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寫在前面
思維導圖作者：
Cece，消防人+經濟學人粉絲
翻譯組全體成員如下：
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精讀|翻譯|片語
Culture | Back Story
文化|背景故事
英文部分選自經濟學人20250322期文化
Culture | Back Story
文化|背景故事
At 100 “The Great Gatsby” is as urgent as ever, old sport百年回望，《了不起的蓋茨比》仍在叩問時代，老夥計
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s immortal novel, America’s graft and glory are entwined
美國的浮華與瘡痍在F·斯科特·菲茨傑拉德（F. Scott Fitzgerald）這部不朽之作中糾纏共生
He is A relative of Kaiser Wilhelm and spied for Germany during the first world war. His dazzling house is actually a boat that creeps along the Long Island shore. He killed a man once; he is “second cousin to the devil”. A quarter of “The Great Gatsby” has passed before, at one of his lavish parties, Jay Gatsby bumps into Nick Carraway, the narrator, and the legend at last enters the action in person.
關於傑伊·蓋茨比（Jay Gatsby）的傳聞不勝列舉：他是德皇威廉（Kaiser Wilhelm）的親戚，一戰期間當過德國間諜；他那座“豪宅”實則是一艘船，沿著長島海岸悄然遊弋；他殺過一個人，是“魔鬼的二表親”。在小說篇幅過了四分之一後，蓋茨比在自己的奢靡派對上偶遇故事的敘述者尼克·卡拉威（Nick Carraway），至此，這位傳奇人物終於親自登場了。
Gatsby is as much a rumour as a character, a phantom in his own drama—one of the main reasons he has survived for 100 years and counting. Beneath its shimmering surface, or rather because of it, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel raises enduring questions without resolving them. They are as timely now as when it was first published in spring 1925: questions about memory, money and, above all, about America. Its promise and corruption, abundance and menace are facets of the same story.
蓋茨比其人，亦真亦幻，宛若自身戲劇中的魅影——這是他得以百年不衰的秘鑰之一。F·斯科特·菲茨傑拉德的小說在流光溢彩的表象之下，或者說正因這表象的蠱惑，小說懸置著未解的永恆詰問。時至今日，這些問題一如1925年春天初版之際發人深省：關於記憶，關於金錢，尤其是關於美國本身。這片土地的希冀與潰爛、豐饒與危機，構成了同一故事的多稜面。
Readers shape their own version of Fitzgerald’s hologram-hero, as Nick does in his narration. Gatsby is a romantic idealist, ennobled by his love for Daisy Buchanan; or, according to Daisy’s husband, Tom, he is a pink-suited vulgarian and “common swindler”. Or he is both. Pinned down on screen, Gatsby always wilts. The adaptation of 1974 starring Robert Redford, with its two-tone brogues and flapper headbands, and the garish film of 2013 with Leonardo DiCaprio (pictured) are both a bit too fleshly and literal, about lust, gangsters and, especially, Gatsby himself.
正如尼克的主觀敘事，讀者們亦在心中，塑造著菲茨傑拉德筆下那如幻似真的蓋茨比。蓋茨比，或是一個浪漫的理想主義者，憑藉對黛西·布坎南（Daisy Buchana）的愛鍍上金身；又或是，如黛西的丈夫湯姆（Tom）所言，穿著粉色西裝的庸俗之徒，一個“市井騙子”。抑或，二者皆是。蓋茨比被搬上銀幕，卻失去了那份神采。無論是1974年羅伯特·雷德福（Robert Redford）版，那腳踩雙色雕花皮鞋、頭戴羽飾髮帶的復古演繹，還是2013年萊昂納多·迪卡普里奧（Leonardo DiCaprio）（如圖）版，那俗麗浮華的銀幕再現，都流於具象，過多刻畫情欲和黑幫，尤甚者，是對蓋茨比本人的實體化解構。
The short novel is itself a gossamer thing. Not much happens in it. An enigmatic man courts an old flame and is murdered. Another chap has a tawdry affair. Rich people sit around in delicious ennui. The book flopped on publication; H.L. Mencken, an eminent critic, dismissed it as “a glorified anecdote”.
