Edward Morgan Forster |
| Edward Morgan Forster was born in
London on 1 January 1879. He was the only son of Edward
Morgan Llewellyn Forster and Alice Clara Whichelo. They
were an upper middle class family but unfortuately his
father, an architect, died when of consumption before EM
Forster was two years old. He was raised by his mother
and great-aunt Marianne Thornton. It was his mother (known
as Lily to family and friends) that gave him the
awareness of injustice and sense of propriety that is
evident in his novels. EM Forster shared a house with his
mother until her death in 1945. From 1883 to 1893 Forster lived at Rooksnest. He was educated at Tonbridge in Kent and then Kings College, Cambridge, which he remained connected with even after his graduation in 1901. He travelled extensively, living in Italy for several years and also to Greece, Germany and India. It was now that EM Forster seriously began to start writing. He had several short stories published in journals such as the 'Independant Review' and his first novel - 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' - was published in 1905 when he was only 26 years old. The "most brilliant, most dramatic and the most passionate of his works" (Lionel Trilling) and his most autobiographical novel 'The Longest Journey' was published two years later in 1907. 'A Room with a View' followed in 1908, the first part having been written years earlier when the author was in Italy. When 'Howards End' was published in 1910, Forster, at 31 years of age, was established as a respected and economically successful writer. He became a part of the Bloomsbury Group, "a set of Bohemian thinkers and doers who revolted against the manners and morals of Victorian England" (Jerry Carroll). Besides Forster, other members of the Bloomsbury Group included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey. EM Forster's last novel, 'A Passage to India' was published in 1924. The story depicts the complicated reaction to the British Raj and has been called "a classic on the strange and tragic fact of history and life in India" (Lowes Dickenson). The book cemented his literary reputation and despite only writing relatively few novels, EM Forster has been acknowledged as one of the 20th century's greatest writers. Forster continued to write political essays and biographies and later became a broadcaster for the BBC. He was known as a great humanist and frequently spoke out on affairs of the day. He was awarded with membership in the Order of Companions of Honour in 1953 and he received the Order of Merit in January 1969. EM Forster died on 7 June 1970 in Coventry aged 91. His novel 'Maurice' written between 1913 and 1914 was published posthumously in accordance with his wishes. |
Howards End
The house that
figures prominently in Howards End is modeled on the house where
he spent his childhood Rooksnest. Most critics
believe that by the end of the novel the house functions as a
symbol of human dignity and endurance.
Howards End deals with personal relationships and conflicting values. On the one hand are the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their brother Tibby, who care about civilized living, music, literature, and conversation with their friends; on the other, the Wilcoxes, Henry and his children Charles, Paul, and Evie, who are concerned with the business side of life and distrust emotions and imagination. "Only Connect," Forster's key aphorism, informs this novel about an English country house and its influence on the lives of the wealthy and materialistic Wilcoxes; the cultured, idealistic Schlegel sisters; and the poor bank clerk Leonard Bast. Bringing together people from different classes and nations by way of sympathetic insight and understanding, Howards End eloquently addresses the question "Who shall inherit England?" (Lionel Trilling).
Howards End depicts the life and manners of the upper middle class that Forster knew from his own life. He portrayed the shortcomings as well as the amenities of society along side the frequent trivialities he saw. He felt that people need not be static even when a society was. A sincere individual could still achieve a morality above what his surroundings might seem to permit. In Howards End, Forster is "preoccupied with the well-being of an entire society. He not only analyzed the various strata of the British upper class, he also showed that even a sincere individual would encounter great difficulty in acquiring wholeness in the fractured modern age". (DLB, v. 34, p. 131)
The primary character in Howards End is Margaret Schlegel. She and her sister, Helen, and brother Tibby, represent the middle level of middle class society, independent, but not wealthy. Henry Wilcox, whom Margaret eventually marries, and his family represent the upper level of the middle class. Two other characters of importance are Leonard and Jacky Bast, who live in genteel poverty.
Margaret tries to bridge the upper and lower levels of the middle class. Her practical abilities, inner strength and emotional perceptiveness enable her to appreciate the Wilcoxes and, at the same time, strive for a finer life, which she perceives can only be found from enjoying an emotionally whole life experience.
Henry Wilcox's first wife, Ruth, becomes a close friend to Margaret. She feels an affinity to Margaret that her own family does not offer. The property at Howards End is hers (from her family inheritance) and she decides to give it to Margaret when she dies. The Wilcox family, ignoring her wishes, decide not to give the property to Margaret.
