An analysis of F.Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" through a consideration of two Italian translations. Part 3

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An analysis of F.Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" through a consideration of two Italian translations.

By Paul Armstrong
Libera Universita’ Di Lingue E Comunicazione Iulm
Facolta’ Di Lingue, Letterature E Culture Moderne
Corso Di Laurea In Lingue E Letterature Straniere
Milano, Italy
M.A. in literary translations with Tim Parks.
English language teacher.
Italian < > English translator
paul.armstrong@libero.it

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Part 3.

Nick tells Gatsby to go away from West Egg for a while since his car is bound to be identified by the police. But Gatsby refuses to consider leaving while there is still a chance that Daisy may change her mind and return to him. As they sit together Gatsby tells Nick about his relationship with Daisy five years ago. Daisy belonged to a social class which had always seemed remote from him, and feeling aware of his own poverty and lack of background, all through their courtship and even later when they became intimate, Gatsby tormented himself with his unworthiness pretending to Daisy that he was financially secure and belonged to the same social class she belonged to. Here are Nick’s words:

§ He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself – that he was fully able to take care of her. ( pg. 118 )

What is interesting here is Fitzgerald’s use of the adjective "phantom" to describe Gatsby’s money. "Phantom" means illusory, unreal, invisible and the word implies, as is the case, that Gatsby’s millions didn’t exist. Indeed Jay Gatsby, the young soldier, was tormented by the fact that he was too poor for Daisy. "Phantom" also has the meaning of specter, ghost, and coming so close as it does in the text to Nick’s words that "morning would be too late", with the pun on "mourning", what "phantom" achieves is to reinforce the suggestion of death.

Here is the translation of "phantom millions" in the Italian versions:

§ Non che si fosse basato su milioni inesistenti, ma aveva deliberatamente dato a Daisy un senso di sicurezza ( . . . )

( Mondadori, pg. 150 )

§ Non dico che avesse speculato su milioni fantomatici, ma aveva offerto a Daisy, deliberatamente, un’impressione di sicurezza ( . . . ) ( Newton, pg. 155 )

In the Mondadori translation the adjective "inesistente" has the meaning of inexistent but it does not also have the meaning of ghost, specter. So "milioni inesistenti" only means "nonexistent millions": the sinister suggestion of death is lost with this choice of adjective. In the Newton translation, the adjective "fantomatici" comes from a French word meaning ghost, specter. Since "fantomatici" means nonexistent but also ghostly, spectral, the expression "milioni fantomatici", like the English "phantom millions", suggests the idea of death.

Gatsby and Nick continue their discussion of Daisy over breakfast. Gatsby’s gardener arrives and says he plans on draining the pool because the season is over and the leaves will soon start to fall. There is a sharp, autumn flavour to the air but Gatsby asks his gardener to wait because he hasn’t used the pool all summer and wants to do so sometime after breakfast. Here are Nick’s words a few minutes before leaving Gatsby and setting off for his office in New York.

§ The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. ( pg.120)

"Ghostly birds", suggesting birds of ill omen, and "blue", unexpectedly used to describe leaves, with its meaning of depressed, bleak, suggest that Fitzgerald is signalling the end of Gatsby’s life. Within the space of a few pages there has been a patterning of the narrative in which words ("morning" / "mourning", "phantom", "ghostly birds", and "blue leaves" ) have echoed each other to foreshadow Gatsby’s death. We have seen that the foreshadowing of this tragic event is lost in the translations because the same verbal patterning is missing. Only once, in the Newton translation, through the expression "fantomatici milioni" ("ghostly, spectral millions") was the suggestion of Gatsby’s death hinted at.

