Month 21: Pages 32-34

This Month's Installment

First, a few notes:  it wasn't until this post that I realized that - since August 2015 - I've been describing these monthly installments as "weekly installments."  Obviously, I didn't notice this when I started doing it, and then routine just took over.

Lately, I've been splitting some sentences into clauses or phrases.  The last sentence here isn't complete, so my translation may change when I get to the rest of it.

As always, the italicized things are what I'm unsure about:

Taken by the amount, a kindly disposition has a far better effect than intellectual merits;  these shut out, that draws in.  Hans Warsow was still innocent enough to believe that in life, it depended first on a serious will and the strength of ability.  The people want to be caressed; the look must be warm, and that hand that touches them must be soft.  And Hans Warsow's look was not always warm, and the hand that he offered not always soft.
     For all that, he wasn't allowed to complain:  a very big part, not only of the St. Nikolaus congregation, but also of the whole city, stood by him indefatigably.  He gave priority to his sermons above everything else; he searched it for its official acts.  He tried hard to come into a personal and social intercourse with it.  This was, of course, not easy because during the day he workt in the community, and his evenings were devoted to intellectual studies that he 

---32---

did not neglect at all, or he was occupied with the preparation for the second edition of his work about East Prussia, which had met with a growing approval in the province and even beyond it. 

     Hans Warsow allowed himself a rest in the middle of all of his concentrated work:  now and then he travelled to Bärwalde.  Of course it was always a long trip, but it paid its rewards.  As soon as he breathed the air of Bärwald, all of the places on the height, and walkt in field and forest that held the most beautiful memories of his childhood, then he felt fine and was sincerely happy and young.
     There stood the proud, old manor, its earlier part reminiscent of a distant past, the left far-reaching wing and the upper floor built later.  But only the knowing eye could distinguish the old and new periods here because an understanding architect from Königsberg had managed the renovation and added to the [Vorhandenen] uniformly.  And everything was lookt after and maintained with painstaking care.
     Before him, facing the courtyard stood on both sides of the open, wooden veranda two enormous, ancient poplars, that a number of storms ruffled and many lightning bolts hit and that nevertheless rose strong and [trutzig] with leafless tops into the sky, as if they were put down as two protecting giants to guard the Bärwald manor against the hostile elements of the heavens and of the earth.  Across from them was a big oval plaza planted with all kinds of bushes and young trees, under which the 

---33---

well-kept lawn gleamed; to the right of him, divided with a wide drive strewn with gravel, the manorial coach house with the steeple on top

Interesting Words I Happen to Come across

• die Melisse - balm [I found this interesting because it's pronounced the same as the name Melissa.  I did some research, and according to a book I have, the name Melissa means honeybee (it's listed under Greek and Latin and has the same meaning for both).  I feel they're related (if only tenuously), but my field of knowledge doesn't encompass that.]
• das Pipapo - und das ganze Pipapo - and all the rest (of it), and all that nonsense

Grammatical Minutiae

I couldn't find Wollen in my dictionary (not as a noun, anyway).  I'm pretty sure it's related to the verb wollen, so I translated it as will.  Such a translation required that I change the definite article in the text ("es... das ernste Wollen... ankomme") to an indefinite article ("it depends... on a serious will").

I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't use the same parallel structure in "warm muß der Blick sein und weich die Hand, die sie berührt."  That relative clause ("die sie berührt") causes problems in English, so the best I could do is "the look must be warm, and that hand that touches them must be soft."
I'm also mentioning this sentence so I can bring up the fact that the tense changes here.  In the midst of all of this past tense, there's a sudden change to present tense.  I think this sentence is just a continuation of the previous sentence (the end of which was also in present tense).  Taken together, theses sentences explain Hans Warsow's philosophy, and - assuming it's a philosophy he still holds - it makes sense for them to be in present tense.  However, before his philosophy is introduced, there's a present tense sentence espousing the opposite value.  So...?
I just wanted to make a note of that tense change lest anyone think I've not been paying close enough attention.

Translating "Da stand das alte stolze Herrenhaus..." proved interesting because of the order of adjectives.  (Brief side-note:  Herrenhaus wasn't in my dictionary, but Herrenhof was listed as manor.  Since they're similar, I just used manor.)  "Das alte stolze Herrenhaus" is "the old, proud manor," but those adjectives have a different order in English, so it becomes "the proud, old manor."
That same sentence has the word "mahnend," which took some searching to translate.  It's a participial of the verb mahnen, to remind.  My dictionary also mentions that it's usually accompanied with a prepositional phrase starting with an.  Here, it's "an eine ferne Vergangenheit."  Translating this as "reminding of a distant past" seemed clumsy, so I changed that participial into the regular adjective reminiscent, so the whole phrase becomes "reminiscent of a distant past."

A later sentence describes "der Kutschstall" as "herrschaftliche," which my dictionary translates as "manorial," so my translating Herrenhaus as manor seems accurate.  However, Kutschstall wasn't in my dictionary.  Since Kutsche means coach (in the sense of carriage) and Stall means stable, I translated this as coach house.  

Month 20: Pages 30-32

This Week's Installment

The italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:

Frau Lisa was only half listening.  She lookt over the table with an examining gaze and counted the glasses.
     "Are you ready with everything?" askt Stoltzmann.  "It's almost time!"
     The bell, which announced the arrival of the first guests, proved him right.  Hans Warsow and his brother appeared punctually on time; the others followed soon afterwards. 

 

There were still two other priests invited to Rodenburg for the trial sermon, who also pleased.  But the first mayor spoke out for the choice of Hans Warsow with resoluteness, 

---30--- 

and because he had an influence in the city like no one else before him, so would it be carried out with considerable consensus.
     Now Hans Warsaw had achieved his goal; he had a great vicarage in the middle of a thriving city that lay in the heart of his beloved home: he could work and be active.
     And he did it.  His job was not easy.  His predecessor, an older, sicker gentleman, had left the larger part of the work to his younger colleague, and Deacon Brettschneider had created a rich field for himself in the congregation.  But Hans Warsow was in a better position than all his colleagues:  his sermons had a strong attraction that increased church attendance.  People who were usually never seen in the church now appeared; one spoke of his sermons, which had never happened in Rodenburg until now.
     But all that, as beautifully as it started, lasted only a short time.  The interest in his sermons certainly did not stop, but still lost its liveliness, as the novelty value there and his job was a little bit familiar.  Moreover, because his character changed that balance that let itself bring neither through obtrusiveness nor through affectation of many of his feminine [Schutzbefohlenen] out of the composure, because as a thinker he was too often occupied with all kinds of questions and contemplations, in order to come to meet every visitor, every one of his congregation members on the street alike with every ready kindness, whom one now wanted of "his" priests, so maintained the public interest that he had excited in the beginning, not on his peak. 

---31--- 

     "Certainly, he's clever, and what he says is beautiful," opined a lady of the better circles, who at first built doors for him with an enthusiastic hand, "but I can't help myself: Mr. Brettschneider is so very much nicer; it all comes out from him so sincerely and so lovingly."
     "He's earned himself a little bit of credit.  The intellectual people are always like that," voiced an-other, with whom he had a very stimulating conversation at a baptismal party, but whom at a later occasion he had not recognized and consequently had paid little attention to.
     "He can do sermons, but he can't comfort!" said a more modest old woman, who had taken offense to the new priest, that after a half-hour complaint of all of her grief in succession he was not more completely with the concern.

