Category Archives: Poetry

September 20, 2011

As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado

By Joe

In honor of the official repeal of DADT today, I wanted to post a poem about homosexual love in the military. Long before DADT was an official policy, Walt Whitman was serving as a nurse for the US Army during the Civil War. Drum Taps (1865), Walt Whitman’s sequence of poems on the Civil War that reflects his experience as a hospital volunteer, includes several poems that appreciate soldiers in more or less homoerotic terms (for example, “First O Songs for a Prelude” and “O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy”).

But it is elegies such as “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,” “Reconciliation,” and “As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado” that allow Whitman to express himself unrestrainedly.

In “Reconciliation,” the speaker’s tenderness for the fallen soldier overpowers the enmity between armies, in terms that anticipate Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, / I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin–I draw near, / Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.”

As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado

As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,
The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air
I resume,
I know I am restless and make others so,
I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to
unsettle them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have
been had all accepted me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,
majorities, nor ridicule,
And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me,
And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still
urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

Walt Whitman

In this particular poem, Whitman writes a brief, but beautiful confession and declaration of his own sexuality. It is a brief, but significant love poem, and the manner of Whitman’s “confession” can be explored in a number of ways, but it ultimately points to a homosexual relationship. The first obvious hint that this poem is linked to Whitman’s homosexuality is his adjustment of the word “camerado.” The original Spanish word is actually “camarada” with a feminine ending, and it means “friend” or comrade.” By changing this specific word to have a male ending, we know that Whitman is aiming and professing this poem to a male friend. The significance of this male friend becomes more apparent as Whitman continues with his poem.  His use of the actually word “confession” within the second line – “The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume” is another example of Whitman confessing openly his sexuality. As Whitman continues to describe this poem, he draws attention to the fact that it will make others “restless” and his words are “weapons full of danger, full of death.”

The intensity of the poem, although subtle but existent, is what ultimately points that nature of the poem has to do with love or at least intimacy. Whitman seems very determined in this poem, especially as he says “Dear camerado! I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.” Whitman seems to be dismissing everything else, and urging this other person to do the same. He is rejecting any significance of heaven or hell, and embracing the fact that whatever road he is going down may bring hard times. Indeed, to announce homosexuality during Whitman’s era would have brought on a lot of criticism and grief.

Sources:

7 Comments | posted in History, Poetry

September 17, 2011

Moment of Zen

By Joe

Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.

Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚)

Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚) (1758–1831) was a quiet and eccentric Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry and calligraphy, which present the essence of Zen life.

3 Comments | posted in Moment of Zen, Poetry

September 13, 2011

The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name

By Joe

“The Love that Dares to Speak its Name” is a controversial poem by James Kirkup.  In fact, some might find the poem to be quite offensive, but after reading it and researching about it, I found it fascinating, even if it is blasphemous.  Maybe intellectual curiosity sometimes kills the cat, but I decided to write about it anyway.  It is written from the viewpoint of a Roman centurion who is graphically described having sex with Jesus after his crucifixion, and also claims that Jesus had had sex with numerous disciples, guards, and even Pontius Pilate.  If the poem was not about Jesus Christ and the centurion, Longinus, I would truly consider the poem beautiful and erotic in an odd necrophilia sort of way that is also quite disturbing.  Maybe it is either way, or maybe I have been reading too much Edgar Allen Poe in the high school English class that I am currently teaching.

The poem was at the centre of the Whitehouse v. Lemon trial for blasphemous libel, where the editor of Gay News—which first published in the poem in 1976—was convicted and given a suspended prison sentence.  In later years, Britain’s Royal Crown Prosecution Service attempted to charge the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement with a similar charge of blasphemous libel after a complaint by religious conservatives over a hypertext link on their web site to text of “The Love that Dares to Speak its Name” by James Kirkup.

The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name
By James Kirkup

As they took him from the cross
I, the centurion, took him in my arms-
the tough lean body
of a man no longer young,
beardless, breathless,
but well hung.


