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Labors in Love, Labor of Love:
Pharos and Pharillon

©2004 Rob Doll

 

In 1922 Forster wrote to his confidante Florence Barger:

I have dedicated it 'To ______'   because I wish my next book to be M's whatever his relation to it, but now I do not like the dedication. All his life I hushed him up and I feel I ought to put his name in full. Yet I don't want questions from outsiders as to who Mohammed is (7 July 1922).

He goes on in the same letter to say that he did not like to "allude to him by some literary paraphrase"; nevertheless Forster chose in the end to veil his reference to Mohammed by dedicating the book in Greek to "Hermes Psychopompos."  Leonard Woolf had to go out and buy Greek type especially for the purpose:

Detail: Hermes of Praxitiles.