Är jag en kamera? En studie av kamerametaforiken i Christopher Isherwoods 'Goodbye to Berlin'

Abstract

Goodbye to Berlin was published in 1939. Along with Mr. Norris Changes Trains it gained fame as The Berlin Stories; together, these two novels depict Berlin in the early 1930s, when it was still the world capital of modernity and decadence, before Hitler took power. The first adaptation was for the theatre, called I Am a Camera. The title is derived from a quote from the first page: ”I am a camera with its shutter opened, quite passive, recording, not thinking”. This quote forms the starting point of this essay, which will study its affects on the narratology and what implications it bears on the relationship between fiction and reality. This will then lead to a discussion of the portrayal of the rise of Nazism in the novel. To analyze the camera metaphorics’ implication on the narratology, theories on the relationship between photography and reality in fictive texts are borrowed from Anna Woodhouse. For the discussion on the relationship between fiction and reality, thoughts from Sara Danius’ Den blå tvålen will be used. These theories along with the analysis will show that Isherwood in reality undermines his own definition of the narratological technique, and that the novel shows the impossibility of depicting passively and not thinking; hence, that it is impossible for a narrator to thoroughly be a camera. Nevertheless, the approach will affect the realist notions of the novel. The analysis shows that the result is that the reader has to interpret the photography that the camera shoots; interpretation is, as the analysis shows, a requirement for all photographs. What to interpret, and how, is then the final discussion of this essay.