He was still warm.
While they prepared the tomb
I kept guard over him.
His mother and the Magdalen
had gone to fetch clean linen
to shroud his nakedness.


I was alone with him.
For the last time
I kissed his mouth. My tongue
found his, bitter with death.
I licked his wound-
the blood was harsh
For the last time
I laid my lips around the tip
of that great cock, the instrument
of our salvation, our eternal joy.
The shaft, still throbbed, anointed
with death’s final ejaculation


I knew he’d had it off with other men-
with Herod’s guards, with Pontius Pilate,
With John the Baptist, with Paul of Tarsus
with foxy Judas, a great kisser, with
the rest of the Twelve, together and apart.
He loved all men, body, soul and spirit. – even me.


So now I took off my uniform, and, naked,
lay together with him in his desolation,
caressing every shadow of his cooling flesh,
hugging him and trying to warm him back to life.
Slowly the fire in his thighs went out,
while I grew hotter with unearthly love.


It was the only way I knew to speak our love’s proud name,
to tell him of my long devotion, my desire, my dread-
something we had never talked about. My spear, wet with blood,
his dear, broken body all open wounds,
and in each wound his side, his back,
his mouth – I came and came and came


as if each coming was my last.
And then the miracle possessed us.
I felt him enter into me, and fiercely spend
his spirit’s finbal seed within my hole, my soul,
pulse upon pulse, unto the ends of the earth-
he crucified me with him into kingdom come.


-This is the passionate and blissful crucifixion
same-sex lovers suffer, patiently and gladly.
They inflict these loving injuries of joy and grace
one upon the other, till they dies of lust and pain
within the horny paradise of one another’s limbs,
with one voice cry to heaven in a last divine release.


Then lie long together, peacefully entwined, with hope
of resurrection, as we did, on that green hill far away.
But before we rose again, they came and took him from me.
They knew not what we had done, but felt
no shame or anger. Rather they were glad for us,
and blessed us, as would he, who loved all men.


And after three long, lonely days, like years,
in which I roamed the gardens of my grief
seeking for him, my one friend who had gone from me,
he rose from sleep, at dawn, and showed himself to me before
all others. And took me to him with
the love that now forever dares to speak its name.

Further Reading:

8 Comments | posted in Art, History, Photography, Poetry

September 11, 2011

Lest We Forget

By Joe

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists from the Islamist extremist group, al Qaeda, hijacked four commercial airplanes, deliberately crashing two of the planes into the upper floors of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. The Twin Towers ultimately collapsed because of the damage sustained from the impacts and the resulting fires. After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, fought back, and the plane was crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania about 20 minutes by air from Washington, DC.
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people from 93 nations. 2,753 people were killed in New York,  184 people were killed at the Pentagon, and 40 people were killed on Flight 93.


Ode of Remembrance
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal,
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation,
And a glory that shines upon her tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Lest We Forget

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables at home;
They have no lot in our labour of the daytime;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known,
As the stars are known to the night.

As the stars will be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Lest We Forget

English poet Laurence Binyon, overwhelmed by the carnage and loss of life by British and Allied forces in World War 1, penned one of the most moving tributes the world has known to those who died in war.

Originally titled For the Fallen, the ode first appeared in The Times of London on September 21, 1914. It has now become known in Australia and Canada as the Ode of Remembrance.  I think that on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 it is a fitting memorial.  After the verse in bold is recited in memory of those who died, it is followed by the response, “Lest we forget” as I have added it above.

6 Comments | posted in History, Poetry

September 6, 2011

The Hug by Thom Gunn

By Joe
The Hug
It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who’d showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.
Thom Gunn

Photo © Ander Gunn 1992

In 1929, Thom Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent, England, the older son of two journalists. His parents were divorced when the poet was ten years old, and his mother committed suicide while he was a teenager. Before her death, his mother had inspired a deep love of reading in him, including affection for the writings of Marlowe, Keats, Milton, and Tennyson, as well as several prose writers.

