Chapter 14 On the Novels of E. M. Foster

There are many reasons for not criticizing the work of contemporary writers.Aside from the obvious feeling of unease—the fear of hurting someone's feelings—there was difficulty in judging impartially.Books by contemporary writers, published one after another, seem to slowly reveal the components of a pattern.Our appreciation may be warm, but our curiosity is stronger.Does the new fragment add anything to the previous one?Does it prove our theory about the genius of that author?Or, do we have to change our forecasts?Questions of this kind wrinkle the otherwise smooth and level surface of our commentary, making it full of controversy and doubt.This is especially the case with a novelist like Mr. Foster, who is always a writer on whom opinions are rather divided.There was something puzzling, elusive in the very nature of his gift.Let us bear in mind that at most we are building a theory which in a year or two will be disproved by Mr. Forster himself; let us therefore examine Mr. Forster's novels in the order in which they were written. , tentatively and carefully trying to make them furnish us with an answer.

The order in which these novels are written does have a certain significance, since from the very beginning we find Mr. Foster to be extremely susceptible to the influence of time.Most of the characters in his eyes are at the mercy of various conditions that change with the times.He was acutely aware of the bicycle and the automobile, the public school and the university, the suburb and the city.Social historians will find his book full of illuminating material.In 1905 Lilia, who had learned to ride a bicycle, was driving down High Street on a Sunday evening when she fell at the bend near the church.Her brother-in-law taught her a lesson about it, which she will never forget.In Sandtown, the maids cleaned the living room on Tuesdays.Spinsters always blow into them before taking off their gloves.Mr. Foster is a novelist, in other words, his characters are closely related to their environment.Thus the color and quality of 1905 affected him far more than any other year on the calendar has affected the romantic Meredith and the poetic Hardy.As we turn the pages, however, we discover that this observation is not an end in itself; rather it is the goad and gadfly that drives Mr. Foster to provide an escape from this miserable, banal situation. of refuge.Thus we arrive at that balance of forces which plays such a large part in the structure of Mr. Forster's novels.Sand Town implies Italy: shy, fanatical; conservative, liberal; illusory, real.These are the villains and heroes of most of his works.In the novel Where Angels Fear Not to Tread, the vice of custom and the remedy of nature, if anything, are expressed with a too eager frankness, too simple confidence, and yet How bright and charming it is!Indeed, this is not too much: if we find in this thin first novel evidence of forces that are merely necessary, you would venture to suggest a richer recipe to ripen it , become rich and beautiful.Twenty-two years may be enough to wear down the irony and change the overall proportions.Yet, if it is true to some degree, those years have not had the power to erase the fact that while Mr. Foster may be sensitive about bicycles and vacuum cleaners, he is also the most enduring convert of the soul.Beyond bicycles and vacuum cleaners, Sandtown and Italy, Philip and Harriet and Miss Abbott, there was always a burning core to him--it was this that made him such a tolerant man. satirist.It is the soul; it is reality, it is truth; it is poetry; it is love; it presents itself in various forms, and it disguises itself in various ways.However, he must grasp it, he cannot leave it.He flew over rakes and cowsheds, parlor rugs and mahogany cupboards in pursuit of it.Naturally, the spectacle is sometimes comical and often tiring; but at certain moments—his first novel provides several examples—his hands catch the prize he was after.

However, if we ask ourselves under what conditions and how this happens, it seems that it is the passages which are least didactic and least aware of the pursuit of beauty that most successfully achieve this goal.When he gives himself a day off—we can't help but say things like that; in a hotel, freely and spontaneously compose the scene in which the dentist's son Gino sits with his friends in a café, or depict - this is a comedy masterpiece - one of the scenes in the performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. times; and it is at those times that we feel his object attained.Judging, therefore, by the evidence of the book--its vision, its insight, its brilliant conception--we should be able to say that once Mr. , he would be firmly established among the successors of Jane Austen and Peacock.However, his second novel, The Longest Journey, confuses us.The opposites are still the same as before: real and unreal; Cambridge and Sandtown; sincerity and sophistication.But it's all emphasized.This time, he used thicker bricks to build his sand town and used stronger winds to destroy it.The contrast between poetry and realism is even more dramatic.Now we see more clearly what a task his genius gave him.We discovered that what might have been a fleeting emotion was actually a deep belief.He believed that fiction should stand on the side of human conflict.He saw beauty—no one was more keenly aware of it than he; but beauty was imprisoned in a fortress of brick and mortar, and he must rescue her.So, before he can set the prisoner free, he is always compelled to build that cage—that society in all its intricate, mundane aspects.Those buses, villas and suburban houses are an essential part of his design pattern.Ask them to imprison, hold back the rushing flame imprisoned inexorably behind them.At the same time, when we read The Longest Journey, we are aware of a mocking spirit of fantasy that defies his seriousness.No one has grasped more deftly the shades and shades of social comedy; no one has more amusingly sketched parish lunches, teas, and tennis matches on the spot in a few strokes.His spinsters and priests are the most vivid of their kind that we have seen since Jane Austen stopped writing.But to this he added something that Jane Austen did not—the exhilarating impulse of a poet.That smooth exterior, always disturbed by a sudden burst of lyricism.In The Longest Journey, we are repeatedly delighted by the delicate depiction of certain rural scenes; or certain lovely sights—such as when Ricky and Stephen send those flaming paper boats through the arched bridge openings. — is described so that it will always emerge vividly before our eyes.Here, opposing talents need to be persuaded—sarcasm and sympathy; fantasy and fact; poetry and a raw sense of morality—to live in harmony.No wonder we are so often aware of opposing currents running against each other, and prevent this book from rushing at us with the authority of a masterpiece.Yet if there is one gift that is more important to a novelist than others, it is synthesis—the ability to compose a single scene.The success of those literary masterpieces is not that they are free from flaws—indeed we tolerate all their major failures—but that they lie in the infinite persuasiveness of a mind perfectly mastered in perspective.

