The Great Gatsby

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

在我年纪还轻、阅历尚浅的岁月里，父亲曾给过我一句劝告，至今仍常在我心头盘桓。

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

“每逢你想批评什么人，”他对我说，“千万记住，这世上并非所有人都拥有你曾有过的优越条件。”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

他没有多说，但我们父子之间向来内敛却异乎寻常地心意相通，我明白他的言外之意远不止于此。因此，我养成了不轻易对人妄加评判的习惯，这种习性为我敞开了许多古怪奇特的性情，却也让我成了不少老牌乏味之徒的受害者。当这种特质出现在一个正常人身上时，反常的心智总能敏锐察觉并紧附不放，所以在大学里，我曾被平白无故地指责为圆滑世故的政客，只因那些狂放而不为人知的家伙都肯把心底的隐痛向我倾诉。其中绝大多数秘密都不是我主动探听的——每当我从某些显而易见的迹象察觉到某种私密的袒露正在地平线上隐隐欲现，我便常常装睡、走神，或是带着敌意插科打诨；因为年轻人的倾心袒露，或者至少是他们用来表达的心辞，往往都是拾人牙慧，且因明显的隐瞒而残缺不全。保留评判，便寄寓着无限的希望。我至今仍有点担心自己若忘记了父亲带着势利腔调的提醒，就会错失什么，而我也带着势利腔调在此重申：人生来所分得的对基本体面的认知，本就是不平等的。