Here is the passage in the translations:

§ L’ombra di un albero cadde bruscamente sulla rugiada e uccelli invisibili incominciarono a cantare tra le foglie azzurre. ( Mondadori, pg. 153 )

§ L’ombra di un albero cadde bruscamente sulla rugiada e uccelli fantomatici incominciarono a cantare tra le foglie azzurrine. ( Newton, pg. 157 )

The idea of birds of ill omen is suggested in the words "uccelli fantomatici". This is because the Newton translation has again repeated the adjective "fantomatico", which means ghostly, spectral. However, the words "uccelli invisibili", in the Mondadori translation, only mean "invisible birds", so the suggestion of "ghostly birds" as in birds of ill omen is lost in this translation. Furthermore, we should notice that in the original the word "blue", coming shortly after "morning would be too late", "phantom" and "ghostly" ( Nick also describes Gatsby’s piano as looking "ghostly" ) suggests the idea of Nick feeling dejected and depressed over Gatsby’s death. The words "azzurre" and "azzurrine" only mean the colour blue or light blue. They do not have the same meaning of feeling down, dispirited that the word "blue" has. So what is lost in the translations is the suggestion of Nick being depressed over Gatsby’s death.

Looking back at these examples and concluding, what we notice is that in the Mondadori translation no word echoes another to foreshadow Gatsby’s death. In the Newton translation, Gatsby’s death is hinted at not so much through a patterning of the narrative in which different words echo one another, as in the English, but through the repetition of the adjective " fantomatici", which is used twice.

Returning to Gatsby and Nick’s conversation during breakfast, Gatsby insists that Daisy has never really loved Tom. Here are Gatsby’s words:

§ "Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were first married – and loved me more even then, do you see ?"

Suddenly he came out with a curious remark.

"In any case," he said , "it was just personal."

Gatsby’s words take us back to "his Platonic conception of himself". Daisy’s love for Tom is just a small matter ( "it was just personal" ) whereas his love for Daisy is an ideal kind of love that reaches beyond the level of personal feelings into something transcending the people involved. His love for Daisy is therefore bound up with his vision of the ideal, with "his Platonic conception of himself".

Gatsby’s desire is to transcend the world as it is and to somehow move beyond people towards something greater and better. His pursuit of transcendence, his vision of moving beyond the level of personal ( "personale" ) feeling towards something better ( whatever that may be ) is also expressed in the translations:

§ "Si capisce che forse lo ha amato un momento, appena sposati . . . ma anche allora ha amato di più me, capisci ?"

D’un tratto uscì con una frase strana.

"Comunque" disse "è stato un fatto personale."

( Mondadori, pg. 153 )

§ "Naturalmente, può averlo amato per un momento, appena sposati – ma anche allora era me che amava di più, capisci ?"

Ad un tratto, aggiunse stranamente:

"In ogni caso, era qualcosa di personale."

( Newton, pg158 )

Nick, unwilling to leave Gatsby because he senses something is going to happen to him, nevertheless heads to his train. Before he goes he tells Gatsby that he thinks him better than all the others put together. Here are Nick’s words:

§ "They’re a rotten crowd", I shouted across the lawn. "You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together."(pg.122)

Nick is making a moral judgement when he calls people like the Buchanans and Jordan Baker "rotten". By describing them as "rotten", which means morally corrupt, Nick is associating all of these people with the moral laxity of the American upper class of which they are a part. The words "damn bunch" suggest sinners who have been damned. These words, coming so close in the text to "rotten", an adjective commonly associated with fruit, bring to mind the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve resided before the Fall. In a way the Buchanans and " the whole damn bunch put together" are like Adam and Eve: good people who have turned bad ( "rotten" ). Realizing that Gatsby’s dream, however tainted and pathetic, is beyond the comprehension of this "damn bunch" of people, Nick tells Gatsby "they’re a rotten crowd . . . You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together."

Here are Nick’s words to Gatsby in the translations:

§ "Sono un branco di porci" gridai attraverso il prato. "Tu da solo vali più di tutti quanti messi insieme."

