E.M. Forster - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. E.M. Forster Biography of E.M. Forster E. M. Forster (1879-1970), noted English author wrote Howards End (1910); The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catherine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. Amabat, amare timebat. And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him. It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the form of a good "talking." By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty. But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness.--Ch. 22 The relationship between Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox shows us the importance of our connection with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. Howards End was Forsters' first critically acclaimed novel and as with many of his works, successfully adapted to the screen. Heavy in symbolism, Forster explores themes of class, repression, mysticism, sexuality, individualism, British Imperialism, and social realism. Forster was outraged by the treatment of Oscar Wilde and the treatment of homosexuals as criminals, and his essay "What I Believe" (1939) outlines much of his secular humanist views. Using quotes from such authors he esteemed as William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman , inspired by Samuel Butler and Jane Austen , and at times evoking Thomas Hardy or D.H.

Lawrence , today many of Forster's works have been translated to dozens of languages, and are widely read and studied. Edward Morgan Forster was born on 1 January 1879 in London, England to Alice Clara nï¿½e Whichelo (1855-1945) and architect Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster (1847-1880) who died soon after his son was born. Living at Rooksnest (which would later prove the model for Howards End near Stevenage in Hertfordshire) young Edward was raised by his mother, aunts, and governesses. A precocious young man, he started writing stories at the age of six. He attended the Tonbridge School in Kent County, then went on to study history, philosophy, and literature at King's College, Cambridge. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1900. Although his public school years were unhappy, at King's he blossomed under tutors and the atmosphere of intellectual freedom.

He joined groups like the Cambridge Conversazione Society, also known as the Cambridge Apostles, and met lifelong friends including Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932). Many of them went on to form the Bloomsbury Group. After coming into an inheritance from his Great Aunt Marianne Thornton (1797-1887), Forster was off on his first of many trips to Europe with his mother. They visited Italy, then Greece, where Forster first experienced the Mediterranean culture he would grow to love and write about. When he was not travelling he lived with his mother at Abinger Hammer in Surrey until her death in 1944. Forster knew early on he would be a writer and was fortunate enough to not experience financial hardships. His first of many sketches, essays, and stories was printed in the Independent Review in 1904. Later, he contributed greatly to the London literary journal The Athenaeum. His first novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), set in Tuscany, was followed by his Bildungsroman novel The Longest Journey (1907), Rickie Elliot being one of his most autobiographical characters.

A Room With a View (1908) was Forsters next work, a romance set in Italy, contrasted with Edwardian England's society and mores. While he started writing Maurice in 1912, it was not officially published until after his death in 1971. During World War I, while Forster was in Alexandria, Egypt serving with the Red Cross, he met and fell in love with Mohammed el Adl (1900-1922), a young tram conductor. He also penned short stories that were printed in local newspapers under his pseudonym 'Pharos'. Works inspired by this period of his life include Alexandria: A History and Guide (1922) and Pharos and Pharillon: A Novelist's Sketchbook of Alexandria Through the Ages (1923), printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf 's Hogarth Press. Forster also spent much time in India and became well-acquainted with the conflict between the British Raj and the Indian Independence Movement of which he wrote about in A Passage to India (1924), his last novel to reach international acclaim.

In recognition he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse. Forster was deeply committed to numerous literary causes during his lifetime including PEN, the international association of writers. He was a witness for the defence in the obscenity case of D.H. Lawrence 's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. As an Honorary Fellow at Cambridge, he lectured there and was a well-known and respected figure on campus. After the death of his mother he maintained residences at Cambridge and in London. In the 1950's he worked with Eric Crozier to write the libretto to Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville 's 1924 novel of the same name. In 1953 he was awarded the Order of Companions of Honor and in 1969 given Queen Elizabeth's Order of Merit. At the age of ninety, on 7 June 1970, Edward Morgan Forster died at the home in Coventry of friend and long-time companion Robert Buckingham. Other titles by E. M.

Forster include; The Celestial Omnibus (short stories, 1914), The Eternal Moment (1928), Abinger Pageant (short stories, 1934), England's Pleasant Land (1940), The Hill of Devi (1953), and Arctic Summer (unfinished). E.M. Forster - IMDb IMDb Writer E.M. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England as Edward Morgan Forster. He was a writer, known for A Passage to India (1984), A Room with a View (1985) and Howards End (1992). He died on June 7, 1970 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England.

See full bio » Born: a list of 90 people created 31 Mar 2011 a list of 464 people created 08 May 2011 a list of 4 people created 07 Dec 2011 a list of 203 people created 27 Jan 2012 a list of 169 people created 18 Jun 2014 Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of E.M. Forster's work have you seen? User Polls 1 win & 1 nomination.

