Transparency After The Complete Comprehension

Spiritual exploration is all along an important theme in the western literature. Since the individual emancipating was stressed during the Renaissance, seeking spiritually had become the focus of writers. Generation after generation, the western writers have been seeking for human the various ways of life and spiritual home. The traditional culture of western was therefore interpreted and criticized in different ways. Maugham, in the middle of the traditional realism and modernism, towards the traditional culture, had a mixed attitude-negating with reservation. In a word, it was cool-headed reflection. He tried to get a balance and harmony between the reality and mental world what to him was the ideal state. What made him unique was that he built a new paradise in his mind beyond the traditional western culture and started a whole new way of life.Here Maugham's individual process of seeking is analyzed. The whole paper can be divided into three parts:Chapter I: the lonely one with great honor. In this part Maugham's experience of life, feelings of being and his ideal are analyzed. As a man once experienced all kinds of hardships, he suffered great agony and loneliness, which were beyond the understanding of ordinary people, though he enjoyed the enviable reputation and success. In short he was a lonely one with great honor. He is just a bystander of life, looking calmly on others' joys and sorrows, not involving their ordinary lives. This way of life could make it possible for him to reflect objectively the world and life and therefore to realize what on earth one needed and the significance of his life. To him the most important for life was to be oneself independently and reach the spiritual home. And he himself had been taking great troublefor the aim throughout his life.Chapter II: the extricator from spiritual shackles. In this part by analyzing his novels, Maugham's process of spiritual exploration is made known. To an individual the real society was only shackles. His protagonists had no way to find solid ground in the real world for their spiritual ideals, which caused their lives to be in the wandering state. So loneliness became a prominent feature of their being. They made untiring efforts to extricate from such a state. So they began to rescue themselves. They have tried various ways of life, among which there have been real and quiet way of living, aesthetic and free way of art and the most kind and detached way of worship. They reflected the traditional culture and then approached the spiritual absoluteness step by step. Therefore they eventually arrived in a pure spiritual state and finished their exploration. The self of spirit got realized and at last the complete self appeared.Chapter III: the explorer in nothingness. In this part Maugham's essence of spiritual exploration and his ideology are analyzed, His attitude towards life was pessimistic. To him life is only nothingness. Because in his opinion one was controlled by his mysterious instinctive emotions and therefore he suspected and even denied life. Only depending upon another mystery could one get out of the state.By analyzing Maugham's process of spiritual exploration we can well understand the real Maugham. He was a holy philosopher, complicated and profound, who had particular understanding and consciousness of life. What made him different from other writers was that he was a writer of feelings. We can see he was a paradox-escaping feelings but meanwhile regarding them as his spiritual home, i.e. he escaped and denied them but sought another mysterious kind to solve the spiritual problem. The worldly feelings made one lonely. The instinctive feelings helped one escape the society. The detached feelings helped one to find the sense and significance of life and therefore realized self.