如果dude今天跟我作问答题,哪本书最近看了让我睡不着觉,那我就得说是这本书。从前喜欢追逐情节,只了解故事梗概,没有认真读这本书。昨天在飞机上读这本书,亲近的人却觉得非常非常远,心情一落千丈,黑暗无边,Gatsby的忧郁感伤也传染到我身上,Daisy的无情拜金竟然也是身边的故事,大约我的春梦也该醒了。
Fitzgerald是真天才。偷懒,转贴网上的读书笔记。
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阮一峰 发表于 2005年07月13日 | 分类:首页 -> 档案 -> 文学
在第八章中,Gatsby回忆了他初遇见Daisy时的情景。一个穷小子爱上富家小姐,他到底爱的是这个姑娘本身,还是她所代表的上层生活呢?
最终来说,Gatsby爱上的不是Daisy,而是他念念不忘的美国梦。他追求Daisy,就是为了追求他的梦。
这一段写得非常深刻和优美。我把中英对照的全文都贴在下面。我认为优美的英语句子,都用黑体标出来了。
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It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody--told it to me because "Jay Gatsby." had broken up like glass against Tom's hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything now, without reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.
就是这天夜里,他把他跟丹·科迪度过的年轻时代的离奇故事告诉了我,因为“杰伊·盖茨比”已经像玻璃一样在汤姆的铁硬的恶意上碰得粉碎,那出漫长的秘密狂想剧也演完了。我想他这时什么都可以毫无保留地承认,但他只想谈黛西的事。
She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him--he had never been in such a beautiful house before. but what gave it an air of breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there--it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it,a hint of bedrooms up-stairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor-cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house,pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.
她是他所认识的第一个“大家闺秀”。他以前以各种未透露的身份电曾和这一类人接触过,但每次总有一层无形的铁丝网隔在中间。他为她神魂颠倒。他到她家里去,起先和泰勒营的其他军官一起去,后来单独前往。她的家使他惊异——他从来没进过这样美丽的住宅,但是其所以有一种扣人心弦的强烈的情凋却是因为她住在那里——这房子对于她就像他在军营里的帐篷对于他一样地平淡无奇。这房子充满了引人入胜的神秘气氛,仿佛暗示楼上有许多比其他卧室都美丽而凉爽的卧室,走廊里到处都是赏心乐事,还有许多风流艳史——不是霉烘烘、用熏香草保存起来的,而是活生生的,使人联想到今年的雪亮的汽车-联想到鲜花还没凋谢的舞会-很多男人曾经爱过黛西。这也使他激动——这在他眼中增高了她的身价,他感到她家里到处都有他们的存在。空气中弥漫着仍然颤动的感情的阴影和回声。
But he knew that he was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident.However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present apenniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the mostof his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously--eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he hadno real right to touch her hand.
但是,他明白他之所以能出入黛西家里纯粹是出于偶然,不管他作为杰伊·盖茨比会有何等的锦绣前程,目前他只是一个默默无闻、一文不名的青年人,而且他的军服——这件看不见的外衣随时都可能从他肩上滑落下来。因此地尽所利用他的时间,他占有了他所能得到的东西,狼吞点咽,肆无忌惮——终于在一个静寂的十月的夜晚他占有了黛西,占有了她,正因为他并没有否正的权利去摸她的手。
He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself--that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities--he had no comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal governmentto be blown anywhere about the world.
他也许应该鄙视自己的,因为他确实用欺骗的手段占有了她,我不是说他利用了他那虚幻的百万家财。但是他有意给黛西造成一种安全感,让她相信他的出身跟她不相上下——相信他完全能够照料她。实际上,他并没有这种能力——他背后没有生活优裕的家庭撑腰,而且只要全无人情味的政府一声令下,他随时都可以被调到世界上任何地方去。
But he didn't despise himself and it didn't turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go--but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn't realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her richh ouse, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby--nothing. He felt married to her, that was all.
但是他并没有鄙视自己,事情的结果也出乎他的意料。他起初很可能打算及时行乐,然后一走了之——但是现在他发现他已经把自己献身于追求一种理想。他知道黛西不间寻常,但是他并没认识到一位“大家闺秀”究竟有多少不同寻常。她回到她那豪华的住宅里,回到她那丰富美满的生活,突然不见了,给盖茨比什么也没留下。他觉得他已经和她结了婚了,如此而已。
When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless,who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth.She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes,and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
两天之后,他们俩再见面时,显得心慌意乱,似乎上当受骗的倒是盖茨比。她家凉台沐浴在灿烂的星光里。她转身让他吻她那张奇妙、可爱的嘴时,时髦的长靠椅的柳条吱吱作响,她看了凉,她的声音比平时更沙哑,更动人。盖茨比深切地体会到财富怎样禁甸和保存青春与神秘,体会到一套套衣装怎样使人保持清析,体会到黛西像白银一样皎皎发光,安然高踞于穷苦人激烈的生存斗争之上。
"I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her,old sport. I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over, but she didn't, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her. . . . Well, there I was,'way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?"