Through a series of social contacts, Margaret and Henry become involved and eventually marry. Helen, Margaret's sister, has discovered that through bad advice from Henry, Leonard Bast, a poor clerk in the office of the Porphyrion Insurance Company, has lost his position and fallen into the abyss of the poor. Helen tries to appeal to Henry's conscience by dragging the Basts to Evie Wilcox's wedding in Shropshire. The situation is only worsened and threatens the marriage of Margaret to Henry when it is revealed that Mrs. Bast (Jacky) was Henry's mistress when he lived in Cypress (while still married to Ruth).
Helen becomes pregnant by Leonard Bast and disappears for eight months. At Henry's suggestion, Margaret lures Helen to Howards End and they reconcile. Henry eventually must face the discovery that his son, Charles, has caused the death of Leonard Bast (a beating causes Leonard's heart to fail), and Charles must serve time in prison. Henry is a broken man, but Margaret undertakes his care. Henry eventually is reconciled to Helen. She and her illegitimate child join Margaret and Henry at Howards End, where peace and stability are enjoyed.
Howards End represents a fusion of social realism and poetic symbolism. Forster comments on the contradictions, complexities and paradoxes of human experience.
| English society at the close of the Edwardian era. | Country houses as images of cultural unity |
| Emotion versus pragmatism | Culture versus materialism |
| The strong bond between sisters | The relationship between Germany and England at the time of the novel |
Read it online here
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/howardsend.html
http://www.online-literature.com/forster/howards_end/
aspects of the novel
Aspects of the Novel is the publication of a series of lectures on the English language novel, delivered by E. M. Forster at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1927. Using examples of classic works by many of the world’s greatest writers, he discusses seven aspects he deems universal to the novel: story, characters, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm.
Forster dismisses the method of examining the novel as a historical development, in preference to an image of all novelists throughout history writing simultaneously, side by side. He first establishes that, if nothing else, a novel is a story that takes place over a period of time. He stresses the importance of character, maintaining that both ‘‘flat’’ and ‘‘round’’ characters may be included in the successful novel. He regards the necessity of plot, which creates the effect of suspense, as a problem by which character is frequently sacrificed in the service of providing an ending to the novel. Fantasy and prophecy, which provide a sense of the ‘‘universal,’’ or spiritual, Forster regards as central aspects of the great novel. Finally, he dismisses the value of ‘‘pattern,’’ by which a narrative may be structured, as another aspect that frequently sacrifices the vitality of character. Drawing on the metaphor of music, Forster concludes that rhythm, which he defines as ‘‘repetition plus variation,’’ allows for an aesthetically pleasing structure to emerge from the novel, while maintaining the integrity of character and the open-ended quality that gives novels a feeling of expansiveness.
a passage to india
Forster's 1924 novel, A Passage to India, begins and ends with a question - can the English and Indian races be friends and, at the end of the novel, the answer appears to be no, "No, not yet". The novel, in dramatizing the repercussions following Aziz's attempts to be decent to the English , his subsequent arrest, trial and final anti-English sentiments, is largely constructed around this question. Throughout the novel the barriers to inter-racial friendship in a colonial context are explored, and personally experienced by Fielding and Aziz. This is the first important point I would make - Forster's emphasis is firmly placed on the realms of the personal and the individual, rather than the social and political. And this, as we shall see, is an inherent characteristic of his own sustained liberal humanist world-view, with the premium it places on personal experience, individual experience, and the sanctity of the personal.
In this sense one can approach the novel in terms of a slogan first coined in the 1960s; "the personal is political, the political is personal". And this is the vantage point from which I will explore the novel. However, it is worth noting that A Passage is a rich, multi-layered novel, highly complex in both form and argument, and it is indeed one of the most critically discussed novels within the canon. This complexity derives from one of the narratives central mysteries (or muddles): what exactly does happen in the Marabar Caves? What do the Caves mean or suggest within the narrative? Furthermore Forster, from the self-confessed perspective of the enlightened Western visitor, suggests that the Caves themselves are symbolic for the "alien" "otherness" of India itself: complex, ungovernable, bewildering, enigmatic…
Various critical approaches have been applied to the novel, and a host of allegorical interpretations attached to its central mysteries: it is about the Encounter with sexuality, with Death, with the Hostility of Nature itself and the emptiness at the "Heart of Things", the Encounter with the Unconscious or the 'Shadow'. Alternatively it is a narrative concerned with the limits of Christian humanism or liberal idealism in the post-1918 world, or it is an exploration of Imperialism, or it is a kind of existentialist exploration (underwritten by an awareness that we need to impose meanings on the World or Nature, but must also recognise that such meanings are inherently or finally false). How then does one attempt to come to terms with the bewildering range of interpretation? My answer would be to suggest that the novel is deliberately and consciously polyphonic and symphonic in design, in common with many of Forster's works. It deliberately raises the above issues and perspectives, weaving together through various means - symbolism, imagery, the use of leit-motifs. It is not a monophonic text, a thesis novel, although at times it might appear to present itself in these terms.
