歌词中的一句“月亮月亮啊你不懂，六便士到底多重”，从原曲的主题和意象延伸而来，化用了毛姆（W. Somerset Maugham）的名著《月亮与六便士》（The Moon and Sixpence），将普通人的理想与世俗庸常的现实唱到听者的内心深处。不少网友直呼听完这首歌泪水在眼眶里打转。

在很多读者眼里，《月亮与六便士》围绕的是一个“理想与现实”的主题，因为通常认为六便士是价值最低的银币，代表现实与卑微，而月亮则象征着崇高。

（图源：视觉中国）

其实这本小说本身写的是一个脾气怪异的证券交易所的经纪人，有着稳定工作和美满家庭却迷恋上绘画，突然弃家出走，去追求绘画理想。他的行径没有人能够理解。

经过一番离奇的遭遇后，主人公最后离开文明世界，远遁到与世隔绝的塔希提岛上。他终于找到灵魂的宁静和适合自己艺术气质的氛围，创作出一幅又一幅震惊后世的杰作。

通过这样一个一心追求艺术、不通人性世故的怪才，毛姆探索了艺术的产生与本质、个性与天才的关系、艺术家与社会的矛盾等等引人深思的问题。

比方说这个常被人引述的段落就探讨了把自己视为“他者”的感觉。

I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage.

我认为有些人诞生在某一个地方可以说未得其所。机缘把他们随便抛掷到一个环境中，而他们却一直思念着一处他们自己也不知道坐落在何处的家乡。在出生的地方他们好像是过客；从孩提时代就非常熟悉的浓荫郁郁的小巷，同小伙伴游戏其中的人烟稠密的街衢，对他们说来都不过是旅途中的一个宿站。

They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.

这种人在自己亲友中可能终生落落寡合，在他们唯一熟悉的环境里也始终孑身独处。也许正是在本乡本土的这种陌生感才逼着他们远游异乡，寻找一处永恒定居的寓所。说不定在他们内心深处仍然隐伏着多少世代前祖先的习性和癖好，叫这些彷徨者再回到他们祖先在远古就已离开的土地。

作为英国现代文学史上创作力旺盛的多产作家，毛姆的作品中充满了连珠妙语。

来读读这些句子，哪些让你会心微笑，哪些又让你心生共鸣？

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

逾越礼规的言词是机智的灵魂。

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

获得了阅读习惯，那你就为自己在生活的诸多痛苦之外建造了一处避难处。

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

生命的巨大悲剧不是人终有一死，而是人会停止爱。

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

一本书最重要的意义就是你读出来的那份意义。

The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.

恒久的爱就是没有回报的那种爱。 

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

恋爱的时候，男女的区别在于，女人是整日爱着，而男人则是偶尔爱着。

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

有时候，人们把面具佩戴得天衣无缝，连自己都以为自己成了和面具一样的人了。

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

我想，唯一能让我们毫无厌恶地看待我们生活的这个世界的，就是人们时不时从混乱中创造出来的美。他们画的画，他们谱写的音乐，他们写的书，他们过的生活。在所有这些中，最美的是美丽的生活，那是一件完美的艺术品。

你认为月亮和六便士之间的关系是怎样的？欢迎大家留言讨论。