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

While I was translating "Frau Lisa hörte nur mit halbem Ohre zu," I figured that it contained an idiom.  It's slightly different in my dictionary ("er hört nur mit halbem Ohr hin"), but in German the phrase "to only half listen" is literally "to listen with only half an ear."

My dictionary has the exact same phrase as an-other sentence in the text, but they're used in different ways.  My dictionary translates "prüfender Blick" as "searching look," but that doesn't really make sense in the context of the sentence:  "Sie überschaute mit prüfendem Blick die Tafel und zählte die Gläser."  The context (Frau Lisa's looking over the table) calls for a phrase that evokes more scrutiny than just a "searching look," so I translated prüfendem as examining.  Prüfendem (in dative case in the text) is an adjectival form of the verb prüfen (to examine, test, etc.).  It seemed redundant then to say, "She lookt over the table with an examining look," so I translated Blick as gaze.  "She lookt over the table with an examining gaze and counted the glasses."

"It is the highest time," which is how I've translated "Es ist die höchste Zeit" doesn't seem to make that much sense in the context, so I'm suspicious that "Es ist die höchste Zeit" is an idiom of some kind.  My dictionary wasn't any help.  Google Translate suggested "It is high time," which sort of fits but which I'm still dubious about adopting.

As I mentioned before, because these sentences are linked in a narrative, they can act as checks and balances of each other and help in determining whether I've translated something correctly.  The sentence after "Es ist die höchste Zeit" confirmed my suspicion that it means something like "It's almost time," which is what I've revised it to.
That sentence itself - "Die Glocke, die das Kommen der ersten Gäste meldete, gab ihm recht" - has a couple things of its own that I want to comment on:

1. I had to look up Gast to make sure that Gäste really is the plural.  Going just by the article der, I thought it was singular.  In genitive case, der is the article for feminine singular; the genitive plural article is den.  I'm not sure what's going on with that discrepancy.
2. I couldn't find the phrase "gab ihm recht" (or the present tense "gibt ihm recht" or even just "recht geben") in my dictionary, but I'm pretty sure it's comparable to "recht haben" (to be right), so I translated it as "proved him right."

I wanted to translate Einstimmigkeit as unanimity because they have the same prefix (both the German "ein-" and the Latin "unus-" mean "one"), but the modifying adjective ziemlicher (considerable, quite) prevents that.  There aren't shades of meaning to unanimity; it's all or nothing, so I can't say "considerable unanimity."  Instead, I went with "considerable consensus," which I guess has the benefit of being alliterative.

I couldn't find Amtbruder in my dictionary, but since Amt is office and Bruder is brother, it's something like office-brother, which I translated as colleague.
In that same sentence, there's the word Diakonus.  I was pretty sure that this is deacon, but I lookt it up anyway.  My dictionary has only Diakon.  The -us ending made me curious though, so I lookt it up in my Latin dictionary, and I'm pretty sure that Diakonus is the Germanized form of the Latin diaconus (2nd declension masculine).

I can't seem to figure out the grammar in "die sonst nie in der Kirche zu sehen gewesen," but based on the context, I'm pretty sure it's "who were usually never seen in the church."  Later in the sentence, there's the verb einstellen, which my dictionary translates as appear and turn up.  I chose appear because it continues the visual theme that sehen sets up.
That same sentence ends with "was in Rodenburg bisher nie geschehen war" ("which had never happened in Rodenburg until now"), which is very similar to the novel's opening line: "Was lange nicht in Reckenstein geschehen war, das geschah heute" ("What had not happened for a long time in Reckenstein happened today").  So there's a second instance of something that hasn't happened for a long time (or ever).  I'm not sure if these two things are supposed to be connected, but the phrase stuck out to me.

The sentence that starts with "Da seinem Wesen zudem jenes Gleichgewicht abging..." totally thew me.  It was no help that that one sentence is an astonishing thirteen lines long!  I broke it up over several days, but even that didn't seem to help in understanding it.  I got one section that I'm reasonably confident about, but most of it is still a jumble for me.

There's inversion in "klug ist er," and the translation in that order ("clever is he") almost seems to imply that Hans Warsow is the embodiment of intelligence, but actually translating it that way is awkward.
The verb in that sentence is meinen.  A lady says that Warsow is clever.  My dictionary doesn't really give me anything for meinen that goes very naturally with a direct quotation.  There is "say," but since meinen is clearly related to die Meinung (opinion), I translated it as opine (or opined, since it appears as "meinte" in the text).

There are some words in dialogue ("Predigten kann hei, aber trösten kann hei nich!") that I can't find in my dictionary.  Because of those two qualities (their being in dialogue and their not being in my dictionary), initially I'd assumed that they're informal or abbreviated words.  I'm suspicious that "nich" is an abbreviation of "nicht."  There's parallel structure there (although the second clause is negative where the first isn't), which seems to suggest this too.
I wasn't sure what to make of "hei" at first, but then I realized it's somewhat similar to the Dutch hij, which is the third person singular masculine pronoun (he).  (Dutch is the language I'm focusing on right now on Duolingo, and - over the two years or so I've been learning it - I've found many similarities between it and German.)  So now I'm wondering if it's just a different dialect.  Translating "hei" as I would er does make a sensible sentence:  "He can do sermons, but he can't comfort!"  It's not a translation I can justify by pointing to the corresponding words in my dictionary, but I think it's at least close to what's intended.

Month 19: Pages 29-30

This Week's Installment

As usual, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:

And while she wrote a few place setting cards with a quick quill on a small side table: "But what hands the man has!  Such hands I have never seen before.  I hardly listened to his words; I always lookt at his hands, and I understood everything."
     "Yes, he really lives only in the intellect; his face, his whole body says it."  And after she spread a few dark roses, which Frau Lisa handed her, over the table: "Would such men have well grown of the idea of a big act?  Whether she would manage Hans Warsow if she one day would have demanded of him?  She can still approach him every day in such a large congregation."
     "See, how philosophical the man has made you!  I never come by such thoughts.  I find them rather useless, and they usually meant nothing for you either.  Come on, you'd better help me get the fruit bowl ready.  I can't leave something like that to the girl."
     Frau Lisa was a very efficient lady of the house; everything went fast and surely from her hands, her housekeeping was of exemplary order, and her guests felt comfortable at her place.
     Just as she had put down the last fruit, her husband stept into the room in order to set up the wine that he himself had fetched from out of the cellar.
     "Were you satisfied?" she askt him.
     "On the whole, yes, as far as a sermon is altogether capable of captivating me.  I must always think of Schiller, who's supposed to have said it would not be for an educated person." 

---29--- 

     "I thought he spoke just for the educated."
     "Surely, it is a lot of little things, which bothers me.  Certainly, he had no pulpit emotionalism, nor the usual meaningless phrases.  But already the manner of address, that unavoidable constraint in dogmatic forms and religious boundaries - as I said, it is nothing for me.  I could do well without it."
     "He has a distinctly modern style, both in that which he says and in his whole demeanour," now commented Edith, who put the written place cards of her friend on the glasses - "I beside Fritz, you have really practiced self-denial, Lisa! - earlier I had the doubt whether he is the right man for a city like Rodenburg and for the St. Nicolaus congregation."
     "But, but!" replied Stoltzmann with resoluteness.  "We have a very competent priest, but one who is capable is all we need to satisfy higher spiritual interests even beyond the church.  Therefore I would like him to pull together a few lectures; it was always my notion that we need something like that in Rodenburg.  He's just the person I want for that."

