One in Ten Thousand: Reading The Moon and Sixpence

One in Ten Thousand: Reading The Moon and Sixpence

As the saying goes, beautiful appearances are all too common, but an interesting soul is one in ten thousand. And yet we are always so easily seduced by beauty on the surface, while remaining blind to something like the soul. That is not entirely our fault. The soul seems so elusive, so distant and intangible, while the body is always right there within reach, tempting and concrete. Ordinary people cannot see through the illusions of the world; in Buddhist terms, they remain trapped in the cycle of rebirth, unable to transcend it. To be ferried to the other shore requires more than a lifetime of cultivation—only then can one develop spiritual insight, only then can one see that mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters. Perhaps the gap between genius and ordinary people lies precisely in this ability to see through appearances.

Genius may not literally be the result of countless reincarnations and lifetimes of spiritual practice, as Buddhism might describe it, but there is no denying the vast difference between them and the rest of us. The story of Charles Strickland illustrates this perfectly. For the overwhelming majority of people in this world, Strickland’s actions are impossible to understand. And whenever we encounter something that cannot be explained by common sense, we tend to reduce it to a single word: madness. If Strickland’s value had not been recognized after his death, then “mad” would likely have been the final verdict on his life. In truth, if people like Strickland—or his real-life prototype, Gauguin, or Van Gogh, another of the great Impressionist masters—had not been understood posthumously, the conclusion attached to their names would probably also have been simply: mad. Who knows how many geniuses in this world have been shut away in asylums by people as worldly as we are, and spent their whole lives there? In that sense, I think we ought to regard psychiatric hospitals with a certain reverence. After all, where exactly is the line between “normal” and “abnormal”? Even with today’s science, we still cannot give a truly precise answer.

We cannot fully understand the suffering of genius. Beethoven once said, more or less, that God whispers softly into your ears, but shouts at me—so loudly that I have gone deaf. Perhaps it was precisely because he heard God’s voice more clearly that he was able to create such heavenly music. Yet while we listen to that sublime music, we can scarcely imagine the pain he endured through countless days and nights. The reason Strickland abandoned his wife and children to become a painter was that, somewhere deep within, he sensed his calling. That calling could not be understood by others, and even more painful than being misunderstood was the torment of being driven by an urge to express something he could not fully express. In this sense, whether being born a genius is a blessing or a curse is impossible to answer in simple terms. Ordinary people have the ease of ordinary lives; geniuses have the suffering that belongs to genius. One can only say that each person’s fate is different. And besides, fate has never been ours to choose.

In The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas wrote that perhaps there is no such thing as happiness or unhappiness in life, only the contrast between one state and another. As a stockbroker and as a painter, it is difficult to say which life was happier for Strickland as an individual, although the latter contributed far more to humanity as a whole. And after all his suffering, Strickland did indeed rise to the height he had hoped for. In terms of fulfillment, that was something his former life could never have matched.

Whether among the ordinary masses or among the rare and extraordinary geniuses, I think there is greater happiness in being firmly at one end or the other. There is, however, a particular kind of misfortune in being caught in between: being able to feel the call of genius and yet never quite touch it, while also remaining unable to transcend the cycle of worldly existence. That kind of pain may be the hardest of all to overcome. Perhaps Zhou Yu’s lament—“Since heaven gave birth to me, why did it also give birth to Zhuge Liang?”—came close to expressing such a state of mind.