See more awards » Known For 2007 A Room with a View (TV Movie) (novel) 2000/II Desire (Short) (short story) 1998 Billy Budd (TV Movie) (libretto) 1998 Plug (Short) (short story "The Machine Stops") 1988 Billy Budd (TV Movie) (libretto) 1987 Maurice (from the novel by) 1984 A Passage to India (based on the novel by) / (by) 1977 Premiere (TV Mini-Series) (short story - 1 episode) - The Obelisk (1977) ... (short story) BBC Play of the Month (TV Series) (novel - 3 episodes, 1965 - 1973) (original author - 1 episode, 1966) 1945 A Diary for Timothy (Short documentary) (commentary) Hide 1959 Camera Three (TV Series) Himself 1970 E.M.

Forster 1879-1970 (TV Movie) Himself - Subject Personal Details Other Works: Stage: His novel, "A Room with a View," was adapted to the stage by Christina Calvit at the Lifeline Theatre in Chicago, IL. See more » Publicity Listings: Did You Know? Personal Quote: If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalize the modern reader, and he may stretch out his hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have shocked Dante though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circles of Hell because they had chosen their friend ... See more » Trivia: Educated at Tonbridge School, Kent. The E. M. Forster Theatre opened at the school in 2000. See more » Star Sign: E. M. Forster - Wikiquote E. M. Forster Jump to: navigation , search There's enough sorrow in the world , isn't there, without trying to invent it. See also: Maurice Only connect !

… Only connect the prose and the passion , and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die . Contents Quotes[ edit ] Poetry is a spirit ; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth . There is fascism , leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol … It means change without hope . Our immediate duty … is to stop it. I am the means and not the end . I am the food and not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit ; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth . "The Celestial Omnibus" (1911) There is fascism , leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol , into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war . It means change without hope . Our immediate duty — in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub — our immediate duty is to stop it.

"Notes on the Way", Time and Tide Magazine (10 June 1934); reprinted in The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings (1998) Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)[ edit ] Romance only dies with life . No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better. Ch. 2 A wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and — by some sad, strange irony — it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy. Ch. 7 I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are.

Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God , and thank Italy , and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before. Ch. 8 This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened. "Thank you," was all that he permitted himself. "Thank you for everything." Ch.

10 It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth. Ch.1 There's enough sorrow in the world , isn't there, without trying to invent it. Ch. 2 The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world ; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but transalate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Ch. 3 Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. Ch. 14 It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal . Ch. 19 Main article: The Machine Stops Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her.

There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. Ch. 1 She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion ... Connect — connect without bitterness until all men are brothers. He remembered his wife's even goodness during thirty years. Not anything in detail — not courtship or early raptures —but just the unvarying virtue, that seemed to him a woman's noblest quality. So many women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity. Not so his wife. Year after year, summer and winter, as bride and mother, she had been the same, he had always trusted her. Her tenderness! Her innocence!

The wonderful innocence that was hers by the gift of God . Ruth knew no more of worldly wickedness and wisdom than did the flowers in her garden, or the grass in her field. Her idea of business — "Henry, why do people who have enough money try to get more money?" Her idea of politics — "I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars ," Her idea of religion — ah, this had been a cloud , but a cloud that passed. She came of Quaker stock, and he and his family, formerly Dissenters, were now members of the Church of England. The rector's sermons had at first repelled her, and she had expressed a desire for "a more inward light," adding, "not so much for myself as for baby" (Charles). Inward light must have been granted, for he heard no complaints in later years. They brought up their three children without dispute. They had never disputed. She lay under the earth now. She had gone, and as if to make her going the more bitter, had gone with a touch of mystery that was all unlike her. Ch. 11 There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness.

I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end. Ch. 15 Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever and not this outer life of telegrams and anger. Ch. 19 She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going. Ch. 22 Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. Ch.

22 In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect — connect without bitterness until all men are brothers. Ch. 33 Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Ch. 3 All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. Ch. 4 Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself", or , “I am horrified,” we are insincere. Ch. 14 Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value. Ch.

14 '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 temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged 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.' Ch. 37 Aspects of the Novel (1927)[ edit ] If God could tell the story of the Universe , the Universe would become fictitious . If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way... As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.

Chapter One: Introductory A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver — in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter. Chapter One: Introductory If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious. Chapter Three: People A man does not talk to himself quite truly — not even to himself: the happiness or misery that he secretly feels proceeds from causes that he cannot quite explain, because as soon as he raises them to the level of the explicable they lose their native quality. The novelist has a real pull here. He can show the subconscious short-circuiting straight into action (the dramatist can do this too); he can also show it in its relation to soliloquy. He commands all the secret life, and he must not be robbed of this privilege. "How did the writer know that?" it is sometimes said. "What's his standpoint?

He is not being consistent, he's shifting his point of view from the limited to the omniscient, and now he's edging back again." Questions like this have too much the atmosphere of the law courts about them. Chapter Five: The Plot How can I tell what I think till I see what I say? Chapter Five: The Plot Most of us will be eclectics to this side or that according to our temperament. The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful." Chapter Seven: Prophecy If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this.

Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. Chapter Nine: Conclusion What I Believe (1938)[ edit ] First published in The Nation (16 July 1938) One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life . One can, at all events, show one's own little light here, one's own poor little trembling flame , with the knowledge that it is not the only light that is shining in the darkness , and not the only one which the darkness does not comprehend. Two cheers for Democracy : one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism . Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal . The Saviour of the future — if ever he comes — will not preach a new Gospel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy, he will make effective the goodwill and the good temper which are already existing. I do not believe in Belief .

But this is an Age of Faith , and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance , good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules , and Science , which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life , and it is therefore essential that they should not let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must, myself, be as reliable as possible, and this I try to be. But reliability is not a matter of contract — that is the main difference between the world of personal relationships and the world of business relationships. It is a matter for the heart, which signs no documents. In other words, reliability is impossible unless there is a natural warmth. Most men possess this warmth, though they often have bad luck and get chilled. Most of them, even when they are politicians, want to keep faith.

And one can, at all events, show one's own little light here, one's own poor little trembling flame, with the knowledge that it is not the only light that is shining in the darkness, and not the only one which the darkness does not comprehend. I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. This has sometimes been misquoted as: If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the decency to betray my country. There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer. Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do.

The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy. Whether Parliament is either a representative body or an efficient one is questionable, but I value it because it criticizes and talks, and because its chatter gets widely reported. So two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. I realize that all society rests upon force. But all the great creative actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the front. These intervals are what matter.

I want them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them " civilization ". Some people idealize force and pull it into the foreground and worship it, instead of keeping it in the background as long as possible. I think they make a mistake, and I think that their opposites, the mystics , err even more when they declare that force does not exist. I believe that it exists, and that one of our jobs is to prevent it from getting out of its box. It gets out sooner or later, and then it destroys us and all the lovely things which we have made. But it is not out all the time, for the fortunate reason that the strong are so stupid. The Valkyries are symbols not only of courage but of intelligence; they represent the human spirit snatching its opportunity while the going is good, and one of them even finds time to love. Bruennhilde's last song hymns the recurrence of love, and since it is the privilege of art to exaggerate she goes even further, and proclaims the love which is eternally triumphant, and feeds upon freedom and lives. The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing-holes for the human spirit. No millennium seems likely to descend upon humanity; no better and stronger Ieague of Nations will be instituted; no form of Christianity and no alternative to Christianity will bring peace to the world or integrity to the individual; no "change of heart" will occur. And yet we need not despair, indeed, we cannot despair; the evidence of history shows us that men have always insisted on behaving creatively under the shadow of the sword; that they have done their artistic and scientific and domestic stuff for the sake of doing it, and that we had better follow their example under the shadow of the aeroplanes. Others, with more vision or courage than myself, see the salvation of humanity ahead, and will dismiss my conception of civilization as paltry, a sort of tip-and-run game. Certainly it is presumptuous to say that we cannot improve, and that Man, who has only been in power for a few thousand years, will never learn to make use of his power.

All I mean is that, if people continue to kill one another as they do, the world cannot get better than it is, and that, since there are more people than formerly, and their means for destroying one another superior, the world may well get worse. What is good in people — and consequently in the world — is their insistence on creation, their belief in friendship and loyalty for their own sakes; and, though Violence remains and is, indeed, the major partner in this muddled establishment, I believe that creativeness remains too, and will always assume direction when violence sleeps. So, though I am not an optimist, I cannot agree with Sophocles that it were better never to have been born. And although, like Horace , I see no evidence that each batch of births is superior to the last, I leave the field open for the more complacent view. This is such a difficult moment to live in, one cannot help getting gloomy and also a bit rattled, and perhaps short-sighted. An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness — much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable. I distrust Great Men.

They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper. I believe in aristocracy, though — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail.

Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world. With this type of person knocking about, and constantly crossing one's path if one has eyes to see or hands to feel, the experiment of earthly life cannot be dismissed as a failure. But it may well be hailed as a tragedy, the tragedy being that no device has been found by which these private decencies can be transmitted to public affairs. As soon as people have power they go crooked and sometimes dotty as well, because the possession of power lifts them into a region where normal honesty never pays.

The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink; the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events restrained by taboos. The Saviour of the future — if ever he comes — will not preach a new Gospel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy, he will make effective the goodwill and the good temper which are already existing. In other words, he will introduce a new technique. In economics, we are told that if there was a new technique of distribution there need be no poverty, and people would not starve in one place while crops were being ploughed under in another. A similar change is needed in the sphere of morals and politics. … Not by becoming better, but by ordering and distributing his native goodness, will Man shut up Force into its box, and so gain time to explore the universe and to set his mark upon it worthily.

