E M Forster Talks About Writing Novels - 'Only Connect'
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- Опубликовано: 24 авг 2013
- E M Forster Talks About Writing Novels - 'Only Connect'
This is part of a talk given at the BBC in 1958 by the great English novelist E M Forster - 'A Passage to India', 'A Room with a View', 'Howards End' and so on.
In it, the author speaks about beginning writing and why he writes. He then discusses one of the reasons he dried up - that 'the social aspect of the world changed so very much' and that he had been
'accustomed to write about the old [now] vanished world with its homes and its family life and its comparative peace'.
Studying Forster at university, one 'mantra' in particular stays with me today:
'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 'Howard's End', 1910).
He modestly states he thinks he is not a great writer as he had only managed to get down in his novels three types: 'the person I think I am, the people who irritate me and the people I'd like to be'. In this,
he contrasts himself with Leo Tolstoy who 'can get hold of all types'.
The talk is accompanied by footage of Forster in his rooms at Cambridge University. We see him walking about his study, fetching a novel from a book case and writing at his desk.
In evidence on the mantle piece is the blue and white china collection he'd been putting together since his school days.
E M Forster is my favourite novelist and so I was particularly pleased to finally see him on film and hear him talk about writing.
Enjoy!
He sounds a very modest and charming man. It was not much more than a decade later - and published posthumously - that Maurice was published. How wonderful it would have been to hear the great man speak of this work.
yes...i think merchant-ivory came pretty close...but agreed i would have liked to listen to him about a novel he wrote over 50years before he died
Thank you for this. Forster's novels are an old love of mine. I read Maurice when I was 18 and it helped me a lot through that phase. I will never forget the power and the awareness Forster's writing gave me at that time. Hearing his voice for the first time is quite touching for me.
hi Magnificat17
an old love of mine too.
i too was moved by hearing him speak for the first time - different from what i might have imagined - more steady and calmer - i don't know quite what i imagined though.
i loved in Forster that quick change of point of view - often several times in a paragraph - masterful. and the writing so paired down to essentials. i read him today with the greatest pleasure still.
'Maurice' was such a powerful book for me - critics do not like the ending - but, given social attitudes to gay at the time, stepping out of England and making a new life elsewhere where things might be different works very well for me.
The part when Maurice and Clive fell out and Maurice had to get by on his own is particularly touching. A sense of sublimity transcended mundane love.
I found E.M Forster through watching the 1990s film adaptation of Howard’s End staring Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter as a boy in my early teens growing up in the country in England I felt a real connection to the characters his books and the beautiful homes in which they lived .
I have always been in love with the Edwardian time period in which his books are predominantly set it is so wonderful to hear him talk thank you . :-)
i knew Forster from school and university - i read all his novels - he was one of the great writers for me. so it was wonderful to finally actually see him and hear him speak
@@JohnRaymondHall I’d be so interested to talk to you if you would like too it must have been something quite wonderful to have heard the man himself speaking in person.
sorry i have unclear when i said it was wonderful to finally actually see him and hear him speak - i meant in this footage - i had never heard him speak until i saw this film. it was also wonderful seeing a little footage of Lytton Stratchy - i had no idea film of him existed either
Wonderful to hear English well spoken. He seems to be very honest about drying up, self deprecating.
yes, isn't it. and Forster's self-awareness and clear view of things is a lesson to everyone - it's so easy to have one's perception skewed by desires, wants, visions of what one would like to be and the like.
"Maurice" helped me through a terrible breakup a few years ago. His other books are on my shelf, waiting to be read.
yes, as a young person 'Maurice' helped me be comfortable with my identity. i've read his novels - and re-read them - great works
He speaks in everyday words. This is the gift of great writers.
hi Gonzalo. i totally agree - i think this was one of his great attributes. he used to develop easy and real friendships with people quite outside his background, such as his Egyptian friend who was a ticket collector on a Cairo tram.
John Hall Hi John, I recall reading W.Somerset Maugham statement that if he lived in an abandoned island and had to chose to share it with a statesman or a veterinarian, he would chose the veterinarian. The reason being that the statesman was too perfect and only showed a small polished part of himself, while the veterinarian (and the Egyptian ticket collector, in E.M. Forster´s opinion) was a bag of surprises.
Gonzalo Mariátegui Hi Gonzalo. i hadn't heard that Somerset Maugham statement - thanks for passing it on. taking another angle and another author, Patrick White often peopled his novels with 'ordinary people' - in one novel the central character is a drunk down-and-out guy - White's view being that such people could also lead lives of real genuine insight.
John Hall People and literary characters who will never pass down into history books make entertaining reading. Napoleon is a very interesting real life character but I would rather read Jean Valjean, the never ending persecuted man of Victor Hugo´s Les Miserables.
Gonzalo Mariátegui yes, a seeming paradox but one nevertheless!
Thank you very much for this. I've been passionate about Forster's work for more than 40 years, but had somehow never heard his voice or seen moving footage of him.
