By DONALD DeMARCO
W. Somerset Maugham was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930-40s. His most popular novel, The Razor’s Edge (1944), which was made into a most successful movie two years later, is about the search for meaning. It takes as its theme the Zen Buddhist notion that the passage to enlightenment is narrow and painful. The path to enlightenment, therefore, is as narrow and sharp as a razor’s edge. This bears an interesting contrast with Christ’s statement concerning the “narrow path” (Matt. 7:13-14).
The protagonist, Larry Darrell, cannot abide the self-centered people who surround him and is driven to find a meaning to life other than the pursuit of money and material comfort. His odyssey takes him to India where he is mentored by a guru. He finds meaning in “goodness” although, by the end of the novel, his search is far from over.
Maugham’s own personal search for meaning was not as illuminating. He was torn between his own search for meaning and his atheism. In the final year of his life (1965) he became terrified of dying and possibly being judged by a just and holy God. His life, he admitted, was one of debauchery and decadence. On his deathbed, he was losing his faith in secularism and tortured by the possibility that God exists.
He summoned the famous atheist philosopher Alfred Ayer to his deathbed and begged for reassurance that he was on the brink of oblivion and not divine judgment. “Don’t worry old boy,” Ayer said to him, “God does not exist and you will have no suffering in the afterlife.” Nonetheless, oblivion is not a state in which anyone can find comfort.
In his biography, The Summing Up, Maugham alludes to what he believed to be the contradiction that all life poses. “To myself I am the most important person in the world; though I do not forget that, not even taking into consideration so grand a concept of the absolute, I am of no consequence to the universe if I had never existed.”
How does one reconcile pride with common sense? Maugham was unable to reconcile a subjective perspective (I am all important) with an objective one (I am of no importance). Life, therefore, is a contradiction. But is it? Maugham’s atheism prevented him from understanding the harmony that can exist between these two perspectives.
If God exists, then He, not I, is the center of reality. Furthermore, if God is a loving being, He is a transcendent subjectivity to which my subjectivity and that of each and every other human subjectivity are related. Therefore, from a subjective perspective, I am important and have meaning because I am related to God as subjectivity to Subjectivity. From the perspective of objectivity, I am important and have meaning because I am related to that which is the center of the universe. In this framework, I can avoid pride (I am the most important person in the world) and despair (I am of no importance whatsoever).
Maugham had the extreme misfortune of losing both his parents before he was ten years of age and then being raised by a cold-hearted uncle. Despite his extraordinary powers of perception, Maugham failed to discover the meaning of his own life, though he was haunted by the possibility that his atheism might be wrong. He did not do himself any favors by summoning an atheist to his deathbed.
Jacques Maritain would have brought a different message to the dying novelist. In Existence and the Existent, the Peasant of the Garonne writes, “It is only from above that the antinomy can be resolved. If God exists, then not I, but He is the centre, and this time not in relation to a certain perspective…but speaking absolutely, and as transcendent subjectivity to which all subjectivities are referred.”
These words may reflect a philosophy that might be difficult for many to grasp. A more appropriate message is that God is both loving and forgiving. Salvation may be just a hairbreadth away.
In The Razor’s Edge, Larry Darrell meets an anxiety-ridden “unfrocked priest” who was terrified of God’s mercy. Perhaps this fallen priest was Somerset Maugham in disguise. A fall from grace and a fear of judgment can be a formidable, even lethal, combination. Ultimately, the search for meaning is a wild goose chase if God is not in the picture. God maps out our meaning. Our search for meaning is really our search for God.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest three books are How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life [posted on amazon.com], and the soon to be published, A Moral Compass for a World in Confusion.)
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