At present he only explores it at odd moments, when Force is looking the other way, and his divine creativeness appears as a trivial by-product, to be scrapped as soon as the drums beat and the bombers hum. Naked I came into this world, naked I shall go out of it. And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour. Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)[ edit ] This title comes from a phrase from his 1938 essay "What I Believe" which is the first essay in the book. [Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends. "Tolerance" Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work. "Tolerance" Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes. "Cambridge" A poem is true if it hangs together.

Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. "Anonymity: An Enquiry" What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse. "Anonymity: An Enquiry" Commonplace Book (1985), edited by Philip Gardner Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise. p. 6 Long books , when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time. p. 11 Probable that I am now better than most people and as good as I ever shall be at this game, and can therefore get to know anyone I wish, provided I am not physically repellent. And perhaps this is why personal relationships no longer seem to me a serious branch of study. p. 45 I don't think literature will be purged until its philosophic pretentiousness is extruded, and I shant live to see that purge, nor perhaps when it has happened will anything survive. p. 46 Self-pity ?

I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage. p. 50 I grudged her nothing except my company. But it has gone further, like the degradation of rural England: this afternoon (Sunday in April) all the young men had women with them in far-flung cameradeie. If women ever wanted to be by themselves all would be well. But I don't believe they ever want to be, except for reasons of advertisement, and their instinct is never to let men be by themselves. This, I begin to see, is sex-war, and D.H.L. has seen it, in spite of a durable marriage, and is far more on the facts than Bernard Shaw and his Life Force. p. 59 No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt : fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. p. 76 [...] it is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing.

p. 92 (26-2-32) One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course. p. 92 Today 29-9-34 ion the garden, rockery side, looking up to the house where Bone was working, sky bluish, very gentle, I looked without theories or self consciousness. This happens very seldom, though I can prolong the delight if I prevent my engines from restarting. p. 95 But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters. p. 151 N.B. this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted. p. 155 (1943) I have very strongly of late the wish that others may be as sensitive as myself and the fear that they will not be. Colleague Sir Frank Adcock stumped by the sunset-portent unheeding.

And I can't arge that I gain, or that others would gain, anything for humanity by observing and recording what went on for a few moments in the sky on Boar Race evening. I sometimes pretend to myself that I am public-spirited. I am not. I am an hedonist who wants pleasant sensations. On the other hand I am not the usual type of hedonist, for I want sensations to be had – if not by myself, then by someone else. The show shouldn't end with my death, which becomes a minor boo-hoo. p. 211 (1959) Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace. p. 219 (1960) Going to Bits. This phrase me to day and is indeed the one I have been looking for; not tragic, not mortal disintegration; only a central weakness which prevents me from concentrating or settling down I have so wanted to write and write ahead. The phrase "obligatory creation" has haunted me.

I have so wanted to get out of my morning bath promptly: have decided to do so beforehand, and have then lain in it as usual and watched myself not getting out. It looks as if there is a physical as well as a moral break in the orders I send out. I have plenty of interesting thoughts but keep losing them like the post cards I have written, or like my cap. I can't clear anything up yet interrupt a 'good read' in order to clear up. I hope tomorrow to copy out a piece of someone else's pose: it is the best device known to me for taking one out of inself, Plunge into anothers minutiae.' 31-1-61 p. 224 I haven't made my point yet, which is that it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way — otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contrary the Christian danger. p.

243 (1963) Cyril Connolly , Enemies of Promise , 1938 "Two Cheers for Democracy"...[made] a considerable impression. It annoyed many, both orthodox patriots and orthodox Marxists , but they felt outmanoeuvred by it. And many others, sickened of "commitment" by the betrayals and confusions of the Spanish civil war, found it a great support and recognized a heroism in its facing of limitations. P. N. Furbank , E. M. Forster: A Life. Oxford University Press, 1979. (p. 225) His light blue eyes behind his spectacles were like those of a baby who remembers his previous incarnation and is more amused than dismayed to find himself reborn in new surroundings. He had a baby's vulnerability, which is also the invulnerability of a creature whom one dare not harm. Christopher Isherwood , Christopher and His Kind (1976) ISBN 0374520364 , ch. 6 (p. 106) No government, no big organization, will pay for the truth.

To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India? He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid. George Orwell , "As I Please" column in Tribune (13 October 1944); reprinted in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945 (1968) Forster took a risk, opening the comic novel to let in the things it was not designed for; small patches of purple prose were the result. But Forster's innovation remains: he allowed the English comic novel the possibility of a spiritual and bodily life, not simply to exist as an exquisitely worked game of social ethics but as a messy human concoction. He expanded the comic novel's ethical space (while unbalancing its moral certainties) simply by letting more of life in . Austen asks for toleration from her readers. Forster demands something far stickier, more shameful: love.

