A few years ago I read Somerset Maugham's novel, "The Moon and Sixpence," about a London stockbroker who chucks in his comfortable but dull life and wife to become a painter in Paris and then, like Gauguin, seeks the even more exotic beauty of Tahiti, both in its visual and physical forms, leaving various casualties in his wake.
At no point in the novel, as far as I can recall, is the title, "The Moon and Sixpence" ever explicitly referred to, but I suppose the implication is that you can chase the quotidian comforts offered by filthy lucre (sixpence) or look up and seek a more transcendent beauty.
Maugham later observed that,
"If you look on the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon."
Moon or Sixpence?
I wonder, though, if that is all there is to it, since even a hundred years ago when the novel was published (1919 to be precise), sixpence in old money would not have lasted very long. Likewise, the moon is the fleetest of the "planets" whose every phase is indeed easily missed.
Perhaps, then, the choice is more pressing and urgent, not a static "either/or" but a dynamic decision about what to appreciate here and NOW in the present moment - the sixpence in the gutter, or the moon in her current phase and constellation.
Moon and Turtle
Those were the thoughts that sprang to mind when I looked at the ninth proverb of my dime-store deck of Japanese "Iroha Karuta" cards, which is one of the shortest proverbs in the series and simply reads:
月とスッポン
Tsuki to suppon
- 月 = "tsuki" = moon
- と = "to" = and
- スッポン = "suppon" = soft-shelled turtle (a culinary delicacy in Japan)
"Moon and turtle"
The Picture
I like these dime store illustrations. This one is divided into three sections from top to bottom. At the top there is the "tsu" "つ" kana that this card illustrates. To the left of the kana the full moon is looking down at the turtle in the bottom section. The full moon has three "surprise" marks and a raised eyebrow as it looks at the turtle.
For its part, the turtle, in the bottom section of the card is looking up at the moon with three surprise marks of its own. The roundness of the turtle's shell is emphasised. The turtle and the full moon have each noticed another "round" thing rather like themselves.
In the middle section we find a boy squatting on the shore looking at the turtle. To his left there is some writing and a couple of line drawn arms that illustrate what the boy is thinking. Two curved strokes between the two arms show that it is one "arm" that is pointing now at the moon, now at the turtle, while the hiragana text shows that the boy is thinking,
まるいもの
Marui mono
Round things!
In short, the boy has noticed the superficial similarity between the full moon and the turtle, and the text helps us to understand the connection between the moon and the turtle, while leaving us to appreciate the complete incompatibility of those two particular "marui mono."
Both "moon and sixpence" and "moon and turtle" are comparing or contrasting two round shaped objects, the moon and either a coin or a "soft shelled turtle" whose shell is indeed circular in shape if viewed from above.
In that sense, they are superficially similar, and I am probably not the only person to have thought of Maugham's novel when I came across the Japanese kotowaza, or vice versa.
However, the structural similarity - comparing the moon to another round object - is where the similarities end.
Like Chalk and Cheese
A dynamic equivalent of the Japanese proverb "Moon and turtle" might be "like chalk and cheese". Here, two superficially similar things are actually completely different so that a comparison is quite absurd, and that's the end of it. "Tsuki to suppon" is quite neutral, and often humorous. You can deploy this proverb to express the idea that “these things that might share a superficial similarity are actually completely and utterly different.”
On the other hand, Maugham's title, "The Moon and Sixpence," especially when taken in the context of his novel, is about the apparent incompatibility of two modes of being in the world - you can chase the tarnished coin of a conventional career, or you can pursue your lunatic artistic vision to the uttermost end of the earth, but not both.
Cheers!
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