Before enrolling in Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1950, he spent two years in the national service and six months in Paris. In 1954, the year after his graduation, Gunn’s first poetry collection, Fighting Terms, was published. The book was instantly embraced by several critics, including John Press, who wrote, “This is one of the few volumes of postwar verse that all serious readers of poetry need to possess and to study.” Gunn relocated to San Francisco and held a one-year fellowship at Stanford University, where he studied with Yvor Winters.

Over the next few decades, he published several collections that were not as warmly received as his earliest work, including The Sense of Movement (1957), My Sad Captains (1961), Touch (1967), Moly (1971), To the Air (1974), Jack Straw’s Castle (1976), Selected Poems 1950-1975 (1979), and The Passages of Joy (1983).

During the 1970s and 80s, Gunn’s poems were marked by the poet’s personal experiences as he wrote more openly about his homosexuality and drug use. Many critics believed he was betraying his talents. But with the publication of The Man with Night Sweats in 1992, a collection memorializing his friends and loved ones who had fallen victim of the AIDS pandemic, critics were reminded of Gunn’s early promise. As Neil Powell wrote of the book, “Gunn restores poetry to a centrality it has often seemed close to losing, by dealing in the context of a specific human catastrophe with the great themes of life and death, coherently, intelligently, memorably. One could hardly ask for more.” Gunn received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the collection in 1993.

He went on to publish several more books of poetry in the United States and Britain, including Boss Cupid (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), Frontiers of Gossip (1998), and Collected Poems (1994). He has also written several collections of essays, including The Occasions of Poetry (1982; U.S. edition, 1999).

Gunn’s honors include the Levinson Prize, an Arts Council of Great Britain Award, a Rockefeller Award, the W. H. Smith Award, the PEN (Los Angeles) Prize for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, the Forward Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations.

Thom Gunn died on April 25, 2004, in his home in San Francisco.

5 Comments | posted in Nudity, Poetry

September 4, 2011

Fauns and Satyrs

By Joe

The satyrs were woodland spirits, often depicted in arts with head and upper body of man, horns and pointy ears, and goat legs. They were also depicted with large erect phallus (penis).

They were often seen accompanying Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. They were shown in drunken revelry and orgy, dancing with Dionysus’ female followers, the maenads.
Pan, the god of shepherd was a satyr, so was probably Silenus or Seilenus. Silenus was one of the loyal followers of Dionysus, who brought up the wine god.

Satyrs were usually represented as being very hairy and having the tails and ears of a horse and often the horns and legs of a goat. An important part of Dionysus’ entourage, they were lustful, fertile creatures, always merrily drinking and dancing.

In Greek mythology, satyrs (in Greek, Σάτυροι — Sátyroi) are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus— “satyresses” were a late invention of poets— that roamed the woods and mountains. In mythology they are often associated with male sex drive and vase-painters often portrayed them with uncontrollable erections.

The Fauns and Satyrs were he-creatures, like men, with the hind-legs of goats, short horns on their foreheads, and long pointed ears. But there was a difference between the Fauns and Satyrs. The Fauns were handsome, gentle, innocent, and rather foolish. The Satyrs were hideous, clumsy, hairy monsters, with flat faces, little eyes, and huge mouths, great gluttons, often drunk, and sometimes mischievous: most of them were dull and stupid, but many of them had plenty of sense and knowledge. The Fauns and Satyrs lived among the woods and hills like the Dryads and Oreads.

The king of all these Nymphs, Fauns, and Satyrs was a god named Pan, who was himself a very hideous satyr. He had nothing to do with the gods of Olympus, but lived on the earth, chiefly in a part of Greece called Arcādia. “Pan” is the Greek for “all”—you remember the same word in the name of “Pan-dora.” He was called “Pan” because he was the god of “all” nature—all the hills and mountains, all the woods and forests, all the fields, rivers, and streams.

Anonymous poem: A Faun meets a Taormina shepherd

In the most remote areas of Taormina’s wilderness,
Young shepherds met fauns and satyrs, Pan and Dionysos,
Hidding behind a rock, vanishing in a flash, a flash of light.