Interesting Word I Happened Upon

• der Auspuff - exhaust

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

I couldn't find Führungskarten in my dictionary, but since my dictionary gave me guidance and direction for Führung and since Karte is card, I translated it as place setting cards.
Later, in this section, I came across Tischkarten, apparently referring to the same thing.  My dictionary gave me place cards for that, so my translating Führungskarten as place setting cards seems accurate.

I'm pretty sure that "Geistigen" in "Er lebt ja auch nur im Geistigen" is a substantive adjective (my dictionary has the adjectival form geistig, but not a noun form), but I don't know what the implied noun there is.  Instead of translating that as a substantive adjective, I just used the noun intellect for "Yes, he really lives only in the intellect."

I have absolutely no idea what Edith is asking herself starting with "Ob solche Männer der Idee wohl einer großen Tat gewachsen wären?"  I can translate the individual words and link a couple together, but I have no confidence whatsoever in my translation.

I couldn't find Einzwängung in my dictionary, but I did find the verb einzwängen, which means squeeze in, jam in, constrain, straightjacket, so I translated Einzwängung as constraint.

I had to look up sowohl in my dictionary, and I found ~ ... als auch, which is the correlative "both... and...."  In my sentence, I think that's the meaning that sowohl has, but instead of being paired with als auch, it's with wie.  It's "sowohl in dem, was er sagt, wie in seinem ganzen Gebaren."  I can't make any sense of the sentence otherwise.

Month 18: Pages 27-29

This Week's Installment

     Hans Warsow received an invitation for a trial sermon at the St. Nicolaus church in Rodenburg.  The church attendance in Rodenburg was not up to scratch.  Even this time, the great church was not filled in all its parts but still saw a bigger and more considerable gathering than on other Sundays.  In the patron seat sat the first mayor with his wife, the [Dezernent] for school and church and a few other town councilors.  Even Edith, who in these days had come to Rodenburg in order to speak with the doctor about her father, had turned up there and smuggled in Fritz.
     One waited for the new preacher even at the liturgy.  But he didn't come.  Deacon Brettschneider, the much-loved second priest at St. Nicolaus', held it to the old tradition.  That heightened the tension.  Finally the liturgy was over.  The well-schooled church choir sang its motet: "Alles, was Odem hat," the principle tune came in, the last verse was sung, Hans Warsow ascended to the pulpit.
     The pale, fine-featured face with the serious, almost severe features and the dark, dreaming eyes, which no one in the large congregation saw but which lookt completely inwards, immediately made an impression on the people.  Now he read the text; now he began his sermon.
     He spoke with a rather rough but very clear voice in short, concise sentences, each carefully filed and of firm structure.  Like 

---27--- 

well-hewn stones were they, that he piled up into a tightly ordered construction.  Visibly, he rose upwards in front of the listeners; everywhere, one noticed the keen thinker.  Eloquent like his mouth, his hand spoke: a long, almost overly-slender hand with fine, cerebral lines; they alone explained his gestures.  But even they only with quiet, interpreting movements.
     "How did you like his sermon?" asked Frau Lisa, who had invited Hans Warsow and his brother to lunch with a few other guests.  She had done it out of consideration for her relationship with the Reckenstein family and was now occupied with the arrangement of the table, with which Edith was helping her.
     The Stoltzmanns lived in a newly built villa outside of the city, which architecturally was built with taste and was very spacious in the interior.  The city had made it for its mayor as a public gift, as he had unceremoniously refused the invitation of a big city in the west to take on - at a close vote - the vacant lord mayor position there.
     Edith was silent a moment.  "As you know, I've never had much sense for sermons," she said then, "but I admit, it was rather suitable in this.  Sometimes it struck me more like a lecture; then again, it seemed to me as if it would please even the simpler people.  I haven't yet seen such a devotion at St. Nicolaus."
     "Yes, you too have had little opportunity for that, my soul," Frau Lisa threw down a little derisively, and while she put out the glasses: "He must lead me.  It will not go differently.  Although I'm even less cut out for the sermon 

---28--- 

than you and would much prefer his younger brother.  But all the same, it's a pity that he's taken off his uniform.  It suits him so well!"

Interesting Words I Happened Upon

• pauken - to play the timpani [I thought it interesting that there's a word for this specifically.  There's also the phrase "mit Pauken und Trompeten durchfallen," which my dictionary translates as "to fail miserably," but which literally means "to fail with timpani and trumpets."]
• der Galgenvogel - good-for-nothing [literally "gallows-bird"]
• die Feinkost - delicatessen [this led me also to die Kost - food.  This was familiar to me because of frokost, which is breakfast in Norwegian but lunch in Danish.  According to Wiktionary, they are related, etymologically.]

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

I found an-other word that I couldn't find in my dictionary, on Google Translate, or by referencing Wiktionary.  A sentence describes the mayor's wife as "der Derzernent."  The closest I could find is das Dezernat, which means department, and which doesn't make sense in this context.  Based on the phrase it's in ("der Dezernent für Schule und Kirche und einige andre Ratsherren"), I think it might be secretary ("the secretary for school and church and a few other town councilors"), but I couldn't find anything in my dictionary that's even close to that.  Besides, that seems like an absurd amount of work for one person.

The title of the motet the choir sings ("Alles, was Odem hat") lookt familiar to me, so I did some research.  First of all, the text is Psalm 150:6.  Bible Gateway provided me with Luther's translation:  "Alles, was Odem hat, lobe den HERRN!  Halleluja!"  My Bible renders this as "Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!  Praise the LORD!"
I thought I knew this because of a Bach work, but I lookt in my music collection, and the only work with "Odem" in a title of one of its movements is Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 52 "Lobgesang."  When I searched for a motet with "Alles, was Odem hat" on the internet, I discovered that this text is actually used in a Bach work.  It's near the end of Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225.  I'm not sure if that section of this Bach motet is what the choir is intended to be singing, but I suppose it's possible.
I kept the title of the motet in German.  Translating something like that (and calling it "Everything That Has Breath") just seems wrong somehow.
In that same sentence, I was very surprised at the meaning of one of the words.  I assumed that die Kanzel meant chancel, but I lookt it up anyway.  I'm glad I did because it actually means pulpit (chancel is der Altarraum).

I'm not too happy with my translation of "Das bleiche, feingeschnittene Gesicht mit den ernsten, beinah strengen Zügen...."  For "feingeschnittene," my dictionary gave me "fine-featured," but - of the possible translations for "Zügen" - the best one in this context is "features," so I ended up with the redundant-sounding "The pale, fine-featured face with the serious, almost severe features...."  Literally, "feingeschnittene" is "finely-cut," which is also in my dictionary, but I don't think that's the best choice here.

For (I think) the first time in the year and a half I've been doing this, I ran across the letter X.  When I first started doing this, I had to consult charts of German fonts pretty regularly just in order to copy out the sentences.  I think I've gotten used to the type font now, and while encountering an X didn't utterly confused me, I went back to the charts just to make a comparison.  It seems that the lowercase German X is written as an r with a tail.  It's in "Text," fourth line from the bottom:

I think there's a Biblical reference in the sentence "Like well-hewn stones were they, that he piled up into a tightly ordered construction."  (I'll admit that there's an odd sentence structure there, but I kept close to what the original had.)  Because this is a sermon, this stone metaphor reminded me of Psalm 118:22 - "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone."  In that text, it refers to the coming Messiah.  In Ephesians 2, Paul writes that the fellowship of believers is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:20).  The stones represent different things, but the metaphor of building up stones is certainly common to both.

