My Wood By E.M. Forster (我的小树林 英国 E.M.福斯特著)

My Wood

E. M. Forster

Edward

Morgan

Forster

(1879-1970),

English

essayist,

novelist,

biographer,

and

literary

critic,

wrote

several

notable

works

of

fiction

dealing

with

the

constricting

effects

of

social

and

national

conventions

upon

human

relationships.

These

novels

include

A

Room

with

a

View

(1908),

Howards

End

(1910),

and

A

Passage

to

India

(1924). In addition, his lectures on fiction, collected as

Aspects of the Novel

(1927),

remain

graceful

elucidations

of

the

genre.

In

“My

Wood”

taken

from

his

essay

collection

Abinger Harvest

(1936), Forster writes with wit and wisdom about effect of

property upon human behavior---notably his own.

A few years ago I wrote a book which dealt with in part with the difficulties of

the

English

in

India.

Feeling

that

they

would

have

had

no

difficulties

in

India

themselves, Americans read the book freely. The more they read it the better it made

them feel, and a cheque to the author was the result. I bought a wood with the cheque.

It is not a large wood---- it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it by

a public footpath. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other

people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will

vary

in

horror,

this

very

important

question:

What

is

the

effect

upon

the

character?

Don’t let’s touch the economics; the effect of private ownership upon the community

as a whole is another question----a more important question, perhaps, but another one.

Let’s keep to psychology.

If you own things, what’s their effect on you? What’s the

effect on me of my wood?

In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. Property does have this effect. Property

produces

men

of

weight,

and

it

was

a

man

of

weight

who

failed

to

get

into

the

Kingdom of Heaven. He was not wicked, that unfortunate millionaire in the parable,

he

was

only

stout;

he

stuck

out

in

front,

not

to

mention

behind,

and

as

he

wedged

himself this way and that in the crystalline entrance and bruised his well-fed flanks,

he saw beneath him a comparatively slim camel passing through the eye of a needle

and being woven into the robe of God. The Gospels all through couple stoutness and

slowness. They point out what is perfectly obvious, yet seldom realized: that if you

have

a

lot

of

things

you

cannot

move

about

a

lot,

that

furniture

requires

dusting,

dusters require servants, servants

require insurance stamps,

and the whole tangle of

them makes you think twice before you accept an invitation to dinner or go for a bathe

in

the

Jordan.

Sometimes

the

Gospels

proceed

further

and

say

with

Tolstoy

that

property

is

sinful;

they

approach

the

difficult

ground

of

asceticism

here,

where

I

cannot follow them. But as to the immediate effects of property on people, they just

show

straightforward

logic.

It

produces

men

of

weight.

Men

of

weight

cannot,

by

definition, move like the lightning from the East unto the West, and the ascent of a

fourteen-stone

bishop

into

a

pulpit

is

thus

the

exact

antithesis

of

the

coming

of

the

Son of Man. My wood makes me feel heavy.

In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.