《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter VIII》第16节
This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later when he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window, and realized that dawn wasn’t far off. About five o’clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light. Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash-heaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. “I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window”—with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it—“and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’ ” Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night. “God sees everything,” repeated Wilson. “That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.
注释摘要
这一节的核心是威尔逊在绝望中寻找某种超验的裁判者，而叙述者尼克通过旁观者迈克利斯的眼睛，冷冷地记录下这一切。 “无望的希望”这个短语本身就带着三层意味。表面上，它指迈克利斯想为威尔逊找个朋友来陪伴他，一个实际的、人情上的愿望。但这个词在英语里来自荷兰语“verloren hoop”，本意是军事上注定要覆灭的突击队——所以从一开始，这个念头就被钉死在必败的命…