Zadie Smith , " Love, Actually " The Guardian (1 November 2003) He's a mediocre man — and knows it, or suspects it, which is worse; he will come to no good, and in the meantime he's treated rudely by waiters and is not really admired even by middle-class dowagers. Lytton Strachey , Letter to James Strachey, 3 February 1914, in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography (1968) Forster wrote the five books on which his reputation rests because he desperately needed to create characters and situations that would expose his own plight in ways that were subtle and dramatic without being obvious or explicit. His true nature was not only homosexual, it was also wounded, mysterious and filled with sympathy for others, including foreigners and women. Despite his best intentions, he allowed all of himself into the five novels published in his lifetime, and only part of himself into “Maurice". Colm Tóibín , in "Lives of the Novelists: E. M.

Forster", The New York Times (22 July 2010) The book [A Passage to India] shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment; but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, what will he write next? Virginia Woolf , 'The Novels of E.M. Forster, Atlantic Monthly, November 1927, in E. M. Forster: The Critical Heritage, ed. P. Gardner (1997) The middle age of buggers is not to be contemplated without horror. Virginia Woolf , Diary for 12 March 1922, in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, ed. A. O. Bell (1977-82) M. [Forster] says he would much rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave... E.M. Forster Biography | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays | GradeSaver Forster, E.M. Biography of E.M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on the first day of 1879.

His father, an architect from a strict evangelical family, died of consumption soon after Forster was born, leaving him to be raised by his mother and paternal great-aunt. Because his mother was from a more liberal and somewhat irresponsible background, Forster's home life was rather tense. He was raised in the household of Rooksnest, which inspired Howards End . Forster was educated as a dayboy at the Tonbridge School, Kent, an experience responsible for a good deal of his later criticism of the English public school system. He then attended King's College, Cambridge, which greatly broadened his intellectual interests and provided him with his first exposure to Mediterranean culture, which counterbalanced the more rigid English culture in which he was raised. Forster became a writer shortly after graduating from King's College. His first novels were products of that particular time -- stories about the changing social conditions during the decline of Victorianism. However, these earlier works differed from Forster's contemporaries in their more colloquial style and established the author's early conviction that men and women should keep in touch with the land to cultivate their imaginations.

He developed this theme in his first novels, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and The Longest Journey (1907), followed by the comic novel A Room With a View (1908), which concerns the experience of a young British woman, Lucy Honeychurch, in Italy. However, Forster's first major success was Howards End (1910), a novel centered on the alliance between the liberal Schlegel sisters and Ruth Wilcox, the proprietor of the titular house, against her husband, Henry Wilcox, an enterprising businessman. The novel ends with the marriage of Henry Wilcox to Margaret Schlegel, who brings him back to Howards End, reestablishing the Wilcox land link. When composing this novel, Forster was part of the Bloomsbury Group, a set of unconventional British bohemian thinkers that included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey. Forster spent three wartime years in Alexandria doing civilian work and visited India twice. After he returned to England, inspired by his experience in India, he wrote A Passage to India (1924).

The novel examines the British colonial occupation of India, but rather than developing a political focus, explores the friendship between an Indian doctor and British schoolmaster during a trial against the doctor, based on a false charge. A Passage to India is the last novel Forster published during his lifetime, but two other works remained, the incomplete Arctic Summer, and the unpublished complete novel Maurice, which was written circa 1914, but published in 1971 after Forster's death. Forster specifically requested the novel be published only after his death due to its overt homosexual theme. Although Forster published no novels after A Passage to India, he continued to write short stories and essays until his death in 1970. He published several anthologies, including The Celestial Omnibus (1914) and The Eternal Moment (1928), two collections of short stories, Abinger Harvest (1936), a collection of poetry, essays and fiction, and several non-fiction works. Forster also wrote the libretto to the Benjamin Britten opera " Billy Budd ." The essays by Forster as well as his frequent lectures on political topics established his reputation as a liberal thinker and strong advocate of democracy.

Forster was awarded membership in the Order of Companions of Honor in 1953 and received the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth in 1969. He died in June of 1970 after a series of strokes. Today, many people know of E.M. Forster due to the many film adaptations of his work. Titles by Forster that are immortalized not only on the page but also on film include A Passage to India (1984), A Room with a View (1986), Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991), and Howards End (1991). It is ironic that so many of his titles were made into movies, many with great success, as throughout his life he remained adamant about the difficulty of adapting books to stage or film. In 1919, he contributed regularly to the London literary magazine "The Athenaeum", often criticizing various attempts to convert written work to the stage. For him, the individual experience of reading a book was something that could not be captured in another form of media. Despite his beliefs, many of the film adaptations of Forster's work were met with widespread enthusiasm and praise, including multiple Academy Award nominations.

