[Note: In this book, written in the 1970s, Christopher Isherwood writes
about his life in late 20s/30s Germany and Europe in the third person.
It seems like an affectation at first but by the end I think it makes
sense: Who you were almost 50 years earlier might as well be another
person.]
Christopher and Wystan [Auden] stayed on an extra day in Amsterdam,
before Christopher went back to England. They were both in the highest
spirits. It was such a relief and happiness to be alone with each other.
They took a trip through the canals and the harbor in a tourist launch,
deep in an exchange of private jargon and jokes, barely conscious of
their surroundings. On disembarking, all the passengers were asked to
sign a guest book. Beside their two signatures, Wystan wrote a quotation
from Ilya Ehrenburg's poem about the Russian Revolution:
Read about us and marvel!
You did not live in our time—be sorry!
Christopher saw Viertel as the kind of intellectual who takes his
intellectualism too seriously and thus becomes the captive of his own
opinions. He could be dazzlingly witty, grotesquely comic, but never
silly, never frivolous... Christopher said to himself that only those
who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
In his two novels about Berlin, Christopher tried to make not only the
bizarre seem humdrum but the humdrum seem bizarre—that is, exciting. He
wanted his readers to find excitement in Berlin's drab streets and
shabby crowds, in the poverty and dullness of the overgrown Prussian
provincial town which had become Germany's pseudo-capital. Forty years
later, I can claim that that excitement has been created—largely by all
those others who have reinterpreted Christopher's material: actresses
and actors, directors and writers. Christopher was saying, in effect:
"Read about us and marvel! You did not live in our time—be sorry!" And
now there are young people who agree with him. "How I wish I could have
been with you there!" they write. This is flattering but also ironic;
for most of them could no more have shared Christopher's life in Berlin
than they could have lived with a hermit in the desert. Not because of
any austerities Christopher endured. Because of the boredom.
The change in Christopher's attitude was also related to Heinz
[Isherwood's long-term German boyfriend who had been forcibly drafted]
and the Nazis. As long as Heinz had been outside their power but menaced
by them, Christopher's attitude to them had been one of uncomplicated
hatred. But now Heinz was about to become an unwilling part of the Nazi
military machine. Soon he would be wearing Hitler's uniform. Christopher
didn't for one moment wish him to do otherwise. Heinz had plenty of
courage but he wasn't the type who could be expected to disappear and
join the underground, or to take a stand as a pacifist in a country
where pacifists would probably be executed.
Suppose, Christopher now said to himself, I have a Nazi Army at my
mercy. I can blow it up by pressing a button. The men in that Army are
notorious for torturing and murdering civilians—all except for one of
them, Heinz. Will I press the button? No—wait: Suppose I know that Heinz
himself, out of cowardice or moral infection, has become as bad as they
are and takes part in all their crimes? Will I press that button, even
so? Christopher's answer, given without the slightest hesitation, was:
Of course not.
That was a purely emotional reaction. But it helped Christopher think
his way through to the next proposition. Suppose that Army goes into
action and has just one casualty, Heinz himself. Will I press the
button now and destroy his fellow criminals? No emotional reaction this
time, but a clear answer, not to be evaded: Once I have refused to press
that button because of Heinz, I can never press it. Because every man
in that Army could be somebody's Heinz and I have no right to play
favorites. Thus Christopher was forced to recognize himself as a
pacifist—although by an argument which he could only admit to with the
greatest reluctance.
...
The above description of Christopher's reactions is far too lucid, however. What had actually begun to surface in his muddled mind was a conflict of emotions. He felt obliged to become a pacifist, he refused to deny his homosexuality, he wanted to keep as much of his leftism as he could. All he could do for the present was to pick up his ideas one after another and reexamine them ring them like coins saying: This one's counterfeit; this one's genuine, but I can't use it; this one I can keep, I think.
