著者

Jones J. B.

出版者

駒沢女子大学

雑誌

駒沢女子大学研究紀要 (ISSN:13408631)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.117-168, 2002-12-24

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This paper will explore Forster's concepts of religious meaning and the sacred in A Passage to India. It is generally acknowledged that the three sections of the novel: Mosque, Caves and Temple, stand for the three seasons in India, but they may also indicate conceptions of three systems of religious belief: the Christian/Moslem system that stresses allegorical understanding of opposites, like Good and Evil; the nihilist vision of nothingness and endless, meaningless repetition through time, (non-belief in this case) symbolized by the Marabar Caves; and the creation/destruction and all-embracing mysticism of Hinduism in the final part, Temple, which uses a religious festival to portray and dramatize the Hindu belief system. Forster presents these three belief systems as a way of exploring what it means to believe; he does not favor one system over any other; he may possibly be charting the evolution of religious belief in the individual as well as its development on wider levels of human consciousness. On a more mundane level, Forster takes up the question of the potential for mutual understanding between Indians and Anglo-Indians and appears to conclude that the two cultures were destined to remain divided in understanding each other until some future time of higher consciousness and tolerance. Forster offers gentle and ironic hope for the future in the person of Ralph, Mrs. Moore's son. In fact, Mrs. Moore herself is an embodiment of this hope in the present time of the novel: the sacral nature of creation is reaffirmed by her instinctive intuition; her sense of the sacred is Forster's affirmation that there is meaning in human existence-that the journey each of us makes through life is a journey toward God. In Whitman's words: O my brave soul! O farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God? Oh Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath, Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, Thou mightier center of the true, the good, the loving, Thou moral, spiritual fountain-affection's source-thou reservoir, (O pensive soul of me-O thirst unsatisfied-waitest not there? Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?) Thou pulse-thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself, I could not launch, to those, superior universes? -Whitman "Passage to India"