的显明的化身,因而实际上它是可诛的.他把他整个种族自古以来的一切愤怒和憎恨全都加在大鲸的白色背峰上;于是,仿佛他的胸膛就是一架臼炮,他就在那上面发射出他那火热的心弹来.
Unit6
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself, so much the more important. From a hill-top nearby, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a
stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of intervening water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land.
八月里，在轻柔的斜风细雨暂停的时候，这小小的湖做我的邻居，最为珍贵，那时水和空气都完全平静了，天空中却密布着乌云，下午才过了一半却已具备了一切黄昏的肃穆，而画眉在四周唱歌，隔岸相闻。这样的湖，再没有比这时候更平静的了；湖上的明净的空气自然很稀薄，而且给乌云映得很黯淡了，湖水却充满了光明和倒影，成为一个下界的天空，更加值得珍视。从最近被伐木的附近一个峰顶上向南看，穿过小山间的巨大凹处，看得见隔湖的一幅愉快的图景，那凹处正好形成湖岸，那儿两座小山坡相倾斜而下，使人感觉到似有一条溪涧从山林谷中流下，但是，却没有溪涧。我是这样地从近处的绿色山峰之间和之上，远望一些蔚蓝的地平线上的远山或更高的山峰的。真的，踮起了足尖来，我可以望见西北角上更远、更蓝的山脉，这种蓝颜色是天空的染料制造厂中最真实的出品，我还可以望见村镇的一角。但是要换一个方向看的话，虽然我站得如此高，却给郁茂的树木围住，什么也看不透，看不到了。在邻近，有一些流水真好，水有浮力，地就浮在上面了。便是最小的井也有这一点值得推荐，当你窥望井底的时候，你发现大地并不是连绵的大陆；而是隔绝的孤岛。这是很重要的，正如井水之能冷藏牛油。当我的目光从这一个山顶越过湖向萨德伯里草原望过去的时候，在发大水的季节里，我觉得草原升高了，大约是蒸腾的山谷中显示出海市蜃楼的效果，它好像沉在水盆底下的一个天然铸成的铜市，湖之外的大地都好像薄薄的表皮，成了孤岛，给小小一片横亘的水波浮载着，我才被提醒，我居住的地方只不过是干燥的土地。
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Unit13
The pillow rose about her shoulders and pressed against her heart and the memory was being squeezed out of it: oh, push down the pillow, somebody：it would smother her if she tried to hold it. Such a fresh breeze blowing and such a green day with no threats in it. But he had not come, just the same. What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn't come?She tried to remember. No, I swear he never harmed me but in that. He never harmed me but in that... and what if he did? There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was
planted so carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell when she saw it. For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against losing her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the two things were mingled in one and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a minute. Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don't let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were jilted, weren't you? Then
stand up to it. Her eyelids wavered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her eyes. She must get up and pull the shades down or she'd never sleep. She was in bed again and the shades were not down. How could that happen? Better turn over, hide from the light, sleeping in the light gave you nightmares. \forehead. But I don't like having my face washed in cold water!
枕头突然从她的双肩升起，压在她的胸口上，把埋在心底的往事都要挤压出来了：啊，快来人把枕头推开吧！这枕头可要把她闷死了，如果她想就这样躺着的话。这一天微风轻拂，温暖如春，吉吉利利的。可是尽管如此他还是没有来。女人已经蒙上白色面纱，准备好结婚蛋糕，而男的却还没有来，她该怎么办呢？她竭力回忆。不，除了这一次外，他可从来没有伤害过我呀。除了这一次，从来没有伤害过我……如果伤害过我，又怎么样呢？是有那么一天，那一天，一股黑烟袅袅升起把那一天遮盖住了，黑烟逐渐蔓延开来，飘到阳光灿烂的田野，那里庄稼种植得井井有条。那是地狱，她一见就知道。六十年来她一直在祈祷，希望永远不要再想起他，不要使自己的灵魂堕入地狱的万丈深渊。可现在，她刚刚摆脱了哈里医生，想休息一会时，这两件可怕的事竟然融成了一体：对他的回忆就象是从地狱深处升起的烟雾在她的脑海里浮荡。突然在脑顶盖处响起了一个尖锐的声音：艾伦，这是受挫的虚荣心。可别让这种受挫的虚荣心占了上风啊。很多女孩子都遭到过被遗弃的命运，你是给遗弃了，是吗？那么勇敢坚强地面对现实吧。她的眼皮抖动着，青灰色的光芒，象一张薄纸遮盖在眼皮上，在她眼前闪烁。她必须起身去把窗帘拉上，不然的话一定睡不着。她又回到了床上，可是窗帘还是没有拉上。咦，这是怎么回事？最好翻过身去，背对着亮光，在亮光里入睡是会做恶梦的。“妈妈，你感觉怎样？”刺骨的潮湿贴在她的前额。我可不喜欢用冷水洗脸！
Unit14
One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim
Union Station at six o'clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: \
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Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?\hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
That's my Middle West — not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