It's a useful comment, from Martin Green, that "One could read all the works of the Great Tradition, and never know that England had an empire" - the canonical English texts deal, he comments, with "women and marriage, personal relations, and alternatives to politics", but the financial source of the wealth which lubricates these personal and social relationships is left generally unspoken of. Forster's work faces that silence head on, raising issues of empire and race in ways which had not been attempted earlier. His principal, and contrasting antecedent as, of course, Kipling, and it is against Kipling's representation of the 'East' as a training ground for manliness, decency and character-building which Forster wishes to challenge. When the novel appeared, in 1924, many Anglo-Indians were outraged: the portrayal, Forster admitted, was exaggerated, but only slightly. Ronnie's views on his career are parallel to the sympathies of contemporary young Anglo-Indians for whom the 'East' was, in the words of Disraeli, "a career". India was also seen, from this Kiplingesque perspective, as a training ground, a frontier, a gymnasium within which qualities such as manliness and character were to be assessed. We find echoes of the influence of such views of India in George Orwell's portrayal of his experiences in the 'East', in Burmese Days or 'Shooting an Elephant'.
Forster clearly ironises such views of the India as Career, as gymnasium or testing ground, but it is the nature of the debunking which is important. Forster, in common with a number of upper middle class intellectuals (such as Virginia Woolf) was an anti-Imperialist, but his criticism of imperialism is liberal, as opposed to Socialist or Marxist. For Forster, with his liberal emphasis on education and individualist psychology, approaches the critique of Anglo-Indian imperialism in terms of the predominance amongst the upper middle classes of the "Public School Attitude": the priggishness, snobbery, complacency, censoriousness, the lack of imagination and subtlety, the philistinism and narrow-mindedness which the novel sees in the Anglo-Indians is, for Forster, testimony of something deficient within the English national character.
This emphasis on national psychology is a recurrent issue throughout Forster's work, coupled with his ironic, and often highly satirical, portraits of the English middle class culture from which he had emerged and, briefly, lived within. In a 1921 article, 'Notes on the English Character' Forster outlines his case more fully: "For it is not that that the Englishmen can't feel - it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even to open his mouth too wide when he talks - his pipe might fall out if he did. He must bottle up his emotions, or let them out only on a very special occasion."
Forster, as someone who partly admires the virility of this type of Englishman, remains ambivalent about the English Public School Character and the "undeveloped heart" of the typical Englishman. Nevertheless, in A Passage, his criticism of Anglo-Indian prejudice, snobbery and narrow-mindedness is remorseless.
Whilst Forster emphasises the personal experience of Imperialism two points should be noted: (i) he recognises that Imperialism in India is a system (political, economic and social) and that India is a colonial subject, and (ii) that Forster's account of India is culturally and historically specific. Although the novel was first conceived in 1912, it is set in an India shortly after the Amritsah Massacre, a notable and brutal episode in the history of English rule over India, when there were debates about how Anglo-Indian rule could be liberalised through new attitudes of courtesy and decency. Forster spent two years in India, in 1912 and again in 1921/2, and did so as a paid secretary at a Hindu court. He was closely involved in Indian affairs, supported the Ghandi Non-Co-operation movement of the early 1920s, and continued to remain interested in Indian affairs as a broadcaster and commentator in the inter-War period. For these reasons Forster's portrait of Anglo-Indian rule is a well-observed portrait, from the pen of someone who was thoroughly familiar with the realities of the Raj.
