Showing posts with label Forster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forster. Show all posts

Monday, 29 June 2026

Heresies to others, they were of course orthodox in their own eyes

Christ was the Son of God. All agreed. But what was the Nature of Christ? The subtle Alexandrian intellect asked this question about the year 300, and the Arian heresy was the result. It asked it again about 400 and produced the Monophysite heresy. And a third query about 600 produced a third heresy, the Monothelite. Let us glance at these three in turn. Heresies to others, they were of course orthodox in their own eyes. Each believed itself the only interpreter of the link that binds God to Man.

E.M. Forester, Alexandria (1922), 43

Sunday, 28 June 2026

The man who created and the woman who lost Alexandria have one element in common: monumental greatness

Yet for all their differences, the man who created and the woman who lost Alexandria have one element in common: monumental greatness; and between them is suspended, like a rare and fragile chain, the dynasty of the Ptolemies. It is a dynasty much censored by historians, but the Egyptians, who lived under it, were more tolerant. For it had one element of greatness: it did represent the complex country that it ruled. In Upper Egypt it carried on the tradition of the Pharaohs: on the coast it was Hellenistic and in touch with Mediterranean culture. After its extinction, the vigour of Alexandria turns inwards. She is to do big things in philosophy and religion. But she is no longer the capital of a kingdom, no longer Royal.

E.M. Forester, Alexandria (1922), 17

Saturday, 27 June 2026

Greek accents—another doubtful boon—were also invented in the Mouseion

Hitherto the Greek language had developed unnoticed. Now it was consciously examined, and the result of the examination was the first Greek Grammar (about 100 B.C.). Grammar is a valuable subject but also a dangerous one, for it naturally attracts pedants and schoolmasters and all who think that Literature is an affair of rules. And the Grammarians of Alexandria forgot that they were merely codifying the usages of the past, and presumed to dictate to the present, and to posterity; they set a bad example that has been followed for nearly 2000 years. Greek accents—another doubtful boon—were also invented in the Mouseion. Indeed the whole of literary scholarship, as we know it, sprang up, including that curious by-product the Scholarly Joke.

E.M. Forester, Alexandria (1922), 22

Sunday, 10 October 2021

What Forster had against colonialism was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality

What Forster had against colonialism (since he was a novelist and not a pamphleteer) was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality. What irked Forster about the Raj was that it turned a silly Indian like Aziz into a martyr and a silly Englishman like Heaslop into a tyrant, and neither of them were fitted for roles so important.

J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 110

I expect that is what irked Forster about colonialism, but it's not what I'd put top.