Most of the time they were mere illusions, a reflection of the sun,
A mirage in Taormina’s wilderness, at the peak of the hot wave,
Or just a noise of a rock falling down from a cliff… 

But Pasqualino met a faun, a real faun, sitting on a rock,
Far away from the usual paths of Taormina’s young shepherds,
So far that he was in the middle of nowhere… 

“Are you a god or just an illusion ?”, asked Pasqualino.
“Did I love you a long time ago, I am sure I know you”,
Answered the faun with his Dionysiac horns… 

“Cute shepherd of Taormina, please, play a melody for me,
A melody from your reed flute, perhaps I will sing one for you,
A song of love, of the love of gods for Taormina’s shepherds… 

Please, have a seat on this rock, beside me, let us sing and dream,
Hope and remember, love and be loved, let me tell you the legend of fauns,
Please tell me the story of your life, where you are from, what you dream about…” 

And Pasqualino played the most beautiful of the tunes the boys of Taormina know,
A music wide as an horizon, deep as eyes, sensitive as a caressing hand,
A music of longing and sorrow, of dream and hope, of loneliness and communion. 

Wilhelm von Gloeden’s camera obscura was able to catch the magic of this encounter,
The encounter of a Faun and of a young shepherd from Taormina,
At the turn of a century, at the threshold of two worlds, reality and imagination. 

While looking at this photograph, forever I can listen to this forgotten melody,
To the melody of Fauns meeting young shepherds in the most remote wilderness,
Of Fauns falling in love with them, and crossing the invisible border, 

The border between gods and humans, between dream and reality,
Between hope and memory,
So far, so deep, at this crossroads where a lover meet his loved one.

Anonymous poet, around 1907, Von Gloeden Archive, 1907, call number 1907/Anon/12 (Rêves Siciliens)

8 Comments | posted in History, Nudity, Photography, Poetry

August 31, 2011

The Homoerotic Poetry of Catullus

By Joe
Catullus 

Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC.His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus invented the “angry love poem.” He was imitated by Tibullus, Propertius, Horace and Ovid, as well as Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick in English. Most of Catullus’ poems are short. In a few concise lines he expresses love, friendship or bitterness. Most of his poems are heterosexual, but a good number of them are devoted to boys and are “particularly lusty.”

50. Yesterday: to Licinius Calvus 1

Yesterday, Calvus, idle day
we played with my writing tablets,
harmonising in being delightful:
scribbling verses, each of us
playing with metres, this and that,
reciting together, through laughter and wine.
And I left there fired with your charm,
Calvus, and with your wit,
so that, restless, I couldn’t enjoy food,
or close my eyes quietly in sleep,
but tossed the whole bed about wildly
in passion, longing to see the light,
so I might speak to you, and be with you.
But afterwards I lay there wearied
with effort, half-dead in the bed,
I made this poem for you, pleasantly,
from which you might gather my pain.
Now beware of being rash, don’t reject
my prayers I beg, my darling,
lest Nemesis demand your punishment. She’s
a powerful goddess. Beware of annoying her.

99. Stolen Kisses: to Iuventius 2

I stole a sweet kiss while you played, sweet Iuventius,
one sweeter than sweetest ambrosia.
Not taken indeed with impunity: for more than an hour
I remember, I hung at the top of the gallows,
while I was justifying myself to you, yet with my tears
I couldn’t lessen your anger a tiny morsel.
No sooner was it done, than, your lips rinsed
with plenty of water, you banished it with your fingers,
so nothing contracted from my lips might remain,
as though it were the foul spit of a tainted whore.
More, you handed me unhappily to vicious love
who’s not failed to torment me in every way,
so that sweet kiss, altered for me from ambrosia,
was more bitter than bitter hellebore then.
Since you lay down such punishments for unhappy love,
now, after this, I’ll never steal kisses again.

