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STEPHEN SPEND ER
fuse with the self-knowingness of another homosexual. That is something,
of course. But the tone of the novel is of homosexual bitchincss towards
the heterosexual world (which, of course, provides plenty to be bitchy
about) .
Maurice - in most ways an ordinary undergraduate - finds him–
self strangely intrigued by the young aesthetes of T rinity (this is in
the year 1912) of whom the leader is Risley (a scarcely disguised por–
trait of Lytton Strachey). In Risley's rooms, he meets Clive Durham,
who plays pianola rolls of Tchaikovsky's
PathBtique,
reads to him from
the
Paradiso
and makes him read Plato's
Symposium.
Their relationship
is based on the admiration of the man of intellect and imagination for
the companion who has a body of pure beauty which seems to express
the beautiful integrity of his being. One day, in a crowd of other under–
graduates, Clive goes up to Maurice and "with eyes that had gone in–
tensely blue," whispers: "I love you." To which Maurice, "shocked
to the bottom of his suburban soul," exclaims "Oh rot!" and goes on :
"Durham, you're an Englishman. I'm another. Don't talk nonsense. I'm
not offended, because I know you don't meant it, but it's the only subject
absolutely beyond the limit as you know, it's the worst crime in the
calendar...." Clive disappears. Maurice pursues him for another two
chapters, at the end of which he has found his real self, and also found
Clive! "Maurice --." As he alighted his name had been called out
of dreams. The violence went out of his heart, and a purity that he
never imagined dwelt there instead. His friend had called him. He
stood for a moment entranced, then the new emotion found him words,
and laying his hand very gently upon the pillows he answered "Clive!"
There follow two chapters of extraordinary elation, probably the
best in the book, in one of which there is an account of a drive into
the country, on motorcycle and sidecar, which gives a feeling of reckless–
ness combined with purity, like a game in which two players cover each
other from head to foot with kisses.
This relationship between Clive and Maurice is pure, in that al–
though they stroke and kiss one another, and lie together in deep grass,
they do not, technically, "come." This is important because the ex–
traordinary elation and lightheartedness, the happy sense of excitement
converged in these two chapters, makes one suspect that Forster's ideal of
homosexual love was deeply innocent. Throughout the book, Maurice
has a recurring dream in which "Nothing happened. He scarcely saw a
face, scarcely heard a voice say 'That is your friend,' and then it was
over, having filled him with beauty and taught him tenderness." This
is certainly a homosexual fantasy, but it is also a fantasy of the com-