Study Guides on Works by E.M. Forster E.M. Forster - Writer - Biography.com E.M. Forster Writer and critic E.M. Forster is the author of Howards End, A Passage to India and A Room With a View. IN THESE GROUPS Famous British People Synopsis Raised by his mother and aunts, E.M. Forster attended England's Tonbridge School before enrolling at the University of Cambridge. His novel Howards End brought him great acclaim, and he went on to publish A Passage to India and A Room With A View, among other literary works. Forster's themes reflect the shift in morals and viewpoints from the Victorian era to the 20th century. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information A Room With a View by E.M. Forster. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. "I think I shall live." What a delightful read! A few months ago I picked up this book, read seventy or so pages, and then put it down because I was bored with it. I don't know, back then I must have been impatient!

But I picked it up again this past week, read it in a few days, and was delighted. It is especially interesting to read this book after having read A Passage to India. There are endless similarities between the two... both in theme, and in conception of character. I notice that Mr. Beebe is much like the schoolmaster (and close friend and confidant of Dr. Aziz) - I forget his name, but he's one of the main characters. They are both wise men, unentangled by the romances, indifferent to women, observing from the outside. They seem to me to be the portals through which E.M. Forster's homosexuality enters the novels. There are countless other similarities, but they are not worth drowning this post in. But perhaps what is worth a discussion are Forster's views on the two genders. From the two novels of his that I have read, Forster doesn't seen to have any strong female characters and, on the contrary, his female characters seem to be either naive or superficial. Both Miss Quested and Lucy Honeychurch undergo much disillusionment in the novels. The rest of the female characters seem to care more about delicacy than beauty, and on the whole are very superficial.

To examine the way he conceives male characters, one should look at Dr. Aziz and George Emerson, Mr. Beebe and the schoolmaster (oh, how I hate that I forget his name). Dr. Aziz and George Emerson are both passionate men who are right in their principles, but are unable to accomodate the prejudiced views of their environment. Mr. Beebe and the schoolmaster are both wise men, observers, indifferent to the petty women in their environments, providing the closest insight into Forster himself. One can see, then, how Forster's personal indifference to women manifests itself in the novels. Posted By ktm5124 at Thu 8 Jul 2010, 7:35 PM in A Room With a View || 2 Replies View? I have just finished this novel. This one is a good one especially the role of the heroine, who struggles between convention and her own passion. This character is rather tipicall at that time, while at last she submits to her own heart. I want to raise a question for those who have already reading it. Does the word "view" in the title has any deep meaning and why the author chooses this name?

Look forward to your answers!!!;) Posted By godhelpme2 at Wed 6 Dec 2006, 8:54 AM in A Room With a View || 3 Replies Based in my hometown The area where Summer Street is, is actually down the road from where I currently live (in Surrey) and is actually called Friday Street. When I was in college our tutor took us out with the book and made us read it where it was actually set. This made us more interested in the book and I can now happily say that this is one of my favourites. However, to see his real skill at writing I would look to his short stories as well. Particularly The Machine Stops. Posted By Trace at Wed 14 Jun 2006, 3:32 PM in A Room With a View || 5 Replies fav!! My all-time favourite book and film! Day Lewis, Callow and Elliott are superbly funny in the movie, the casting was either very lucky or a stroke of genius.

Posted By billy duffy at Mon 25 Jul 2005, 5:43 PM in A Room With a View || 2 Replies A Room With A View A Room With A View by E.M. Forster was my most recently read book. I have read this particular book several times now. I usually catch something that I missed the time before. I find this book to be quite interesting. It has a lot to do with life, society and love. Forster did a wonderful job at making the characters come alive. Lucy is such a delightful character, who has quite the dilemma on her hands. Posted By Rachel Pate at Tue 24 May 2005, 10:07 PM in A Room With a View || 0 Replies A Room with a View I read this book right after I read "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf. There is such an interesting connection between the two as if Woolf wrote the nonfiction explanation and Forster wrote the fictional explanation of the women of the day. His book has subtle comments that parrallel Woolf's and often explains her better than she is able to do herself.

Posted By tish knapp at Tue 24 May 2005, 10:07 PM in A Room With a View || 0 Replies More Than Just Obviously "A Room With a View" is a symbol for "a LIFE with a view" - which is what Lucy Honeychurch wouldn't have had with Cecil Vyse. The plot ambles along at a deadly slow pace. But such was the pace of life for many in this Edwardian era. I think I might have found the book even tougher going were I not familiar with the film and just embarking on watching it again - I grow fonder of the film with each successive viewing. Such a splendid adaptation - it probably wasn't easy. Posted By Philip at Tue 24 May 2005, 10:07 PM in A Room With a View || 0 Replies Lovely I picked up A Room With A View at Barnes and Noble, and didn't know what to expect. It was listed as a classic so I thought I'd check it out, and so I bought it along with The Jungle and Dracula. It was the shortest of the three books so I cracked the hard cover open and began reading.