His remark "I had better add that I am quite sure I am not a great novelist" was long familiar, but to hear him say those words is quite something. As for that sentiment, I think Forster says somewhere in "Howard's End" something to the effect that one can always trust Beethoven. In most things, one can trust Forster, but in his underestimation of his own greatness, he was entirely wrong.
I've always though "The Longest Journey" his finest work. It's interesting to learn that he thought so too. The only novel I've not read is "Maurice" - a glaring omission, which will be remedied soon.
Did you read "Maurice" after all these years?
Great shame your other site was removed. All that work of yours taken 'off the air'. I hope you'll post them all again! I had not seen this one before nor even heard Forster's voice. You are providing a valuable service, don't be dismayed by what has happened.
So good to hear writers speak of their writings. Lovely ❤
yes, i'd never heard his voice express his literary ideals
Thank you for this. I have just listened to A Passage to India having really got into audio books through lockdown. There were so many points in the final third at which I thought it could have ended because time and again Forster achieves such a strong degree of resonance. I was enthralled to find out a little more about the writer and this is a delightful part of my undertaking. How could anyone not like this? What a charming, insightful and understated person.
hi Andrew
it was a pity the old channel was closed but we'd been expecting it for a bit. and the new one seems to have given me a new burst of energy.
that's an interesting point you make about not having seen this one - i'm hoping re-posting will give a fresh airing to some of the earlier and so deeply embedded videos at the old channel.
Forster has been a hero of mine - he grew to be greater than himself - i had no sense of his voice and imagined it more tentative - wonderful to hear him.
Anyone reading this read and learn about Christopher Isherwood one of my faves. Goodbye Berlin and the Berlin stories
A treasure to hear this. Thank you.
my pleasure :)
Thank you for this.
pleasure Ashish
Thank you for sharing.
My pleasure!
Highly recommend Zadie Smith's essay on E.M. Forster in "Changing my Mind"
thanks - i'll look it out
Great to be able to hear this awesome writer talking and saying a bit of what he thought about the world we're in and his own works. This fine and apparently "grey" clerk, happened to hide a very good writer. From Room with a View to Passage to India and Howard's End, Forster proved to be as good as any other artist of the famous Virginia Woolf Bloomsbury Circle. Though would place him closest to Elizabeth Bowen more than to any other. Of course he shared those estheticist ideals of the Bloomsbury artists, and this can easily be seen in Howard's End. Maybe there more than in any other of his works. However, you could say it isn't so much shown in his writing style. Beauty is all around present in Howard's End. Though Forster wrote in a kind of direct and even plain, simple English. Far away from the beautiful language display Virginia W cultivated in the great Masterwork Orlando is. So, ethics had to show somehow entwined with Esthetic in Forster also. Being Ethics and Esthetics the same thing, as Wittgenstein stated, a way or another. And Aesthetic and Ethics had to apply to human relationships. It is this way, when at the end of A Passage to India, it's all cleared up and everything returns to the goodness of the starting point. Inspite having it all changed, due to what happened...or, should we say due to the lie within? - For of course, beauty lies in goodness, unavoidingly. Forster hided being a gay, although he finally showed up this way. He does, in Maurice, his posthumous short novel. He might have been quite a puritan, as he was a conservative character, too. I consider Howard's End the best one of his novels, though some friends of mine found it a tad boring, here and there. It shows how the fifties and forties world was. It pictures its beauty. Or at least, the inner beauty of certain habits and values, so nice and civilised as he's always painting it. His world is clearly represented by the upper classes world. And it's about what more or less he writes about. The world he surely wanted to belong to, though never totally belonged. Because Forster was just average class. Differently from the other Bloomsbury Circle members. Howard's End goes around the selling of a family's house. Representing the house in this case, the old values and the inner beauty of a so civilised and liberal way of being. But love is also delicately present. As it is in Room with a View, that had to happen in Firenze. Representing I suppose, this town, beauty it contains. Beauty had to be all time present, and it happens so, with Forster. Liked a lot Room with a View, and found it in the Henry James subtile and interesting line. Forster, in this sense, kept being a Classic. And so he is considered nowadays. An excellent writer with whom James Ivory and his hindi producers did great movies that I don't doubt to recommend, as well. A great writer of the mind moods and human relations analysis. 🤗💎❤️🆗👍🙏
Forster is the only author I would defend wholeheartedly.
i am exactly the same!
hi Mike
yes, and wonderful if he had read some of the novel aloud - i often wonder he imagined his prose sounding.
I'm a straight female in her 60s who loves E M Forster's writing. Maurice is a favourite.
i like Maurice very much too - so personal to Forster that he did not let it be published in his lifetime. i am a gay man in his 70s :)
@@JohnRaymondHall did you see Call me by your name? Despite it being a James Ivory production, I didn't enjoy it as much.
I really enjoyed Heartstopper.
@@voulafisentzidis8830 yes, i saw 'Call me by your name' - i was prepared to enjoy it but it made me feel uncomfortable. i haven't seen the Heartstopper series - thanks for the alert - i'll look it out
Great E.M .FORSTER !