( Mondadori, pg. 155 )

§ "E tutta gentaglia", gridai attraverso il prato. "Tu vali più di tutti loro messi insieme." ( Newton, pg. 159 )

The moral judgement that Nick makes by calling these people "rotten" is not as clearly expressed through the words " branco di porci". " Branco di porci" means " a herd of pigs", and it is an insult that might be used to suggest vulgar or contemptible people. When we call someone a pig ( "porco") we are not necessarily condemning that person’s moral corruption, as we would be doing if we were to use the word "rotten" instead. In the Newton translation the word "gentaglia", which means rabble, scum, comes closer to the idea of moral corruption which is implied in the word "rotten". In fact "gentaglia" has the meaning of vulgar, vile, or worthless people but also of people who are morally depraved or morally corrupt. However, even the word "gentaglia" does not suggest the idea of moral corruption as immediately and as strongly as the word "rotten" does. The feeling is that a word like "marcio" ( "rotten" ) expresses the idea of moral corruption better than the words "branco di porci" and "gentaglia" do. We should also notice that in the original Nick not only calls people like the Buchanans "a rotten crowd" but also "a damn bunch", thus reinforcing his condemnation of them even further. This second adverse judgement is missing in the translations: the words "a damn bunch" have not been translated.

Here is the look that passes over Gatsby’s face when Nick tells him that he is "worth the whole damn bunch put together":

§ First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. ( pg. 122 )

The phrase "in ecstatic cahoots" is extraordinary for suggestiveness. It combines "in cahoots", meaning "in league with someone", "in partnership with someone", with the adjective "ecstatic", meaning to be " in a state of ecstasy", and derived from the Greek for "standing outside of oneself". So somehow Gatsby agrees with Nick ( "in cahoots with" ) on the fact that he is better than all the others put together, but at the same time he is in an "ecstatic" state, a state in which he is somehow standing outside of himself, oblivious to Nick’s words, beyond them. If this is what "in ecstatic cahoots" means, then it takes us back to Gatsby’s " Platonic conception of himself ", to his vision of the ideal. Gatsby wants to transcend the material world that surrounds him, he wants to move beyond it towards something greater and better. So by saying that Gatsby is "in ecstatic cahoots" with Nick, Fitzgerald might again be suggesting that Gatsby’s vision of the ideal reaches beyond the level of personal relationship ( " in cahoots" ) into something "ecstatic" ( "in ecstatic cahoots"), something that is outside of , that transcends the people involved. Whatever the exact meaning of "in ecstatic cahoots" is, the important thing is to notice the complexity and the ambiguity of this phrase, the way in which it goes beyond an overt statement of partnership, of affinity ("in cahoots") towards something else ( "in ecstatic cahoots"), whatever that something else may be.

Here is the same passage in the translations:

§ Prima fece un cenno educato e poi il viso gli si aprì in quel sorriso raggiante e comprensivo, come se fossimo sempre stati grandi complici a questo proposito. (Mondadori, pg. 155 )

§ Fece dapprima un educato cenno con la testa, e poi il viso gli si aprì in quel suo sorriso raggiante e comprensivo, come se fossimo stati da sempre in estatica complicità tra noi su tale argomento. ( Newton, pgs. 159 – 160 )

In the Mondadori translation "in ecstatic cahoots" has been translated as "grandi complici". The word "complice" means party, accomplice, and is frequently used in the context of being a partner with someone else in a wrongdoing , as in a crime for example ( "il complice di un furto", "an accomplice in a burglary" ). "Grandi complici" suggests the idea of greatly, strongly ("grandi") agreeing over something ("complici"), as is the case with the English expression "in cahoots with", but it can also suggest the idea of somehow being partners in crime ("grandi complici" ) and this negative connotation is missing in the expression "in ecstatic cahoots". However, apart from the possible negative connotations of the words "grandi complici", what is important to notice is that this expression limits us to the idea of Gatsby and Nick greatly, strongly agreeing over something and that is that: no further interpretation is possible. What is missing in this translation is the added dimension of ecstasy ("in ecstatic cahoots" ) which, as we saw, took us back to Gatsby’s "Platonic conception of himself", to his desire to transcend the material world that surrounds him, to somehow stand outside of it ( "ecstatic" ).

In the Newton translation "in ecstatic cahoots" has been translated as "in estatica complicità". Like "in ecstatic cahoots", the Italian also combines the idea of being in league with someone ( "in complicità" ) with the adjective "ecstatic" ("estatica"), thus generating the same richness and complexity of meaning as Fitzgerald’s "in ecstatic cahoots". Unlike the Mondadori translation in which the adjective "ecstatic" has not been translated, the Newton translation includes "estatica" and this gives a weight to the whole phrase "in estatica complicità" carrying it beyond the immediate context of agreeing over something ("in complicità"), towards something else ( "in estatica complicità" ), whatever that something else may be.

