This Month's Installment
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.
"Then we must go back again. No path leads upwards here."
"Why do we need a path and a bridge? Sometimes you really act as if you were an old man... forward!"
As nimble as a chamois she clumb up the steep elevation, now and then she graspt one of the numerous shrubs with her hand in order to pull herself up by it. At the same time she spoke and joked, turning back to him without stopping, although now he didn't even hear a syllable. Everything was in her movement: every muscle of her lithe body, the black curly hair that the wind
---70---
tousled, and the cherry-red lips from which the words fell as smoothly and easily as pearls.
Now they walkt again on level, well-kept paths through deciduous and coniferous woods, through the trees they saw the foam-crowned water, the dull thunderous [Geprall] of the waves prest on their ears.
"I went here almost every day last year. He workt then on his veranda, and the children played on the beach."
"And his wife?" he askt casually.
She glanced at him with a quick look: "She lay in her hammock in the South Park and read Dostoyevsky's 'Raskolnikov.'"
Gradually the forest disappeared and then thinned out completely. Now there were only individual knotted and withered trunks in the dense dune-sand.
They walkt along the edge of a cornfield with cheeky blue and red invaders that swayed on the slender stalks like dreaming idlers. With a strong hand the window swept over the high ears, they duckt down and rose again and murmured like the waves of the water. Under the clouds, which piled up darker and thicker, flew a flock of ravens toward the sea, and over a fallow field a shepherd with his flock moved to the horizon; the polyphonic bleating of the animals united with the excited screeching of the ravens. Loudly the dpg barkt. The first houses of Adlershorst became visible.
"Now, first we will got into the Kur House and drink a cup of coffee," she suggested," and then I will lead you through the small [uckige] village high up on the summit of th eAdlershorst. There we will have the most beautiful view of the world."
---71---
In the large hall of the Kur House, it was empty and uncomfortable, he felt a little cosy, she however with visible desire spooned up the chocolate that she had ordered for herself and polished off a mountain of cake besides; now and then the tiny tip of her tongue slid over her red lips in order to wipe up the remains of the cake crumbs from them. A certain craving was in her way of eating, nothing elegant, but also nothing off-putting. Even here appeared, as in all expressions of her character, the true child of nature that had borrowed from culture and society only as much veneer as was unavoidably necessary for the people of our days.
"I once read a Russian novel," he said, "it was very sad, but good. The heroine was a young girl of the steppe. She has stirred up in my memory again since I've been together with you."
Again the quick glancing look.
"It was very sad?"
"Yes."
"Like life - no, not to-day, to-day it is beautiful and full of strength like the storm outside. I am full, we can go outside again."
He paid, she let it happen as a matter of course and didn't even thank him.
The storm had gained strength, as it does here on the coast only seldom, especially at the beginning of July. With long-winded pushes the sea came thundering against the shore, the swirling waves blew like a pack of mad dpgs, they lashed against the posts of the small swimming pool. And when their white [Gischtköpfe] smashed on them, then they roared, irritated through the resistance, like a wild animal up to the sky
---72---
that now - stuffy and leaden without any view of the light, almost without a hue - hung over the excited waters.
They had stept onto the sea-bridge.
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
Although I would usually translate Herr as gentleman, I translated it as man here because "you really act as if you were an old man" reads better as a playful insult than "you act as if you were an old gentleman."Rather than "sie," Nuscha refers to the Baroness with "die" ("Die lag in ihrer Hängematte..."). I couldn't think of a way to put this in my translation, but I feel this specific word choice illustrates distance between the two characters.
This seems kind of backwards to me, but the original text does says that the forest disappears before it thins out: "All mählich verlor sich der Wald und lichtete sich dann ganz."
I have a few comments on the clause "das vielstimmige Blöken der Tiere einte sich mit dem aufgeregten Gekrächz der Raben." The only suggested translation my dictionary has for "vielstimmige" is "polyphonic." "Many-voiced" is a more literal translation and probably would have fit better, but I thought "the polyphonic bleating" sounded funny, so I kept it. I couldn't find direct translations for "einte sich" or "Gekrächz," but I'm pretty sure of my translations of "united" and "screeching" (respectively) based on related words. (I did consider simply keeping Gekrächz because it's a great onomatopoeic word.) Also, I find it interesting - but perhaps a bit confusing - that the German word for ravens (Raben) sounds exactly the same as robin in English. Same sound; different bird.