1 Gaius Licinius Calvus, orator, poet, friend of Catullus and colleague of Cicero. Ovid mentions him alongside Catullus and Tibullus.


2 An unidentified friend of Catullus.

3 Comments | posted in History, Poetry

August 23, 2011

Les regrets de Joachim du Bellay

By Joe

Les regrets de Joachim du Bellay

Sonnet CV (Originally French)

De voir mignon du Roy un courtisan honneste,
Voir un pauvre cadet l’ordre au col soustenir,
Un petit compagnon aux estat parvenir,
Ce n’est chose (Morel) digne d’en faire feste.


Mais voir un estaffier, un enfant, une beste.
In forfant, un poltron Cardinal devenir,
Et pour avoir bien sceu un singe entretenir
Un Ganymide avoir le rouge sur la teste:


S’estre veu par les mains d’un soldat Espagnol
Bien hault sur un eschelle avoir la corde au col
Celuy, que par le nom de Sainct-Père lon nomme:


Un bélistre en trois jours aux princes s’égaller,
Et puis le voir de là en trois jours dévaller:
Ces miracles (Morel) ne se font point qu’à Rome.

The Regrets of Joachim du Bellay

Sonnet 105 (English Translation)

Seeing King’s darling as an honest courtier,
Watch a poor junior order to support to the collar,
A little companion to achieve status,
This is something, my dear Morel, worthy of making a feast.

Yet seeing a footman, a child, a beast,
A rascal, a coward made a Cardinal
For having taken care of a monkey well,
A Ganymede wearing the red hat on his head

Is to be seen through the hands of a Spanish soldier
Although a high ladder to have the rope to the neck
The one, by the name of the Holy Father’s common names:

A scoundrel in three days for the princes are equal,
And then view there over three days to unwrap:
These are miracles, my dear Morel, that take place in Rome alone.

I searched the internet to the best of my ability to find an English translation of this poem and never found more than a few lines translated.  So with my limited ability at translating French and the use of Google Translate with some further help from various French-English Dictionaries, the English Translation above is my best attempt at a translation, though I am afraid I am not poetic enough to translate it in the style of a Petrarchan Sonnet in which it was originally written.  If anyone knows of a better English translation, please let me know.

Du Bellay

With that caveat at the beginning you may be wondering why I even posted this poem today.  For me, the answer is quite interesting.  The poem was written by the poet Joachim du Bellay, who lived in Rome while in the retinue of his relative Cardinal Jean du Bellay.  This sonnet is one of the two sonnets in his series Les regrets (1558) which expressed his scandalized opinion of Julius III during what became known as The Innocenzo Scandal.

The Innocenzo Scandal

Julius III

Pope Julius III (1550-1555) was born in Rome, September 10, 1487 as Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, he took the name Julius and studied law at Perugia and Siena. After taking holy orders, he became chamberlain to Pope Julius II.  Although an outstanding canonists, his careless homosexuality, especially as he got older, created a scandal for the papacy. In his sixties, he picked up a 14-year-old boy on the streets of Parma. The boy, ironically named Innocenzo was described as being stunningly beautiful, and Julius was so enraptured with him that he forced his brother to adopt Innocenzo.

In February of 1550 Cardinal Del Monte was elected pope as Julius III, and immediately made the 17 year old Innocenzo a Cardinal. Attempts to give the boy an education which could have prepared him for ecclesiastic office had already proven useless – “a few social graces, a few bits of knowledge, perhaps about the glories of the Classical world, and Innocenzo’s formal education was over.” Nevertheless, Julius issued a Papal Bull declaring Innocenzo legitimate – a necessary move given that persons of illegitimate birth were not eligible for membership of the College of Cardinals – and named him Cardinal Nephew, effectively in charge of all papal correspondence. But the role of secretary to the papacy proved manifestly beyond Innocenzo’s abilities, and so, in order to find a way for his favourite to retain the appearance of power without having any real responsibility, Julius upgraded a hitherto minor position, that of secretary intimus, which, as Cardinal Secretary of State, was eventually to become the highest of Vatican offices. Innocenzo, although relieved of all real duties, continued to be showered with benefices and high offices, much to the disgust of his fellow cardinals. As Cardinal he was given the titular church of San Callisto, in 1562.

