Worldly author’s unworldly tale of renunciation   ‘The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to passover Thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard’ Katha-Upanishad This epigraph opens the book Razor’s Edge , twentieth century English novelist, W. Somerset Maugham’s most successful novel. The edge of a razor symbolises the path to enlightenment, which is as painful and narrow.   Maugham was fascinated by the character who renounces worldly pleasures for a spiritual life of deep joys and lasting contentment. This theme recurs in his writings. Fall of Edward Barnard is one such fabulous tale of another American youth. In Of Human Bondage , his most acclaimed novel, protagonist Philip Carey is forever entangled in search of truth that will reveal to him the true nature of the world. In Moon and Six Pence , Charles Strickland, forswears life of a successful stockbroker and comfortable marriage, to follow his passion of painting. Maugham was taken by the idea of renunciation

  What is it in a piece of verse that makes your heart go pit-a-pat? In an anthology of essays on great equations in modern science, editor compared these equations to a beautiful poem. I sat back, closed my eyes, and effortlessly slipped into a pleasant reverie of one constant love in my readerly world. Words, lines, stanzas, and occasionally a complete poem floated in my consciousness. Poetry is regarded as the pinnacle of human creativity, the most beautiful of literary arts, the purest representation of man’s aesthetic sense. Outstanding achievements of human mind are called poetic, be they in: science, architecture, music, painting, or even prose. Einstein placed high value on beauty in science. According to his elder son Hans, for Einstein, ‘the highest praise for a good theory or a good piece of work was not that it was exact but that it was beautiful.’ He once said, ‘the only physical theories that we are willing to accept are the beautiful ones.’ Paul Dirac, perhaps the