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Excerpt:Scott Fitzgerald’s My Lost City
2012/02/25 09:21
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ExcerptScott Fitzgerald’s My Lost City


如果有人要求我「舉出迄今為止人生中遇到的最重要的三本書」,我不用思考,答案早有。那就是這本《大亨小傳》和杜思妥耶夫斯基的《卡拉馬助夫兄弟們》、雷蒙.錢德勒的《漫長的告別》。哪一部都是我人生(身為讀書人的人生,身為作家的人生)中不可或缺的小說。要是無論如何再讓我只能挑選一本的話,那我會毫不猶豫地選擇《大亨小傳》。如果沒有和《大亨小傳》相遇,我甚至覺得自己說不定會寫出和現在完全不同的小說(或者說不定什麼都不寫。因為那是純粹的假設性話題,自然不會有正確的答案)。
——
村上春樹 2006.9


今年年初剛唸完了《大亨小傳》最新的中譯本,如同費滋傑羅曾經對這部作品的自我剖析:
「我將《大亨小傳》立基在『幻象的破滅』上──正是這樣的幻象,世界才能如此鮮豔。你無須理會真假,但求沾染上那份魔術般的光彩就是了。」

真實與虛幻交錯,人們不斷傳言臆測甚至千方百計挖掘大亨蓋茲比的身世秘密,財富與愛情終究無法兩全其美,冥冥之中似乎皆有定數,小說中人生結局的安排確實巧妙而令人不勝唏噓
然而,我還沒有時間做到村上春樹所提到的「通過原文閱讀是最佳方式」,也沒有那樣的閱讀實力去感受「空氣的微妙流動,使得與其相應的色調和情形、節奏每時每刻都在變化,這樣自由自在的、暢通無阻的美麗文體


取而代之,我找到了這一篇費茲傑羅的隨筆,試著摘要其中的部份內容,索性讓我們一起漫遊這一位失落的一代 (Lost Generation) 的代表性作家所描繪的這一座失落的城市。


Excerpt
書名:我失落的城市 My Lost City
作者:史考特‧費茲傑羅 F. Scott Fitzgerald
中譯:林恵敏

    There was first the ferry boat moving softly from the Jersey shore at dawn? the moment crystalized into my first symbol of New York. Five years later when I was fifteen I went into the city from school to see Ina Claire in The Quaker Girl and Gertrude Bryan in Little Boy Blue. Confused by my hopeless and melancholy love for them both, I was unable to choose between them? so they blurred into one lovely entity, the girl. She was my second symbol of New York. The ferry boat stood for triumph, the girl for romance. In time I was to achieve some of both, but there was a third symbol that I have lost somewhere, and lost forever.
(
首先是渡船輕柔地在破曉時分駛離澤西海岸,這個時刻具體地形成了我的第一個紐約象徵由於同時對她們懷抱著令人無助且悲哀的愛,困惑的我難以從中做出抉擇,因此她們模糊成一個可愛的實體,即女孩。她是我對紐約的第二個象徵。渡船代表著偉大的勝利,而女孩則代表著愛情故事。我遲早要完成其中一樣,但我已經將第三個象徵遺落在某處,而且是永遠地失去了。
)
……
    But that night, in Bunny's apartment, life was mellow and safe, a finer distillation of all that I had come to love at Princeton. The gentle playing of an oboe mingled with city noises from the street outside, which penetrated into the room with difficulty through great barricades of books; only the crisp tearing open of invitations by one man was a discordant note. I had found a third symbol of New York and I began wondering about the rent of such apartments and casting about for the appropriate friends to share one with me.
(
不過在巴尼公寓裡的那天晚上,生活卻是甘美而安穩的,由我在普林斯頓熱愛的所有事物的精華所組成我已經發現紐約的第三個象徵,而且開始在想這種公寓需要多少租金,以及物色適合一起分租的朋友。
)
……
    New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world. The returning troops marched up

Fifth Avenue
and girls were instinctively drawn East and North toward them? this was the greatest nation and there was gala in the air. As I hovered ghost-like in the Plaza Red Room of a Saturday afternoon, or went to lush and liquid garden parties in the East Sixties or tippled with Princetonians in the Biltmore Bar I was haunted always by my other life? my drab room in the Bronx, my square foot of the subway, my fixation upon the day's letter from Alabama? would it come and what would it say?? my shabby suits, my poverty, and love. While my friends were launching decently into life I had muscled my inadequate bark into midstream.
(紐約擁有著世界誕生時,所散發出的所有燦爛光輝當我的朋友們優雅地朝人生之海出航時,我卻勉強划著一葉破落的小舟,投身猛烈的海流之中
…)

