Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood Read Free Book Online Page A

fired. I didn’t care what happened.
    â€œIt’s such a bore,” I said brutally. “It’s so completely unreal. It has no relation to anything that ever happened anywhere. I can’t believe a word of it.”
    For a whole minute, he didn’t answer. He paced the carpet, grunting. Dorothy, from her seat at the typewriter, watched him nervously. I expected a major volcanic eruption.
    Then Bergmann came right up to me.
    â€œYou are wrong,” he said.
    I looked him in the eye, and forced a smile. But I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t give him an opening.
    â€œTotally and principally wrong. It is not uninteresting. It is not unreal. It is of the very greatest interest. It is highly contemporary. And it is of enormous psychological and political significance.”
    I was startled right out of my sulks.
    â€œPolitical?” I laughed. Why, really, Friedrich! How on earth do you make that out?”
    â€œIt is political.” Bergmann swept into the attack. “And the reason you refuse to see this, the reason you pretend it is uninteresting, is that it directly concerns yourself.”
    â€œI must say, I…”
    â€œListen!” Bergmann interrupted, imperiously. “The dilemma of Rudolf is the dilemma of the would-be revolutionary writer or artist, all over Europe. This writer is not to be confused with the true proletarian writer, such as we find in Russia. His economic background is bourgeois. He is accustomed to comfort, a nice home, the care of a devoted slave who is his mother and also his jailer. From the safety and comfort of his home, he permits himself the luxury of a romantic interest in the proletariat. He comes among the workers under false pretenses, and in disguise. He flirts with Toni, the girl of the working class. But it is only a damn lousy act, a heartless masquerade…”
    â€œWell, if you like to put it in that way.… But what about…?”
    â€œListen! Suddenly Rudolf’s home collapses, security collapses. The investments which built his comfortable life are made worthless by inflation. His mother has to scrub doorsteps. The young artist prince, with all his fine ideas, has to face grim reality. The play becomes bitter earnest. His relation to the proletariat is romantic no longer. He now has to make a choice. He is declassed, and he must find a new class. Does he really love Toni? Did his beautiful words mean anything? If so, he must prove that they did. Otherwise…”
    â€œYes, that’s all very well, but…”
    â€œThis symbolic fable,” Bergmann continued, with sadistic relish, “is particularly disagreeable to you, because it represents your deepest fear, the nightmare of your own class. In England, the economic catastrophe has not yet occurred. The pound wavered, but it did not utterly fall. Inflation still lies ahead of the English bourgeoisie, but you know in your heart that it is coming, as it came to Germany. And, when it comes, you will have to choose.…”
    â€œHow do you mean, choose?”
    â€œThe declassed intellectual has two choices. If his love for Toni is sincere, if he is loyal to his artistic traditions, the great liberal-revolutionary traditions of the nineteenth century, then he will know where he belongs. He will know how to align himself. He will know who are his real friends and his real enemies.” (My eye caught Dorothy’s. She was watching us blankly, for Bergmann, as he usually did when excited, had started to talk German.) “Unfortunately, however, he does not always make this choice. Indeed, he seldom makes it. He is unable to cut himself free, sternly, from the bourgeois dream of the Mother, that fatal and comforting dream. He wants to crawl back into the economic safety of the womb. He hates the paternal, revolutionary tradition, which reminds him of his duty as its son. His pretended love for the masses was only a flirtation, after all. He