Why the interest in India? For Forster the interest was highly personal. Forster was a homosexual and it was his love affair with an Indian, Syed Ross Massood, a long and turbulent affair, which opened his eyes to India. The novel is dedicated to Massood and is, partly at least, an attempt to come to terms with that relationship through its exploration of Anglo-Indian friendship. Massood died in 1923, when Forster was working on the novel, and inevitably his thoughts and feelings regarding the relationship worked themselves into the novel's characterisation, its imagery, and its treatment of personal relationships. It certainly explains a great deal about the characterisation of Aziz and the narrative's attempt to see events from Aziz's point of view. In part also Forster's treatment of inter-racial friendship draws upon his other affairs, most notably with Mohammed, whom Forster had first met in Alexandria in 1917. Throughout his novels Forster explores ways in which the barriers - of race, of class, of age and gender - can be broken down or even transcended. In Howards End, for example, the novel's insistence on the need to connect("only connect") permeates the exploration of the various friendships, and Forster's other Edwardian narratives continue this in their presentation of Anglo-Italian relationships, or in the friendships which cross the barriers of class. As a liberal novelist Forster is determined to explore these friendships from all perspectives, from a variety of points of view.
This takes us back to the issue of A Passage as a "polyphonic" novel, as a novel with multiple points of view or perspectives, and also as a novel split across a number of levels - political/social observation, spiritual/philosophical speculation, and straightforward drama. One's reading of the novel is, therefore, determined by the point of view from which the action is seen. If, for example, we identify Fielding with Forster, as many readers do (and partly correctly), the novel is about friendship and the difficulty of leading a life by liberal principles Fielding, in terms of this reading, is the hero. From Aziz's point of view, however, the novel takes on a different quality: Aziz moves from the naïve good-natured innocent who is eager to please to a more rigidly Indian nationalist perspective. However, the novel also presents us with two more points of view, that of Adela Quested and Mrs Moore. In the case of Adela the novel allegorises her growth in personal honesty and personal truth - she moves from a shallow desire to "see India" towards a more truthful sense of self, of sexual and psychological honesty, than she had previously possessed. But it is the point of view of Mrs Moore, who also confronts something in the Marabar Caves, an emptiness and hollowness which undermines her form of Christian idealism, which makes the novel particularly enigmatic. What is in the caves, if anything, challenges all Mrs Moore's idealistic belief in the intrinsic friendliness of Nature and of the Universe - she realises, possibly, that Nature is, at best, indifferent, and possibly hostile. From this perspective many critics have seen Forster using Mrs Moore's point of view as a means of exploring fundamental issues about Good and Evil, about Truth and Reality. Certainly the novel permits this reading, a reading of the "shadow side" of Christian humanism and of the basic tenets of Western civilisation, and a prophetic anticipation of the spirit which would lead to Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
Yet over-arching all of these perspectives is the design of the novel itself, with its tripartite structure modelling the 3 Indian seasons. It is also a novel structured by the quest for India itself. The novel portrays a ever-shifting and panoramic view of an 'India' which cannot grasped. References to mystery/muddle that is India are frequent throughout the novel, but by the end all we can say for sure is that we have various visions, but India remains.
What then can be said of the novel's style, language, structure etc., assessed in purely aesthetic terms? And what does Forster bring to the Novel form that it did not have before? The answer is, I would suggest, that the novel is essentially modernist, in its use of polyphony, its patterning, its refusal to offer final interpretations. The perspectives offered through the novel are multiple, characterisation shifts between the socially stereotypical and the elusive and enigmatic. Forster appears, at first sight, to be an old-fashioned novelist, in the mode of an earlier novelist such as Jane Austen, especially in his use of ironic and omniscient narration. But look again. What we see is a consistent blurring of narrational and character-based points of view, the indeterminate attribution of perceptions, comments and observation. And all of this is part of a larger whole in which subjectivity and personal perspectives predominate and are celebrated. Forster was, at the time of writing Passage, consciously under the influence of the French novelist Proust and, as a writer he was certainly not unaware of the wider development of European modernism within the novel form. The modernist novel, with its tendency towards the subjective, the indeterminate, representing the flux and process of experience, was seeking to find new ways of expressing reality, and Forster's novel is one further example of this general tendency in twentieth century writing. However, we cannot forget also that Forster's style also clings to the more traditional role of the novelist, to represent and comment upon the social and empirical world. The balance of modernist and traditional elements makes for an intriguing reading experience, and characterises an individual writing talent who has been so influential on later writers such as Paul Scott, Angus Wilson, John Fowles, Doris Lessing, and so many more.
Depending on the particular narrative voice being used, characters are referred to by either their formal surname or their familiar name.
