Howards End is a classic English novel . . . superb and wholly cherishable . . . one that admirers have no trouble reading over and over again," said Alfred Kazin.
First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recog...
Howards End is a classic English novel . . . superb and wholly cherishable . . . one that admirers have no trouble reading over and over again," said Alfred Kazin.
First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie two families--the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked--some very funny, some very tragic--that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the Wilcoxes' charming country home. As much about the clash between individual wills as the clash between the sexes and the classes, Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, "Only connect," remains a powerful prescription for modern life.
"Howards End is undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece; it develops to their full the themes and attitudes of [his] early books and throws back upon them a new and enhancing light," wrote the critic Lionel Trilling.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) began writing stories while at Cambridge University. He is the author of Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924). His novel Maurice, about a homosexual love affair, was published posthumously in 1971.
James Ivory is an American film director and is best known for the films he has made of E. M. Forster's novels, including Howards End, which enjoyed immense critical and popular success. He lives in New York City.
Howards End is a novel of ideas, not brute facts; in many respects it is an old kind of novel, playful in the eighteenth-century sense, full of tenderness toward favorite characters in the Dickens style, inventive in every structural touch but not a modernist work.
Amazon.com
Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.
Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly.
From AudioFile
An audiobook cannot be satisfactory unless the reader understands the text completely. In the case of a complex and subtle work like Howard's End , that's no small order. Edward Petherbridge does understand and makes all clear to the listener with unaffected authority. At the same time, he achieves such transparency that one forgets one is listening to a performance and simply experiences the story. His delivery is flawless. The story may not appeal to everyone, but the reading won't disappoint. J.N.
E•M•福斯特(Edward Morgan Forster,1879—1970),英国著名小说家、散文家和批评家,著名的人道主义者,毕业于剑桥大学国王学院,后被母校聘为荣誉研究员。主要作品有长篇小说《天使不敢涉足的地方》(1905)、《最漫长的旅程》(1907)、《看得见风景的房间》(1908)、《霍华德庄园》(1910)、《莫瑞斯》(创作于1913—1914年,1971年作者逝世后出版)、《印度之行》(1924);两部短篇小说集《天国公共马车》(1911)和《永恒的瞬间》(1928),后合为《福斯特短篇小说集》(1947);以及广受好评的小说评论专著《小说面面观》(1927,原为在剑桥大学的系列演讲)。
E•M•福斯特(Edward Morgan Forster,1879—1970),英国著名小说家、散文家和批评家,著名的人道主义者,毕业于剑桥大学国王学院,后被母校聘为荣誉研究员。主要作品有长篇小说《天使不敢涉足的地方》(1905)、《最漫长的旅程》(1907)、《看得见风景的房间》(1908)、《霍华德庄园》(1910)、《莫瑞斯》(创作于1913—1914年,1971年作者逝世后出版)、《印度之行》(1924);两部短篇小说集《天国公共马车》(1911)和《永恒的瞬间》(1928),后合为《福斯特短篇小说集》(1947);以及广受好评的小说评论专著《小说面面观》(1927,原为在剑桥大学的系列演讲)。
‘… The truth is that there is a great outer life that you and I have never touched — a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think are supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage settlements; death, death duties. So far I’m clear. But here’s my difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid, often seems the real one — there’s grit in it. It does breed character. Do personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?’
‘Oh, Meg, that’s what I felt, only not so clearly, when the Welcomes were so competent, and seemed to have their hans on all the ropes.’
‘Don’t you fell it now?’
‘I remember Paul at breakfast,’ said Helen quietly. ‘I shall never forget him. He had nothing to fall back upon. I know that personal relations are the real life, for e... (查看原文)
'Do you imply that we Germans are stupid, Uncle Ernst?" exclaimed a haughty and magnificent nephew. Uncle Ernst replied:’To my mind. You use the intellect, but you no longer care about it. That I call stupidity.’ As the haughty nephew did not follow, he continued:’You only care about the things that you can use, and therefore arrange them in the following order: money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful; imagination, of no use at all. No’ — for the other had protested — ‘your Pan-Germanism is no more imaginative than is our Imperialism over here. It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven. That is not imaginati... (查看原文)
to connect,没问题,但是不是让月亮掉入阴沟好吧。里面的男人都太恶心了,实在很影响阅读体验,特别是Charles,他可以获得最恶心的小说人物奖银牌了。作为理想主义者实在无法忍受将金钱与灵魂相结合的尝试,灵魂至高无上,每次看到像Helen , Marianne这种美丽的、鲜妍的、活生生的人收获作者眼中的幸福结局就很不舒服
At first I thought it is a love story and the man whose unbrella was taken by Helen carelessly will fall in love with one of Schlegel sisters and all of them will live in Wickham Place happily ever after. Soon I realized I must be wrong. First of all, even ...
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0 有用 慕愁空 2025-04-20 15:55:26 上海
看的是Project Gutenberg的电子书。讲阶级的部分很有见地,毕竟是英国人,但是剧情发展的每一步都在我的意料之外,仿佛这座庄园在控制着一切。
0 有用 巴黎獭读书浣熊 2007-10-15 11:32:34
没有人翻译,只能看原著了
0 有用 bagins 2024-04-30 14:00:00 上海
听
0 有用 PinkdolphinAmz 2022-09-22 12:15:02
Only connect…!
0 有用 在那七片树林里 2021-08-29 17:14:47
to connect,没问题,但是不是让月亮掉入阴沟好吧。里面的男人都太恶心了,实在很影响阅读体验,特别是Charles,他可以获得最恶心的小说人物奖银牌了。作为理想主义者实在无法忍受将金钱与灵魂相结合的尝试,灵魂至高无上,每次看到像Helen , Marianne这种美丽的、鲜妍的、活生生的人收获作者眼中的幸福结局就很不舒服