On a knife's edge (novel)

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The Razor's Edge (Engl. The razor's edge ) is one of the title novel by W. Somerset Maugham , was published in 1944. The book was made into a film in 1946 and 1984.

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Maugham himself acts as the first-person narrator of the story and is addressed by name on various occasions, albeit rarely. The focal point of the novel is the story of an American named Larry Darrell . Nevertheless, Maugham also goes deeper into some minor characters, most of which are related to Larry and at the same time to himself, especially his child friend and fiancée Isabel and her uncle Elliott , the second main character in the novel after Larry .

Although the narrator primarily wants to provide a description of a person who is important to him, he also thematizes the relationships between the characters and themselves with a distant but sympathetic look. In essence, Maugham describes the “search for meaning” of a Western person in the book. He was ahead of his time with this topic, considering how the search that led to Asia peaked in the 1970s (see Hippie trail ) and continues to this day. The novel allows, especially through the second main character Elliott , insights into different social classes, including their changes, in France and in the USA between the two world wars.

The story of Larry's life portrayed by the narrator (Maugham) reads as follows: Mentally wounded and mentally unsettled by the experience of the First World War , Larry does not find his way back to life as an American citizen. After a year of recovery, he is still not ready to lead a mutually demanded, productive working life - despite his love for Isabel , which also urges him to. At first he wants to live in Paris for a long time, where he hopes to find answers to life's questions, and buries himself there in various libraries.

His fiancée later gave him an ultimatum in Paris that he had to go back to America. In Chicago he is supposed to take on a promising job, mediated by their mutual friend Gray Maturin with his father, a wealthy stockbroker. Otherwise, she'll break the engagement. Larry then offers her a life for two from his meager income, the inheritance of his father, who died young. Since Isabel does not want to go into this, the engagement is broken off by mutual agreement. Isabel eventually marries Gray and has two daughters with him. Larry continues to devote his life to "idleness," which apparently means a lot of reading, mental and physical work. He gained some experience, including working in a coal mine in northern France and a trip to Germany on foot, which ended in a monastery in Alsace. Eventually he arrives in India , where he lives in an ashram .

A few years later, old friends Larry , Isabel , Gray and the narrator find each other again in Paris and spend a lot of time together. Larry successfully helps his friend Gray , who was economically and psychologically and psychosomatically ruined by the stock market crash of 1929 , to regain confidence in himself. When Larry plans to marry another woman, his former fiancée destroys that relationship. It concerns Sophie , another mutual childhood friend from Chicago, who after the accidental death of her husband and child in Paris leads a promiscuous life devoted to alcohol and opium in the worst circles . Isabel thwarted what she thought was a ruinous relationship for Larry (he didn't want to marry her out of love, but out of compassion) by deliberately driving Sophie back into alcoholism. At the same time, despite her happy marriage to Gray, she is still pining for Larry . That it had fallen heir to the rich uncle Elliott added Isabel then in a position Grays finance business fresh start in Chicago, and the couple traveled back with his children in the United States.

The second central character in the novel is the American Elliott Templeton , who is described as a "super snob" and Isabel's uncle . Having made great fortunes as an art dealer in Paris, Elliott's main purpose in life is his social intercourse in the highest classes, depending on the season in Paris, London or on the Riviera. It is Elliott who introduces the narrator to Larry through his sister Louisa , Isabel's mother, in Chicago .

The figure of the apparently completely superficial, completely on style, elegance, representation in dealing with the upper thousand fixated and trapped in conventions older man offers the counterpoint to the figure of the materially modest, but mentally insatiable young Larry , who attaches little importance to externals . Nevertheless, Elliott is by no means hollow and proves this several times, for example through his loyalty to his own family (among other things he offers shelter to the ruined Gray and his family in Paris). Unlike Larry , Elliott committed himself spiritually early on by converting to Catholicism (for style reasons?) And becoming an ardent supporter of the Church of Rome . Old, sick and increasingly disgusted by the once adored, but in his opinion now styleless upper ten thousand, as if cut the other way round, Elliott dies in his villa on the Cote d'Azur and is appropriately placed in a splendidly appointed chapel in the Buried in the Pontine Marshes near Rome.

The novel ends with Larry informing the narrator that he too wants to return to “his people” in the USA in order to lead his life in blissful modesty. In the end, the narrator simply loses sight of Larry ; it can only be speculated whether he has realized his plan to earn a living as anonymous in a car repair shop.

Maugham reports distantly and yet with great sympathy about the fates of Larry , Elliott , Isabel , Gray and other characters in his novel, of whom he claims in the introduction that they are real, easily defaced people - an illusion that includes them Using his own name helps. Larry , although declared the main character, appears in the novel as often as he disappears for years or over several chapters to make room for the description of the living conditions of Elliott and the other protagonists.

Film adaptations

The book was filmed twice:

German editions

All previously published German-language editions were published in translation by NO Scarpi , first published in 1947 by Steinberg-Verlag , Zurich .