It took a little effort getting into the book, but eventually my imagination start running with the scenery and things got better. I ultimately found the books perspective on society and love inspiring and good. The revelation this book provided to me basically has to do with the art of "getting in love" or "falling in love", and how that effects our lives. I would recommend A Room With A View to most anyone, and I am interested to see what else E. M. Forster writes about. Posted By Chrissy at Thu 17 Mar 2005, 3:46 PM in A Room With a View || 2 Replies No Subject A Room With A View is currenlty my favorite novel in the entire world. Those who bash it for being dull may be right but in my opinion have not given it the chance it so richly deserves. While the story may be a bit slow the writing is eloquent and captivating. The people who toss it aside as boring and dull miss the wonderful point that Forster is putting across. I wish i had read this work in school so that a teacher could explain it to me better than my own humble interpretation.

I feel however that Forster illustrates in this novel the importance of love better than any other work I have encountered. I understand that this is and was no new concept but Forster brought it to a whole new level that I have yet put into words myself. I have read that this is actually not the strongest of Forster's novels and so I have resolved to read Howard's End before the summer is out. Posted By The Wolf at Tue 24 May 2005, 10:07 PM in A Room With a View || 0 Replies beautifully done I loved A Room with a View. My stepdad recommended I read it to prepare for English in University. So when we needed to pick a novel for an oral book report, I chose this one. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it at first, but by the end of the second chapter I was hooked. The book drew me in subtely and before I knew it, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. The movie version was also excellent. Posted By Emma at Tue 24 May 2005, 10:07 PM in A Room With a View || 1 Reply E.M.

Forster - Modernism Lab Essays E.M. Forster by Anthony Domestico E.M. Forster (1879-1970) is difficult writer to classify. An Edwardian modernist, he criticized Victorian middle class mores in formally traditional novels; a writer who idealized connection and sincerity above all else, he kept his own homosexuality hidden from view but defended D.H. Lawrence ’s sexually daring Lady Chatterley’s Lover from obscenity charges. Forster’s enduring achievement rests upon his novels, including Howards End ( 1910 ) and A Passage to India ( 1924 ), his critical study Aspects of the Novel ( 1927 ), and his continuing, principled defense of liberal humanism despite the upheavals of the early twentieth century. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England. His father died soon after his birth, and he was raised by his mother and a series of aunts and governesses. As a child, Forster received an inheritance from his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton that enabled him to travel and, later, write with little concern for finances.

Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge from 1897 to 1901, studying history, literature, and philosophy. He became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a discussion society steeped in philosophical skepticism that shaped Forster’s liberalism and led him to shed his Christian faith. Among the Apostles who had a formative intellectual influence upon Forster were Sir James Frazer, G.E. Moore, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, and several future members of the Bloomsbury Group. After graduation, Forster traveled throughout Europe and Asia, visiting Italy, Greece, Germany, India, and Egypt. This experience would inform Forster’s cosmopolitanism and his abiding interest in foreign cultures, an interest reflected in A Passage to India and A Room with a View. Forster contributed stories and sketches to the Independent Review in 1904, and later published a number of works in the Athenaeum, a London literary magazine that also printed work by Thomas Hardy , T.S. Eliot , and others. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread , was published in 1905 .

Two years later, he published The Longest Journey ( 1907 ), a Bildungsroman that begins at Cambridge and is perhaps Forster’s most autobiographical work. Forster’s next two novels, A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), secured his place as one of the leading British writers of his generation. He was a comic moralist, a writer interested in exploring conflicts between ideologies that oftentimes resulted in melodrama. In Howards End, for instance, Forster used the tension between the Schlegel family, exemplars of liberalism and bohemianism, and the Wilcoxes, plutocratic businessmen, as a means to structure his plot and subtly explore the various possible stances towards life of the modern period. In 1924, Forster published A Passage to India, his most successful novel. A deeply symbolic, mystical book that examines the nature of colonial rule, A Passage to India reveals Forster’s interest in both politics and religion, in the practical and the numinous. Forster did not publish another novel after A Passage to India, spending the last forty-six years of his life writing short stories and non-fiction.

His homosexual novel Maurice , written in 1913 - 1914 , was published posthumously in 1971. His 1938 essay “Two Cheers for Democracy” reveals Forster at his best: gently ironic, tolerant yet chiding, willing to take a principled stand in defense of liberal values. A Passage to India (1984) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A Passage to India ( 1984 ) PG | Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator. Director: E.M. Forster (by), E.M.

Forster (based on the novel by) | 2 more credits » Stars: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 30 titles created 18 Jan 2013 a list of 27 titles created 23 Apr 2013 a list of 23 titles created 04 Jan 2014 a list of 45 titles created 17 Jan 2015 a list of 28 titles created 26 Jul 2015 Title: A Passage to India (1984) 7.4/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 2 Oscars. Another 19 wins & 26 nominations. See more awards » Videos Set in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, a married woman in a small Irish village has an affair with a troubled British officer.

