On Meeting the Celebrated

William Somerset Maugham

I have always wondered at the passion many people have to meet the celebrated. The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account. The celebrated develop a technique to deal with the persons they come across. They show the world a mask, often an impressive one, but take care to conceal their real selves. They play the part that is expected from them, and with practice learn to play it very well, but you are stupid if you think that this public performance of theirs corresponds with the man within.

I have been attached, deeply attached, to a few people; but I have been interested in men in general not for their own sakes, but for the sake of my work. I have not, as Kant1) enjoined, regarded each man as an end in himself, but as material that might be useful to me as a writer. I have been more concerned with the obscure than with the famous. They are more often themselves. They have had no need to create a figure to protect themselves from the world or to impress it. Their idiosyncrasies2) have had more chance to develop in the limited circle of their activity, and since they have never been in the public eye it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal. They display their oddities3) because it has never struck them that they are odd. And after all it is with the common run of men that we writers have to deal; kings, dictators, commercial magnates are from our point of view very unsatisfactory. To write about them is a venture that has often tempted writers, but the failure that has attended their efforts shows that such beings are too exceptional to form a proper ground for a work of art. They cannot be made real. The ordinary is the writer's richer field. Its unexpectedness, its singularity, its infinite variety afford unending material. The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you. For my part I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister.

注释

1) Kant：即Immanuel Kant(伊曼努尔·康德1724- 1804)，德国古典哲学创始人

2) idiosyncrasy [7idiE5siNkrEsi] n. 特质, 特性

3) oddity [5Cditi] n.奇异, 古怪, 怪癖

论见名人

许多人热衷于见名人，我始终不得其解。在朋友面前吹嘘自己认识某某名人，由此而来的声望只能证明自己的微不足道。名人个个练就了一套处世高招，无论遇上谁，都能应付自如。他们给世人展现的是一副面具，常常是美好难忘的面具，但他们会小心翼翼地掩盖自己的真相。他们扮演的是大家期待的角色，演得多了，最后都能演得惟妙惟肖。如果你以为他们在公众面前的表演就是他们的真实自我，那你就傻了。