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Forster and His Kind – Christopher Isherwood

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Forster and His Kind – Christopher Isherwood UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR Artes e Letras Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group Ângela Prestes Veiga dos Santos Tese para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Letras (3º ciclo de estudos) Orientador: Professor Doutor Mário Jorge Torres (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa) Coorientador: Professor Doutor António dos Santos Pereira (Universidade da Beira Interior) Covilhã, julho de 2015 Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group To Luís Madeira, my lifelong companion. ii Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group Acknowledgements I am grateful to my masters, those living, and those who left work of the most inspiring quality and from whom I have learnt. I thank my friends and family, and each and every one who, one way or another, helped me to accomplish this work. I am sorry for having kept my friends in abeyance for so long a period… My heartfelt gratitude goes also to the two friends who, at a later stage of this work, so generously helped me to bring it to an end – António Cartaxo, to whom I assigned the task to read it and was so kind as to share his time and ideas with me, and Rita Carrilho, the young scholar, whose endevour and good humour were paramount. At last, I am grateful to my deceased parents who taught me respect and sense of justice. iii Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group Abstract Having as a starting point a Materialist outset, this research work is intended to be an interdisciplinary attempt to study the literary production as well as the life trajectories of E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood and other writers of the Thirties’ – the so-called ‘The Thirties’ Generation’ - with the precise goal to find a connecting thread between the older writer, born in 1879, under the rule of Queen Victoria, and these writers who started developing their writing activity in the late 20’s and 30’s. They were too young to participate in the First World War, but old enough to partake in the Second. Our endeavour aims at bringing to light the social, economic and political impact the successive wars (not only the two World Wars but also the Spanish Civil War) as well as the consecutive convulsions that took place in the first half of last century had on the works of these writers, both E. M. Forster and the writers of the Thirties’ Generation. Moreover, it is our aim to expound how they made use of and dealt with the current predicament and the subsequent changes of the political systems in Europe (in so far as it helped) in their artistic production. This study thus deals with the role of the intellectuals, the writers and the artists and to what extent, especially in a period of crisis, their art should be autonomous or, on the reverse, should mingle with politics in the sense of helping in the changing process of life in society. It further seeks to provide an explanation for the development of the various phases of these authors’ writing careers, the shifts in their interests, often dictated by the historical moment they were going through, by exploring the intricate interrelationships between the historical events of their time and their literary evolution. It will also try to trace E. M. Forster’s influence on the work of the younger writers (namely Christopher Isherwood), and the importance of the latter’s militant work on the various privileged grounds of their choice, be they political, of gender or religious. Keywords Materialism, Cultural Materialism, New Historicism, E. M. Forster, the Thirties’ Generation, intellectuals, literary production, Fascism, Nazism, War, political militancy. iv Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group Resumo Tendo como ponto de partida uma perspectiva Materialista, este trabalho de pesquisa pretende ser uma tentativa interdisciplinar de estudar a produção literária bem como as trajectórias de vida de E. M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood e outros escritores ingleses da década de trinta do século XX, a chamada Geração de Trinta. Ele tem como objectivo encontrar um fio condutor entre as obras de E. M. Forster, nascido em 1879, ainda no reinado da Rainha Victoria, e estes escritores, mais jovens, que começaram a desenvolver as suas respectivas carreiras literárias nas décadas de 1920 – 1930 e que eram demasiado jovens para participar na Primeira Guerra Mundial, mas com idade suficiente para tomar parte na Segunda. Os nossos esforços têm, ainda, a ambição de trazer a lume, a importância e o impacto social, económico e político que as sucessivas guerras (não apenas as duas Guerras Mundiais mas também a Guerra Civil de Espanha) e também as inúmeras convulsões