In translating one sentence, I discovered that I'd mis-translated a section of the previous sentence.  I couldn't understand what "Sie [Frau Lisa] hatte es... getan" ("She had done it") referred to.  But then I lookt at the previous sentence and realized that my translating "Frau Lisa, die Hans Warsow and seinen Bruder mit einigen andern Gästen zu Mittag geladen" as "Frau Lisa, whom - with a few other guests - Hans Warsow and his brother invited to lunch" was wrong.  Part of the past perfect verb is missing there; instead of "die hatte [Hans Warsow und so weiter] geladen," it's just "die [Hans Warsow und so weiter] geladen."  There's no good way to represent this in English because if you take out the "had" in "she had invited them," you're left with "she invited them."  Past perfect tense becomes simple past, but it's still understandable.  (I hadn't realized that until encountering this, but that was mind-blowing and an-other way in which English is stupid.)  Anyway, I should have translated "Frau Lisa, die Hans Warsow and seinen Bruder mit einigen andern Gästen zu Mittag geladen" as "Frau Lisa, who had invited Hans Warsow and his brother to lunch with a few other guests."  The "es" to which "Sie hatte es... getan" refers then becomes obvious: it's Frau Lisa's inviting these people to lunch.
This situation also reveals something I hadn't considered before: if I mis-translate something in a sentence, there might be something in the following sentences that will illustrate my error simply because the narrative doesn't make sense.  Most of the translation work I did in my foreign language classes consisted of isolated sentences, where there wasn't this sort of over-arching narrative.  But here, each sentence builds on the last, so there's a sort of safety net in that the sentences have to make sense when they're read together.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn't find freigewordene in my dictionary.  I knew frei is free and gewordene is a past tense, adjectival form of werden, to become.  Together, they mean something like free-become, so I translated freigewordene as vacant.  This is also a note to say that that sentence ("The city had made it for its mayor as a public gift...") gave me a lot of problems, the second half in particular.  I still don't think my translation is a very fluid one, but it's the best I could do.

I'm not quite sure how to translate what Edith says: "Ich habe, wie du weißt, nie viel Sinn für Predigten gehabt."  Somewhat literally, it's "As you know, I've never had much sense for sermons."  That sounds kind of stilted though.  My dictionary also has: "sie hat keinen Sinn dafür she has no appreciation for that kind of thing; dafür habe ich keinen Sinn it doesn't mean anything to me (do anything for me), it's not really my thing (or my cup of tea)."  It would certainly be easier to translate this dialogue with that meaning, but I feel that that would take too much liberty with the text.  I'm also hesitant to translate it like that because "Sermons have never been my cup of tea" is a vastly different meaning from "I've never had much sense for sermons."
In that same sentence, I'm not sure I have Eignes translated correctly.  It wasn't in my dictionary, but I think it's a noun form of sich eignen, to be suitable.

There's an interesting use of verbs in "Manchmal kam sie [die Predigt] mir mehr wie ein Vortrag vor, dann wider schien es mir...."  Initially, I translated both kam... vor and schien as "seems," but I wasn't satisfied with that.  There's alliteration between vorkommen and Vortrag (lecture) that implies (through the similarity) that - like a lecture - the sermon was boring.  Translating both verbs as seems was redundant and didn't give a sense of that wordplay, so I lookt up vorkommen again and found the very phrase that's in the text, which my dictionary translates as "it strikes me."  It doesn't provide the same sense of a lackluster lecture, but at least there's a distinction between the two verbs (that mean essentially the same thing) and a bit of wordplay.  Instead of the the dullness that the resemblance between the two German words implies, there's a suggestion of the sermon's physically assaulting the listeners.

I don't really understand what Frau Lisa is saying at the end of this section.  She addresses "mein Herz," which I've translated as "my soul," but which could also be "my heart."  I don't know if she's talking about herself or to Edith or what.  The rest of her dialogue is confusing too.

Month 17: Pages 25-27

This Week's Installment

This also happens to bring me to the end of chapter two.

The old gentleman is already a bit jealous sometimes when she pays attention to me too carefully at table and regularly makes my favorite foods for me.  Regrets, as you see, I don't have yet and never will.  But what I wanted to ask," he turned himself to Hans again now, "what did Stoltzmann think then?"
     "He was very reserved and noticed only that a very large number of the applicants for the spot would have reported, and he got involved in nothing else."
     "Didn't you mention Edith, Miss von Barrnhoff?  Didn't you pay his wife a visit?  She is Edith's best friend and would surely listen to her!"
     "Nothing from all of that." 

---25--- 

     "But why not, man?"
     "Because I don't want to owe my election to such means and recommendations.  If everything that I accomplished thus far doesn't speak for me, then I just have to do without."
     "Do you hear it, Edith?  He's always been so!  So are all we Warsows - always with our own strength, always with our hard heads!  For heaven's sake, no associations and no recommendations!  That's also why we've never gotten far.  But you will have done it already, haven't you, Edith?  So drop it, Hans, she doesn't do it for you or for me.  She does a good deed for the city Rodenburg.  They should look for that kind of priest!  You can recommend him with pure conscience; you can believe me about that!"
     "Gladly, I want to try what is in my powers, provided - naturally - that your brother approves of it."
     "Then you do it without his will, yes, against his will!  For my sake, Edith, do it!"
     The old Reckstein citizen stept into the room.  The long ride had made him fresh and springy; his blood and his movements had something of a young military man.  But in the faint light of the spirit lamp, which one always burnt in Reckenstein and which was just now lit, his face showed tired features.
     He had not many men to whom he gave his affection; he was critical and inclined to objection.  However even today he welcomed Fritz with heartfelt joy, while in contrast he adopted a cooler manner for his brother, without, however, neglecting through word or expression the duties of the host.  Because hospitality was a sacred thing in Reckenstein.  Under trivial 

---26--- 

conversations the richly served dinner proceeded; then the two brothers went through the starry summer night to Bärwalde.

Interesting Word I Happened Upon

• das Bauchknöpfchen - belly button [aside from the -chen ending, which - if I remember aright - makes this a diminutive, this is the same as the English (Bauch is belly, and Knopf is button), but I think I prefer this is a word]

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

I can't find a translation of "Bereut," but I did find bereuen (to regret), so I'm pretty sure "Bereut" is a noun form.  I don't know if it's singular or plural though.  Later in the sentence ("Bereut, wie du siehst, habe ich noch nicht und werde es nie tun"), there's a singular pronoun ("es"), but I don't think that refers to "Bereut."  I think it's more like, "Regrets, as you see, I don't have yet and will never do it [have regrets]."

I'm sure this won't be the last time this happens, but in translating one sentence, I realized I made an error in a previous sentence.  At least it was only a couple lines ago, rather than a few pages.  The second half of a sentence was "mit ihr läßt sich doch reden."  In order to translate this, I had to look up "reden."  I knew that usually it means just "speak" or "talk," but with "läßt" and the reflexive "sich," I figured that this probably has a more involved meaning.  My dictionary gave me the phrase "sie läßt nicht mit sich reden" - "she won't listen (to anyone)."  Aside from the negative, I think this is the same sense as in my text, which I translated as "would surely listen to her."
It was at this point that I realized I'd lost the narrative thread.  Since I'm translating this sentence by sentence, I often find myself neglecting the larger picture.  As far as I can tell, Fritz is nervous about getting a position he wants, and his getting it is dependent on Stoltzmann.  Fritz's brother Hans reminds him that Stoltzmann's wife is friends with Edith, and he implies that Edith can help Fritz's cause by speaking to Stoltzmann's wife about it.
Stoltzmann's apparent opposition (or maybe just indifference) recalled my attention to a sentence I translated three days ago (the 18th).  I'd thought it was "He [Stolzmann] was very reserved and noticed only that a very large number of the applicants for the spot would have reported and gotten involved in nothing else."  I'd thought "would have reported" and "[would have] gotten involved" had the same subject ("a very large number").  Looking at it again though, I realized that subject of "ließ sich auf nichts andres ein" is "Er" (Stoltzmann).  So it's "He was very reserved and noticed only that a very large number of the applicants for the spot would have reported, and he got involved in nothing else."  This explains the indifference that Fritz wants to overcome so that he can secure the position he wants.

I couldn't find the word "alledem" by itself, but I did find it in the phrase "trotz alledem," which means "in spite of all that" or "in spite of it all."  Because "trotz" means "despite" or "in spite of," it seems that "alledem" means "all of that."  So I translated "Nichts von alledem" as "Nothing from all of that."

In an earlier post, I mentioned that sometimes the German present tense is translated as English future tense when some other sentence elements (like adverbs) imply a future time.  I think I ran into a sort-of-similar instance of that, but instead of simple future tense (will do), it's future perfect tense (will have done).  The sentence has "du wirst die Sache schon machen."  Literally, it's something like "You will do the job already," but without the imperative tone that "You will do the job already" has in English.  There's a grammatical strain between "wirst" ("will") and "schon" ("already").  Individually, "wirst" indicates simple future tense, and "schon" indicates a past tense.  Having both creates a temporal conflict, and the only solution I can think of is an implied future perfect tense, so I translated that sentence as "you will have already done the job."

I translated "das darfst du mir glauben" as "you can believe me about that" rather than the literal "that you may believe from me."  It's smoother that way.

In one of these sentences, I changed a noun to the plural to make a more sensible translation.  "Sein Gesicht zeigte... einen müden Zug" is literally "His face showed... a tired feature."  Since that sounds weird, I altered it to "His face showed tired features."

In my dictionary, I couldn't find a translation of Aussetzen as a noun.  In the sentence, it's the object of the verb neigen ("zum Aussetzen geneigt"), which I translated as incline (although since it's geneigt, the translation is inclined).  One of the translations given for aussetzen is to object to, so I started wondering if I could translate Aussetzen as objection (so, zum Aussetzen geneigt would mean inclined to objection).  Using a trick I learned in German class, I lookt up objection in the English section, and I found die Abneigung.  It's related to the verb in my sentence, so I'm pretty confident that zum Aussetzen geneigt does indeed mean inclined to objection.

My dictionary tells me that der Hauswirt means landlord, but landlord doesn't make sense in the context of the sentence in which Hauswirt appears.  I lookt up just der Wirt and found that it means host, and host does fit the context.
That same sentence has what I'm pretty sure is a participial, but neither of my German textbooks has anything about participials, and when I lookt them up on the internet, Google asked me, "Do you mean participles?"  No, Google, I did not.  The original text reads, "ohne jedoch durch Wort oder Miene die Pflichten des Hauswirts zu vernachlässigen."  Translating "vernachlässigen" as a participle (a participle that is part of a participial, not one that modifies a noun, which is the only kind my textbooks talk about) is the only way I can make sense of this.  I translated it as "without, however, neglecting through word or expression the duties of the host."

Month 16: Pages 24-25

This Week's Installment

As usual, the italicized parts are those that I'm unsure about:

He's probably the highest man of action of the whole affair, isn't he?"
     "We haven't gotten that far yet."
     "Not gotten that far yet?  Surely you must have already been here a long while."
     "We are speaking about general things," Edith joined in, "just now your brother shared with me his decision to apply for the Rodenburg pastor position.  I'm surprised at him."
     "Why surprised?  I think it's a very reasonable idea.  The man must be active in practice, that is the most important thing; and it is good for Hans if he turns himself from the uninterrupted intellectual activity to the rougher reality.  He will do his job, you can be sure of that."
     The old love and high esteem for the older brother spoke from out of his words.  In the simple dark brown suit jacket, he no longer lookt as neat and snappy as in the flattering cuirassier uniform.  But the clear-cut features of his face emerged all the more, and his brown eyes lookt at cheerful and good things in the world.  "Everyone must know best what is good for him, and no one else should interfere with him.  I have experienced it myself." 

---24--- 

"And are you happy in your new occupation?"
     He smiled his clever, calm smile.  "Well, you know, at first I had to decree myself damned.  So from the bottom up!  And old Borowski, whom I knew until then only as a jovial, good man, is a bloody stern gentleman.  And you'll be sorry for him who provokes his anger!  I saw him once as he threw himself at a rebellious worker, and I am astonished even today that the man escaped with his life.  But we both get along well with one an-other."
     "And the old Bärwald citizen?"
     "With him I can communicate excellently, just because he is so terse and frugal in his words.  That raises me above much, especially over the loneliness which is sometimes a little oppressive."
     "But the [Hutemach] is still your best friend?"
     "You bet!

Interesting Word I Happened Upon

• der Johanniskäfer - glow-worm [literally this means "John beetle," so I don't understand how it came to mean glow-worm]

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

I've run into an-other word that I can't find a translation for.  "Hutemach" isn't in my German-English dictionary; Google Translate and Wiktionary didn't have anything; and when I searched for it on Google, all I found was an-other digital copy of Wer die Heimat liebt wie du (apparently "Hutemach" is also used on page 279, so I have that to look forward to in a decade or so).  It's obviously a noun (because like all German nouns it's capitalized), and based on the sentence ("But the [Hutemach] is still your best friend?"), it's a person (unless "best friend" used metaphorically and applied to something inanimate or abstract), so I'm thinking that it's an occupation or title.

I couldn't find the phrase "Na ob!" in my dictionary, but it does have "Na und ob," which I'm assuming means about the same thing:  "You bet!"

Month 15: Pages 22-24

This Week's Installment

As usual, the italicized sections are what I'm unsure about:

you, the man of the intellect, whom Fritz looks up to with respect, who to me - excuse me! - appears sometimes very kind, sometimes a little bit funny.  You, the light of the Warsow family, whose books and writings I didn't dare to read because they appeared too high for my feeble intellect, you - a simple priest in a city that, if not exactly small, is still only of middling importance, at least minuscule compared with Königsberg, where you desired to be a professor, that certainly would have been fitting and worthy for you.  And now pastor in Rodenburg, the successor of the old honest but very simple Maleischke, my confirmation priest - no, that comes as a surprise to me.  What does Fritz say about it, then?" 

