From a sexual Mecca to the City of Doom - Signs of a lost society in selected novels by Christopher Isherwood

Contents

1. Introduction

2. „Berlin meant Boys“: Christopher Isherwood’s “sexual mecca”

3. „Charlie Chaplin ceased to be funny“: A changing society in stylistic devices

4. „The City is ultimately doomed”: The Characters and their Role

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

1. Introduction

On his first visit to Germany, Bremen, Christopher Isherwood stayed with his uncle Mr. Lancaster. As described in his novel Down there on a Visit it was this uncle that persuaded him to return to Germany, namely Berlin. “Is Berlin so bad?”, I [Isherwood] asked, trying not to sound too interested. “Christopher – in the whole of Thousand Nights and One Night, in the most shameless rituals of the Tantra, in the carvings on the Black Pagoda, in the Japanese brothel-pictures, in the vilest perversions of the oriental mind, you couldn’t find anything more nauseating than what goes on there, quite openly, every day. That city is doomed, more surely than Sodom ever was. […] And then and there I made a decision – one that was to have a very important effect on the rest of my life. I decided that, no matter how, I would get to Berlin just as soon as ever I could and that I would stay there a long long time.”^[1] Norman Page wrote in ‘Auden and Isherwood. The Berlin Years’ how the German capital became the “the most exciting city in Europe, perhaps in the world, for anyone sympathetic to experiment and innovation in a wide variety of art forms, high and popular, pure and applied: a vital city that in a surprisingly short time had become a magnet for gifted young artists and artistes.”^[2]

After Isherwood left London by the afternoon train for Berlin on March 14th, 1929 he moved in a room next to the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science – and thus did take a close look at the famous Berlin ‘decadence’. But not only did Isherwood explore his own sexuality while being in Germany throughout the years 1929 to 1933. He also observed a good deal about the changes that were happening in the capital: the political turmoil and the beginning of what later became the darkest of Germany’s historical chapters. Especially in his Berlin novels Goodbye to Berlin^[3] and Mr.. Norris Changes Trains^[4] does Isherwood describe the change from a sexual Mecca to a city of doom^[5]. Traces of this change can also be found in Down there on a Visit^[6], Exhumations^[7] and Christopher and his Kind^[8]. This term paper will take a look at all these novels. How is the downfall of a society portrayed? Starting point will be the signs of a sexual Mecca in Isherwood’s works, before changing stylistic devices and different characters from his novels will be portrayed before being analyzed as hints to a doomed city. At last the denseness and dark atmosphere of the closing pages of Isherwood’s novels will be discussed before a conclusion will be drawn. As a reminder it needs to be said that it will be tried to point out whether it is talked about the author or the novel character Christopher Isherwood.

2. „Berlin meant Boys“: Christopher Isherwood’s “sexual mecca”

^[9] In the 1920s Paris was the centre of the universe – or so it seemed. Artists, wannabe-artists and other bohemian people tried to go there. “ The list of people who lived and worked there included Pablo Picasso, Apollinaire, Igor Stravinsky and a young Ernest Hemingway.”^[10][11] But not only did people go to Paris to promote their careers, they also enjoyed being in one of the most liberal places in Europe at the time to party and to take part in various sexual adventures.^[12] But all of this meant hardly anything to Christopher Isherwood and some of his fellow friends. He had come to find his homeland in Germany, namely Berlin. It was there that he could explore his homosexuality thoroughly. After all: “Paris had long since cornered the straight girl-market, so what was left for Berlin to offer its visitors but a masquerade of perversions?”^[13]

When Christopher Isherwood wrote a review about Stephen Spender’s World Within World he remembered that he “was living mostly in Berlin at the time, which seemed especially romantic to Spender; for Germany was then pre-eminently the country of the wandervogel movement, of nudism, hiking-trips, leather shorts, accordions and free love.”^[14] These dreams about the permissiveness of the German society are reflected in Isherwood’s novels, especially in the ones that were later published. The sex life described in Goodbye to Berlin (1939) is definitely frivolous, nevertheless it is of a heterosexual kind and only a few hints to homosexuality are to be found. At the end of the novel an American youth asks Isherwood and his friend Fritz Wendel: “‘Do you mean they’re queer ?’ ‘Eventually we’re all queer,’ drawled Fritz solemnly, in lugubrious tones. […] ‘You queer, too, hey?’ demanded the little American, turning suddenly on me. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘very queer indeed.’” This reservation at least about the wickedness of the Berlin years is almost non-existent in Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1935) . Arthur Norris, the main character, has a collection of artefacts (whips, pornographic books, etc.) to be used for amorous adventures. And he doesn’t even try to hide his sexual desires. On New Year’s Eve William Bradshaw witnesses the following scene on his way home late at night: “I had wriggled and shuffled about half the distance when an agonized cry came from the lighted room ahead of me. ‘ Nein, nein! Mercy! Oh dear! Hilfe! Hilfe!’ There was no mistaking the voice. They had got Arthur in there, and were robbing him and knocking him about. […] Struggling forward to the door, I pushed it open. The first person I saw was Anni. She was standing in the middle of the room. Arthur cringed on the floor at her feet. He had removed several more of his garments, and was now dressed, lightly but with perfect decency, in a suit of mauve silk underwear, a rubber abdominal belt and a pair of socks. […] Olga towered behind him, brandishing a heavy leather whip. […] My presence did not seem to disconcert any of them in the least. Indeed, it appeared to add spice to Arthur’s enjoyment.”