sociais, que ocorreram na primeira metade do século passado, tiveram nas obras destes escritores, tanto E. M. Forster como os escritores da “Geração de Trinta”, e como eles lidaram e fizeram uso, na sua produção artística, dos acontecimentos históricos e das subsequentes mudanças de sistemas políticos na Europa. Este estudo trata, portanto, do papel dos intelectuais, dos escritores e dos artistas e até que ponto, especialmente em períodos de crise, a sua arte deve ser autónoma ou se, pelo contrário, ela deve interferir nas questões e decisões políticas no sentido de trazer um contributo que possa favorecer o processo de mudança da vida em sociedade. Com a sua realização pretendeu-se encontrar uma explicação, que julgámos plausível, para o desenvolvimento das várias fases das carreiras literárias destes autores, das mudanças dos seus interesses, muitas vezes ditados pelo momento histórico que atravessavam, explorando as intrincadas inter-relações entre os acontecimentos históricos do seu tempo, as relações de poder no terreno e a sua própria evolução literária. Traçar a influência de E. M. Forster nos jovens escritores (nomeadamente Christopher Isherwood), tanto na sua conduta literária como na sua conduta como cidadãos, e a importância do trabalho militante destes últimos nos vários campos da sua escolha, quer seja político, de género ou religioso foi também nossa preocupação no estudo agora apresentado. Palavras-chave Materialismo, Materialismo Cultural, “New Historicism”, E. M. Forster, a Geração de Trinta, intelectuais, produção literária, Fascismo, Nazismo, Guerra, militância política. v Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group Index Abstract _______________________________________________________________________ iv Resumo ________________________________________________________________________ v Preliminary considerations ________________________________________________________ 1 Introduction or a Passage to Forster ________________________________________________ 3 CHAPTER 1 Where Literature Studies Fear to Tread: Materialism, History, Texts and Contexts ________ 15 1 Materialism and the basic roots of our approach _________________________________ 16 1.1 Ideology ___________________________________________________________________ 16 1.1.1 Alienation ______________________________________________________________ 17 1.1.2 Limits of the Marxist Cultural Theory ________________________________________ 19 1.1.3 First Proposition of a Personal Possible Synthesis ______________________________ 21 1.2 Literature and Society ________________________________________________________ 24 1.2.1 Art and literature as political devices _______________________________________ 24 1.2.2 Power relations __________________________________________________________ 25 1.3 History ____________________________________________________________________ 27 1.3.1 The complex relationship between history and literature _______________________ 27 1.3.2 The writer and the historical context _______________________________________ 28 1.3.3 The historian and the value of the literary text _______________________________ 28 1.4 Agency ____________________________________________________________________ 30 1.4.1 Anthony Giddens’s “Structuration Theory” ___________________________________ 31 1.4.2 Pierre Bourdieu’s “Theory of Practice” ______________________________________ 33 1.4.3 Our perspective – a possible operative synthesis ______________________________ 35 1.5 Theoretical Sources – a development ___________________________________________ 37 1.5.1 Materialism, its founders and revisers _______________________________________ 37 1.5.2 Althusser’s notion of Ideology ______________________________________________ 38 1.5.3 Gramsci’s notion of Hegemony _____________________________________________ 40 1.5.4 Cultural Materialism and the New Historicism ________________________________ 42 CHAPTER 2 Small Rooms with a View: About Forster’s Loose Essays _______________________________ 50 2 About Forster’s loose texts ___________________________________________________ 51 2.1 Abinger Harvest - essays on books people and places (1955) ____________________ 52 2.1.1 Our Graves in Gallipoli ____________________________________________________ 52 2.1.2 Liberty in England________________________________________________________ 53 2.2 Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) _________________________________________ 54 2.2.1 The Menace to Freedom __________________________________________________ 54 2.2.2 Racial Exercise __________________________________________________________ 55 2.2.3 Tolerance ______________________________________________________________ 56 2.2.4 Romain Rolland and the Hero ______________________________________________ 61 vi Forster and his kind – Christopher Isherwood and the 30’s Group 2.2.5 What I Believe and
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