Council of Trent

Cardinals who were more sensitive to the need to reform the mores of the Church in order to combat the Protestant Reformation protested in vain against Innocenzo’s elevation. Rumors also circulated around European courts. Gossip called the boy Julius’s “Ganymede.” The relationship became a staple of anti-papal polemics for over a century: it was said that Julius, awaiting Innocenzo’s arrival in Rome to receive his cardinal’s hat, showed the impatience of a lover awaiting a mistress, and that he boasted of the boy’s prowess. The Venetian ambassador, Matteo Dandolo, wrote that Cardinal Del Monte “was a little scoundrel”, and that the Pope “took him [Innocenzo] into his bedroom and into his own bed as if he were his own son or grandson”. Onofrio Panvinio wrote that Julius was “excessively given to intemperance in a life of luxuriousness and to his libido,” and, more explicitly characterized him as “puerorum amoribus implicitus” (‘entangled in love for boys’). One more mocking rumor made the rounds in Rome, saying that Innocenzo had been made a cardinal as a reward for his being the keeper of the pope’s monkey.

Remember that this scandal took place in one of the most tumultuous periods of the Roman Catholic Church. It occurred in the midst of the Wars of Religion that resulted from the Protestant Reformation.  As a Cardinal, Julius III, had served as the first president of the Council of Trent, which was the core movement in the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

8 Comments | posted in Art, History, Poetry

August 16, 2011

On His Queerness

By Joe

On His Queerness

When I was young and wanted to see the sights,
They told me: ‘Cast an eye over the Roman Camp
If you care to.
But plan to spend most of your day at the Aquarium –
Because, after all, the Aquarium –
Well, I mean to say, the Aquarium –
Till you’ve seen the Aquarium you ain’t seen nothing.’

So I cast my eye over
The Roman Camp –
And that old Roman Camp,
That old, old Roman Camp
Got me
Interested.

So that now, near closing-time,
I find that I still know nothing –
And am still not even sorry that I know nothing –
About fish.

— Christopher Isherwood

For a biography of Christopher Isherwood, click on “Read More” below.

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was a British-born American writer who worked in many genres, including fiction, drama, film, travel, and autobiography. He was especially esteemed for his stories about Berlin in the early 1930s.


The son of a career military officer, Christopher Isherwood was born in High Lane, Cheshire, England, on August 26, 1904. He attended the Repton School from 1919 to 1922 and Cambridge University from 1924 to 1925. His university year was significant because it was at Cambridge that he met Wystan Hugh Auden, with whom he later collaborated on several literary projects, and because it was there that he became a practicing homosexual, an orientation which played an important role in his personal and artistic life.

Leaving the university without a degree, Isherwood worked for a year as the secretary to French violinist Andre Mangeot and as a private tutor in London. In his spare hours he worked on his first novel, which was published as All the Conspirators in 1928.

Scenes of a Crumbling Germany

In 1929 he went to Germany to visit Auden, who was living there, and was attracted to life in the crumbling Weimar Republic, and particularly to the sexual freedom that existed. As he so succinctly put it in his 1976 book Christopher and His Kind 1929-1939, “Berlin meant Boys.” He was not long in establishing a liaison with Berthold “Bubi” Szczesny, a bisexual ex-boxer, which lasted until Szczesny was forced to leave the country. Among the young men he met subsequently was one from the working class section of Berlin; he took a room with this boy’s family for a time and so became familiar with day-to-day living among the urban proletariat.

At first his stay in Germany was financed through an allowance provided by his only wealthy relative, his uncle Henry Isherwood. His uncle was also homosexual and seemed happy to assist his nephew in the quest for companions. Eventually, however, Uncle Henry stopped his remittances, and Isherwood paid his way by tutoring in English; in this way he met Berliners from the upper classes.

