Über ein verfallsdetail in Thomas Manns „Buddenbrooks“
On a detail of decay in Thomas Mann's “Buddenbrooks”

Author(s): Nino KVIRIKADZE
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Biblioteca Ştiinţifică a Universităţii de Stat Alecu Russo
Keywords: Thomas Mann's “Buddenbrooks”; incidental detail; detail of decline; phraseological coloring; leitmotif
Summary/Abstract: This article examines a detail of decline in Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks, namely the phraseological detail "auf den Steinen sitzen" and its variations. The text is analyzed using a structural-semantic method based on the theory of word series, which was proposed by V. Vinogradov and subsequently developed by structuralists. The purpose of this article is to trace the movement of this detail and its variations throughout the novel and gradually reveal its semantics in textual fragments. In doing so, it establishes its connection to the content of the work and gradually "uncovers" various subtextual meanings that have thus far remained unnoticed by scholars of Thomas Mann's work. The analysis shows that the detail “auf den Steinen sitzen” initially appears as a random detail. It then gradually reveals increasingly new meaning at a deep level of fragmentary semantic planes and transforms into an artistic detail. Structurally, it can function not only as a phrase but also as a sentence. It then takes on the meaning of the Buddenbrooks family's decline and, in the end, becomes a leitmotif.

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