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William Plomer. But Isherwood’s relationship with Forster was the most complex, one that was a combination of awed disciple, naughty son, and devoted friend. Throughout the 1930s, Isherwood kept Forster abreast of his current writing projects, writing in late 1932 that he was working on
“an indecent bumptious stupid sort of novel about Berlin which I fear you won’t like.” Thirty years later he would no longer feel it necessary that Forster approve of his work, but at this stage in his writing career he sought Forster’s praise.13
Like other writers of his generation, Isherwood was keenly aware of the growing menace of Nazism in the early 1930s. In “The Lost” Isherwood sought to portray some of the people he had met during his years in Berlin who were living in the shadow of the Nazi threat.14 Though he was not writing a political novel, he was offering an interpretation of Berlin society in the early 1930s. His diary records are “The link which binds all the chief characters together is that in some way or other each one of them is conscious of the mental, economic, and ideological bankruptcy of the world in which they live.”15 Although Isherwood abandoned the project two years later, characters such as Mr. Norris, Bernard Landauer, and Sally Bowles were to fill the pages of his two famous Berlin novels, Mr. Norris Changes Trains (U.S. title, The Last of Mr. Norris) and Goodbye to Berlin, published in 1935 and 1939, respectively.
In 1934, Isherwood was also collaborating with Auden on a play, which was eventually titled The Dog Beneath the Skin. It makes a tentative antifas-cist statement but is not really a political play. Jonathan Fryer notes that the play “is very much a child of its time, urgent in its anti-fascism and aggressive in its overt suggestion that such things might also take place in England . . . yet its political position is not so clear-cut, its ardour for the left-wing cause ambiguous.”16 Part of the problem was Isherwood’s and Auden’s reluctance to embrace a political cause—even when they had a personal antipathy to fascism. Fryer suggests that in Isherwood’s case, “his artistic temperament and interests would always prevent him from being a political mouthpiece.”17
Though he worked quickly with Auden on the play, Isherwood was finding it difficult to work steadily on his novel. He was traveling restlessly around Europe with his young German lover, Heinz, trying to find a country where they could settle together. In May 1934 he wrote to Forster, “My own novel doesn’t get finished and changes its form daily. I read chiefly books about what is going to happen in Europe and study maps.” Forster, meanwhile, attempting to emerge from a dry spell, was beginning a new project: a biography of his Cambridge friend, the historian Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, who had recently died. He confesses to Isherwood, “It’s pal-zeik-00intro 4/21/08 10:23 AM Page 6
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LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
so long since I’ve written a book that it feels like opening a tomb.” Although each writer keeps the other up-to-date on his latest writing project, the letters become increasingly personal and intimate. Isherwood’s letters to Forster from 1933 to 1937 are a travel diary of beautiful places inhabited by odd people. He entertains his mentor-friend with descriptions of mysterious ship passengers, Germans in the Canary Islands who “bow from the waist and say ‘Permit,’” and Portuguese workers who sing loudly as they work. And wherever Isherwood and Heinz are, he coaxes Forster to join them for a visit, in one letter giving him rather hilarious directions of how to reach them on a remote Greek island.
But always present like a dark cloud threatening to pour down on a sunny, idyllic picnic is the rise of fascism in Europe. As early as April 1934, Forster writes to Isherwood of the “coming smash” and resigns himself that
“nothing can be done.” Forster notes that those whom he admires feel the need “to do something,” but he only supports such action if one remains true to one’s character and is not playing the role of political activist merely to gain admiration. He thus never suggests that Isherwood should become more politically engaged. Forster himself was decidedly apolitical and even when war was imminent did not add his voice to those who strongly advocated fighting the Germans. Although not overtly carrying a political message, Isherwood’s works during this period are informed by the times. In August 1934, as he began the segments that will eventually become Goodbye to Berlin, Isherwood reflects that “they ought, at least, to form quite an interesting set of illustrations to a serious work on Fascism.” The outcome is perhaps more in line with what Fryer writes about the companion novel, Mr. Norris Changes Trains: “The background of the Nazi rise to power is succinctly and powerfully evoked, without ever directly intruding on the private drama in the foreground.”18
Isherwood’s placing of his story within a background of the rise of the Nazis in Berlin is in keeping with his relation to political developments of the 1930s. The fascist threat is the active backdrop for the drama of Isherwood’s life which was mainly concerned with keeping Heinz out of Germany and with him. His letters to Forster record his anxiety, fear, and desperation not about a future war per se but about the very threatening present situation he faces in his personal life—the fact that Heinz could any day be arrested and deported for failing to report for military duty in Germany. In the summer of 1936, after unsuccessfully seeking help from a famous Lisbon lawyer, Isherwood records in his journaclass="underline" “I came out into the street feeling stunned. It was absurd, of course, to be so upset. What else had I expected?. . . Why shouldn’t H[einz] go back? Everything seemed to be slipping away down into a bottomless black drain. . . . So absolutely pal-zeik-00intro 4/21/08 10:23 AM Page 7
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doomed did I feel—wandering up and down the hot sunlit streets.”19
Shortly after, still in Portugal, Isherwood writes Forster that “Every time the door-bell rings, we jump out of our skins and the postman is awaited daily like an executioner.” Isherwood’s fears are realized but not in the way he imagined. Heinz was arrested by the German Gestapo in Trier, Germany, where Isherwood’s attorney had instructed him to wait for a visa to return to Belgium. He eventually was found guilty and given a six-month prison sentence. His freedom would be denied for three additional years: one year working for the German government and two years military service.20
Throughout the 1930s, writers of Isherwood’s generation struggled with the question of how to respond effectively to the increasing menace of Fascism. In 1935, John Lehmann felt that “time was running out for a new world war”; He asks, “How to defend oneself, to be active, not to crouch paralysed as the hawk descends?”21 Stephen Spender, who joined the Communist Party in late 1936 and wrote articles for the party’s newspaper, The Daily Worker, later reflects on his commitment to politics: “I was ‘political’ not just because I was involved, but in feeling I must choose to defend a good cause against a bad one.”22 Although Spender took on an active political role, traveling around England representing the anti-fascist position, in a letter to Isherwood he admits “I still secretly and perhaps exag-geratedly believe that a very good book about things one cares for is a potent instrument. And imaginative work is more important than one more voice added to a controversial babel.”23 While Spender’s “imaginative work” would not be overtly, or even subtly, political, Cecil Day-Lewis, who, like Spender, joined the Communist Party at this time, believes that a “pro-letarian poet” can play a direct role in politics: “To speak to the workers and for the workers he does not need, as bourgeois poets do, to learn a new tongue: he has only to make poetry of what is his native language.”24