As the years go by, we look for signs that Mr. Foster has joined or joined one of the two camps to which most writers belong.Roughly speaking, we can divide them into two camps: the missionaries and teachers headed by Tolstoy and Dickens on the one hand; the pure artists headed by Jane Austen and Turgenev on the other.Mr. Foster seems to have a strong compulsion to belong to both camps.He has many of the instincts and inclinations of a pure artist (to use the old categorizations)--a graceful prose style, a keen sense of comedy, with a few strokes to create characters who live in their own atmosphere ability; however, at the same time he is highly aware of certain information.Behind the rainbow of wit and feeling lies a vision that he is determined we must see.But his images are of a special kind, and his message is elusive.He has little interest in institutions.He has none of the wide-ranging social curiosity which characterizes Mr. Wells' work.The Divorce Bill and the Poverty Bill received little attention from him.His concerns are private; his messages are to the soul. "It is private life that holds up the mirror of the infinite; only personal intercourse suggests a personality that we do not see in the spectacle of everyday life." Our business is not built of bricks and mortar Instead of building in gray, it connects what has been seen with what has not been seen.We must learn to build that "rainbow bridge that connects the mundane prose breath in us with the passionate poetry. Without this bridge, we are meaningless fragments, half monk, half beast."Private life is crucial, the soul is immortal; this belief is always carried through in his work.It is between Sandtown and Italy in Where Angels Dare Not Go, between Riggy and Agnus in The Longest Journey, and between Sandtown and Italy in The Room That Sees a View. The conflict between Lucy and Sissel.As time went on and this conflict deepened, it became more compelling.It forced Forster from the lighter and more whimsical short stories, through the outlandish interlude "The Airbus," to the two long works "Howard's Abbey" and "A Passage to India," which marked His heyday.

But before we examine these two works, let us observe for a moment the nature of the problem he sets himself to solve.What matters is the soul; and the soul, as we have seen, is imprisoned in a red-brick villa somewhere on the outskirts of London.It seems to be the case, then, that if his books are to succeed in their mission, some point of his reality must become radiant; his bricks must shine; we must see the whole The building is drenched in light.We must immediately believe in the full reality of that suburb, and of that soul.In this combination of realism and mysticism, he is perhaps most closely related to Ibsen.Ibsen has the same power of realism.To him a room was a room, a desk was a desk, and a wastebasket was a wastebasket.At the same time, those personal props of reality become a curtain at certain moments, through which we see the infinite realm.When Ibsen achieves this goal—and he certainly does—he does not just perform some amazing magic tricks at critical moments.It is by these means that he puts us into the right frame of mind, and gives us the right material for his purpose, at the outset.Like Mr. Foster, he gives us the effect of life in general; but he gives us this effect by choosing a few very pertinent facts.So when the illuminating moment comes, we accept it without reservation.We are neither excited nor confused; we don't have to ask ourselves: what does this mean?We simply feel: what we are looking at is illuminated, its depths revealed.It has not lost its true nature and become something else.