---22--- 

"He understands it because he knows me," he returned, now audibly irritated because of the way with which she received his announcement.  "Because he knows that, after all, the subordinate lecturer job in Bonn cannot satisfy me, that I must work with all of my strength and can do this nowhere so well and gladly than as priest of a large congregation.  I find there is nevertheless enough similarity between his decision and mine.  He left a distinguished position that perhaps promised him a significant advancement in order to learn from scratch as a simple apprentice."
     His comparison was fitting.  But she didn't mention it to him.  "But with the difference," said she, "that something would never be made out of him, that despite his acknowledged ability he constantly stept back compared with you."
     Now it came to life in his dark eyes, which had - so slightly - a tired, almost dead expression:  "I don't know who gives you the right [implied verb?] me always as the less humble, who [sich Überhebenden hinzustellen].  You know me only from the judgement of others, who - with the exception of Fritz - have dealt with me with little love and understanding.  Do you want to charge me with it or count it for a sin if I always stood apart because of the arrangement of my nature?"
     She hadn't thought that such emotion could speak from out of the quiet thinker.  He wanted to be right: she didn't know him.  She wanted to say a justifying word when wheels rolled over the driveway in front of the house.  In a simple, but well-hitched self-driver, leading the reins, sat Fritz; near him, with an admirable impunity Schikorr set himself, who had been for Fritz in his childhood days a figure of authority, 

---23--- 

as ruler and leader of the manorial coachhouse, and now ancient as everyone in Bärwalde.
     "Now, have you settled your matter in Rodenburg?" asked Fritz, after he had greeted Edith and his brother.  "And are you content?"
     "Nothing can be said about that for the time being."
     "Have you told Edith about your visit with Stoltzmann?

Commentary/Grammatical Minutiae

Part of one sentence has "ein klein wenig komisch," and since "klein" means "small" and "wenig" means "little," I wasn't quite sure how to translate it.  I went with "a little bit funny," which I think provides the same sense as the original and is about as close as I could get.

For the first time in this project, I ran across a sentence that completely stumpt me.  I think there might be an implied verb that I just can't figure out, and some of the words aren't in my dictionary (Google Translate wasn't any help either).  I translated what I could, but I ended up with a sort of Frankensteinian "I don't know who gives you the right [implied verb?] me always as the less humble, who [sich Überhebenden hinzustellen]."

I ran into a panoply of problems in the clause "neben ihm der noch immer mit einer bewundernswerten Straffheit sich aufrecht haltende Schikorr, der für Fritz in seinen Kingertagen als Lenker und Leiter des herrschaftlichen Kutschstalles eine Respektsperson gewesen und jetzt uralt war wie alles in Bärwalde."  There are just so many elements, and I can't figure out how they all go together.  It's made more difficult because I couldn't find perfect translations for some words ("sich aufrecht haltende Schikorr" in particular gave me problems; I couldn't find anything for Schikorr, so I think it's a name, but I'm not sure).

Month 14: Pages 21-22

This Week's Installment

She knew it and did it all the same.  A little humiliation couldn't hurt him.
     He answered almost calmly: "Fritz has taught you well.  Yes, I hoped it once and was very disappointed as the affair came to nothing.  But I soon found myself.  In the meantime doubt emerged for me, whether it would be right to devote my whole life to the academic career."
     "I believed another would not at all be out of the question for you."
     "O but.  Actually my inclination, perhaps also my ability, pointed me more to the vicarage.  Just during my year of lecturing in Bonn the advantages in addition to the faults of this profession had become clear to me.  I did without contact with the large spheres of people, in which I could support my ideas and goals more effectively than in a small circle of students. - I was in Rodenburg this morning.  That's why you see me in this solemn 

---21--- 

garment.  There I had a good connection; I travelled here by the fast train.  Fritz wanted to send for me tonight from here to Bärwalde.  Perhaps he's even coming himself."
     A shimmer of delight flew over Edith's beautiful features.  It didn't escape him.  These last words appeared to spark a stronger interest in her than everything that he had said so far.  But now she turned herself to his matter again:
     "You were in Rodenburg?  I don't understand how it can be connected with what you just told me."
     "Very easily.  The first vacancy in Rodenburg will be at St. Nicolaus church.  I have applied for it."
     "You?  In Rodenburg - and at St. Nicolaus'?"
     A bright astonishment lay in her words, which she uttered individually and in bigger intervals.
     "That appears to astonish you - ?"
     "Yes, greatly - 

Interesting Words I Ran Across by Happenstance

• der Dreck - dirt, muck, filth; rubbish, garbage [I find it interesting that Dreck is a word in German because dreck is also a word in English, although apparently not a very common one.  I know it only because of Chris Baty's use of it in No Plot? No Problem!:  "The main thing separating the mind-blowing, life-changing stories of a great novel from the treacly dreck of daytime TV is the manner in which the tale is told."  Merriam-Webster's etymology seems to suggest that it came into English from German.]
• entgehen - to escape ["Escape" in both literal and figurative senses.  Usually, these "interesting words I ran across by happenstance" are ones I find in my dictionary when I'm looking up a word in the text, but entgehen was actually used in the text (in the imperfect tense: "Er entging ihm nicht").  Based on the sentence it's in (specifically the "ihm"), I'm pretty sure it's a dative verb, which is why it's in this list of interesting words.]
• in sein - to be in, to be the fashion [I don't find this so interesting in itself, but rather the part of speech is interesting.  This is listed under "in" in my dictionary.  It's "adj.: ~ sein."  In the sentence "it is in," "in" is indeed an adjective, but "it is in" seems to be a curtailing of "it is in fashion."  In that sentence, "in" is a preposition, and the prepositional phrase "in fashion" is adjectival.  What I find interesting about "in" being an adjective is that it came to be considered that part of speech through an abbreviation of a construction in which it's a preposition.

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

Despite having studied German for almost a decade, I'm still not really sure how to translate "doch," so for "O doch," I have "O but," which isn't exactly fluid English, but it's the best I could do.

"Fritz wollte mich heute abend von hier nach Bärwalde abholen lassen" is an-other one of those sentences where I've translated every part but can't come up with a way to put it in a smooth English translation.  It'd be easy enough were it not for the "von hier nach Bärwalde."  Anyway, I've translated it as "Fritz wanted to send for me tonight from here to Bärwalde."

I'm pretty sure the "großes" in "Ja, großes" is a substantive adjective.  That's why there's a "-es" ending; if it were an adverb, it'd just be "groß."  I think it's "great [astonishment]" since there's "ein helles Erstaunen" (a bright astonishment) a few lines earlier.
"Yes, great [astonishment]" doesn't really translate well into English though, so I changed that substantive adjective into an adverb to get "Yes, greatly."  The same sense is there, although the grammar is different.

Month 13: Pages 19-21

This Week's Installment

As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:

But just because it is so, we love this country with a tenacity and strength of which the people in the south and in the west have no idea.  And if we separate ourselves from him and look for the area of southern Germany or even of flourishing Italy - certainly, we are not blind to the beauty there that presents itself to us step 

---19---

by step.  But we can only enjoy all that and be glad of its being for a short time, for a holiday period.  Then love for the home awakens only all the more strongly.  Then in the midst of all of the softness of the air and lines, all of the agricultural and artistic splendor, our angular, gruff country only appears all the more lovely and wonderful.  Then we must go back, northwards, in the high east, in the tempered, steel air without which we cannot thrive.  And if we suppress this urge and do violence to it, then we become sick, as it has fared with me."
     She had listened to him with growing interest; having spoken with such depth and sincerity out of every word, he had suddenly appeared to her a completely different man.  "Wonderful" - but then she stopt; no, she couldn't say that to him -
     "You had never confided all that to me," he completed her without any trace of sensitivity.  "But that's the way it is, and I can't change it.  For three centuries the Warsows have settled here.  Bärwalde has never come out of their hands.  They have kept it even in the most desperate times, the hardest misery of war, have gone without and suffered, simply in order to not yield an inch of the homely clod.  In my history of East Prussia, the comprehensive chronicle of Bärwalde and of the Warsows is included.  It is admirable in its power and in its suffering."
     "Fritz has often told me about it.  But I did not suspect that you knew even more and more precisely.  I took you for a man of intellect, a hero of the pen, who found his fatherland there, where he could write and create."
     "Certainly, I am a man of intellect.  The 

---20---

problems of our time, the questions of belief and knowledge burn in my soul, and I want to proclaim them from the university chair or from the pulpit as long as I can.  But I am before everything East Prussian with body and soul.  And there is only one country in which my intellectual ability can develop itself fruitfully.  The others don't understand that; therefore, they have often teased me.  Only we know that the East Prussian blood was to carry many generations, that we have breathed this air from birth on and have fed from the marrow of this earth."
     "That's why it was your wish to obtain a university chair in Königsberg?"
      It was not very sensitive of her to say that to him, not right now.

