This Month's Installment
Aside from the Flying Dutchman, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:It forced its way into every pore, it made steam rise from every stone, it made every leaf swell. Like a steel plate the sea lay completely motionless, as if it were not even water anymore, and in such a deep blue that against it the cloudless sky appeared with an almost pale clarity. In the silver-gleaming streaks that stretcht across the dark blue, now and then sailboats emerged and stood fixed and motionless. In the border however between the sea and the sky
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ran a ship, leaving smoke behind it in a long line as straight as an arrow, so shadowy its course that one thought the Flying Dutchman glided through the ghostly still water.
Now even life stopt off in Zoppot. In the "seastar" every room had been bookt for weeks in advance. A society of men from all countries had assembled there: to the Germans, who were in the majority, not only Poles and Russians, but also Frenchmen and Englishmen; because the sport week, the big sensation of the summer, was just around the corner.
Monsieur Guerard now sat by the side of his very slender, charming wife at every meal, but still had eyes and words for the pretty Nuscha, who had taken over the place across from them. And at Hans' table had sat two Englishmen and a flaxen-haired miss, the sister of the one, whom likewise had come for the sport week and spoke of nothing else but tennis, in which they were masters. He steered clear of them. He had never loved this nation and on all of his trips had gone out of his way to avoid it. So he stayed on his own more than ever.
But Nuscha, however, he saw more often, even outside of the building. Actually, she was everywhere: in the Kur house, at the concerts, where she moved in the most dense stream of people, which she liked best, on the sea bridge, where her face with lively, restless eyes searching and examining scanned the passers-by.
But even on his lonely hikes he met her. Afterwards she sat in any secret spot on the dune or on the beach and had a long notebook on her lap in which
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she made marks with a large pencil. Once he surprised her, as he approached her from behind, unnoticed. But she quickly closed the notebook.
"Are you a poet or an artist?" he askt.
"Neither, I'm much too prosaic for that. But now and then I write down a thought that just comes to me. Or I make for myself a little sketch of the surroundings. One learns it soon, if one travels so much."
"Couldn't I see it once? Or maybe you'll read something to me?"
"It wouldn't pass your criticism," she replied curtly and put the notebook in the black folder that she took with her on her morning hikes.
Commentary/Grammatical Minutiae
The sentence "In jede Pore drang sie, aus jedem Stein dampfte sie, jedes Blatt schwellte sie" ("It forced its way into every pore, it made steam rise from every stone, it made every leaf swell") exhibits anaphora (the repeated "jede" ["every"]), and this gives a sense of the ubiquitousness of the heat.I went with the functionally equivalent "was just around the corner," but I want to point out that the expression in the original text is literally "stood at the door" - "stand vor der Tür."
I couldn't think of a way to include this in my translation, but "the pretty Nuscha" rhymes (or nearly rhymes) in the original: "die hübsche Nuscha."
