弗朗西斯?司各特?菲茨杰拉德致玛丽亚?曼尼斯（1）
弗朗西斯?司各特?菲茨杰拉德（1896－1940），20世纪20年代美国文艺复兴的代表作家，以其描写“爵士时代”的作品而著称，代表作品是《了不起的盖茨比》。
亲爱的玛丽亚：
非常感谢你写给我的关于《了不起的盖茨比》的来信。因为女性，甚至包括知识女性，通常不太关心这本书，所以我对你的信尤为感激。她们不希望女性被描写为感情被动的人，事实上，我认为绝大多数女性就是这样，她们的脑子里充满的是一些二流的、无关紧要的，她们的辩护者称之为“实用性”的簿记。在充满诱惑的商业世界里，她们如同法国人一样是“生丁（法国货币单位）节省者”。（你看我是一个叔本华式的人，而非萧伯纳式的人。）
纽约将会让你感到兴奋。我怀疑在那里经过五年多的充分滋养之后，你会变成什么样子。我把纽约装在心里周游世界，但有时在梦里，我试图将它抛开。美国最伟大的允诺就是变化终将会发生。可是，过不了多久，你就会对它厌烦，因为除了人们的年龄逐渐增大外，什么变化也没有发生。美国的艺术也没有发生变化，因为美国是从未升起的月亮的故事。就连“那一刻”自身也从来没有降临过——这一刻并非充满不安和希望，而是闪烁着和平。比如那天晚上，当月亮在杰拉德和萨拉的花园上空升起的时候，你说你希望自己出现在那里。在美国，从来没有人用那个巨大的、华丽的、愤世嫉俗的幻灭感来安排什么，而杰拉德和萨拉则用它来安排聚会之类的事。
（上周，他们在这里和我们一起度过了六七天快乐的时光。）
我新写的小说是部非凡之作。我正在写第一章，你从中可以辨认出某些人和事。
美国的年轻一代从他们的父辈——那经历过战争的一代人（他们在某种程度上知道替自己打算）那里继承了陈旧的世故心理。他们勇敢、浅薄、乖戾、急躁、狂暴并且空虚，我不喜欢他们。那些“美国新鲜而坚强的河流”！天哪！玛丽亚，你的眼睛长到哪里去了？难道你的眼睛因为充满太多的生气和力量而只能看见它们自己的颜色和镜子中的轮廓吗？美国如此堕落，以至它才华横溢的孩子们几乎在出生之前就被毁掉了。你能指出除了詹姆斯和惠斯勒（他们在英国生活）之外，有哪位艺术家不是由于酗酒而死的？如果你的眼睛富有生气和力量而不能容忍它所见的现状，那么就闭上眼睛或者歪曲事实去撒谎，你这样做就像在打仗，玛丽亚?曼尼斯，从来没有人这样把文明的花朵——希腊人或高卢人的观念曲解成这样。
你真诚的敬慕者，
弗朗西斯?司各特?菲茨杰拉德
1925年10月
F. Scott Fitzgerald
To
October, 1925
Dear Marya,
Thank you for writing me about Gatsby—I especially appreciate your letter because women, and even intelligent women, haven't generally cared much for it. They do not like women to be presented as emotionally passive —as a matter of fact I think most women are, that their minds are taken up with a sort of second?rate and unessential book?keeping which their apologists call “practicality” —like the French, they are centime?savers in the business of magic. (You see I am a Schopenhauerian, not a Shavian. )
You are thrilled by New York—I doubt you will be after five more years when you are more fully nourished from within. I carry the pComce around the world in my heart but sometimes I try to shake it off in my dreams. America's greatest promise is that something is going to happen, and after a while you get tired of waiting because nothing happens to people except that they grow old, and nothing happens to American art because America is the story of the moon that never rose. Nor does the “minute itself” ever come to life either, the minute not of unrest and hope but of a glowing peace — such as when the moon rose that night on Gerald and Sara's garden and you said you were happy to be there. No one ever makes things in America with that vast, magnificent, cynical disillusion with which Gerald and Sara make things like their parties.
(They were here, Comst week, and we spent six or seven happy days together.)
My new novel is marvelous. I'm in the first chapter. You may recognize certain things and people in it.
The young people in America are brilliant with second?hand sophistication inherited from their betters of the war generation who to some extent worked things out for themselves. They are brave, shallow, cynical, impatient, turbulent and empty. I like them not. The “fresh, strong river of America”! My God, Marya, where are your eyes—or are they too fresh and strong to see anything but their own color and contour in the gComss? America is so decadent that its brilliant children are damned almost before they are born. Can you name a single American artist except James and Whistler (who lived in EngComnd) who didn't die of drink? If it is fresh and strong to be unable to endure or tolerate things as they are, to shut your eyes or to distort and lie — then you're fight, Marya Mannes, and no one has ever so misinterpreted the flowers of civilization, the Greek or Gallic idea, asTxt!小!说!天.堂