By Christopher Isherwood, 1945
Having enjoyed the film Cabaret since it came out in
1972, I have wanted to read Isherwood’s novels for a long time. Of course, the
novels are not the movie. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see Isherwood’s depiction
of the social and political context of Berlin in the early 1930s from his very
personal, up-close perspective.
Although not strictly autobiographical, the stories draw closely
from Isherwood’s life and contacts. And it’s hard to imagine that he could, or
would want to, create the detail in the stories without having seen them in
person. His descriptions are often sketchy, but nevertheless give enough detail
to leave a vivid picture of the milieu and the characters. He takes the stance
of an outside observer – “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive,
recording, not thinking,” he famously says in the first page of Farewell to
Berlin. He reports what he sees in a non-judgemental tone, while clearly
sympathizing with the left-wing (communist) anti-Nazi characters.
Perhaps it was a fear of censorship or social intolerance,
but it’s a little disappointing that he chose to underplay the queer scene of
Berlin almost entirely. (I think there’s one point where the character Christopher
responds Yes when asked if he is queer.) Many of the characters can be read as
queer, and there is a degree of homoerotic attraction in their relationships. But
actual queer sexuality was certainly a part of the scene that Christopher
inhabits, and it seems artificial to have left it out. Isherwood’s later book, Christopher
and His Kind, apparently deals with this, and perhaps anything more explicit
would have been unpublishable in England in the 1930s.
The most vivid of several memorable characters is Sally
Bowles. (I can see why the film producers wanted to focus on her.) It’s not
clear why Sally and Christopher form such a strong relationship. Sally is
irreverent, unconventional and fun, which brings a lot of energy and laughter
to the otherwise staid Christopher. She perhaps appreciates his stability and
the fact that he seems to adore her and she can manipulate him. Many of the
other characters are memorable in their own ways – a bit like the caricatures
that stand out in Dickens’ novels. The mysterious Norris convincingly plays
every side for his own advantage, but seems to be constantly on the run. The working-class
Otto seems to be in a sado-masochistic relationship with Christopher’s friend,
and then welcomes Christopher into the two-room apartment he shares with his impoverished
family, and introduces Christopher to his communist friends and his Nazi
brother. Most poignant is the wealthy Jewish esthete Bernard, with whom
Christopher has a very personal and close relationship, although apparently not
an erotic one. Although somewhat exaggerated, these characters all come across
as actual people.
The stories seem a bit random and unconnected, but they all
fit into the background of the growing Nazi influence in Germany in the early
1930s. At the beginning of the stories, the Nazis seem a vague but ridiculous
threat. As the stories continue, they are elected to government and acquire
more power by intimidating people on the street and managing a semi-legal coup.
In the final segments, they are a dominating malevolent force that imprisons
some of Christopher’s friends and is responsible for the death of at least one
of them.
The overriding narrative describes how people in various
parts of a complex social situation respond to growing Nazi-ism, and also how
the society fails to deal with the clear threat. People know what is happening.
The fact that Isherwood’s books were published in 1935 describing the violence
and arbitrary power grab also makes it clear that Isherwood’s contemporaries knew
it, too. The inflation and unemployment of Germany in the 1930s may have
convinced people that anything would be better than the status quo, and that
the whole system needed to be overthrown.
That gives the stories relevance today – we may also be in a
time when alienation and disillusionment are taking us to the same catastrophic
path.
