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Starting from the sublime cinematic adaptation of A Passage to India directed by David Lean (1984), within just over a few years, five out of six novels by Edward Morgan Forster made it to the big screen, gaining renewed popularity through it. Five out of six. If the math doesn't deceive, then, one remains out. And that one is undoubtedly a "place" where only angels dare tread, freely paraphrasing a British saying as well as Forster himself. Angels and also those who deeply love this author; for these "chosen ones," the longest journey is a "compulsory" pilgrimage. Here E.M. portrayed himself, minimizing literary filters, incorporating his experiences, his inner torments, and his ideals into the novel; to grasp what this book meant for its author, just consider that even in "A View Without a Room," a brief appendix and epilogue to the novel that secured his success (written in 1958), Forster nonetheless wanted to reiterate that his favorite novella wasn't "A Room with a View" but, indeed, "The Longest Journey," his most commercially unfortunate creation.
From here would be born both "Howards End" and "Maurice," where a more mature E.M. would further develop themes already extensively present in "The Longest Journey," which, however, would be unfair and wrong to downgrade to a mere "embryo" role. TLJ is a novel endowed with a very precise personal identity, not so heavily defined by sociopolitical allegories like "Howards End," less emotionally tense, with definitely more suggestive and nuanced shades compared to "Maurice." The reading conveys a general feeling of calm, melancholic sweetness, of an uneasy and introverted intimacy, which perfectly reflects the personality of Rickie Elliot, the protagonist. An aspiring writer, imaginative, sensitive, of gentle nature and moderate ideas, neither strong nor attractive, Rickie is in all respects an alter ego of Edward Morgan Forster himself, and, like Forster, as soon as he leaves the "paradise" of Cambridge, a place of intellectual freedom, he is overwhelmed by the social conventions and prevailing conformism of early 20th-century English society. There is one episode in particular that perfectly summarizes all the subtle unease of the protagonist and the concerns of the author: a renowned publisher refuses Rickie the publication of his book as it is "hybrid," without a defined market segment. "Write a good ghost story, or something completely realistic, and we'll be happy to publish it," Rickie is advised, thus seeing his right to individuality denied.
The artistic dream is destined to fade away sadly, in favor of more prosaic employment as a teacher in a college, one of those colleges of which E.M. himself said they formed boys with well-developed bodies, reasonably developed minds, and completely atrophied hearts; here he suffers the nefarious influence of brother-in-law Herbert Pembroke and wife Agnes, the presumed "heroine" of the novel, whose venal and despotic nature is gradually revealed to the reader (and the naive Rickie) through a perfectly constructed character arc. As in all Forster's novels, even here comes that "magical" and longed-for moment when conventions and falsehoods crumble, and it's a fortuitous convergence between two seemingly opposite characters, both strong and true to themselves, that awakens the consciousness of the disappointed and anesthetized Rickie: on one hand, Stewart Ansell, an uncompromising intellectual, on the other Stephen Wonham, Rickie's illegitimate brother and, as such, inherently reprehensible, cause of scandal and shame; the resulting scene has all the overwhelming emotional lyricism of iconic moments in the Forster repertoire like the trial scene in "A Passage to India" or the dialogue between Lucy and Mr. Emerson in "A Room with a View."
Stephen in particular is one of the most complex and fascinating characters in the Forsterian universe, a drunkard with a terrible temper yet endowed with keen intelligence, generosity, and a sense of justice, though evidently lacking in constancy and reliability. A set of characteristics only seemingly contradictory but entirely realistic, albeit extremely rare, and I say this from personal experience. It will be precisely the imperfect nature of this unlikely "redeemer" that leads to the tragic, sudden conclusion of the penultimate chapter, posing a sad question to the reader: was it truly worth it? The answer is provided in the final chapter, which once again enchants with the beauty of its writing and the sincere, passionate emotional engagement it transmits. One of the characteristics that make "The Longest Journey" unique within E.M. Forster's novelistic production is the particular charm of the chapters set in Wiltshire, a semi-rural county in southern England: we're talking about an ordinary countryside/wooded landscape, neither the wild moors of Brontëan memory nor, staying with Forster, the exotic and desolate Marabar hills, yet E.M. renders it, with absolute credibility and hypnotic allure, the domain of Erda, a mystical place where the protagonist finds himself confronting himself, without filters, and where bourgeois conventions lose their power. And it is precisely this setting (as will also be the case in Howards End) that the author uses to express his hope for a more humane society, for a better world.
In this second, poignant, beautiful novel of his, not particularly loved by critics, yet dearer to him than any other, Edward Morgan Forster portrayed himself in a semi-autobiographical form, and at the same time addressed the possibility, not yet averted for an emerging but not yet fully established writer, of potential artistic and human failure, of surrender in the unequal struggle with his own society and its closures. For E.M. "The Longest Journey" was a strongly "therapeutic" work, and this makes it even more vibrant, as it manages to communicate on even deeper levels. As far as I'm concerned, in my personal Forsterian ranking, it stands right behind "A Passage to India" and "Maurice." What's certain is that one cannot truly know Edward Morgan Forster without having ventured here.
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