All this provided background for his most successful work, The Last of Mr. Norris (1935), Sally Bowles (1937), and Goodbye to Berlin (1939), all collected under the title The Berlin Stories in 1945. In these novellas and short stories he presented an in-depth portrait of life in Germany’s capital as the republican center collapsed, the Communists tried desperately to stem the rightist tide, and the Nazis came to power.

He began in “A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)” with an almost offhand observation about Fráulein Hippi, a student whom the narrator is tutoring in English: “Like everyone else in Berlin, she refers continually to the political situation, but only briefly, with a conventional melancholy…. It is quite unreal to her.” In “Sally Bowles,” he mentioned the closing of two major banks and noted: “One alarmist headline stood out boldly, barred with blood-red ink: ‘Everything Collapses’.”

In “The Nowaks,” about a working class family, he described their neighborhood in this way: “The entrance to the Wassertorstrasse was … a bit of old Berlin, daubed with hammers and sickles and Nazi crosses and plastered with tattered bills….” The political pressures are seen increasing in “The Landauers,” about a well-to-do Jewish family: “One night in October 1930, about a month after the Elections, there was a big row on the Leipzigerstrasse. Gangs of Nazi toughs turned out to demonstrate against the Jews. They … smashed the windows of all the Jewish shops.” Finally, in “A Berlin Diary (Winter 1932-33),” the narrator observes: “Schleicher has resigned. Hitler has formed a cabinet…. Nobody thinks it can last until the spring.”

The Berlin stories were picked up by playwright John van Druten, who was struck by a sentence in “A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)”: “I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive, recording not thinking.” He wrote the play I Am a Camera, centering on Sally Bowles, of whom Alan Wilde wrote: “Sally’s charm is her naíveté, … her total capacity for self-deception and self-contradiction, … her ability to accommodate herself to each new situation….” I Am a Camera in turn became the musical Cabaret (1967), with book by Joe Masteroff and lyrics by Fred Ebb, which was produced both on stage and in film.

Isherwood of course became fluent in German and got acquainted, as did Auden, with the expressionist drama of such important figures as Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser, and Bertolt Brecht. This led the two British artists to collaborate on three expressionist plays: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1937), and A Melodrama in Three Acts: On the Frontier (1938), of which the first two are generally considered the more successful.

Move to the United States

Isherwood and Auden travelled to China in 1938 and in 1939 worked together on Journey to a War. In that same year, the year World War II began, both came to America, a move which made them anathema to many Britons. Indeed, even three years later in Put Out More Flags novelist Evelyn Waugh, christening them Parsnip and Pimpernell, commented, “What I don’t see is how these two can claim to be contemporary if they run away from the biggest event in contemporary history.”

During World War II Isherwood wrote scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox film studios; worked for a year in a refugee center in Haverford, Pennsylvania; and became a resident student of the Vedanta Society of Southern California and co-editor of the group’s magazine Vedanta and the West.

He became increasingly involved in the Vedantist religion, editing the volumes Vedanta for the Western World in 1945 and Vedanta for Modern Man in 1951 and writing An Approach to Vedanta in 1963, Ramakrishna and His Disciples in 1965, and Essentials of Vedanta in 1969. He explained its basic tenets in the 1963 work as follows: “We have two selves – an apparent, outer self and an invisible, inner self. The apparent self claims to be an individual and as such, other than all other individuals…. The real self is unchanging and immortal.”

Isherwood did not confine himself solely to religious writings, however. He authored such novels as Prater Violet (1945), The World in the Evening (1954), A Single Man (1964), and A Meeting by the River (1967), which he dramatized in 1972. He also wrote the travel book The Condor and the Cows (1949), autobiographical volumes, and the collection of stories, articles, and poems titled Exhumations (1966). Additionally, he taught at Los Angeles State University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of California at Los Angeles and wrote film scripts.

