《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IX》第16节
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.
注释摘要
尼克在这一段里做的事，是把地理意义上的故乡，忽然提升成一种几乎带有神光的精神归属。字面上看，这只是一段回忆：火车驶入冬夜，真正属于中西部的雪开始沿着车窗铺展开来，威斯康辛小站的昏黄灯光一掠而过，空气里突然涌进一股凛冽而令人振奋的东西。他们吃完晚饭，穿过冰冷车厢连接处走回自己座位，深吸着这种寒气，在短短一小时里，对这个国家、对自身的身份产生了一种难以言说的认…