he was a son of god—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about his father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.
10、許多種情感魚貫似地流露到她的臉上,仿佛正被沖洗著的相紙一點一點地顯示出物景那樣。
so engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.
11、我整夜沒睡;霧笛聲一個勁兒在桑德海灣上悽惻地鳴響,我輾轉反側,像生了病一樣,理不清哪些是猙獰的現實,哪些是可怕的夢魘。
i couldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the sound, and i tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams.
12、她消逝在了她那奢華的房子裡,消逝在了她那富裕充實的生活之中,留給蓋茨比的——只是無有。
she vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving gatsby—nothing.
13、蓋茨比比以前任何時候都深切地感受到了財富所能賜予青春的魅力和它所能持有的神秘,感受到了錦衣靚飾的清新怡人,意識到了像銀子似的發著熠熠光彩的黛西,安然傲倨於勞苦人為生活所做的拚死鬥爭之上。
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.
14、從這話里,除了能窺測出他對這一無法衡量出的情事之緊張的思考程度,還能推斷出什麼呢?
what could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured?
15、如果這一情況真實的話,他那時一定感覺到了他已失去了他原來的那個溫馨世界,感覺到了他為這么長時間只活在一個夢裡所付出的高昂代價。他那時一定舉頭望過 令人恐怖的葉片,看到了一個陌生的天宇,他一定不由得顫慄了,當他發現玫瑰原來長得是那么的奇形怪狀,照在疏疏落落的草葉上的陽光是那么粗鄙。這是一個沒 有真實的物的新世界,在那裡可憐的鬼魂們四處隨風飄蕩,他們像呼吸空氣那樣吮吸著夢幻。
if that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. he must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. a new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.
16、我三十歲了,如果我再年輕五歲的話,我說不定會自己欺騙自己把這稱之為美德的。
i'm thirty. i'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.
17、月光漸漸升高,顯得渺小的房屋開始融入這溶溶的月色中去,此時我的眼前逐漸浮現出這座古老的島嶼當年在荷蘭航海者眼中的那種妖嬈風姿——一個新世界的翠綠 欲滴胸膛。它那現在不復存在的林木(為修造蓋茨比住過的這座別墅被砍伐掉了)曾經溫馨地煽起人類最後的也是最偉大的夢想;在那短暫的神奇時刻里,人類一定 在這片大陸前屏住了呼吸,情不自禁地耽入到他既不理解也沒希冀過的美的享受之中,在歷史上最後一次面對面地欣賞著,這一與他的感受驚奇的力量相稱的景觀。
and as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually i became aware of the old island here that flowered once for dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.