«Великий Гэтсби» и другие лучшие произведения Ф.С. Фицджеральда

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Tender Is the Night

Already with thee! tender is the night…

… But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

– Ode to a Nightingale

В В В В TO

В В В В GERALD and SARA

В В В В MANY FГЉTES[103 - fГЄtes = holiday, festival (French); fun.]

Book 1

I

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera[104 - the French Riviera – the Mediterranean coast between Cannes in France and the border with Italy], about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel.

Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its English clientele went north in April.