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From
his university days onward, Forster had cultivated the Greek god Hermes
as a kind of personal cult. The messenger of Zeus, Hermes was portrayed
as a young athlete-god, the classic ephebe. Forster's association
of Mohammed el Adl with Hermes was not, however, simply due to the correlation
of their youth and masculine beauty. |
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Among Forster's favorite images of Hermes is this column base in the British Museum, which portrays Hermes as the Psychopompos, which means "guide [or leader] of souls." This epithet refers most directly to Hermes's function of conducting souls to the underworld of Hades, but Hermes was also the protector of travelers, and both of these functions of Hermes had a correlate in Forster's relationship. Mohammed el Adl had been a guide for Forster to another side of Alexandria and to another side of life. Furthermore, just at the time Forster was putting together his collection of Alexandrian writings, el Adl died from tuberculosis. He was perceived by Forster as going ahead in death as a kind of guide. (See EMF's short story "The Life to Come," written in 1922, for an elaboration of this theme.)
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