After Gatsby’s death, Nick assumes the responsibility of arranging his funeral. He calls Daisy but learns that she and Tom have left town, leaving no address. At the funeral the next day there is only Nick, Gatsby’s father, four or five servants, and the postman. Nick realizes that even when he was excited by life in the East he had been aware somehow that it was false and exaggerated. And after Gatsby’s death, he becomes even more conscious of the decadence of the East. So Nick decides to leave, to return to the Midwest and his hometown. The night before leaving, Nick wanders over to Gatsby’s house for one last visit. Strolling down to the beach, Nick realizes that Gatsby’s belief in life and love resembles the faith of the first Dutch sailors who had come to America, sure of happiness and success. Here is the passage, which also ends the novel.

§ I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t investigate. (. . .)

On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at the huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. 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 orgastic 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. ( pgs. 143 – 144 )

The use of "material" to describe a car is another example of Fitzgerald’s unexpected adjectives. Mention of a "material car" picks up on the theme of materialism, of cars as being an index of material success, and takes us back to Myrtle’s death. In having Myrtle run down by Gatsby’s car, Fitzgerald seems to be sending a message. Gatsby’s car, the biggest and fanciest around, is, after all, a clear and obvious manifestation of American materialism. It is tragic that Myrtle died so brutally, but her death takes on greater meaning when we realize that it is materialism ( " a material car" ) that bought about her death. Myrtle wanted all the material comforts money could buy: it was her desire for money that led her to have an affair with Tom, whom she initially got involved with because of the expensive looking clothes he wore. Myrtle, a woman whose dream was to spend her life acquiring material possessions, was, in effect killed by her own desires ( "a material car" ). We should also notice that the car that killed Myrtle was yellow, the colour of gold, hence the suggestion of wealth and expensive material possessions.

Nick perceives Gatsby’s house as a "huge incoherent failure". "Incoherent" is an unusual adjective to describe a house and suggests that somehow Gatsby’s mansion does not hold together firmly, that Nick almost sees it as lacking consistency, solidity. Metaphorically, then, Gatsby’s house becomes his dream: it is magnificent, "huge", yet "a failure", ultimately not holding together but collapsing, disintegrating, like Gatsby’s broken dream.

Nick goes to the beach, to the edge of the continent, and here he has a vision that transcends the moment and carries him back to the arrival on the coast of the pioneering Dutch sailors. He refers to "inessential houses" melting away as the moon rises and again what we notice is Fitzgerald’s use of a surprising and unexpected adjective to describe a house. Whereas Gatsby’s "huge incoherent failure" of a house and the "material car" pick up on the theme of materialism and the misery it can bring, the idea of "inessential houses", houses that are not of the essence, points to idealism ( an "essence" is a metaphysical idea ) in contrast to materialism as the other version of reality. This time, however, it is Nick who has a transcendent vision in which houses dematerialize ("inessential houses") beyond the material world that surrounds him, carrying him back to the moment in which the first Dutch sailors arrived on the coast. In a way, because it is Nick who has this transcendent vision and sees the "inessential houses" melt away and make way for the lush vegetation that greets the first Dutch sailors, we may see Nick’s role as the writer of the novel as the process of extending Gatsby’s transcendent, ideal vision so that we may all share in it.

As Nick sits in meditation on Gatsby’s beach he tries to recapture the wonder that the Dutch sailors must have felt at their first sight of this newly discovered and unspoilt country: " I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world ", he writes. These thoughts get linked with the thoughts of Gatsby and his dream of Daisy. In fact "flowered" suggests Daisy, whose name is the name of a flower. The "fresh, green breast of the new world", taken as an image of the ideal world the early settlers dreamed about, associates the mind with a country that is lively ( "fresh" ), fertile ( "green" ), and creative ( "breast of the new world" ). However, these words can also be associated with the youthfulness Daisy represents ("fresh"), with the green light at the end of her dock ( "green"), and with the fact that she is a mother ( "breast").