    ...Incalculable city. What ensued was only one of a thousand success stories of those gaudy days, but it plays a part in my own movie of New York. When I returned six months later the offices of editors and publishers were open to me, impresarios begged plays, the movies panted for screen material. To my bewilderment, I was adopted, not as a Middle Westerner, not even as a detached observer, but as the arch type of what New York wanted. …
(…
這確實是個不可測的城市。接踵而來的,只是這些俗豔時光中所常見的眾多成功故事之一令我感到混亂的是,我並非因身為中西部人而被接納,甚至也不是以一名客觀觀察者的身分,而是成為了紐約所需求的一種典型人物
…)
……
…Within a few months after our embarkation on the Metropolitan venture we scarcely knew any more who we were and we hadn't a notion what we were. A dive into a civic fountain, a casual brush with the law, was enough to get us into the gossip columns, and we were quoted on a variety of subjects we knew nothing about. Actually our "contacts" included half a dozen unmarried college friends and a few new literary acquaintances? I remember a lonesome Christmas when we had not one friend in the city, nor one house we could go to. Finding no nucleus to which we could cling, we became a small nucleus ourselves and gradually we fitted our disruptive personalities into the contemporary scene of New York. Or rather New York forgot us and let us stay.
(…
我記得在某個寂寞的聖誕節,我們在城裡甚至找不到任何一個朋友,或是可以拜訪的住所。找不到可以依附的核心,我們自己便成了小核心,並且讓自己破碎的人格逐漸融入紐約的現代景象。更確切地說,紐約已經遺忘了我們,只是將我們收留於此。
)
……
    …And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.
(…
我開始放聲痛哭,因為我擁有了我所想要的一切,而且了解自己以後永遠不可能再像現在一樣快樂。
)
……
    It was too late? or too soon. For us the city was inevitably linked up with Bacchic diversions, mild or fantastic. We could organize ourselves only on our return to Long Island and not always there. We had no incentive to meet the city half way. My first symbol was now a memory, for I knew that triumph is in oneself; my second one had grown commonplace? two of the actresses whom I had worshipped from afar in 1913 had dined in our house. But it filled me with a certain fear that even the third symbol had grown dim? the tranquillity of Bunny's apartment was not to be found in the ever-quickening city.
(
已經太晚了,或者該說是太快了——對我們而言,這座城市無可避免地與酒神巴克斯的娛樂、溫和或怪誕結合我的第一個象徵現在成了回憶,因為我知道那樣的勝利是屬於個人的;而我的第二個象徵則已經變得平淡無味這讓我充滿了某種恐懼,即便是第三個象徵已經失去了光輝,我還是無法在一個步伐加快的城市中找到巴尼公寓中的寧靜。
)
……
   …From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then understood-everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits?
(…
我發現這城市最致命的謬誤,看見了它的潘朵拉之盒。一個滿懷著傲慢自尊的紐約客爬到這裡,詫異地發現了他從未懷疑過的一件事,那就是這座城市並非他心目中那道綿延不絕,漫無邊界的偉大峽谷。它其實是有盡頭的。
)
……
    Thus I take leave of my lost city. Seen from the ferry boat in the early morning, it no longer whispers of fantastic success and eternal youth. The whoopee mamas who prance before its empty parquets do not suggest to me the ineffable beauty of my dream girls of 1914

(
因此,我向我失落的城市道別。清晨從渡船上眺望,它已不再輕聲向我訴說著輝煌成功和永恆的青春。在空洞的舞廳中盡情舞動的那些「狂歡美女」,也不會使我想起一九一四年,我夢中的女孩子們那難以言喻的美…)
……

    All is lost save memory,
yet sometimes I imagine myself reading, with curious interest, a Daily News of the issue of 1945…
(
除了記憶以外,一切都失落了…)
……
    So perhaps I am destined to return some day and find in the city new experiences that so far I have only read about. For the moment I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage. Come back, come back, O glittering and white!
(因此,或許我注定某天會回到這座城市,並在這裡尋找至今只在書中所讀到過的全新體驗。現在,我能做的只有放聲嘆息,嘆息我已失去了那光彩奪目的海市蜃樓。回來吧,回來吧,噢,閃閃發亮的雪白光芒!)



Full text online reading
http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/4/fitzgerald/city.htm

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迴響(2) :
2樓. 黃郁棋(灰狼)
2012/02/25 22:24
 
那三本是村上愛書唷!
真快!灰狼已經從【學生期】步入人生的另一個階段【社會期】了
當然,就算我比你早個一輪,其實自己也還是身陷其中吧!

不想也不敢跟你多談所謂的人生經驗,但「莫忘初衷」,是我個人的小小提醒,當然我相信你還會有很多良師益友在人生道路上一路扶持

le14nov2012/02/26 08:08回覆
1樓. ■♀醫楊曉萍
2012/02/25 21:36
感覺您前三大愛書差異頗大
我與您重複了Proust之餘, 原來還有"漫長的告別" .....

另一本, 可能要選約翰克里斯朵夫

至於大亨小傳....沒讀英文版, 或許說的都是上階層人士, 缺乏同感......抱歉得不到與您一樣的感受, 但我相信您的判斷 ^^

哎呀!市長誤會大了
所謂「舉出迄今為止人生中遇到的最重要的三本書」,是新譯本附錄村上春樹的專文中所提到的。

但假如 您要問我這相同的問題,老實說,我的的閱讀經驗有限(或者我應該說我相信未來還更多的閱讀經驗),我好像沒辦法像村上春樹一樣篤定,除了普魯斯特的《追憶似水年華》。
其他候選的書單,可能會從波特萊爾、班雅明、卡夫卡、王爾德、福樓拜、卡爾維諾、太宰治,以及青年時代熱衷的紀德、卡繆、三島由紀夫米蘭.昆德拉、村上春樹、宋澤萊、葉石濤、羅智成、夏宇的作品中選出吧!
當然可能還要包括我學生時代曾經想要研讀卻早已經中輟的《蘇東坡全集》及《莊子》。
le14nov2012/02/26 07:52回覆