The Eternal Moment and Other Stories

By E. M. Forster

“Something that cuts across them like a bar of light . . . patiently illumines all their problems, and at another place shoots over or through them as if they did not exist. We shall give that bar of light two names, fantasy and prophecy.” —E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

Six compelling tales intertwined with fantasy spotlight the profound humanism that E. M. Forster developed in his later novels. These early writings provide readers with a thought-provoking exploration of the human spirit, allowing for the possibility of a life-altering epiphany that frequently conflicts with conventional wisdom. From the prescient science fiction dystopia “The Machine Stops” to the title story, “The Eternal Moment,” each character is engulfed by a separation of reality from illusion and every experience prompts a transformation within. With opposing perspectives at play, they can never be the same. This extraordinary short story collection includes “Co-Ordination,” “The Eternal Moment,” “Mr. Andrews,” “The Machine Stops,” “The Point of It,” and “The Story of the Siren.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780486853079

E. M. Forster

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist. Born in London to an Anglo-Irish mother and a Welsh father, Forster moved with his mother to Rooks Nest, a country house in rural Hertfordshire, in 1883, following his father’s death from tuberculosis. He received a sizeable inheritance from his great-aunt, which allowed him to pursue his studies and support himself as a professional writer. Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge, from 1897 to 1901, where he met many of the people who would later make up the legendary Bloomsbury Group of such writers and intellectuals as Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and John Maynard Keynes. A gay man, Forster lived with his mother for much of his life in Weybridge, Surrey, where he wrote the novels A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature sixteen times without winning, Forster is now recognized as one of the most important writers of twentieth century English fiction, and is remembered for his unique vision of English life and powerful critique of the inequities of class.

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e9780486852102_cover.jpg

The Eternal

Moment

E. M. Forster

Dover Publications

Garden City, New York

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

General Editor: Susan L. Rattiner

Editor of This Volume: Michael Croland

To

T. E.

in the absence

of anything else

Copyright

Copyright © 2023 by Dover Publications

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2023, is an unabridged republication of the work, originally published by Harcourt Brace & Company, San Diego, in 1928.

A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879–1970, author.

Title: The eternal moment : and other stories / E. M. Forster.

Description: Dover edition. | Garden City, New York : Dover Publications, 2023. | Series: Dover thrift editions | Summary: Six compelling tales intertwined with fantasy spotlight the profound humanism that E. M. Forster developed in his later novels. These early writings provide readers with a thought-provoking exploration of the human spirit, allowing for the possibility of a life-altering epiphany that frequently conflicts with conventional wisdom—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023016211 | ISBN 9780486852102 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. | LCGFT: Short stories. | Fantasy fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6011.O58 E8 2023 | DDC 823/.9/12—dc23/eng/20230410

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016211

Manufactured in the United States of America

www.doverpublications.com

Note

EDWARD MORGAN (E.M.) FORESTER was born on January 1, 1879, in London, England. His father, an architect, died when Forster was a baby and left him and his mother with enough money to remain comfortable. He was raised by his mother and paternal aunts.

After graduating from King’s College in Cambridge, Forster dedicated his time to writing and traveling. His early novels and short stories broke free from the morals and viewpoints of the Victorian era, with a colloquial style and strong social commentary.

The Eternal Moment and Other Stories, published in 1928, features six short stories that Forster wrote prior to World War I, during the most active period of his literary career. The Machine Stops was published in Oxford and Cambridge Review in 1909. The Point of It appeared in The English Review in 1911. Mr. Andrews was published in The Open Window in 1911. Co-ordination appeared in The English Review in 1912. The Story of the Siren originally circulated as a pamphlet put out by Leonard and Virginia Woolf ’s Hogarth Press in 1920. The Eternal Moment was published in The Independent Review in 1905.