我记忆中最鲜明的景象之一就是每年圣诞节从预备学校，以及后来从大学回到西部的情景。到芝加哥以外的地方去的同学往往在一个十二月黄昏六点钟聚在那座古老、幽暗的联邦车站，和几个家在芝加哥的朋友匆匆话别，只见他们已经裹入了他们自己的节日欢娱气氛。我记得那些从东部某某私立女校回来的女学生的皮大衣以及她们在严寒的空气中喊喊喳喳的笑语，记得我们发现熟人时抢手呼唤，记得互相比较收到的邀请：“你到奥德威家去吗？赫西家呢？舒尔茨家呢？”还记得紧紧抓在我们戴了手套的手里的长条绿色车票。最后还有停在月台门口轨道上的芝加哥－密尔沃基－圣保罗铁路的朦胧的黄色客车，看上去就像圣诞节一样地使人愉快。
火车在寒冬的黑夜里奔驰，真正的白雪、我们的雪，开始在两边向远方伸展，迎着车窗闪耀，威斯康星州的小车站暗灰的灯火从眼前掠过，这时空中突然出现一股使人神清气爽的寒气。我们吃过晚饭穿过寒冷的通廊往回走时，一路深深地呼吸着这寒气，在奇异的一个小时中难以言喻地意识到自己与这片乡土之间的血肉相连的关系，然后我们就要重新不留痕迹地融化在其中了。
这就是我的中西部——不是麦田，不是草原，也不是瑞典移民的荒凉村镇，而是我青年时代那些激动人心的还乡的火车，是严寒的黑夜里的街灯和雪橇的铃声，是圣诞冬青花环被窗内的灯火映在雪地的影子。我是其中的一部分，由于那些漫长的冬天我为人不免有点矜持，由于从小在卡罗威公馆长大，态度上也不免有点自满。在我们那个城市里，人家的住宅仍旧世世代代称为某姓的公馆。我现在才明白这个故事到头来是一个西部的故事——汤姆和盖茨比、黛西、乔丹和我，我们都是西部人，也许我们具有什么共同的缺陷使我们无形中不能适应东部的生活。
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Unit 15
Presently he could see the grove of oaks and cedars and the other flowering trees and shrubs and where the house would be, though not the house yet. They walked beside a fence massed with honeysuckle and Cherokee roses and came to a gate swinging open between two brick pillars, and now, beyond a sweep of drive, he saw the house for the first time and at that instant he forgot his father and the terror and despair both, and even when he remembered his father again (who had not stopped) the terror and despair did not return. Because, for all the twelve movings, they had sojourned until now in a poor country, a land of small farms and fields and houses, and he had never seen a house like this before. Hit's big as a courthouse he thought quietly, with a surge of peace and joy whose reason he could not have thought into words, being too young for that: They are safe from him. People whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity are beyond his touch, he no more to them than a buzzing wasp: capable of stinging for a little moment but that's all; the spell of this peace and dignity rendering even the barns and stable and cribs which belong to it impervious to the puny flames he might contrive... this, the peace and joy, ebbing for an instant as he looked again at the stiff black back, the stiff and implacable limp of the figure which was not dwarfed by the house, for the reason that it had never looked big anywhere and which now, against the serene columned backdrop, had more than ever that impervious quality of something cut ruthlessly from tin, depthless, as though, sidewise to the sun, it would cast no shadow.
Watching him, the boy remarked the absolutely undeviating course which his father held and saw the stiff foot come squarely down in a pile of fresh droppings where a horse had stood in the drive and which his father could have avoided by a simple change of stride. But it ebbed only for a moment, though he could not have thought this into words either, walking on in the spell of the house, which he could ever want but without envy, without sorrow, certainly never with that ravening and jealous rage which unknown to him walked in the ironlike black coat before him: Maybe he will feel it too. Maybe it will even change him now from what maybe he couldn't help but be.
不一会儿他就看见了一片栎杉间杂的小树林，还有其他一些花开似锦的大树小树，宅子按说就是在这种地方，不过现在还看不见。他们沿着一道攀满忍冬和野蔷薇的篱笆走去，来到一扇洞开的大门前，两边有两道砖砌的门柱，他这才看见门后一弯车道的尽头就是那座宅子。他一见就把爸爸忘了，也把心头的恐怖和绝望全忘了，后来虽然又想起了爸爸（爸爸并没有停下脚步），那恐怖和绝望的感觉却再也不来了。因为，他们虽然也先后搬过十多次家，可是以前始终旅居在一个贫苦的地方，无论农庄、田地还是住宅，规模都不大，像眼前这样的一座宅第，他还从来没有见过。大得真像个官府呢——他暗暗想着，心里不觉顿时安定起来，感到一阵欣喜，这原因他是无法组织成言语的，他还太小，还说不上来。其实这原因就是：爸爸惹不了他们了。生活在这样安宁而体面的世界里的人，他别想去碰一碰；在他们的面前他只是一只嗡嗡的黄蜂，大不了把人蜇一下罢了。这个安宁而体面的世界自有一股魔力，就算他想尽办法放上一把小小的火，这里大大小小的马棚牛棚也决烧不掉一根毫毛。??他又望了望那直挺挺的黑色的背影，看见了那生硬而坚定的颠颠跛跛的步子，他这种安心而欢喜的感觉一时间又消失了。爸爸的身影并没有因为到了这样的宅第跟前而显得矮上三分，因为他到哪儿也没有显得高大过，倒是如今衬着这一派圆柱耸立的宁静的背景，反而越发显出了那种我自无动于衷的气概，仿佛是怀着铁石心肠从白铁皮上剪下的一个人形儿，薄薄的一
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