Music as Queering in E. M. Forster's 'Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson'

At the end of his biography, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1934), E. M. Forster claims that he has not fulfilled the task of producing a work that 'would resemble' his deceased friend: 'And perhaps it only could be done through music.' More than simply a metaphor for the modern self in a newly conceptualized form of biographical writing, music, this article argues, plays a significant role in the biography's representation of Dickinson's homosexuality. It proposes that Forster's references to actual music, especially to Beethoven's 'Moonlight' Sonata, endow the biography with a queer subtext, thus both saying and unsaying Dickinson's homosexual desire. In so doing, the article aims to broaden the recent musical-literary discussion of music, sexuality, and words by focusing on a text that has not received its due critical attention. It also seeks to contribute to current life-writing studies by highlighting the presence of music in modernist engagement with different forms of writing lives.