The collection was welcomed by English and American reviewers, in part because Forster had already established himself as a significant voice in literature. In his biography of Forster, Claude J. Summers referred to The Point of It and The Story of the Siren as beautifully written and intriguing if not wholly successful. He called The Machine Stops and The Eternal Moment impressive achievements, particularly bestowing praise on the latter: Containing the best-drawn characters in Forster’s early short fiction, the story resembles [his] novels in its psychological depth and ironic perspective. . . . Precisely because the story recognizes the complexity of moral responsibility and the ambiguity of symbolic moments, it is among Forster’s most successful efforts in short fiction.

Forster’s well-received debut novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), had Italian themes, and A Room with a View (1908) was also inspired by his time in Italy with his mother. Forster published his favorite of his novels, The Longest Journey, in 1907. Between 1910 and 1913, he wrote Maurice, which reflected his homosexuality and was not published until after his death. Forster spent three years during World War I in Alexandria, Egypt, leading to Alexandria: A History and a Guide in 1922. A Passage to India (1924), one of Forster’s best novels, was inspired by his trips to India in 1912 and 1921.

In the 1930s, Forster was an outspoken voice for liberal humanism, as the academic Lord Annan put it. Shortly before World War II, Forster published one of his most famous essays, Two Cheers for Democracy, also known as What I Believe. His later books include an account of his experiences in India, The Hill of Devi (1953), and a biography of his great-aunt, Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography (1956).

Forster refused knighthood in 1949 but accepted a Companion of Honour in 1953. He had eight honorary degrees and received the Order of Merit on his ninetieth birthday. He was an honorary fellow at his alma mater, King’s College, for the last twenty-five years of his life. He passed away on June 7, 1970, in Coventry, England.

Contents

The Machine Stops

The Point of It

Mr. Andrews

Co-ordination

The Story of the Siren

The Eternal Moment

These stories were written at various dates previous to 1914, and represent, together with those in the Celestial Omnibus volume, all that I am likely to accomplish in a particular line. Much has happened since; transport has been disorganised, frontiers rectified on the map and in the spirit, and under the mass-shock of facts Fantasy has tended to retreat or at all events to dig herself in. She can be caught in the open here by those who care to catch her. She flits over the scenes of Italian and English holidays, or wings her way with even less justification towards the countries of the future. She or he. For Fantasy, though often a lady, sometimes resembles a man, and even functions for Hermes who used to do the smaller behests of the gods—messenger, machine-breaker, and conductor of souls to a not too terrible hereafter.

One of the stories appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and is reprinted by courtesy of its editor; the rest, as far as I know, have never been published in America.

The Machine Stops

Part I

THE AIR-SHIP

IMAGINE, IF YOU can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An arm-chair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk—that is all the furniture. And in the arm-chair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh—a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

An electric bell rang.

The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.

I suppose I must see who it is, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the other side of the room, where the bell still rang importunately.

Who is it? she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people; in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.

But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:

Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes—for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on ‘Music during the Australian Period.’

She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.

Be quick! she called, her irritation returning. Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.

But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.

Kuno, how slow you are.

He smiled gravely.

I really believe you enjoy dawdling.

I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.

What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?

Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want——

Well?

I want you to come and see me.

Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.

But I can see you! she exclaimed. What more do you want?

I want to see you not through the Machine, said Kuno. I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.

Oh, hush! said his mother, vaguely shocked. You mustn’t say anything against the Machine.

Why not?

One mustn’t.

You talk as if a god had made the Machine, cried the other. I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Come and stop with me. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.

She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit.

The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.

I dislike air-ships.

Why?

I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air-ship.

I do not get them anywhere else.

What kind of ideas can the air give you?

He paused for an instant.

Do you not know four big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close together in the middle of the oblong, and hanging from these stars, three other stars?

No, I do not. I dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting; tell me.

I had an idea that they were like a man.

I do not understand.

The four big stars are the man’s shoulders and his knees. The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like a sword.

A sword?

Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men.

It does not strike me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?

In the air-ship—— He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people—an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes. Vashti thought, The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial