July 23, 2022
02:56
Le Bruit du temps republishes EM Forster’s masterpiece, “Howards End”. A virtuoso dive into the heartbreaks of the English bourgeoisie at the turn of the century.
A single kiss and an umbrella, and the order wavers! The misalliance and the class defector threaten through the fault of a distracted, impetuous young woman who kisses an heir under an elm tree and inadvertently takes away the umbrella of a very modest employee. She would have liked to return both, but it was without counting on the genius of Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970), who made the reader’s pleasure and the torments of the protagonists last.
In a delectable language, all the inflections of the time and of being are linked here. “Only connect”, was the author’s sermon.
We know this English author mainly thanks to the director James Ivory, who brought to the screen “Howards end”, “Room with a view” and “Maurice”, restoring to the honor this masterful writer, forgotten, who manages to say everything of the society of his time. From intimate aspirations to amenities taken on the backs of the working classes, without forgetting the thwarted impulses of desire and of the soul.
Remorse turned beautiful
In a delectable language, translated by his friend Charles Mauron with the musicality that was dear to him, all the inflections of the time and of being are linked here. It was his most cherished intention: “only connect”, such was the author’s sermon. And that of Margaret and her sister Hélène, cultivated, emancipated, sensual young women, with unused intelligence and energy, from whom nothing escapes custom and injustice.
They would like to be accountable only to beauty, to poetry, and to live only on love, even if only for half an hour, even if it means regretting it, only to remember it afterwards. “Remorse had become beautiful,” Forster would say with a fatal passion.
At 31, the novelist was well aware of the advantages and abominations of the bourgeoisie, which was already sacrificing nature and social justice on the altar of comfort.
They are charmed by Howards End, the home of Mrs Wilcox – met on vacation – a good house not far from London. Both feel that the truth is here, in this peaceful harmony without ostentation or pretense. Mrs. Wilcox also guesses that her dear house will flourish with Margaret, to whom she bequeaths it in secret, to the great displeasure of her husband. The pragmatic and responsible Henry, an industrialist enriched in rubber, refuses to give this wet domain, fatal to his hay fever, and to harm his children. “Accustomed to the natives, he needed little to strip the Englishman.” However…
The discreet horror of the bourgeoisie
In addition to the plot full of twists and turns, the reader savors the liveliness of each image, statement, inner thought and action. James Ivory had only to plant his camera between the shots-reverse shots and the asides provided by Forster, who plays with the narration and the sets with marvelous eloquence.
Nothing could be less antiquated than these all-British arrangements with Empire, morality and truth. At 31, the novelist was well aware of the advantages and abominations of the bourgeoisie, which was already sacrificing nature and social justice on the altar of comfort. However, Forster has only sympathy for these beings prevented, such Henry, but not for the brutal arrogance of the young upstarts. One wonders how this book with humanist irony was received in 1910 in London circles, but there is no doubt that you will savor it. In the shade of an elm, because if “rest is not of this world, happiness is there”.
Par
E. M. Forster
Translated from English by Charles Mauron
Edited by The Sound of Time
498 p. – 11€
Preface by Catherine Lanone
Note from L’Echo: