In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
我年紀還輕，閱歷不深的時候，我父親教導過我一句話，我至今還念念不忘。
If you?turn?something?over?in?your mind, you think carefully about it.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
"每逢你想要批評任何人的時候，"他對我說，"你就記住，這個世界上所有的人，并不是個個都有過你擁有的那些優越條件。"
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that.
他沒再說別的。但是，我們父子之間話雖不多，卻一向是非常通氣的，因此我明白他的話大有弦外之音。
In consequence, I’m inclined 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.
久而久之，我就慣于對所有的人都保留判斷，這個習慣既使得許多有怪僻的人肯跟我講心里話，也使我成為不少愛嘮叨的惹人厭煩的人的受害者。
The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person,
這個特點在正常的人身上出現的時候，心理不正常的人很快就會察覺并區抓住不放。
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.
由于這個緣故，我上大學的時候就被不公正地指責為小政客，因為我與聞一些放蕩的、不知名的人的秘密的傷心事。
privy??[?pr?v?] ?adj.（與to連用）私下參與的，秘密參與的
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 and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.?
絕大多數的隱私都不是我打聽來的--每逢我根據某種明白無誤的跡象看出又有一次傾訴衷情在地平線上噴薄欲出的時候，我往往假裝睡覺，假裝心不在焉，或者裝出不懷好意的輕佻態度。因為青年人傾訴的衷情，或者至少他們表達這些衷情所用的語言，往往是剽竊性的，而且多有明顯的隱瞞。保留判斷是表示懷有無限的希望。
feign??[fe?n] v.??裝作，假裝
levity??[?lev?t?] n. 輕率
plagiaristic ?adj. 抄襲的
mar??[mɑ?(r)] v. ?破壞, 損傷; 使失敗
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.
我現在仍然唯恐錯過什么東西，如果我忘記（如同我父親帶著優越感所暗示過的，我現在又帶著優越感重復的）基本的道德觀念是在人出世的時候就分配不均的。
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit.
在這樣夸耀我的寬容之后，我得承認寬容也有個限度。
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.
人的行為可能建立在堅固的巖石上面，也可能建立在潮濕的沼澤之中，但是一過某種程度，我就不管它是建立在什么上面的了。
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;
去年秋天我從東部回來的時候，我覺得我希望全世界的人都穿上軍裝，并且永遠在道德上保持一種立正姿勢。
I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.
我不再要參與放浪形骸的游樂，也不再要偶爾窺見人內心深處的榮幸了。
riotous??[?ra??t?s] ?adj. 暴亂的; 吵鬧的,歡騰的
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.
唯有蓋茨比--就是把名字賦予本書的那個人--除外，不屬于我這種反應的范圍--蓋茨比，他代表我所真心鄙夷的一切。
scorn ?[sk??n]n.輕蔑,嘲笑,被叱責的人vt.輕蔑,不屑做
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.
假如人的品格是一系列連續不斷的成功的姿態，那么這個人身上就有一種瑰麗的異彩，他對于人生的希望具有一種高度的敏感，類似一臺能夠記錄萬里以外的地震的錯綜復雜的儀器。
This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impression ability 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.
這種敏感和通常美其名曰"創造性氣質"的那種軟綿綿的感受性毫不相干--它是一種異乎尋常的水葆希望的天賦，一種富于浪漫色彩的敏捷，這是我在別人身上從來發現過的，也是我今后不大可能會再發現的。
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 elations of men.
不--蓋茨比本人到頭來倒是無可厚非的、使我對人們短暫的悲哀和片刻的歡欣暫時喪失興趣的，卻是那些吞噬蓋茨比心靈的東西，是在他的幻夢消逝后跟蹤而來的惡濁的灰塵。
foul ?[faul] adj. 污穢的,邪惡的,骯臟的,淤塞的,惡劣的
elation??[??le??(?)n] n.??興高采烈；得意
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.
我家三代以來都是這個中西部城市家道殷實的頭面人物。姓卡羅威的也可算是個世家，據家平傳說我們是布克婁奇公爵的后裔，但是我們家系的實際創始人卻是我祖父的哥哥。他在一八五一年來到這里，買了個替身去參加南北戰爭，開始做起五金批發生意，也就是我父東今天還在經營的買賣。?
