Chapter XXXII from E M Forster’s A Passage to India: Summary and Analysis
The last chapter of the second part of the novel involves the natural beauty and harmony Fielding comes across outside India on his way to England. From Alexandria to Crete and Venice, he comes across natural and artistic beauty and a sort of harmony among things that is generally missing in India. He was brought back to the picture he was more familiar with and the one that he understood better. The buttercups and daisies of June perked him back up.
On his way to England, Fielding stopped at Egypt. Again he embarked on his journey at Alexandria. It was far from the perplexing wind of Bombay. The coast line and the sky line were clear. Next was Crete and then was Venice. The buildings of Venice were more in order than India. In India everything seemed to have been placed in the wrong place. Form did not accompany beauty there. Among those lumpy hills and stone idols form had gone missing. These Italian Churches were much different from those mosques and caves . San Giorgio and the Grand Canal were vastly different from the Indian scene and a lot free from muddle. There was a kind of harmony between the works of man and nature. He had experienced joys that he believed his Indian friends would miss. So, he started writing picture postcards to them. In these postcards they would see a sumptuous Venice and while it is not Europe it is still mediterranean. It is the entrance to Europe. After the sea, he took the train northward and then his heart bloomed again to see the buttercups and Daisies of June. (End of part 2 Caves)