這部短篇小說本身就輕盈飄渺，情節並不複雜：一位神秘男子重燃舊情卻命喪黃泉；另一位男子深陷庸俗豔遇；富人們於倦意中品嚐虛無。該書初版即遭冷遇，知名評論家H.L.門肯（H.L. Mencken）譏其為“一則被美化的逸聞”。
Yet from the 1940s “The Great Gatsby” rose up the American canon and swept across school curriculums (a stage version seems always to be playing somewhere). Its ornate, high-wire language crystallises deep, intractable themes. One is the tragic tango of time. Gatsby is at once in flight from his humble origins and desperate to reprise his most halcyon moment. “Can’t repeat the past?” he cries. “Why of course you can!” These days some people see Western history as a stain, as others yearn to recover lost golden eras: Gatsby’s one-two of rejection and nostalgia writ large.
然而，自20世紀40年代起，《了不起的蓋茨比》躋身美國文學經典之列，風靡各類學校課程（舞臺劇版似乎總在不斷上演）。該書辭藻華麗、行文高妙，凝練出一個個深邃而難解的主題。首先是時殤悲舞。蓋茨比一方面試圖逃離卑微出身，一方面又拼命想重現他生命中最寧靜美好的時刻。“難道不能重溫舊夢？”他喊道，“當然可以！”如今，有人視西方歷史為恥辱烙印，有人則渴望重拾逝去的黃金時代：蓋茨比身上那種自我否定與懷舊情結交織的情緒尤為強烈。
Next, the issue of money, and related but distinct, the matter of American class. Spouting white-supremacist claptrap and bogus moralising, Tom Buchanan is a cheat and a bully—on whom breeding and background confer a social status and meretricious ease that Gatsby’s brash wealth cannot buy. Gatsby is a champion for every outsider who, pressing their nose against the glass, fears that the system is rigged against them and that grit and hustle can take them only so far.
其次是金錢和美國階級，二者互相關聯但又截然不同。湯姆·布坎南（Tom Buchanan）滿口都是白人至上主義的胡言和虛偽的道德說教，是個騙子也是惡霸。血統和出身賦予他社會地位與虛浮的從容，縱使蓋茨比有再多財富，這些也是他買不到的。蓋茨比則代表著每一個局外人，他們鼻子貼著玻璃向內張望，擔心因為制度不公，怕傾盡所有努力，所能抵達的最高之處不過至此而已。
In “The Great Gatsby”, money plus connections equal immunity. People are defined by how careful or careless they are, and can afford to be, about drinking, driving, marriage, lovers and crimes. Like reckless plutocrats today, Tom and Daisy seem exempt from the consequences of their “vast carelessness”. Others must be wary lest they crash.So Fitzgerald’s is a tale of sex and dough; in other words, of New York. But as he intimates at its close, in a riff about Dutch sailors encountering “the new world”, it is more than that. It is a story of America, the great novel of the country’s entwined glory and heartbreak.
在《了不起的蓋茨比》中，金錢與人脈疊加，構築了一道特權的高牆。人與人的區別在於他們對酒色豪車、婚姻情愛、乃至違法犯罪有多謹慎或多放縱，以及能否承擔相應的後果。正如現今肆無忌憚的富豪，湯姆和黛西“極度放縱”，卻逍遙法外。其他人卻必須時刻如履薄冰，唯恐粉身碎骨。菲茨傑拉德寫的是情慾和金錢的糾葛；換言之，就是紐約城的眾生相。然而，正如他在尾聲描寫荷蘭水手初見“新大陸”的那段隱喻，這個故事遠不止如此。這是一個關於美國的故事，一本關於這個國家光榮與心碎交織的偉大小說。
A drumbeat of violence thuds through the prose, such as in the drowning, suicide and other sticky ends to which, Nick casually mentions, some of the guests at Gatsby’s parties would later succumb. Its ethereal elements, the fluttering dresses and deathless devotion, collide with the earthly, brutish and hard (a man’s hand breaking a woman’s nose, a car’s bumper, a gun). At those soirées, “Girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” Elsewhere Fitzgerald zooms in on a yucky dollop of shaving foam on a drunkard’s cheekbone and a breast torn off in a wreck.