Mr. Foster faces some of the same problems—how to connect the actual thing with its meaning, and get the reader's mind across the gulf that separates the two, without compromising its conviction in the slightest.At certain moments on the Arno, in Herbertshire and Surrey, the beauty comes to the fore, the fire of truth bursts out through the crust; we should see the red-brick villa on the outskirts of London illuminated.Yet it is these great scenes, which testify to the extreme delicacy of this realistic novel, that most remind us of the author's failure.For it is here that Mr. Foster turns from realism to symbolism; it is here that the object, which has been so hard and solid, becomes—or might become—luminous.One cannot help but think that he failed chiefly because his enviable gift of observation worked too far for him.He recorded too many things verbatim.On one side of the page he gives us an almost photographic picture; on the other he asks us to see the same picture transfigured and glowing in eternal flame.The bookcase overturned on Leonard Buster in "Howard's Abbey" should perhaps bear upon him the full burden of that smoky and discolored ancient culture; It should not be a real cave in the eyes, it may be the embodiment of the soul of India.Miss Questold turns from an English girl into a haughty European in one picnic, wandering in the heart of the East and getting lost there.We moderate the tone of these statements because we really don't know for sure whether our guesses are accurate.We don't get the immediate certainty we get in The Mallard or The Architect, we're confused, we're worried.We ask ourselves: what does this mean?How should we understand this?And this indecision is fatal.For we are suspicious of both reality and symbol—Mrs. Moore, the good old lady; Mrs. Moore, the witch.The combination of these two different realities seems to cast a shadow of doubt on both of them.Hence, at the heart of Mr. Forster's novels there is often a sense of ambiguity.We feel that, at critical moments, something has turned our backs; instead of seeing a whole, as in The Architect, we see two separate parts.

The short stories compiled under the heading "The Airbus" may represent Mr. Foster's attempt to simplify the problem that has so often troubled him--combining prose and poetry in life.Here he explicitly, though cautiously, acknowledges the possibility of magic.The bus rises into the sky; the flute of the god Pan can be heard in the bushes; the girls become trees.Those short stories are extremely charming.They release the phantasies that have been placed under a heavy load in the novel.But this air of fantasy was not deep enough or passionate enough to stand alone against the other impulses which formed part of his genius.We feel that he is a schoolboy who is anxious and absent from school wandering in the fairy world.Behind the fence, he kept hearing the horns of cars and the slow footsteps of tired pedestrians, and it wasn't long before he had to go back.A thin booklet indeed containing all the pure fantasy he allowed himself to have.From the whimsical land where boys are thrown into the arms of the great god Pan and girls are turned into trees, we come to the two Miss Schlegel, who have six hundred pounds each and live at Wickham Palace.

As much as we may regret this change, we cannot doubt that it was right.For, before "Howard's End" and "A Passage to India," none of Mr. Forster's works has developed his abilities to the fullest.With his strange and in a sense contradictory assortment of talents, Mr. Foster seems to need some kind of theme which stimulates his highly sensitive, lively intellect, but does not require extreme romance and passion; it will furnish him with critical material, and attract him to investigation; it demands to be composed of a multitude of minute and exact observations, and can stand the test of a mind of the utmost sincerity and sympathy; yet , despite all these qualities, when the subject is composed it carries a symbolic meaning, unfolding against the backdrop of sudden bursts of sunset light and endless night.In "Howard's Abbey", the lower-middle, middle, and upper-middle classes of British society form a complete structure in this way.It's the largest attempt yet, and if it fails, it's largely down to its size.Indeed, when we look back at this well-crafted and virtuoso work—skillfully accomplished, insightful, witty, and beautiful—we may wonder: What mood prompted us to call it a failure.By all rules, and by the keen interest with which we have read it throughout, we should say it is a success.Perhaps the reason for its failure is hinted at in the way it is praised.Delicacy, skill, wit, insight, beauty—these qualities are all there, yet they don't fit together; they lack the cohesion with which they stick together;The Schlegels, the Wilcoxes, and the Busters come alive to us with all the qualities of the classes and circumstances they represent, but the overall effect of this book is less than that of the other The much lighter yet beautifully harmonious "Where Angels Dare Not Tread" is so satisfying.Again we have the feeling that there is something anomalous in Mr. Foster's genius, and that his multitudinous talents tend to find fault with each other.Had he not been so scrupulous, impartial, and so sensitively aware of the different aspects of each case, we feel he might have been able to concentrate more force on a definite point.According to the current way of writing, all the strength he spent was scattered and consumed.He is like a person who is not a deep sleeper, always being woken up by some sound in the room.The poet is jerked away by the satirist; the moralist pats the dramatist on the shoulder; he is never in that pure joy of beauty, or interest in things as they are, Losing control or getting carried away for a long time.For this reason, the lyrical passages in his works are often extremely beautiful in themselves, but when viewed in context, they do not have the effect they should.They are not flowery phrases that spring spontaneously out of an exuberant interest in and beauty in the object itself—as, for example, in Proust—but, we feel, some kind of exasperated Emotions prompt them, they are the effort of a mind outraged by ugliness, which wants to compensate with some beauty; and just because this beauty is originally protested, it has an element of fanaticism in it. .

