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[epershand]

I keep being obsessed with Auden's Christmas Day poem to Chester Kallman.

Because it is in you, a Jew, that I, a Gentile, inheriting an O-so-genteel anti-semitism, have found my happiness:
 
          As this morning I think of Bethlehem, I think of you.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Because, suffering on your account the torments of sexual jealousy, I have had a glimpse of the infinite vileness of masculine conceit;
          As this morning, I think of Joseph, I think of you.
 
Because mothers have much to do with your queerness and mine, because we have both lost ours, and because Mary is a camp name;
As this morning I think of Mary, I think of you.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Because, on account of you, I have been, in intention, and almost in act, a murderer;
            As this morning I think of Herod, I think of you.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Because I believe in your creative gift, and because I rely absolutely upon your critical judgement,
           As this morning I think of the Magi, I think of you.
 
Because you alone know the full extent of my human weakness, and because I think I know yours, because of my resentment against being small and your resentment against having a spinal curvature, and because with my body I worship yours;
          As this morning I think of the Manhood, I think of you.
 
Because it is through you that God has chosen to show me my beatitude,
           As this morning I think of the Godhead, I think of you.
 
Because in the eyes of our bohemian friends our relationship is absurd;
           As this morning I think of the Paradox of the Incarnation, I think of you.
 
Because, although our love, beginning Hans Anderson, became Grimm, and there are probably even grimmer tests to come, nevertheless I believe that if only we have faith in God and in each other, we shall be permitted to realize all that love is intended to be;
           As this morning I think of the Good Friday and the Easter Sunday implicit in Christmas Day, I think of you.

Quoted from Kirsch's introduction to The Sea and the Mirror

In the last six months I've fallen head over heels into Fandom: Mid-Twentieth Century Artistic Queers Who Hung Out With Christopher Isherwood. It started with Britten, spread to Auden, and I am dangerously close to dropping everything and running to pick up a copy of Berlin Stories so that I can be genuinely fannish about Isherwood, not just fannish about Isherwood via Cabaret. I'm still trying to figure out if Blitzstein, who I have adored since high school, gets to come and play in the fandom despite having been KILLED BY PIRATES in the 30s. (No really!)

Part of me wants to put of a Crack-Van style summary of them, but that seems just silly. I am pretty sure that Isherwood would be the little black dress of the fandom, because he brought everyone to Hollywood and got them all jobs working on motion pictures. Auden is the suave slightly older fellow, being much more out than everyone and pushing them onward into decadent gay lifestyles. Britten is the perpetually young, perpetually repressed golden boy, who everyone seems to have had a thing for. Sadly, Blitzstein is too busy getting killed by pirates to hang out with anyone but jerky Brecht.