The Arctic Summer of E. M. Forster

Abstract

So explains one of the central characters in a fragmentary novel called Arctic Summer that E. M. Forster started in 1911. The ironies of its pre-war optimism extend beyond the novel’s apparent plot to Forster’s own crisis of creativity — and to the impending fate of his civilisation. With the success of Howards End in 1910, Forster reached a dead end. He had written four novels in six years. Between its publication in 1910 and the First World War he began four or five more books, only one of which he was able to complete, and it was unpublishable. Only once before Forster had been unable to complete a novel, but that was at the beginning of his career.

My new era is to have no dawn. It is to be a kind of Arctic Summer, in which there will be time to get something really great done…. Dawn implies twilight, and we have decided to abolish them both.

(AS, p. 125¹)