Interesting Word I Ran Across by Happenstance

• blauäugig - blue-eyed; fig. starry-eyed, dewy-eyed, naive

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

I probably should have realized this at the end of what I translated for my last post, but I think some of Hans Warsow's comments are a response of sorts to World War I.  The first sentence I translated for this month is: "But just because it is so [East Prussia is "uneven, sharp, and square"], we love this country with a tenacity and strength of which the people in the south and in the west have no idea."  It's a nationalistic statement, and since this book was published in 1916 (and especially since it's dedicated to General-Fieldmarshall von Hindenburg), it's very possible that Warsow's nationalism is colored by the war.  I haven't found anything in the book so far that indicates a particular time period, and - while the military has been mentioned - it hasn't been particularly prominent, so I don't think the novel is meant to be a novel about or set during World War I.  Still, I think Warsow's comment here is indicative of when the book was written.

I couldn't find a translation for "härtliche," but I found that härten" is "to temper" (as metal), so I translated "härtliche" as "tempered."  Warsow also describes the air as "steel," so - while "tempered" seems to fit - I'm still unsure enough to italicize it.

I think I have the correct sense of one sentence, but my structure differs from the original.  I'm not sure what to do with "es sprach eine solche Tiefe und Aufrichtigkeit aus jedem Wort."  Literally, it's "it spoke such depth and sincerity out of every word," but I'm not sure of the antecedent of that "es."  I should think it's referring to Warsow, but - if so - it would be the masculine "er" rather than the neuter "es."  My other thought was that it could be anticipatory, but there's a problem with that too: it's singular, but what it would anticipate is plural ("Tiefe und Aufrichtigkeit").  In my translation, I rendered that part as "having spoken with such depth and sincerity...."

The only translation I could find for "eingesessen" is the adjective "old-established," but in the sentence in the text, it's a verb, not an adjective.  I lookt up some derivatives and found "seßhaft," and - although that's also an adjective ("settled") - I think it provides enough credence to translate "eingesessen" as "settled."  While it might not be a perfect translation, it makes sense in the sentence:  "Seit drei Jahrhunderten sind die Warsows hier eingesessen" ("For three centuries the Warsows have settled here").

I can't seem to find a good way to phrase part of a sentence in English.  In the original text, there's the indirect statement "daß Sie alles noch viel genauer wußten."  I'm pretty sure that the "alles noch viel" is "even more," but "genauer" is "more exactly" or "more precisely."  It's difficult to put those two phrases together because they both have "more," but one "more" is a substantive adjective where the other is an adverb.  I can't say "that you knew even more more precisely" because two "more"s that are different parts of speech are directly next to each other.  So I added an "and" between them to get "that you knew even more and more precisely."

Month 12: Pages 18-19

This Week's Installment

As always, the italicized parts are what I am unsure about:

As I passed my tests, I received a bigger scholarship that puts me in the standing to do studies in Greece and Italy.”
     “I heard about it from your brother.  How many of the beauties you must have seen!”
     “No doubt.  I don’t misjudge that either.  I saw unforgettable things in Athens, Florence, and Rome.  Just at the age in which one is most receptive to it, the treasures of the world opened themselves to me.  My knowledge increased; my artistic sense received rich stimulation.  And still on all these voyages I never came to a true pleasure.  I tried to force it, was annoyed and outraged at myself - it was all futile.  As a sick person, I wandered through the marvelous Uffizi and the old buildings of the cities.” 

---18---

     “It was the continuous reception of new impressions; that touches the soul.  I have experienced something like it, if only in smaller scale.  When Father took a trip with me to Italy soon after the death of Mother, I too had not nearly the pleasure that I had promised myself.”
     “I saw that it did not go on like that and lookt for a permanent place of residence.  First I stayed a year in Rome, then a second in Florence, for a while I lived in Switzerland, in Zürich and Bern, busy with a bigger effort about the beginnings of Christianity in Rome - finally I went back to Germany.”
     “You let yourself go lower in Bonn?”
     “Yes, my work had appeared, and one encouraged me to give lectures there.”
     “And now you came to rest?”
     “No - I didn’t come here to rest either; I felt just as peaceless as there in the south.  I have worked a lot in this time; I may well claim it.  It was like a self-defense against that which seethed in my core.  And now I want to tell you too what it was.”
     He became quieter, but with a move away that trembled through each of his words:  “We people up here from the northeast cannot thrive in the south, and also not in the west.  There everything is soft, smoothed, even; with us it is uneven, sharp, and square.

Interesting Word I Ran Across By Happenstance

• der Friedhof - cemetery, graveyard [literally peace-yard]

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

I'm very confused by the sentence "Unvergeßliches empfing ich in Athen, Florenz, und Rom," particularly the "unvergeßliches" ("unforgettable").  I think it's a substantive adjective, but I'm not sure of the noun that it's standing in the stead of.  Whatever it is, it's a singular neuter, indicated by the "-es" ending.  I substituted "things" (so, "I saw unforgettable things in Athens, Florence, and Rome"), but I know that's not right (obviously, because it's plural).

I don't think there's a way to translate this to English so that it maintains the same grammar, but apparently in German, one can use "sick" as a substantive adjective.  The last sentence on page eighteen starts with "Wie ein Kranker...."  Literally, it's "As a sick [person]."

I'm not exactly sure what sense "lassen" has in "Sie ließen sich in Bonn nieder?"  Based on the other words, I think there's an implied infinitive there.  I inserted "go," so it becomes "You let yourself go lower in Bonn?" but I'm still not sure if that's really the intended meaning.

I didn't know how to translate "friedlos," and it wasn't in my dictionary.  Because I know der Frieden is peace and -los is -less, I could tell that it meant "please-less," but it wasn't until I lookt up "peace-less" in an endeavor to find a synonym that's an actual word that I discovered that peaceless is a word in English.

Month 11: Pages 17-18

This Week's Installment

As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure of.

