In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me,"just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
我的父亲曾在我年纪尚轻不谙世事的时候教会我让我每每想起都受用不已的一句话:“每次在你想批评什么人之前,”他告诉我,“想想这些人在这个世界上并没有机会得到你所拥有的优秀条件。”
He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that(弦外之音). In consequence I'm inclined(惯于)to reserve all judgments,a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores(惹人讨厌的家伙).
他没有再说什么,但我了解他的说话风格,也知道这句话的意义不只存在于它的字面。在他影响之下的我就惯于保留对别人的看法;这个习惯让不少的人或认为我适合倾听,或认为我无趣至极。
The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.(因为我耳闻一些放荡的,不知名的人的秘密伤心事)
一个有这个特殊习惯的普通人会很容易被心理不正常的人察觉并抓住不放;于是,替别人守住放荡的伤心秘密的我,总是在大学期间被刻薄地认为是一个颇有心计的政客。
Most of the confidences were unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep,preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic(剽窃性的) and marred by obvious suppression(而且多有明显的隐瞒).
“绝大多数的隐私都不是我打听来的——每逢我根据某种明白无误的迹象看出又有一次倾诉衷情在地平线上喷薄欲出的时候,我往往假装睡觉,假装心不在焉,或者装出不怀好意的轻佻态度。因为青年人倾诉的衷情,或者至少他们表达这些衷情所用的语言,往往是剽窃性的,而且多有明显的隐瞒”---(原翻译)
Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.
保留看法是对真实无限的期望。我有些担心忘记父亲固执的教导和我偏执的重复,要对每一个人的不同保留体面的尊重。
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.
尽管我会这样自夸自己的大度和忍耐力,我不得不承认我的忍耐力是有限的。我甚至可以忍受坚石决绝,可以忍受泥泞的束缚,但到达忍耐的极限后我就会不管不顾。
When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby,the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.
自从上个秋天从东边回来,我深切地盼望社会能够统一对道德进行审视,而不是任那些内心深处因对阶级荣誉的敏感而逐渐腐坏的人心肆意蔓延。只有盖茨比,那个赋予这本书生命的男人,是我厌弃那里的一个例外---盖茨比代表了一切我发自肺腑的鄙夷。
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.
如果性格是由一系列毫无破绽的姿态展现出来的,那么盖茨比看上去就像精确的仪器那样完美地诠释着体内的优雅和恰到好处对生命的感性,就像记录几千英里外的地震仪一样敏感。
This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.
这般敏感绝对不代表他敷衍、圆滑的性格—那是一种天生对浪漫的渴求和希望,那是一个我此后在其他人身上无法发现也不会发现的天赋。
No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby,what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elation of men.
不—盖茨比其实都是对的;盖茨比才是那个被吞噬的猎物,也正是那些搅扰他睡梦的丑陋和混沌让我在此后对人们痛苦和短暂的欢愉暂时失去了兴趣。
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