Month 25: Pages 37-38

This Month's Installment

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

     "You see, Fritz," Hans remarkt, "because you would have to replace uncle, where he can no longer do it, and you certainly haven't been there for a church service a single time yet."
     "No, my dear!  Not a single time!  On Sundays I stay in bed; it's the only day when I can, sometimes 

---37---

right into the afternoon.  And my church service - well, Hans, these meadows and fields, the grazing livestock, the foals in the paddock, and the rustling woods all around us.  Do you mean then that all that is no church service, when one only has eyes to see it and ears to hear it?  It's one for me at least; I don't need the church."
     Hans wrinkled his brow.  "You know how I love all that.  But a good sermon - and the old man over there knows his stuff - increases the delight I get from it.  Besides, I thought you had changed your view in this a little."
     "Mr. Warsow is completely right," Hutemach, whose word was worth much in Bärwald and whom the two young men held in an incontestable respect, joined the conversation now.  "See, Captain, how often I have said that to you!  But you didn't want to believe it and thought it would be enough if I prayed for you."
     Fritz relented.  "Let one be good, Hans.  I'm coming along tomorrow, if there's no hurry because you will already want to go in the afternoon while I have to do; but in the evening I'm picking you up with the taxi, if only the cute Little Red Riding Hood from Samaria paid her respects to me."
     "Always the same!" said Hans, and now there was something like anger in his voice.  "Whom does he mean by the cute Little Red Riding Hood from Samaria?" he askt Hutemach.
     "A granddaughter of Pastor."

Grammatical Minutiae

I combined the two words in the phrase "nie angefochtenes" to get "incontestable."  "Nie" means "never" and "angefochtenes" is a past participle from "anfechten," which means "to contest" or "to challenge."  Translating "nie angefochtenes" somewhat literally to get "never-challenged" seemed a bit cumbersome; "incontestable" seemed much simpler.

Month 24: Pages 36-37

This Month's Installment

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

     Now Fritz came too, with Borowski, the inspector, from work.  He had changed all of his clothes, was fresh and cheerful and very pleased when the brother suddenly sat next to them at the table.  And with what pleasure!  In the summer a big [Satte] with thick milk and the coarse farm bread.  In the winter, a plate piled high with warm grits and afterwards, when it was possible, [Stippe] with bacon and gray peas, or, when it came up, [Schmandkartoffeln] with [Bratklops] and cream cheese or [Glumse], those were his favorite foods. 

---36---

Happily, he left them for all the magnificence that Hutemach had dished up for the uncle and Hans.  Because he had become a little more of a cultured man and had a more delicate stomach that was not completely prepared for the heavy East Prussian cuisine.  Only the sorrel soup with the melted egg in it or the plate with pure Königsberg [Fleck] did he not allow himself to take; lunch always had to offer one of the two if he was there.
     In late autumn, he had come to Bärwalde on vacation even for a whole week.  These were red-letter days, one like the other.
     "Listen, Fritz," said Hans the very first evening, "to-morrow I have to go see the old pond-digger, and you have to go with.  It's outrageous that you haven't made a visit to the old gentleman yet."
     "We have no time to be making visits in the country, Hans.  You're not allowed to put such high cultural demands on us.  We are farmers and plow our clod.  We don't worry about the people, their formalities and customs."
     "But with his priest, one must make an exception," threw in the old Bärwald resident, "the Pronitten pastor has always been close to us.  I myself, although I wouldn't like to make any demands on church matters, have gone into his sermons now and then.  Just for his sake."

Grammatical Minutiae

I don't have much to say about this month's installment.  There were a lot of food words that weren't in my dictionary, so I had to leave a lot in brackets.  I could recognize Kartoffeln (potatoes) in "Schmandkartoffeln," but that wasn't very helpful.

I couldn't find a good translation for "Kirchlichkeit" either.  My dictionary has the adjective "kirchlich," which it translates as "church" and "ecclesiastical" among other similar words.  It's obvious that it has something to do with church (I could tell that even before looking it up), but it's a noun, not an adjective.  I translated it as "church matters."  I don't think it's actually a plural in the original text, but the meaning is close enough.