Isherwood’s status in modern literature was best summarized by G. K. Hall: “Christopher Isherwood has always been a problem for the critics. An obviously talented writer, he has refused to exploit his artistry for either commercial success or literary status…. Isherwood was adjudged a ‘promising writer’ – a designation that he has not been able to outrun even to this day. It is still a clicheé of Isherwood criticism to say that he never fulfilled his early promise….In any case, five decades of Isherwood criticism present a history of sharply divided opinion.”

Isherwood, who became an American citizen in 1946, lived and worked in southern California until his death from cancer January 4, 1986.

Further Reading

Much personal information is in his autobiographical Christopher and His Kind (1976). In G. K. Hall’s Christopher Isherwood: A Reference Guide (1979) the reader will find a comprehensive listing of all works by and about the subject.

Additional Sources

Finney, Brian, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Fryer, Jonathan, Isherwood, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978, 1977.

Fryer, Jonathan, Isherwood: A Biography of Christopher Isherwood, London: New English Library, 1977.

Isherwood, Christopher, Christopher and His Kind, 1929-1939, London: Eyre Methuen, 1977; New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1976.

Isherwood, Christopher, My Guru and His Disciple, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1981.

King, Francis Henry, Christopher Isherwood, Harlow Eng.: Published for the British Council by Longman Group, 1976.

Lehmann, John, Christopher Isherwood: A Personal Memoir, New York: H. Holt, 1988, 1987.

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6 Comments | posted in Gay Icon, History, Poetry

August 7, 2011

O Where Are You Going?

By Joe

“O where are you going?” said reader to rider,
“That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder’s the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.”

“O do you imagine,” said fearer to farer,
“That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?”

“O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer,
“Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.”

“Out of this house,” said rider to reader,
“Yours never will,” said farer to fearer,
“They’re looking for you,” said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
— W H Auden

Many a time you come across those who even not dare to dream, forget doing. The poem inspires us to keep the insecurities inside, because the reason for living lies there, in the experience. Do you ever ask yourself, “O, Where am I going? What am I doing with my life?”  My teaching job begins again tomorrow (we have two days of teacher work days, and the heathens students return on Wednesday).  As another year begins and I am still teaching at a small private school, I wonder “O, Where am I going? What am I doing with my life?”  I know I teach because I love it.  I am there because I want to open up the minds of the students, to show them that there is a world out there beyond their little inclusive group/society.

With this teaching job, I sometimes feel like my life in on hold.  I hope that when I finish my PhD (hopefully, I will graduate in May), that I can move on to better things.  I want to have  a real life again.  I want to be out socializing again.  Though I have friends at the academy, they have their own lives and families.  We are all too busy to socialize.  In fact, the main socializing any of them do with one another is either through their children or through church.  Since I have no children and I do not attend the same church as most of them, I am not part of that clique.  It’s okay, I’m not meaning to sound like a pity party, but I do feel like my life and career are on hold for a bit.

I had hoped for a better paying job to begin this fall.  After the fall/spring/summer job search, I was offered one position (this one would have been a step back instead of a step forward) and had one job interview (the one I told you guys about that took place two weeks ago).  Though the job interview seemed to go really well, and I believe that I would have enjoyed teaching at this community college, I was told that they would narrow the candidates further down to three and those three would be invited back for interviews with the college’s president.  I never heard anything more from them.  And since the job is supposed to begin next Monday, I expect that I was not chosen for the top three.  It is possible that they really are waiting until the last minute, I have the feeling that I was passed over.  So the new school year teaching middle and high school  students at the academy begins again this week.

I am actually looking forward to it.  I will probably know for sure by the time Friday rolls around, but I like the classes that I am scheduled to teach.  They will be the same as last year, so there will be opportunities to improve upon what I did last year.  I am going in with a positive attitude that this will be a great year.  And I think when we ask ourselves “O, Where am I going? What am I doing with my life?” that if we look on the brighter side of things, no matter how dim the light may, we will make it happen.  Though I know that I am not always positive, I at least strive to be an optimist.

“O, Where Are You Going?”

8 Comments | posted in Inspiration, Poetry