+Krassimir Slavianski absolutely - i often re-read his novels for fresh understanding.
Good for you ! You do the most wonderful thing then !
+Krassimir Slavianski
hi! i'm sure you do the same :) these books are such an on-going sources of real and deep wisdom.
John Hall Yes they are ! You are thoroughly right !
+Krassimir Slavianski
:) cheers from Sydney!
great writer and touching suggestion: let's enjoy this wonderful world, despite the crazy evets of these days.
yes, his wisdom still translates - one of my favourite authors - fascinated by the technical wizardry of his seeming simple sparse style - like the rapid changes of point of view.
i love him!
me too!
There's a great documentary on here about Forster's life that explores why he dried up as a novelist.
Incredible voice. People do not speak like that anymore. He could write quite well to boot!
hi TS50ER
yes, his voice is more decisive than i imagined - though i'm not sure how i came about to imagine it in the first place
one of my favourite authors whose books i endlessly re-read - so it was great to him him talking of literature at last.
Hi, John.
Yes, I quite agree.
Which book by Forster is your favourite?
Mine is Howard's End.
*****
hi TS50ER
my favourite seems to be the one i'm reading at the moment often!
but i am with you on 'Howards End' more constantly - there's a more complete vision of a time and place perhaps than in some of the other novels which consequently seem a bit slighter
i like 'A Room with a View' a lot as it reminds me a lot of my first times in Italy.
Good!
+李杰克
i agree :)
I have only read Maurice and A Passage to India. I read Maurice first and was hooked. A Passage to India was slow but beautifully written like Maurice. I love how it is such. No-one writes like that with such passion and emotion. I love E M Forster and want to read many many more. Sadly as he said, he didn't write enough novels and dried up after A Passage to India
hi TheLightofAniu
Forster has been my literary hero since university days - he overcame the limitations of the restricted context of being tied to his mother and family social circle - and his prose is so precise and sparse - with ideas hinted at rather than ploddingly spelt out - i could go on about him forever!
it is great hearing him speak - his voice was stronger and more authoritative than i'd imagined.
a truly great man.
John Hall Indeed his voice is wondrous, and he too is my hero, one of my idols that inspired me to write myself. I am writing several stories of Maurice's nature at the moment, set in 1912 but with a backdrop to the Titanic, which is the most recent one. I am glad to be able to speak with another lover of this remarkable and talented man, as a writer and as a person, he was wise and witty. That is plain in many of his books.
TheLightofAniu yes, lovely to meet and speak with someone who appreciates this truly remarkable man. it seems to me Forster had a bigness of outlook and sentiment which is remarkable in that he grew up cosseted and bound into a world of tea cups and restricted Victorian middle class attitudes and values - he was able to fit in there, but at the same time be something quite different at Cambridge University and in his novels without seeming duplicitous.
1912 for your novels is such an interesting choice - the British Empire at its twilight and the maelstrom of WW1 about to overwhelm Europe. all in counterpoint - or otherwise - to one's characters and plot and theme. how far are you with your stories?
John Hall I am pretty far in to the story, they have just left Queenstown, now named Cobh, and they are steaming into open ocean. It explores the life of someone who has had to live through not just the disaster, but because he has had to hide who he is because of Britain's oppressive nature to both human nature and anything that they think scandalous. Even though I am British myself, I am Scottish, I have always found that the way of thinking then positively ridiculous. And I am glad that Maurice ended in a good way, like Forster said, he didn't want to end the book by "a lad gangling from a noose or a suicide pact". I really enjoyed Maurice and shall continue to do so. It is the time that interests me and the sense of forbidden love in it.
TheLightofAniu yes, like in 'Maurice' a journey away from oppression is the way forward - some said it was contrived but i disagree - living in Australia where many people came to find other destinies it seems very plausible indeed.
being started in 1913 or 1914 it was still connected to the Edwardian era and not too far off the Oscar Wild trial of 1897, it seems to me that emigration is a likely option for two young men
i like that we can now read the epilogue that was not originally included - what happened to Maurice and Alec after the novel ends.
i am French on one side and Scottish on the other - my great grandmother, Louisa, a very un-Scottish name but i guess a nod to the origins of the British royal family's origins, not uncommon at the time.
so pretty far in - have you a sense of how it will unfold - sometimes writers feel their way along and sometimes have all things determined - and positions in-between.
From paper to this, I always relate to him in so many ways. Plus, doesn't he speak the way he writes?
I read "The Other Boat" :)
i haven't read that yet - it came out posthumously in 'The Life to Come (and Other Stories)' in 1972 didn't it.
John Hall Yes :3
laprechaun12 :>>
:3
laprechaun12 :>)
Good morning. I have written a book about Howards End and I would like to share it here. How can I do it?
hi Alexandre.did you want to promote the new book on my channel or on your channel on YT? :)
i am more than happy to promote your book - any new work on Forster is very exciting to read!
Alexandre Menezes that's fascinating! I'd love to give it a read
Howards end
The Machine Stops.
November 1909
Remarkable science fiction for the time. Where did he get that insight?