Homosexuality becomes openly an issue in Down There on a Visit (1962). Here the first-person narrator describes his love to Waldemar, whom he has met in Berlin. Both of them share a tent on a Greek island in the chapter ‘Ambrose’ after fleeing from Nazi-Germany. Isherwood’s jealousy is a topic as well as Waldemar’s readiness to sleep with Isherwood for paying his way through life although being heterosexual. In the last chapter ‘Paul’ it is described how Isherwood and Paul lay bed to bed telling each other their homo-erotic or sexual fantasies. Isherwood especially describes his past experiences from Berlin. The topic of homosexuality is also picked up in the movie Cabaret, produced in 1972 and based on Goodbye to Berlin. Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts (Christopher Isherwood) both partake in a threesome with the German baron Maximilian von Heune, who is representing the American Clive of the novel. When Brian tells Sally to “screw him”, referring to Maximilian she icily retorts “I do.” Brian can only reply: “So do I.”

The sexual Mecca that John J. White described in his essay ‘Sexual Mecca, Nazi Metropolis, City of Doom’ is represented in a lot of the Isherwood characters as well. A commercialized wickedness of the City leads to flocks of British tourists who want to participate in it.^[15] This is documented in several characters Isherwood describes. Otto gets money from various sexual partners in Goodbye to Berlin, Mr. Norris likes to take prostitutes home with him for his boot-fetishism and bar-boys are not only in the Cosy Corner but to be found everywhere in Berlin. The most prominent character of a commercialized wickedness is Sally Bowles in Goodbye to Berlin. A singer at Lady Windermere’s, she is “hot stuff”^[16] as Isherwood’s friend Fritz Wendel points out. Sally, although being a foreigner from England, just like Isherwood, goes to Berlin to be a famous actress or singer one day. Till then she tries to live off the money her numerous lovers give her: “I’m supposed to meet a man at the Adlon at five […]. He wants me to be his mistress, but I’ve told him I’m damned if I will till he’s paid all my debts.”^[17] In Christopher and His Kind Isherwood belittles the dreams of the Berlin sexual freedom and openness: “The ‘wickedness’ of Berlin’s night-life was of a most pitiful kind; the kisses and embraces, as always, had price-tags attached to them, but the prices were drastically reduced in the cut-throat competition of an overcrowded market (I remember hearing of a boy who told a psychiatrist quite seriously that he was ‘homosexual – for economic reasons’!).”

[...]

^[1] Isherwood, Christopher. Down there on a Visit. London, 1962, p. 38.

^[2] Page, Norman. Auden and Isherwood. The Berlin Years. New York, 1998, p. 3.

^[3] Isherwood, Christopher. Goodbye to Berlin. London, 2004.

^[4] Isherwood, Christopher. Mr.. Norris Changes Trains. London, 1996.

^[5] Compare: White, White, John J. ‘Sexual Mecca, Nazi Metropolis, City of Doom. The Pattern of English, Irish and American Reactions to the Berlin of the Inter-War Years’, in: Glass, Derek, Rösler, Dieter, White John J. edited by Derek Glass, Dietmar Rösler and John J. White. Berlin. Literary Images of a City. Eine Großstadt im Spiegel der Literatur. Berlin, 1989.

^[6] Isherwood, Christopher. Down there on a Visit. London, 1962.

^[7] Isherwood, Christopher. Exhumations. London, 1966.

^[8] Isherwood, Christopher. Christopher and his Kind. London, 1976.

^[9] Isherwood: Christopher and His Kind, p. 10.

^[10] White, White, John J. ‘Sexual Mecca, Nazi Metropolis, City of Doom, p. 124.

^[11] http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/features/paris/people/, December 11th, 2006.

^[12] Compare: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/features/paris/pleasure/, December 11th, 2006

^[13] Isherwood, Christopher. Christopher and his Kind. London, 1976, p. 29.

^[14] Isherwood: Exhumations, p. 61.

^[15] Compare: White: Sexual Mecca, Nazi Metropolis, City of Doom, p. 135.

^[16] Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin, p. 34.

^[17] Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin, p. 36.