602
PARTISAN REVIEW
The paradox created by the simultaneous descent of salvation and
withdrawal on Philip Herriton is, as I have noted earlier, a paradigm
for Forster's fully developed position in
A Passage to India.
Paradox is
the mode in the final novel, the acceptance of paradox the only hope.
Commitment is no longer even faintly successful as the path to insight:
the career not only of Fielding but of Mrs. Moore belies such a
resolution. Instead we are given Godbole, "who had never been known
to tell anyone anything." Forster has abandoned the possibility of
wholeness for the supra-personal ideal of completion, and completion
is possible only through abnegation of every active effort to achieve it.
Thus, Godbole, though she was not important to him, remembered
an old woman he had met in Chandrapore days. Chance brought her
into his mind while it was in this heated state, he did not select her,
she happened to occur among the throng of soliciting images, a tiny
splinter, and he impelled her by this spiritual force to that place
where completeness can be found. Completeness, not reconstruction.
His senses grew thinner, he remembered a wasp seen he forgot where,
perhaps on a stone. He loved the wasp equally, he impelled it
likewise, he was imitating God. And the stone where the wasp
clung-could he ... no, he could not, he had been wrong to attempt
the stone, logic and conscious effort had seduced.. . .
Godbole represents humanity in its limitation and possibility. The
idea of the Absolute can be expressed only through the transitory, and
Godbole's moment of completion parallels the ephemeral but distinct
descent of deity, as "Infinite Love took upon itself the form of SHRI
KRISHNA, and saved the world. All sorrow was annihilated, not only
for Indians, but for foreigners, birds, caves, railways, and the stars.... "
Thus in
A
Passage to India
Forster resolves the earlier contradiction of
Philip's fate by enclosing it in a paradox that transcends the capacities
or fates of individuals. Withdrawal is the necessary condition for
insight; ultimately human love is possible on ly in the context of an
impersonal unity.
Forster's comradely couples and the sometimes radiant energy they
project in the novels may be seen as expressions of his personal and
artistic dilemma: he could neither overcome inner conflict about his
orientation nor write openly from the vantage point of his particular
sexuality. The larger paradox within the humanistic ideal likewise
reflects Forster's sense of himself as outsider. Here
Maurice
and Mr.
Furbank's biography cast some light on the psychic forces that helped
shape Forster's art. But from the "narrowly personal sources" of
Forster's humanistic statement to its embodiment in art is a tricky leap.
