a friend in need перевод сомерсет моэм

Ответ от Настасья[гуру]
So what is Julia Lambert? She is shrewd, vain, frivolous, not overly concerned with the difference between truth and lies, and rather vulgar on the inside; but even though we can see all her faults, there is a warmth and frankness about her character that makes her irresistible. Strangely enough, Maugham manages to bring her acting talent to life on the pages of the book. Julia beguiles us with her charm and vivacity as we see her beguile the people around her, and we can guess how beguiling she must be on stage.
In Tom, she doesn’t seem to seek her lost youth (‘If she were given the chance to go back again would she take it? No.. it was the power she felt in herself, her mastery over the medium, that thrilled her’) so much as the lost passion of youth. One gets the idea that Julia Lambert the actress may be stuck in a rut needs to be shaken up a bit; but will the feelings of Julia Lambert the woman do more harm than good? And so, the central relationship in the book turns out to be the one between art and life, a perennial Maugham theme. The real emotions take Julia by surprise, but at the same she is curiously detached from them. There is always something chilly about the heart of any true artist, as her teenaged son points out:
‘But where are you? If one stripped you of your exhibitionism, if one took your technique away from you, if one peeled you as one peels an onion of skin after skin of pretence and insincerity, of tags of old parts and shreds of faked emotions, would one come upon a soul at last?’