This Month's Installment
What's italicized is what I'm unsure about:Slowly and peacefully the waves came in, something dreamlike, soporific was in them. Against the white of their crests that shone as if it were made up of pure snowflakes, it stood out from the extensive, almost reddish dunes.
The promenades and paths that laid there lonely for days were filled with a constantly growing stream of people. One had not seen Zoppot so full on a weekday and on top of that before the real main-time. Certainly, one had to make up for his long deprivation.
Even Hans was among the people out on a walk. Leisurely he strolled along the promenade, heard in the Kur Garden from the excellent choir a rhapsody by Liszt and a dance by Brahms, and walkt far along the sea-built bridge, the biggest and most beautiful that he could remember seeing in a seaside resort. All around him giving and taking looks, greeting and chatting, laughing and flirting without end. And the music played the accompaniment to it, and the waves murmured their eternal song.
He didn't look to the right and left; full of quiet delight he breathed the fresh forest fragrance that rose from the sea and whose fruity breeze pierced the soul, so to speak.
All of a sudden, however, he was snatched from his happy contemplation. Under the people who had up until now moved up and down the bridge with such cheerful ease, something wonderful appeared to happen. The stream gathered, stopt short,
---63---
people stood still formed groups, spoke lively to one another, shook their heads, made furious motions and gestures.
Grammatical Commentary/Minutiae
I translated "Hauptzeit" as "main-time," which is what my dictionary said, but I'm not sure it really fits this context.I translated "frischen Waldduft" so that it becomes alliterative ("fresh forest fragrance") to give a lingual impression of the "delight" ("Entzückens") mentioned earlier in that sentence.
I don't know if this is intended to be similar, but "in die Seele drang" (which I translated as "pierced the soul") uses the same words as Luther's translation of Luke 2:35: "und auch durch deine Seele wird ein Schwert dringen..." ("and a sword will pierce through your own soul also...").
Because I'm translating this piecemeal and because I'm not familiar with the story and don't know the larger context of what's going on, some of my word choices might later prove unsuitable. At the end of this section, something precipitous starts to happen and is described as "Wunderbares," which I translated as "wonderful." In reaction to this, people make "heftige Bewegungen und Gesten" ("furious motions and gestures"). These don't seem to go together, but I can't amend my translation until I get further along in the story and learn what this event is.