Month 23: Pages 35-36

This Month's Installment

The italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:

     In the withered features of the old uncle also lay something like a celebrating peace and a gleaming, despite his dim eyes that couldn't see much any more, but when they were young had lookt out on this blessed landscape in the same way, this peacefully lookt after property with its old but well-maintained buildings and trees.  Nothing that happened on the large farm escaped his keen eye in those days.
     The old man had a strange nature.  Usually he sat silently, indifferently, when the others spoke around him.  Then at once he cut in in the conversation, and immediately one knew that he had heard and well understood everything.  Now he expressed his view, and then what he usually said in short, concise words made complete sense and hit the nail on the head.  Above all Hans talked about intellectual things with no one as gladly as with the old man, and it was difficult to decide who of the two gave or received more.
     The old gentleman could not endure the stay in the open air for a long time.  Although he sat in a winter coat, he soon shivered; then one went into the house.  There Miss Hutemach has prepared supper in the meantime.  She was Lithuanian by birth; from

---35---

her earliest youth on, brought to the most varied places in the world, she had acquired a comprehensive education, much talent and tact in dealing with people, and a good dose of personal bravery, which never left her.  As the brother of the Bärwald resident, the old privy councillor in Berlin, searched for an associate, luck could lead him to no one more suitable than this.  Now for a number of years she shared the loneliness of Bärwald with the frail lord of the manor, lookt after the house and yard for him, wrote his letters, read him his newspapers in the morning and evening, kept him to regular hours that had to be kept to the second, walkt in the big, well-tended garden or on the country lane depending on the condition of the weather, and took great care of him.  A wife could not have done it better.
     Even now at dinner she say next to the "Captain" - as the Reckenstein citizen and other neighbors still called him, with the title of the long-ago military time - reached the dishes for him, gave him what was easily digestible for him, and prepared it for him with great care.

Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary

The phrase "hit the nail on the head" is actually in the German text, although it has a different verb:  "traf den Nagel auf den Kopf."  It's literally "met the nail on the head," but it's close enough.  The other idiom in that sentence doesn't have an English equivalent:  "[es] hatte alles Hand und Fuß."  Literally, it's "[it] had all hand and foot."  My dictionary tells me that "Hand und Fuß haben" means "to make sense," so I translated "alles" as "complete," resulting in "it made complete sense."

Back in July, I was confused by "Hutemach."  I thought it was an occupation, but in translating a sentence this month, I discovered that it's actually a name:  "Da hatte Fräulein Hutemach inzwischen das Abendbrot bereitet."

Month 22: Pages 34-35

This Month's Installment

The italicized portions are what I'm unsure about:

the rooster over it as a weathervane, and the bell in the [Dachgestühl], that called to work and announced the celebration.  How familiar this sound was to him, how it spoke its own language that only he could understand!  He and perhaps Fritz, but he (Fritz) was much younger than he (Hans) and had discovered only later what he (Hans) had experienced for a long time.  And again in his way, because they both had their certain idiosyncrasy that united and divided them.  Only in one thing were they the same:  in the love of this property of their ancestors, to every building, every tree, every blade of grass on it.  For them, Bärwald meant the center of the home in which they were rooted.
     And in the act: this old property with its deep areas and ranges, its green meadows and rich pastures, the vast rings of ancient forests, that encompassed the whole horizon, the wide dikes that intersected it on its borders, and the bridges with the black and white railings, that led over it - it was like an excerpt of the fertile, blessed East Prussian country.  And at darkening evening when Hans sat on the wooden bench on the veranda with the old uncle and the rustling poplars over them played the song of time, its eternal melody of growth and fading, when on the drive, on the other side of the oval plaza, the large herd came drawing homewards, the sound of their bells united with the contented bellowing, and behind them, the cutters with scythes and tools settled their houses on the farmstead, when over them all the sun stood like a glowing 

---34--- 

disc in the blazing sky and with them greeted the last light on the old Pronitten church over there on the distant horizon, on the other side of the large dyke.  Then he was overcome by a wonderful silent, secret, happy feeling of security, and he felt nothing but blissful consciousness, now finally, after a long hike, to be back home again in the ardently loved, often missed East Prussian land!  He spoke no word, any syllable would have been a desecration for him.

Grammatical Minutiae

I couldn't find Dachgestühl in my dictionary.  I can put together Dach (roof) and Stühl (chair) to get a sense of the word (it's some kind of housing for the bell that's mentioned earlier in the sentence), but I can't think of a way to say that in English.

I'm not sure rings is the best translation for Kranze in "dem gewaltigen Kranze uralter Wälder," but none of the words my dictionary suggested seemed to fit this context very well.

One of the sentences mentions "die alte Pronitter Kirche." I could tell that "Pronitter" was an adjective derived from a geographic location, so I lookt up "Pronitter" to see if I could find where it is.  Apparently, it's Pronitten in German, but otherwise known as Slawjanskoje.  Looking this up on Google Maps, however, I found that it's about 1,000 kilometers away from the three Barwälds I found last September, so I find it very unlikely that one can see the sun set on Pronitten from Barwäld, which is what happens in the book (at least, I think that's what happens; there was no preposition, so I supplied the "on").  I'm assuming then that Brausewetter made up one or the other of these places (or perhaps even both).

I couldn't find "heißgeliebten" (or even heißlieben) in my dictionary, but I did find that heiß can mean ardently.  I knew that lieben is to love, so I translated as "heißgeliebten" as "ardently loved," subtly referencing Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy.

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!"