Director: David Lean The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during the First World War and then the October Revolution. Director: David Lean A humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor. Director: David Lean An orphan named Oliver Twist meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master. Director: David Lean A lonely American woman unexpectedly finds romance in Venice, Italy. Director: David Lean Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband. Director: David Lean After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it. Director: David Lean This "story of a ship," the British destroyer HMS Torrin, is told in flash backs by survivors as they cling to a life raft.

Directors: Noël Coward, David Lean Stars: Noël Coward, John Mills, Bernard Miles Edit Storyline Circa 1920, during the Indian British rule, Dr. Aziz H. Ahmed was born and brought up in India. He is proficient in English, and wears Western style clothing. He meets an old lady, Mrs. Moore, at a mosque, who asks him to accompany her and her companion, Adela Quested, for sight-seeing around some caves. Thereafter the organized life of Aziz is turned upside down when Adela accuses him of molesting her in a cave. Aziz is arrested and brought before the courts, where he learns that the entire British administration is against him, and would like to see him found guilty and punished severely, to teach all native Indians what it means to molest a British citizen.

Aziz is all set to witness the "fairness" of the British system, whose unofficial motto is "guilty until proved innocent." Written by rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com) See All (73) » Taglines: David Lean, the Director of "Doctor Zhivago", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai", invites you on . . .[A Passage to India] Genres: 1 February 1985 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Pasaje a la India See more » Filming Locations: Peggy Ashcroft 's favorite scene was when she got to ride an elephant. See more » Goofs In a faraway shot at the "bridge" party at the club, an all-Indian band is playing, but the conductor's beat pattern is off- the song is in common time (4/4 time), but he is beating beat 3 when the band is playing beat 1. See more » Quotes Mrs. Moore : My dear, life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

(United States) – See all my reviews Sometimes, what you don't see can be of equal importance to what you do see in a film. David Lean's film is no exception ... but more on that later. A film of epic quality, it follows two travelers on their journey from England to India during the Raj colonial period of the 1920s. For Adela Quested, it's her first time out of England to anywhere. For Mrs. Moore, it's a chance to visit her son, Ronny, who is expected to marry Adela during the visit. But, their visit is not without incident. What both Adela and Mrs. Moore discover is an India ruled by British bureaucrats (Ronny being one of them, a city magistrate) who exude personal and cultural superiority over Indians. This was a shock to them since they both expected to find Indians and Britons meeting socially and on friendly terms. The only exception to that rule appears to be Fielding, principal of a college. Through Fielding, Adela is introduced socially to Professor Godbole (a Hindu holy man) and Dr. Aziz (a Muslim physician). Mrs.

Moore met Aziz in a previous scene but had not yet met Godbole until that moment. One note on that (a film flaw). During the mosque scene where Mrs. Moore meets Dr. Aziz, Aziz never once mentions his name to her ... yet later, Adela knows his name as mentioned to her by Mrs. Moore. Perhaps his name was mentioned in a brief scene that ended up on the cutting-room floor. But, that omission is trivial and in no way detracts from the enjoyment of the film. During this social introduction, Aziz invites Mrs. Moore and Adela on a journey to the Marabar caves, a tourist destination. On the trip, and tired from all the activity, Mrs. Moore stays at the encampment near the lower caves and encourages Aziz and Adela to explore the higher caves alone. Then, something happened ... and I won't tell you what (grin). Suffice it to say that Aziz finds himself in police custody. A court trial ensues that pits culture against culture, race against race, and clearly demonstrates the differences in attitudes between resident British citizens and Indians. But the trial's climax isn't the most moving part of the film.

Lean has risen the film's denouement to a higher level ... one that leaves you smiling and crying at the same time. But what Lean does NOT mention in the film is equally interesting. In today's world, India is beset by inter-sect angst between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and persons of other faiths. In theory, this inter-sect rivalry has been around since before India became a British colony. But, this rivalry was not mentioned once in the film. It is perhaps a testament to the novelist (E.M. Forster) and Lean to realize a potent underlying force in the story ... that British colonial rule held these rivalries in abeyance ... uniting Indians of all faiths into a common bond that eventually forced colonialism to end in India. The film is a masterpiece on every level and remains one of my favorites of all time. P.S. Closing comment to those (like me) who own region-free DVD players that render both PAL and NTSC DVDs. For some reason unknown to me, it's over $10 cheaper to buy the DVD from Amazon.co.uk than it is from Amazon.com ... even after overseas shipping is added in. That's where I ordered mine (from the UK).

37 of 49 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes

Question: Who wrote the novels 'A Passage to India' and 'A Room with a View'?
Answer: E M FORSTER