prominent [?pr?min?nt] adj. 卓越的,顯著的,突出的
well-to-do ?adj.??富有的；有錢的
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye—es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
我從未見過這位伯祖父，但是據說我長得像他，特別有掛在父親辦公室里的那幅鐵板面孔的畫像為證。我在一九一五年從紐黑文畢業，剛好比我父親晚四分之一個世紀，不久以后我就參加了那個稱之為世界大戰的延遲的條頓民族大遷徙、我在反攻中感到其樂無窮，回來以后就覺得百無聊賴了。中西部不再是世界溫暖的中心，而倒像是宇宙的荒涼的邊緣--于是我決定到東部去學債券生意。我所認識的人個個都是做債券生意的，因此我認為它多養活一個單身漢總不成問題。我的叔伯姑姨們商量了一番，他們怦然是在為我挑選一家預備學校，最后才說："呃……那就……這樣吧。"面容都很嚴肅而猶疑。父親答應為我提供一年的費用，然后又幾經耽擱我才在一九二二年春天到東部去，自以為是一去不返的了。
?hard-boiled: ?1.describes an egg which has been heated in its shell in boiling water until both the white and yellow parts are solid 2.INFORMAL describes a strong and determined person who shows little emotion
New Haven?紐黑文,?耶魯大學所在地
Teutonic??[tju??t?n?k] adj. (古代居住于西北歐的)條頓族的，日耳曼族的
prep school ?預備學校,?為富家子弟辦的私立寄宿學校。
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawn sand friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
切合實際的辦法是在城里找一套房寄宿，但那時已是溫暖的季節，而我又是剛剛離開了一個有寬闊的草坪和宜人的樹木的地方，因此辦公室里一個年輕人提議我們倆到近郊合租一所房子的時候，我覺得那是個很妙的主意。他找到了房子，那是一座風雨剝蝕的木板平房，月租八十美元，可是在最后一分鐘公司把他調到華盛頓去了，我也就只好一個人搬到郊外去住。我有一條狗--至少在它跑掉以前我養了它幾天--一輛舊道吉汽車和一個芬蘭女傭人，她替我收拾床鋪，燒早飯，在電爐上一面做飯，一面嘴里咕噥著芬蘭的格言。
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
頭幾天我感到孤單，直到一天早上有個人，比我更是新來乍到的，在路上攔住了我。
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
"到西卵村去怎么走??？"他無可奈何地問我。
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.
我告訴了他。我再繼續往前走的時候，我不再感到孤單了。我成了領路人、開拓者、一個原始的移民。他無意之中授予了我這一帶地方的榮譽市民權。
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
眼看陽光明媚，樹木忽然間長滿了葉子，就像電影里的東西長得那么快，我就又產生了那個熟悉的信念，覺得生命隨著夏天的來臨又重新開始了。
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the “Yale News.”—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the“well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
有那么多書要讀，這是一點，同時從清新宜人的空氣中也有那么多營養要汲取。我買了十來本有關銀行業、信貸和投資證券的書籍，一本本紅色燙金封皮的書立在書架上，好像造幣廠新鑄的錢幣一樣，準備揭示邁達斯①、摩根②和米賽納斯③的秘訣。除此之外，我還有雄心要讀許多別的書。我在大學的時候是喜歡舞文弄墨的--有一年我給《耶魯新聞》寫過一連串一本正經而又平淡無奇的社論--現在我準備把諸如此類的東西重新納入我的生活，重新成為"通才"，也就是那種最淺薄的專家。這并不只是一個俏皮的警句--光從一個窗口去觀察人生究竟要成功得多。①邁達斯（Midas），希臘神話中的國王，曾求神賜予點金術。②摩根（Morgan），美國財閥。③米賽納斯（maecenas），古羅馬大財主。
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of NewYork—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. they are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. to the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
純粹出于偶然，我租的這所房子在北美最離奇的一個村鎮。這個村鎮位于紐約市正東那個細長的奇形怪狀的小島上--那里除了其他大然奇觀以外，還有兩個地方形狀異乎尋常。離城二十英里路，有一對其大無比的雞蛋般的半島，外形一模一樣，中間隔著一條小灣，一直伸進西半球那片最恬靜的咸水，長島海峽那個巨大的潮濕的場院。它們并不是正橢圓形--而是像哥倫布故事里的雞蛋一樣，在碰過的那頭都是壓碎了的--但是它們外貌的相似一定是使從頭上飛過的海鷗驚異不已的源泉。對于沒有翅膀的人類來說，一個更加饒有趣味的現象，卻是這兩個地方除了形狀大小之外，在每一個方面都截然不同。
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. my house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. the one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. it was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
我住在西卵，這是兩個地方中比較不那么時髦的一個，不過這是一個非常膚淺的標簽，不足以表示二者之間那種離奇古怪而又很不吉祥的對比。我的房子緊靠在雞蛋的頂端，離海灣只有五十碼，擠在兩座每季租金要一萬二到一萬五的大別墅中間。我右邊的那一幢，不管按什么標準來說，都是一個龐然大物--它是諾曼底①某市政廳的翻版，一邊有一座簇新的塔樓，上面疏疏落落地覆蓋著一層常春藤，還有一座大理石游泳池，以及四十多英畝的草坪和花園。這是蓋茨比的公館。或者更確切地說這是一位姓蓋茨比的闊人所住的公館，因為我還不認識蓋茨比光生。我自己的房子實在難看，幸而很小，沒有被人注意，因此我才有緣欣賞一片海景，欣賞我鄰居草坪的一部分，并且能以與百萬富翁為鄰而引以自慰--所有這一切每月只需出八十美元。 ①諾曼底（Normandy），法國北部一地區，多古色古香的城堡。