"A passage to India", written by E.M.Forster(1879-1970),
is a story set in India in the early twenties. Forster begins to
write this book, that is his last novel, during his first visit
to this country. His interest in human relationships seems to be
developed during his years at the King's College in Cambridge.
In this novel, Forster underlines the enormous difference between
the Indian and the English culture.This book mainly points
out the behaviour of superiority that the British rulers have
towards the Indian people.The conditions of life of the English
colonies in India are really difficult and the poverty is too
much. So Forster tries to show the dramatic situation of an
English colony: Chandrapore.
The novel tells the story of a young English lady, called Adela
Quested, who has come to Chandrapore to visit her future husband,
the City Magistrate. During this travel, she makes acquaintance
with a young Muslim doctor, Aziz, who organises an expedition to
the Marabar Caves for Adela and the City Magistrate's mother, Mrs.
Moore. In the visit to the Caves there is terrible accident:
Adela accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her inside the Caves. So
trial is made against the doctor, but during this, Adela
suddenly reveales that she is wrong and the accusation against
the doctor is unfounded. Aziz is released and this represents an
important victory for India on English superiority.
Adela has a very strange personality. She seems interested in the
Indian culture and ways of life but she also seems disturbed or
almost scared of this. During the visit to the caves, during the
trial and during her ride by bicycle we can see her weak
psychology and her confusion that at a wide exent brings her to
invent and to imagine that she has been raped by Aziz, her Indian
friend. At the trial she asks herself: "In virtue of what
had she collected this roomful of people together"(ch.24,pg.212)
"per quale virtù era riuscita a radunare tanta gente in
quella stanza "(capitolo 24),but she can't find a reason.
She feels herself upset and at a moment "Her body resented
being called ugly, and trembled." (ch.24,pg.213) "il
suo corpo era offeso d'essere stato chiamato brutto, e tremava"(capitolo
24). During the trial, "while the prosecution continued,
Miss Quested examined the hall - timidly at first as though it
would scorch her eyes" (ch.24, pg.214) "esaminava l'aula-
timidamente, a tutta prima, come se temesse di bruciarsi gli
occhi".(cap 24)
When she is called to testify, she shows herself timorous and
uncertain, almost feared of speaking. Her mind is full of
confused images. "Her vision was of several caves. She saw
herself in one, and she was also outside it, watching its
entrance, for Aziz to pass in. She failed to locate him. It was
the doubt that had often visited her, but solid and attractive,
like the hills, ' I am not- ' Speech was more difficult than
vision. ' I am not quite sure' " ( ch.24, pg. 222). "La
sua visione abbracciava parecchie grotte. Lei si vedeva in una di
quelle, ma era anche all'esterno e ne osservava l'entrata, in
attesa che passasse Aziz. Non riusciva a situarlo. Era il dubbio
che le era venuto spesso, ma solido e attraente, come le montagne.<<
non ne sono…>> le parole erano più difficili che la
visione. << non ne sono del tutto certa >> ".(
cap. 24) Adela can't speak and she really feels too insecure. She
doesn't know anymore what she has to say and what she thinks.
Suddenly she organizes her ideas and she understands what she
really has to say . So she explains that she is wrong. This
revelation is very important: Aziz is in her hands and the
British rulers only wait for his condemnation because he is an
Indian.
However, the story has a happy end, even if the human
relationship - even that of the most open-minded characters - in
the end fails to overcome cultural and social barriers. An only
doubt remains: what influenced Adela? Too much sun, as Aziz says
to Mr. Fielding, her weak and strange personality or the sense of
English superiority?
The book "A passage to India", was written by E.M.
Forster after his journey in this country in 1912, accepting Syed
Ross Masood's invitation. Masood was an Islamic noble young man
met in Weybridge, the city where the author lived for twenty
years. The novel is Forster's masterpiece and it was published in
1924.
It speaks about the social conflict between the Indian people and
the English colonists, who occupied India during Imperialism. The
story is set in Chandrapore where a young English "tourist",
Adela Quested, arrived with her future mother-in-law, Mrs
Moore, to see her boyfriend, Ronny Heaslop, who was the City
Magistrate. Their arrival shattered the delicate balance of the
Anglo-Indian relationship: all happened when the two ladies,
wishing to visit India and to know the Indian culture, were
accompanied by an Islamic doctor, Aziz, in the Marabar's caves.
