《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter II》第1节
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
注释摘要
从西卵到纽约的半路上，公路急匆匆地挨上铁路，与它并行四分之一英里，只为躲开一片荒凉之地。这片地方就是灰烬之谷——一个奇异的农场，灰烬像小麦一样长成山脊、丘陵和怪诞的花园；灰烬还塑成房屋、烟囱和袅袅升起的烟，最后，用尽超绝的努力，塑成一个个灰蒙蒙的人，他们在粉末般的空气中模糊地移动，边走边剥落。偶尔有一列灰色车厢沿着看不见的轨道爬来，发出刺耳的嘎吱声，停下，…