Abstract
E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot were both drawn to the Indian spiritual tradition, for both were concerned, against a background of the collapse of Christianity and the horror of the First World War, with a spiritual search drawing inspiration from other ancient sources of wisdom. If the teachings of Buddha and the Upanishads offered possibilities of meaningful ife to the poet of The Waste Land, it was a vision of Krishna’s birth that stimulated Forster to bring about a resolution of the horror and negation in A Passage to India.2
‘Do you know anything about this Krishna business? … What I want to discover is its spiritual side, if it has one.’
(Fielding in A Passage to India)1
‘I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant …’
(T. S. Eliot, ‘The Dry Salvages’, iii)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1979 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Das, G.K. (1979). E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, and the ‘Hymn Before Action’. In: Das, G.K., Beer, J. (eds) E. M. Forster: A Human Exploration. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04359-0_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04359-0_20
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-04361-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-04359-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)