This Week's Installment
As always, the italicized parts are those that I'm unsure about.
“And if one had now let you in your garrison?”
“Perhaps I would have stayed,” after short reflection he replied, “and perhaps not. See, Edith, it is a thing specific to the job of a soldier in peacetime. He is created for war.”
“Who knows how soon we will have it!”
“Then it would have been desire and happiness to be a soldier.”
“And now?”
“It likes to lay in the blood,” he answered, and his voice was serious, almost heavy, “that sticks to the clod and cannot get off from it. It is something in me that pushes me to the country; I grew up on it, and I feel one with it. The metropolis would suffocate me, paralyze the last strength in me. Another can’t understand it for me, but I know it.”
“So do you mean to become a countryman?”
“It was certain for me for a year and a day, only I could not come to the decision. Now the last moment is there, later I would be too old to go to school again.”
“You want to go to Bärwalde, to your uncle?”
“I intended to ride over tomorrow from here and discuss the details with him. If he too is now frail and doesn’t worry much about the economy, one still has much from
---10---
him because he is cleverer than all the others and has a rich experience. And his inspector, you know what he’s like, the old Borowski, is the best teacher that I can have. Also, there’s more in that one than his modest nature shows at a quick glance.”
Edith knew Fritz; she knew that he was never dissuaded from that which he got down to. She set therefore a joking tone that he loved on her since the childhood years and that had always decided so many serious conversations between them. “Listen, if you went out of a promising career now all of a sudden and will have worked out as a farmer, and on top of that, at your old childless uncle’s place in Bärwalde, what will your comrades say? Will they also believe in the purity of your inclination as harmlessly I do?”
He laughed. “You mean they will take me for a sly boy who in good time wants to secure the warm nest for himself. You can be calm; I am safe from such suspicion. Bärwalde is not yet entailed, but it has always been treated as such; one has acted exactly on the laws of the seniority. And there Hans is the older of us both --”
“Hans? - him?!” she asked, and her voice had all of a sudden an indifferent, an almost disdainful sound.
Interesting German Words I Ran Across
- die Flinte - gun, shotgun [slightly interesting because it seems related to flint, the spark from which triggered the shot, but there's also a related idiom]
- die Flinte ins Korn werfen - give up, throw in the towel [but literally: to throw the shotgun into the corn]
- die Sisyphusarbeit - Sisyphean task
- der Glanz - shine, luster, brilliance, &c. / glänzen - shine, glitter, sparkle [again, I can't confirm this because my German dictionary doesn't have etymologies, but I'm wondering if there's a connection between Glanz and the English glance. According to Merriam-Webster, glance comes from the Middle English verb glencen.]
- die Glühbirne - light bulb [I learned this in German class but had forgotten until now; the -birne part of light bulb means pear by itself (die Birne). Since glühen is the verb for to glow, Glühbirne is more-or-less glowing pear.]
- der Jux - (practical) joke, aus ~ for fun, for a laugh [I find this interesting because it's pronounced the same as yuks, which means the same thing.]
- das Malheur - mishap, accident [Again, I can't confirm this, but this seems to come from French. Initially, I thought malheureusement - unfortunately, but in looking that up, I discovered that in French le malheur is bad luck, which - while not the same as accident - is similar.]
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
I wasn't sure how to translate "Bärwalde." Literally, it's "Bear Wood," but - as I've learned by reading J.R.R. Tolkien's letters (he was very particular about translations of his books) - place names shouldn't always be translated. I looked it up only to find that there are three different Bärwaldes (or - more accurately - Bärwälder).
I found them on Google Maps, but that didn't help in determining which one Edith refers to. Because the mayor says (on page three) that Edith is from an "East Prussian" home, I thought that the Bärwalde that's referred to would be in the eastern part of Germany - the part closest to Prussia. But all of these Bärwaldes are in the eastern part: Bärwalde, Niederer Fläming is the more northern one; Bärwalde, Boxberg is the more eastern one; and Bärwalde, Radeburg is the more southern one. The Bärwalde in the text could be any one of these, or even a historical Bärwalde that doesn't exist anymore or a Bärwalde that the author made up.
I'm a bit confused about the later part of "wenn du jetzt mit einem Male aus einer verheißenden Laufbahn herausgehst und ausgerechnet Landwirst wirst." "Herausgehst" goes with "du," for "you... went out." I can't make sense of having both "ausgerechnet" and "wirst" unless it's a future perfect form that also takes sein instead of haben. So: "You will have worked out." That's how I translated it, and it seems to make sense, but I can't make a clear path through the grammar.
In two sentences exactly a week apart (the 7th and the 14th), I ran across the phrase "mit einem Male." At first I thought this was an-other instance of how German had apparently changed since 1916, since the preceding "einem" seems to indicate that it's singular yet my dictionary says that the "-e" ending indicates a plural (either "times" or "marks"). But when I looked it up a second time for the second occurrence, I found "mit einem ~(e)" ("all of a sudden") in my dictionary. I don't understand it literally (the singular "einem" goes with a plural ending?), but now that I understand that it's an idiom, my sentences make more sense.
I've been consistently translating words like "der" and "die" as demonstrative pronouns (so, "that one" or "this one"), but when I ran across it again this month, I looked it up and found that it can also be translated as just a personal pronoun ("he," "him," etc.), which makes for a smoother translation. I should go back and fix some of the older ones, but I probably won't.
As it is in the text, one of those pronouns should be nominative, but I intentionally put it in accusative instead. It's "Hans? - der?!" so the English should be "Hans? - he?!," but English messes up the cases to such a point that "Hans? - he?!" sounds weird. I went with "Hans? - him?!"
This isn't limited to German, but the interrobang as it's present in the text seems backwards to me. It has ?!, but !? has always looked better to me. I retained the ?! however.
I'm a bit confused about the later part of "wenn du jetzt mit einem Male aus einer verheißenden Laufbahn herausgehst und ausgerechnet Landwirst wirst." "Herausgehst" goes with "du," for "you... went out." I can't make sense of having both "ausgerechnet" and "wirst" unless it's a future perfect form that also takes sein instead of haben. So: "You will have worked out." That's how I translated it, and it seems to make sense, but I can't make a clear path through the grammar.
In two sentences exactly a week apart (the 7th and the 14th), I ran across the phrase "mit einem Male." At first I thought this was an-other instance of how German had apparently changed since 1916, since the preceding "einem" seems to indicate that it's singular yet my dictionary says that the "-e" ending indicates a plural (either "times" or "marks"). But when I looked it up a second time for the second occurrence, I found "mit einem ~(e)" ("all of a sudden") in my dictionary. I don't understand it literally (the singular "einem" goes with a plural ending?), but now that I understand that it's an idiom, my sentences make more sense.
I've been consistently translating words like "der" and "die" as demonstrative pronouns (so, "that one" or "this one"), but when I ran across it again this month, I looked it up and found that it can also be translated as just a personal pronoun ("he," "him," etc.), which makes for a smoother translation. I should go back and fix some of the older ones, but I probably won't.
As it is in the text, one of those pronouns should be nominative, but I intentionally put it in accusative instead. It's "Hans? - der?!" so the English should be "Hans? - he?!," but English messes up the cases to such a point that "Hans? - he?!" sounds weird. I went with "Hans? - him?!"
This isn't limited to German, but the interrobang as it's present in the text seems backwards to me. It has ?!, but !? has always looked better to me. I retained the ?! however.