Here Adela remained alone in the cave and influenced by echoes
and darkness, thought to be annoyed by Aziz and she decided to
accuse him. This charge caused a process, which is the most
important and the most interesting part of the book on our point
of view.
Adela belonged to the British aristocracy and for this reason
Aziz had few possibilities to win the process. This antagonism
didn't only represent the conflict between a poor Indian, Aziz,
and a rich English woman, Adela, but it was also the contrast
between two different cultures. All the Indian people sided with
Aziz and encouraged him, while English people were sure the
"guilty" would be imprisoned. Infact as Ronny, Mrs
Moore's son, said: "Conviction was inevitable..."
"La condanna era inevitabile..." and as Adela thought
"...I can really behave as I like, cry, be absurd, I am sure
to get my verdict..." "...posso veramente comportarmi
come mi pare, piangere, essere assurda, ho la certezza che la
causa andrà bene", because they felt themselves owners of
the Indian land and people. During the trial, the crowd, out of
Court, acclaimed Mrs Moore, the only person who could demonstrate
Aziz's innocence, because the old lady also represented the
mediator between two communities, but also because she was
identified by Indians as a Hindu goddess, Esmiss Esmoor.
But Mrs Moore had been sent away by her son, because he didn't
want her to be a witness at the process. As soon as they knew,
Indian people got angry for this reason and they said: "…She
was kept from us until too late... this is English justice...
give us back Mrs Moore... and she will save my friend..."
"finchè si era in tempo l'hanno tenuta lontana da noi...ecco
la giustizia inglese...Ridateci la signora Moore...ed essa
salverà il nostro amico...". Furthermore, the English
people insulted the Indians calling them "porks" to
underline the native people's inferiority.
At the end, Aziz wasn't imprisoned because Adela decided to
recall the accusations, "humilitating" her compatriots:
"..Miss Quested had renounced her own people..."
"..la signorina Quested aveva ripudiato la propria gente
...".
But a personal problem can't solve a general conflict between a
"little colony" and a big Empire; the history
demonstrates it. For example with the persecution or the
extermination of Indians, also the annulling of the Indian
culture, a civilization now forgotten but in reality considered,
studied and respected by numerous western people, probably those
who had ill-treated the Indians for many centuries.
| 1912: | Forster's first travel to India with a young Muslim known at Weybridge. |
| 1922: | Forster's second travel to India as secretary for the Maharaja of the State of Dewas Senior. |
| 1924: | Forster published his masterpiece "A passage to India". |
Chandrapore. India is under the English colonization.
Between Indian and English people there is a
silent "cold war". But, when Adela Quested,
a young English tourist, arrives, she breaks this frail balance.
She would like to know the "real India" and she finds
in the welcoming Aziz, the perfect guide. But during an
expedition to the Marabar Caves… a mysterious event leads
the two characters to a difficult confrontation in the tribunal
court. This trial triggers prejudices,
racism and contradictions between these two civilizations, so
deeply different for feelings and values.
Mrs Moore, "Esmiss Esmoor" for the Indians, will be the
symbol of an impossible peace…
The last paragraph of this novel by Forster is perhaps the inevitable end of the whole story. The main idea is the impossible communication and unity between two men so different for nationality, uses and ideologies. We can understand this from many sentences in this passage, as "…riders must pass single file". These words refer to the obstacles of nature, that rise up against all the attempts of reconciliation, also because English buildings create a strong contrast with the Indian ones. In addition to physical elements, there are symbolic voices, like the "hundred voices", perhaps those of India and Great Britain, that say: "No, not yet", surely because the situation is still strained for the subjection of Indians to English people. But there is a final divine voice, that belongs to the sky and tells: "No, not there". In fact the sky is the only element that can observe silently all the reasons of such a division.
| " "Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want". But the horses didn't want it - they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there".". | Perché non possiamo esserlo subito?" disse l'altro, stringendolo con affetto. "È quello che voglio. È quello che voi volete". Ma i cavalli non volevano:scartarono di fianco; non voleva la terra, che balzava su in massi tra cui i cavalieri dovevano passare l'uno dietro l'altro; i templi, il lago, la prigione, il palazzo, gli uccelli, le carogne, la foresteria, che apparvero alla vista quando loro uscirono dalla gola e scorsero Mau ai loro piedi. Non volevano, dissero con le loro cento voci: "No, non ancora", e il cielo disse: "No, non qui"." |
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