Summertime

“Summertime” is a recurring song title in the book’s musical framing: it appears once beside a reflection on the narrator’s acquired German and again in a later sequence of song listings. The evidence establishes this recurrence, but does not identify a particular recording or explain the song’s meaning within the story.

First Appearance

The first listing follows the narrator’s account of learning German through contact with people from across the country, especially Lorna and Birgit. She describes her unusual vocabulary as Berlin slang mixed with scholarly words in faulty declensions, and regards acquiring it at the brothel as an unlikely accomplishment she could report to her astonished family. She compares the effort of understanding Lorna and Birgit to working through difficult books, and calls them her version of Molly Bloom’s monologue. “Summertime” appears immediately after this reflection, making the song part of the passage’s musical accompaniment without specifying how its lyrics or mood relate to the scene.

Recurrence in the Closing Listings

The title returns in a sequence near the book’s end, between “Love Me or Leave Me” and “Ballrooms of Mars.” This later appearance confirms that “Summertime” is one of the work’s repeated musical selections rather than a title confined to the earlier passage. The sequence supplies no further account of the song or its performance, so the recurrence is the clearest supported connection between its two appearances.