别了，柏林 (1939)

Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by English-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn in Berlin as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany. The work consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." Isherwood drew many plot details from factual events, and he based the novel's characters on actual persons. Jean Ross, a 19-year-old flapper who briefly shared lodgings with Isherwood, inspired Sally Bowles, one of the main characters in the novel.

During Isherwood's time abroad in Germany, the young author witnessed the country's rapid political and social unraveling. He saw extreme "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right." Following the Enabling Act that cemented Hitler's power in March 1933, Isherwood fled Germany and returned to England. Afterwards, the Nazis shuttered Berlin's cabarets, and many of Isherwood's friends fled abroad or perished in concentration camps. These events served as the genesis for Isherwood's Berlin stories.

The novel received positive reviews from critics and writers. Anne Margaret Angus praised Isherwood's mastery in conveying the despair of Berlin's denizens and "their hopeless clinging to the pleasures of the moment". She believed Isherwood skillfully evoked "the psychological and emotional hotbed which forced the growth of that incredible tree, 'national socialism'." George Orwell hailed the novel for its "brilliant sketches of a society in decay". "Reading such tales as this," Orwell wrote, "the thing that surprises one is not that Hitler came to power, but that he did not do so several years earlier."

New Directions collected the 1939 novel together with Isherwood's 1935 novel, Mr Norris Changes Trains, in a 1945 omnibus edition titled The Berlin Stories. Critics praised the collection as capturing the bleak nihilism of the Weimar period. In 2010, Time magazine named it one of the 100 best English-language works of the 20th century. The work inspired the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera, the 1966 musical Cabaret, and the 1972 film of the same name. According to critics, the novel's character Sally Bowles inspired Truman Capote's character Holly Golightly in his 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Plot summary

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking...

After relocating to Weimar-era Berlin to work on a novel, an English writer explores the decadent nightlife of the city and becomes enmeshed in the colourful lives of a diverse array of Berlin denizens. He acquires modest lodgings in a boarding house owned by Fräulein Schroeder, a caring landlady.

At the boarding house, he interacts with the other tenants, including the brazen prostitute Fräulein Kost, who has a Japanese patron, and the decadent Sally Bowles, a young English flapper who sings tunelessly in a seedy cabaret called "The Lady Windermere". Due to a mutual lack of funds, Christopher and Sally soon become roommates, and he learns a great deal about her sex life as well as her coterie of "marvelous" lovers. When Sally becomes pregnant after a tryst, Christopher facilitates an abortion, and the painful incident draws them closer together. When he visits Sally at the hospital, the hospital staff assume he is Sally's impregnator and despise him for forcing her to have an abortion.

During the summer, Christopher resides at a beach house near the Baltic Sea with Peter Wilkinson and Otto Nowak. Peter has spent years in therapy when he meets the 16-year-old Otto, who assures Peter that he can cheer him up more than a therapist can and for less money. Peter is in love with Otto and is possessive over him; Otto appears to be bisexual, but it is clear that he prefers the girls he dances with in the town to Peter. Otto demonstrates little affection for Peter and increasingly desires independence, making Peter jealous and unhappy. Eventually, the two split: Otto escapes back to Berlin and Peter returns to his native England. Christopher too returns to Berlin.

During this time, Christopher meets teenage Natalie Landauer whose wealthy Jewish family owns a department store. After the Nazis smash the windows of several Jewish shops, Christopher learns that Natalie's cousin Bernhard is dead, likely murdered by the Nazis. Ultimately, Christopher is forced to leave Germany as the Nazis continue their ascent to power, and he fears that many of his beloved Berlin acquaintances are now dead.

Major characters

Christopher Isherwood – an English writer who visits Berlin and becomes entangled in the lives of various locals. The character is based upon the author. Isherwood specifically relocated to poverty-stricken Berlin to avail himself of underage male prostitutes, and he was politically indifferent about the rise of fascism. Jean Ross claimed that Sally Bowles' political indifference more closely resembled Isherwood himself and his hedonistic male friends, many of whom "fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms". Ross' opinion of Isherwood's political indifference was confirmed by Isherwood's acquaintance W. H. Auden who noted the young Isherwood "held no [political] opinions whatever about anything".