Yet one feels that in "Howard's Abbey" all the qualities that make up a masterpiece dissolve.Those characters are extremely real to us.The sequence of the story, the arrangement is well controlled.That element, which is difficult to define precisely but which is highly important, is the atmosphere of the book, radiant with intellectual brilliance; there is not an iota of affectation in it, not a single atom of falsehood can settle in it.On a larger battlefield, the struggle that is present in all of Forster's work - between what matters and what doesn't, between reality and illusion, between truth and lies — is still going on.It's the same again: the comedy is artful and refined, his observations impeccable.However, just as we indulged in the pleasure of imagination, a slight sudden movement woke us up again.Someone tapped us gently on the shoulder.He reminds us: we should be aware of this, we should be aware of that.He makes us understand that Margaret or Helen are not speaking simply as themselves; what they say has another, wider intention.And so, as we struggle to discover that meaning, we emerge from the enchanted realm of the imagination (where our instincts run free) into the twilight of the world of theory (where only we intellect functioning dutifully).The moment when the illusion fades often occurs when Mr. Foster is at his most sincere and earnest, at the critical moment of the book, when the sword falls and the bookcase overturns.Those moments, as we have already noted, bring a strange sense of unsteadiness to the "great scenes" and important characters.However, they never show their faces in Foster's comedic scenes.They lead us quite foolishly to wish to arrange Mr. Foster's various talents differently, and to limit his creative range so long as he writes comedies.For, in a comic work, he immediately ceases to feel responsible for the actions of his characters, and he forgets that he has to solve the problems of the universe, and he becomes the most entertaining novelist.In "Howard's End," the enviable Tibby and the dainty Mrs. Mentor, though inserted chiefly to amuse us, bring in a breath of fresh air.They inspire us with that intoxicating belief that they are free to wander away from their Maker, and go as far as they please.Margaret, Helen, and Leonard Buster were tightly bound and watched vigilantly lest they might take control of their own destiny and overturn the author's theory.But Tibby and Mrs. Mentor can go where they want, say what they want, and do what they want.The secondary characters and scenes in Mr. Forster's novels, therefore, often make a more vivid impression than the ones and scenes on which he has obviously labored.However, if we do not confirm that this large, serious, and very interesting book is an important, though unsatisfactory work, before we part with it, it may very well be another book of the same magnitude. A prelude to a gigantic but less unnerving work, then that wouldn't be fair.

Many years passed before A Passage to India appeared.It was hoped that during this interval Mr. Foster might have developed his artifice, made it easier to submit to the imprints of his whimsical mind, and released more freely the poetry and fancy which roamed within him; but they disappointed.The author's attitude is precisely the same poise: he walks towards life as if it were a house with a front door, he puts his hat on the table in the hall, and then, in a step-by-step manner, visits all the Room.The house is still the home of the middle class in Britain.But there has been a change since "Howard's Abbey."Hitherto, Mr. Foster has tended to permeate and pervade the book with his personal influence, like an attentive hostess eager to introduce, explain, and warn her guests that there is a step here and a smell there. Draft.But, in this book, perhaps a little disenchanted with both his guests and his house, he seems to let go of those concerns.We were allowed to roam this unusual continent almost alone.We noticed many things at the same time, almost by accident, especially things about the country of India, as if we were really in this country; what caught our attention for a while was the sparrows flying on those pictures, For a while, it was the elephant with patterns painted on its forehead, and for a while, it was the huge and scattered mountains.Those people, especially the Indians, have something of the same serendipitous and inescapable quality.Maybe they are not as important as the land, but they are alive and sensitive.We no longer feel, as we are used to in England, that they are only allowed to go so far, and that they cannot go any further, lest they disprove some of the author's theories.Aziz is a free agent.He is by far the most imaginative character Mr. Foster has ever created, and he recalls Gino, the dentist, in the author's first novel, Where Angels Dare Not Go.We may indeed guess that placing the ocean between him and Sandtown did Mr. Foster a favor.It was a relief to be temporarily detached from the influence of Cambridge.For him, while there was still a need to build a model of the world that could withstand subtle and precise criticism, that model was on a larger scale than in the past.That English society, with all its smallness and vulgarity, and its feeble heroism, is set against a larger and more sinister background.Although there is still some ambiguity on important occasions, and in some moments there is still imperfect symbolism, a rich accumulation of facts that dazzles the imagination, but the kind that seems to confuse us in previous works The double vision is now gradually becoming one.The infiltration and infiltration between the two is much more thorough than before.Mr. Foster seems to have accomplished the great feat of animating this dense, solid body of observation with a spiritual radiance.The book shows some signs of fatigue and loss of hallucinations; yet there are chapters that are clear and beautifully brilliant, and above all, it leaves us wondering: what is he going to write next?