我没法向你形容我发现自己爱上了她以后感到多么惊讶,老兄。有一阵我甚至希望她把我甩掉,但她没有,因为她也爱我。她认为我懂很多事,因为我懂的和她懂的不一样……唉,我就是那样,把雄心壮志撇在一边,每一分钟都在情网“越陷越深,而且忽然之间我也什么都不在乎了。如果我能够告诉她我打算去做些什么而从中得到更大的快乐,那么又何必去做大事呢?”
On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisyin his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with firein the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and hechanged his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.
在他动身到海外之前的最后一个下午,他搂着黛西默默地坐了很长的时间。那是一个寒冷的秋日,屋子里生了火,她的两颊烘得通红。她不时移动一下,他也微微挪动一同胳臂,有一次他还吻吻她那乌黑光亮的头发。下午已经使他们平静了一会,仿佛为了在他们记忆中留下一个深刻的印象,为第二天即将开始的长远的分离做好准备。她用无言的嘴唇拂过地上衣的肩头,或者他温柔地碰一碰她的指尖,仿佛她是在睡梦之中,他俩在这一月的相爱中从来没有像这样亲密过,也从来没有像这样深刻地互通衷曲。
- posted on 09/13/2007
Saturday, October 16, 2004 | 分类:目录 -> 英语 -> 文学
The Great Gatsby是我一直想读,却一直没有读完的书。现在,下决心在今年冬天把它读完。该书的英语非常规范,而且生动,有很高的学习价值。所以决定边学边做笔记。
我认为我所摘录都是很有价值的东西,如果你对英语感兴趣的话,很值得精读哦。在每段下面,我加了一些阅读心得和评语。
下面是第三章后半部分的一些笔记。
The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn.
多迷人的月色啊!
It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
最知心的朋友就该是这样。
The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano, and beside her stood a tall, red-haired young lady from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly, that everything was very, very sad - she was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano.
The tears coursed down her cheeks - not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and went off into a deep vinous sleep.
"She had a fight with a man who says he's her husband,." explained a girl at my
elbow. I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands.
难以想像菲茨杰拉德会写出这么滑稽的段落,看的时候真是把我笑死了。
Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow quietly away.
I took dinner usually at the Yale Club - for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day - and then I went up-stairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour.
There were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the library, so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel, and over 33d Street to the Pennsylvania Station.
唉,这就是一个所谓的坐办公室的白领生活。忙碌而又空虚。
I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove.
Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded rough
a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others - poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner - young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi-cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.
上海和纽约真是有相似的地方。
对于我来说,繁华灯火中的孤独就是这个样子。
Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply - I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.
这句话的意思是不忠诚是女人的天性。虽然很不幸,但这是实话。
I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires.
这句话我要背下来,本人就是slow-thinking、full of interior rules、having brakes on desires的人啊.
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
这句话对我也适用,呵呵。我也是老实人啊。 - posted on 09/13/2007
阮一峰 发表于 2004年10月20日 | 分类:首页 -> 档案 -> 文学
下面是第四章的读书笔记。
He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American - that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of
restlessness.
我觉得,这句话算是比较难的了。不过,菲茨杰拉德就最爱写这种风格的句子。
It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous
length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns.
这是描写20年代的一辆豪华汽车的。我觉得,用在描写暴发户身上也很合适。不过,令人不解的是挡风玻璃为什么会是“terraced with a labyrinth”呢?今天的汽车似乎都只有一块挡风玻璃的呀。
A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.
当你遇到你不想回答的问题,开始搪塞了。就可以用到上面这句话来描述你的反应。
I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
对于某些人来说,金钱的意义在于它有助于抚平内心的空虚。
Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
这句话写的是通过皇后区大桥进入纽约时的情景。这个城市令人惊奇,充满希望和奇迹。最后一句中的“promise”一词令人叹服。
She began to cry - she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid, and we locked the
door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow. But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over.
这段很像后来海明威的风格。
They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation.
在这句里面,move是“交往”的意思,fast是行为放荡的意思。
The clear voices of girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.
很诗意的句子。
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.."
(中译)我的耳边兴奋的跳出一句警句:“世界上只有追求者,被追求者,忙碌的人和疲倦的人......”
Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.
肉体的幸福胜于相思的痛苦。
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