E. M. Forster: The Limitations of Mythology

Abstract

HE MOST tantalizing, as well as the most prominent, fact about E. M. Forster's use of Greek mythology is that, while two of his three earliest novels and most of his short stories (all early) are studded with mythological allusions, his last two novels are not. Howards End and A Passage to India are nearly devoid of such references, while A Room with a View and The Longest Journey depend on mythology for thematic coherence as well as for decoration. The fact is tantalizing because mythology in the early novels is closely bound to Forster's general view of the world; the question arises whether his gradual withdrawal from Hellenism signifies something deeper than the passing of a literary vogue. If we can establish the precise import of mythology in the early work, it may be possible to see a correlation between changes in Forster's technique and the broadening of his total outlook from one novel to the next. Some orientation to the problem may be gotten from Nietzsche's famous distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. The Dionysian, according to Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, is the spirit that feels the oneness of all things, and which consequently shares in all the pain and ecstasy in the universe. This Promethean seizure of forbidden experience quickly becomes unbearable and must be succeeded by the spirit of Apollonianism. The Apollonian is the principium individuationis; it recognizes forms, borders, and categories, and imposes the image of finite humanity upon the disorder of experience. As opposed to the Dionysian involvement in excess, the Apollonian insists on measure and morality; it substitutes the ideal of knowledge for that of participation. Tragedy, the highest of the arts, ideally transfixes experience at the moment when the Dionysian consciousness, tormented