How very kindly, yes, with what admiration and love had Fritz spoken of him!  And he?  He took the first real opportunity to lower the younger brother in her eyes.
     “I believe your judgement about your brother is not totally fair.  In the foundation of his nature Fritz is serious, almost too serious.  That he ventures a funny horseman trick and can also be happy in the happy circle doesn’t make him worse for me.  I do not love the person who can not once laugh from the heart.”
     “And do you count me among them?”
     “I have not the pleasure to know you so well in order to allow myself an opinion about you.”
     She said it in that cold, dismissive manner that, for her, was always required when she felt herself offended.
     “But your word suits me since you have rightly said:  such laughing from the heart, as you yourself expressed, I have never been able to do - not from my childhood on.  And no one has felt that so heavily as I myself.”
     A faint stroke of sympathy flitted over her face.  He did not want it, one could tell it annoyed him, 

---17--- 

that it was not accepted by him.  A more self-conscious tone came into their conversation.
     “That your brother, now arrived at a sure highpoint of his career, has the bravery to break from it,” said Edith after a short pause, “and build up a totally new life for himself through his own strength surely also speaks for the earnestness of his view.”
     “No, no!” he butted in with suddenly-awakened liveliness, “that isn’t it.  At least not that alone.  It’s something else - the same as with me.  However different we also usually find our philosophy of life, we find something of a shock in it.”
     “And what would this other be?”
     A faint glow had entered his face.  It didn’t color it red, but it gave it a hint of warmth that it didn’t possess up until then.  “You see, I have gone a long way around the world and have gotten to know many people and countries.

Interesting Words I Ran Across

• das Manko - deficiency, shortage; deficit, shortfall [This is an-other word that makes me wish my German/English dictionary had etymologies because it seems to come from the Romance Languages.  In French, there's the noun le manque (lack, want; deficiency, shortage) and the verb manquer (to be absent; to be missing), and in Italian, there's the verb mancare (to be missing)

I had to look up a different sense of Zug (I was familiar with train, but that didn't fit the context), and I found a lot of idioms with "train" in them:

• in den letzten Zügen liegen - be breathing one's last; be on its last legs [literally: to lay in the last train]
• dem Zug seines Herzens folgen - follow (the dictates of) one's heart [literally: to follow the train of his heart]
• Zug um Zug - step by step [literally: train by train]

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

A relative clause has "zu Gebote," which I've translated as "required," although it's literally more like "to requirements."  So, "die ihr immer zu Gebote war" becomes "that, for her, was always required."  I'm pretty sure it provides the same meaning, but the grammar is different; there's a passive voice verb instead of a plural noun in a prepositional phrase.

Ihr can be either a third person singular (feminine) possessive pronoun or a third person plural possessive pronoun, so "Ein befangenerer Ton kam in ihre Unterhaltung" could be translated as either "A more self-conscious tone came into her conversation" or "A more self-conscious tone came into their conversation."  Since this sentence takes place right after Hans Warsow was speaking, he seems to have some involvement in the conversation's turning to "a more self-conscious tone," so I translated it as "their conversation."

Month 10: Pages 15-17

This Week's Installment

As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:

“I must still have some good establishment with you because although we were neighbors often enough, our circles have met little.”
  “They had better things to do,” she casually retorted, as she removed the riding cap from her hair.
  “Not better,” he replied quietly and frankly, “but more important, I willingly grant it.  I was until today, and perhaps still am to a certain degree, burdened with the illness that destroys each harmless 

---15--- 

pleasure:  taking life and its duties seriously.  I believe it is Egmont who once said, ‘If you take life a bit too seriously, what is it?’  Very true - but one can just not do differently, that is the misfortune.”
  “You have also received your reward for that:  You’d find he’d become a well-known man, like your brother Fritz first explained it to me a few days ago.  I for my part read little, even your books and writings I don’t know, but with them I say the same.”
  “I am well-known only in a very small circle; that my life was accompanied by exceptional luck I can hardly say.”
  She looked at him, for the first time.  He had no resemblance with his younger brother.  His pale face was clever and charming, but the strong and energetic excitement that made Fritz’s features so dear to her was missing from him; too much of the dreamy and pensive lay in this face, and she loved the hard, angular brows in men more.  The act was for her that which granted value to men, not the idea.  It had always possessed something subordinate for her.
  “You know that Fritz is about to change jobs,” said Hans Warsow, well in the wish to give the conversation an objective turn.  But for her it was as if he would have read out of her gaze what she had just felt in the stillness.  “And do you also know well that he already settled into his new job in Bärwalde?”
  “He notified me of it when he appeared here unexpected one evening.”
  The thought of this evening, of Fritz’s arrival high on horseback, here on the veranda woke up in her with such vividness that a cheerful smile 

---16--- 

flit across her pretty mouth.  She recounted the incident.  But he didn’t show an interest in her cheerfulness; on the contrary, he became even more serious, and in the gently entering dawn his face appeared to her a shade paler and gloomier than it had so far.
     “That’s like him!  Although he is old enough to wean himself from such tricks.”
     She was annoyed at his words.  That was Hans Warsow, exactly as he stood in her memory, as she had often heard her father, who favored him little, describe him:  full of himself and from a higher vantage point judging the actions of others condescendingly and disparagingly.

Interesting Words I Came Across

• das Bauchknöpfchen - belly button
• der Kasus - case [in the sense of grammatical case; the case in sense of container is der Kasten.  More then a few times, my Latin professor impressed upon us students the importance of recognizing multiple meanings of a word in a particular context.  He complained that the textbook used "in this case" where "in this instance" would have been better suited because otherwise it could easily be misconstrued that grammatical cases were being talked about when they really weren't.  So it's interesting that - for this particular word, at least - that ambiguity wouldn't occur in German.]
• im falschen Zug sitzen - be barking up the wrong tree [literally: to sit in the wrong train]

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

Originally, I thought that something had happened that resulted in a cataclysmic shift in Edith and Warsow's relationship because the pronouns that they use had changed.  I even wrote:

It seems like something has caused a rift between Warsow and Edith in the break between chapter one and chapter two.  There's her stinging remark about how their social circles had better things to do than mingle with each other, which she "casually retort[s]," but there's something else that indicates this change too.  A few months ago, I noticed that Warsow and Edith were using the informal du to address each other, but here, Warsow uses the formal pronouns (it would be Sie in the nominative case, but since all the instances so far are in accusative, it's Ihnen).  He says, "Ich bringe Ihnen" ("I bring you") and "bei Ihnen" ("with you").

It wasn't until weeks later that I realized that it wasn't Fritz Warsow; it's Hans Warsow, his brother.  I guess tunnel vision is a side-effect of translation a novel one sentence at a time.
Fritz and Edith's relationship seems to be the same then, but the formal German pronouns that Hans and Edith use with each other still illustrate something about the characters that my English translation can really only hint at.

Warsow (Hans Warsow) quotes Egmont ("I believe it is Egmont who once said, 'If you take life a bit too seriously, what is it?'").  I haven't read it and amn't even familiar with it, but I'm assuming that Goethe's play Egmont is Warsow's source.

I think "Sie find ein bekannter Mann geworden" is subjunctive, but mostly it just confused me.  Because "sie" starts the sentence, I don't know if it's capitalized or not, so I don't know whether it's the formal you or they or she.  The conjugation of the verb could help narrow those options, but it doesn't seem to agree with any (it'd be "sie finden" or "sie findet").  "Geworden" is a past-tense of "werden," which also complicates things.  I eventually translated that section as "You'd find he'd become a well-known man," but I'm extremely dubious of the accuracy, especially because I had to stick in that he pronoun myself.

Die Dämmerung can be translated as either "the dawn" or "the twilight."  So far in this chapter, there hasn't been anything that indicates the time, but since it starts out with der Reckensteiner doing work on the grange, I translated it as "the dawn."  Farmers are known for getting up really early.
I'm not sure how useful it is to try to write commentary on the novel as I'm translating it, but this sentence seems to portray Hans Warsow as unnatural.  As the dawn comes in, he becomes "paler and gloomier."