On understanding and translating the leitmotifs in Thomas Mann’s Royal Highness

Abstract

The article examines Thomas Mann’s use of repetitions and leitmotifs as recurrent creative devices. The main bulk of the examples come from the novel Royal Highness and the novella The Blood of the Walsungs. The second book’s motto selected by the writer from the very outset came from a poem by Pushkin: ‘You are a king; live alone.’ The article considers the evolution of the book’s plot in accordance with changes in the novelist’s social and marital status. Also analysed are cases when a translator faces difficulties rendering the novel in Russian. While repetitions and leitmotifs accentuate the holistic nature of the novel, a word-for-word repetition of a passage may be misinterpreted by the reader. The author discusses such an example found in Royal Highness, hitherto unnoticed by Russian and German commentators alike. These cases E. Berkovich looks into are seen as ‘a striking example of the use of leitmotifs and plot repetitions, which in this particular novel is exaggerated to the level of self-caricature’ by Prof. Heinrich Detering, author of the volume of comments to Royal Highness in the large annotated Frankfurt edition of Mann’s works.