So about half way through Part Eight now . . . (warning for potential spoilers for those not at that point yet)
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Originally Posted by caleb72
I guess I'll find out more as I progress. I'm enjoying the translation and the attempt to also translate the dialect and slang into appropriate English lingo, but at the same time it does seem a bit weird. I start to feel that I'm reading an English rather than a German novel. Is anyone else feeling this?
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I was feeling all right with the Woods translation until I 'met' Herr Permaneder. Speaks something like Huckleberry Finn.
When I was finishing graduate school (about 1985) I spent three months at a university in Munich (Technische Universität München). I did not (and do not) read or speak any German, I was just there because of the research topic for my dissertation. However, in the Chemistry Department there were graduate students from all over Germany, as well as a German speaking post-doctoral fellow from Mexico. All seemed to be able to converse amongst themselves without problem. Perhaps there would have been greater variation in dialect in the 19th Century? I was also told that the Bavarian dialect was very close to the German spoken in Austria. It was interesting to read in this book about how Bavaria was overwhelmingly Catholic. When at the university in Munich I recall one of the graduate students telling me that because of this Catholic background Bavaria had more holidays than any other part of Germany. Certainly it seemed like every week or two I would show up in the morning and there would be no one there. The next day I would be informed that yesterday had been Saint Slackoff Day, or something like that.
I wonder if at the time of this book Bavarians were really looked upon as lazy hicks by those in Northern Germany?
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Originally Posted by caleb72
Tony is quite interesting. In a way she is right when she says that she is a victim, although second time around in the marriage game I think less so. Everything is a bit of a disaster, but I'm not sure I can hold it that much against her. She understood what her duty was and that her marriage was her means to bring honour to the family name/firm. If I look at her story from a modern standpoint, it becomes a cautionary tale about the importance of looking beyond the periphery aspects of a match and actually understand the "who". In her first marriage all her instincts were correct and she succumbed to the pressure of her family's expectations. I agree with her father that he was largely to blame for this error. But for the second marriage, there's not much discussion of what she actually thought about the suitor from Munich. This left me feeling that she perhaps didn't have as much to say about him as a person and was eager only to right a wrong for her family's honour.
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It seems to me that, while it was unfortunate that Tony was pushed by her father into marriage with Grünlich, she was never going to be happy in any marriage for how high her nose was always in the air. Even her first love Doctor Morten would never have been able to provide her a lifestyle that was “elegant” enough to meet her expectations.
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Originally Posted by caleb72
Christian, I just see as a buffoon. I was actually hoping he would contract some horrible illness that would end him and get him out of everyone's hair. I'm still not sure how he's going to play in the downfall, but it looks like his complete lack of discipline while craving an independence he doesn't deserve is going to be a strong factor. I wonder how much being the second son impacted his development. Limited expectation, forever in Tom's shadow. Could it have helped in this rather passive rebellion?
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Yes, Christian is a hopeless drag on the family, seemingly interested in nothing but leading a life of entertaining leisure. It is also no help that from an early age he was a hopeless hypochondriac.
I find the occasional mentions of “poor Klothilde” (she seems always to be mentioned with that modifier, that or hungry) odd, as if the character is there for comic relief. Her one role seems to be to consume mass quantities of nourishment.
