02

Chapter 1

My family have been prominent(显著的), well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. 我家三代以来都是这个中西部城市家道殷实的头面人物。The Carraways are something of a clan(家族) and we have a tradition that we’re descended from 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（替代品）to the Civil War and started the wholesale(批发) hardware business that my father carries on today. 姓卡罗威的也可算是个世家，据家谱记载，我们是布克娄奇公爵的后裔。但是我们家系的实际创始人却是我祖父的哥哥。他在一八五一年来到这里，买了个替身去参加南北战争，开始做起五金批发生意，也就是我父东今天还在经营的买卖。

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. 我从未见过这位伯祖父，但是据说我长得像他，特别有挂在父亲办公室里的那幅铁板面孔的画像为证。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(条顿民族) migration known as the Great War. 

I enjoyed the counter-raid(反攻) so thoroughly that I came back restless. 我在一九一五年从纽黑文毕业，刚好比我父亲晚四分之一个世纪，不久以后我就参加了那个称之为世界大战的延迟的条顿民族大迁徙、我在反攻中感到其乐无穷，回来以后就觉得百无聊赖了。Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged(破旧) edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. 中西部不再是世界温暖的中心，而倒像是宇宙的荒凉的边缘——于是我决定到东部去学债券生意。

Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. 我所认识的人个个都是做债券生意的，因此我认为它多养活一个单身汉总不成问题。All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, ‘Why—yees’ with very grave, hesitant faces. 我的叔伯姑姨们商量了一番，仿佛他们是在为我挑选一家预备学校，最后才说：“呃……那就……这样吧。”面容都很严肃而犹疑。Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two. 父亲答应为我提供一年的费用，然后又几经耽搁我才在1922年春天到东部去，自以为是一去不返的了。

The practical thing was to find rooms inthe city, but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns(草坪) and 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. 切合实际的办法是在城里找一套房寄宿，但那时已是温暖的季节，而我又是刚刚离开了一个有宽阔的草坪和宜人的树木的地方，因此办公室里一个年轻人提议我们俩到近郊合租一所房子的时候，我觉得那是个很妙的主意。

He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard(硬纸板) bungalow(平房) at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the countryalone. 他找到了房子，那是一座风雨剥蚀的木板平房，月租八十美元，可是在最后一分钟公司把他调到华盛顿去了，我也就只好一个人搬到郊外去住。I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish(芬兰) woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom(格言)to herself over the electric stove(炉子). 我有一条狗——至少在它跑掉以前我养了它几天——一辆旧道吉汽车和一个芬兰女佣人，她替我收拾床铺，烧早饭，在电炉上一面做饭，一面嘴里咕哝着芬兰的格言。

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. 头几天我感到孤单，直到一天早上有个人，比我更是新来乍到的，在路上拦住了我。

‘How do you get to West Egg village?’ he asked helplessly. 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(赋予) me the freedom of the neighborhood. 我告诉了他。我再继续往前走的时候，我不再感到孤单了。我成了领路人、开拓者、一个原始的移民。他无意之中授予了我这一带地方的荣誉市民权。

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts(爆裂boom) of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies,  I have that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. 眼看阳光明媚，树木忽然间长满了叶子，就像电影里的东西长得那么快，我就又产生了那个熟悉的信念，觉得生命随着夏天的来临又重新开始了。

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.有那么多书要读，这是一点，同时从清新宜人的空气中也有那么多营养要汲取。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(造币厂), promising to unfold the shining secrets thatonly Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. 我买了十来本有关银行业、信贷和投资证券的书籍，一本本红色烫金封皮的书立在书架上，好像造币厂新铸的钱币一样，准备揭示迈达斯、摩根和米赛纳斯的秘诀。

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(严肃的) 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.’ 除此之外，我还有雄心要读许多别的书。我在大学的时候是喜欢舞文弄墨的——有一年我给《耶鲁新闻》写过一连串一本正经而又平淡无奇的社论——现在我准备把诸如此类的东西重新纳入我的生活，重新成为“通才”，也就是那种最浅薄的专家。This isn’t just an epigram(警句)—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.这并非一个警句，生活如果从不止一个窗户向外观察，将会成功更多。

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(苗条，细长) riotous(狂乱) island which extends itself due east of New York. 纯粹出于偶然，我租的这所房子在北美最离奇的一个村镇。这个村镇位于纽约市正东那个细长的奇形怪状的小岛上。