暴力的鼓點在文字間低沉震響，比如尼克隨口提到，蓋茨比聚會上的一些賓客，日後遭遇溺水、自殺和其他悲慘結局。那飄渺的元素：翩翻的長裙和不朽的忠誠撞擊著世俗、粗野、冷硬（例如，男人用拳頭打折女人的鼻子、車的保險槓、槍）。社交晚會上，“姑娘們來了又走，像飛蛾一樣穿梭在私語、香檳和星光之間”。筆鋒一轉，菲茨傑拉德又聚焦於醉鬼臉頰上一團噁心的剃鬚泡沫，和那在事故中被撕裂的胸膛。
The ideal and the bruisingly real, the seductive and the sordid, hope and cynicism, beauty and betrayal, and, ultimately, the dream and disappointments of America: Fitzgerald holds these opposites in a magical equipoise. “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true?” wondered the bard of another stretch of the eastern seaboard, Bruce Springsteen. That is the mystery at the heart of “The Great Gatsby” and, a century on, it is as urgent as ever, old sport.
理想與殘酷現實、誘惑與骯髒醜陋、希望與憤世嫉俗、美豔與背叛不忠，以及終極主題——美利堅的夢想與破滅：菲茨傑拉德以魔幻的平衡，把這些對立元素糅為一體。東海岸的另一位吟遊詩人布魯斯·史普林斯汀（Bruce Springsteen）問：“若夢想成空，是否即為謊言？”這正是《了不起的蓋茨比》的核心謎題，百年之後，它宛如昨日，亟待解答，老夥計。
翻譯組：
zy，當下快樂就是意義
Crystal ，SISU小菜雞，紮根生長也自然流淌
Cassie，ECNU口譯小菜雞，體制內摸爬滾打教書匠
校對組：
雪迪，開眼看世界
Shulin，非上上智，無了了心
Yu Yang，架一艘譯艦巡航無數內心的曲折宇宙
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感想
本期感想
Very，男，電氣民工，經濟學人資淺愛好者
我們總是很欣賞對歷史的描寫，而在文學的範疇，我們更偏愛某一個時期的刻畫，可以是具體的真實歷史時期，也可以是模糊的對映，無數的偉大作品無不若隱若現又無比真實地展示這一點。
當然文學作品不能以一種枯燥的形式展現，因為資料之類的委實太冰冷了，激不起讀者的興趣和共鳴，自然也無法成就作品的偉大。讀者要的是一種透過閱讀能夠真切體會到作者塑造的人物的悲歡離合，這自然離不開其營造環境的襯托。我們對於環境越熟悉，越容易代入所描寫的角色，但這裡也有一定的風險，對於作者而言，由於讀者對於環境過於熟悉，那麼他們對於作者描寫的環境也更加苛刻，那些不真實的描寫很容易被看穿，進而引起非常大的不適感。
所以很多作者更願意將作品置於某種模糊的歷史中，如此便會讓自己的細節描寫有更多的辯解空間，代價則是讀者要費更久的時間來熟悉這個模糊的環境。以此而言，類似《了不起的蓋茨比》或者《戰爭與和平》之類感覺將作品置諸真實歷史中，尤其是一段本身就紛繁複雜的環境時，更是對作者提出了非常高的要求。
當然，對於我這樣的讀者，除非描寫的是最近幾十年的長三角地區，也許還能辨別出一些虛實，除此之外，美洲、歐洲之類的歷史，我是萬萬不能嗅查出一些描寫錯誤的細節，所以對於旁人說好的文學作品，我權作都是對的。
有時我也想把自己經歷這微小的數十載也記錄下來，不想著流芳百世，也願意和我的子孫分享我這個年代所經歷的一切，但是真到了下筆的時候，卻不知從何開始。想要不錯過所有細節，但是在回想時過往的一切卻逐漸變得模糊，我越是努力回憶細節，細節卻越是模糊不可見，如果夢境裡一般。有些記得真切的細節，卻忘了細節出自何處，來自何時。這時我便開始懷疑了：自己經歷的一切是否真實。
當然這個問題並不會有答案，也許在地球毀滅之前，造物主會給我們一份臨死前的真相，但我肯定等不到那一天的到來。
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願景
46節直播課