At the beginning of the novel, while watching Gatsby, Nick witnesses a curious event. Gatsby, standing by the waterside, stretches his arms toward the darkness, trembling. This gesture seems odd to Nick because all he can make out across the Sound is a green light, such as one finds at the end of a dock. Later, when Gatsby finally meets Daisy, Gatsby tells her that her house is right across the Sound from his. He then continues, informing her "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." Prior to that day, the green light represented a dream to Gatsby and by reaching out to it, he was bringing himself closer to his love. Now that Daisy is standing beside Gatsby, her arm in his, Nick notes that the green light will no longer hold the same significance. Gatsby’s dream, the goal for which he patterned his adult life on, must now change. However, Gatsby was still dreaming about Daisy the day George Wilson murdered him. Perhaps Gatsby was happiest with his dream: the dream never deserted him but the reality of Daisy did. Green is the colour of hope, promise and renewal. The green light held for Gatsby all the promise and wonder that the original settlers once had for this green land ( "green breast of the new world" ). The problem Gatsby faces with his hope in the green light is that in America that green light, that vision or dream, can only be realized by accumulating enough wealth to bring it within arm’s reach, and the accumulation of such riches only serves to corrupt the dream. Thus, the dream and its realization are basically incompatible and the green light is, after all, nothing more than a lightbulb shining at the end of Daisy’s dock.

We should also notice that during his reverie Nick describes America’s trees as having "once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams". "The last and greatest of all human dreams" is the dream that animated the imagination of the Dutch sailors when they first set eyes on the "new green world", a dream of infinite possibilities and fulfillment. "Last" can be seen in relation to the words "face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his [man’s] capacity for wonder", which appear at the end of the paragraph. To the Dutch sailors America was full of promise and wonder, it represented the "greatest of all human dreams", but this was the last time the world was equal to the great expectations ("the last and greatest of all human dreams" ) these men had. "Pandered in whispers" is something trees cannot do; only people can pander and whisper. A pander is a person who furnishes clients for a prostitute: "pandered in whispers" suggests a pimp doing this privately, secretly("in whispers"). Is Fitzgerald suggesting the corruption of the early idealism of America by the worldly concerns ("pandered" ) of the later settlers, those who had pulled down "the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house" ? Perhaps "pandered in whispers" suggests that whatever the settlers and explorers came for, they came not only to "wonder" at America but also , in various ways, to "rape" it silently, to use a metaphor for the various spoliations of the American land. The "green breast of the new world", the pap of a possible new life, might have offered an inexhaustible supply of happiness and success, but as an image we cannot help linking this "green breast" of America to the shocking spectacle of Myrtle Wilson’s left breast "swinging loose like a flap" after the road accident in which she is killed. It is almost as if Fitzgerald wanted to show America desecrated, mutilated, violated.

Nick writes that Gatsby believed in the "orgastic future". "Orgastic" is another example of Fitzgerald’s use of unusual adjectives. When Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald’s editor, queried this word, Fitzgerald told him that it was the alternative version of the adjective "orgasmic", and that in his view it was more appropriate to this final passage than the word "orgasmic" was because only "orgastic" suggested an intense experience which seemed to stand outside the flow of historical time. Fitzgerald was very insistent about retaining this word instead of the more commonly used "orgasmic": " I want "orgastic" – it’s exactly the thing, I think", he wrote to Perkins. Fitzgerald knew, of course, exactly what he wanted but the idea of "orgastic" suggesting an intense experience that stands outside of historical time is quite baffling. Some editions of the novel mistakenly preserve "orgiastic", the adjective from "orgy", which was an unauthorized and incorrect change made by Edmund Wilson in 1941, after Fitzgerald’s death.

Nick concludes his passage by writing " so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." He notes how we are all a little like Gatsby, boats moving up a river, going forward but continually feeling the pull of the past. Although one may look at Gatsby and realize the futility of chasing dreams ( at the expense of missing the joy of the present and neglecting reality ), in the end, is anyone really that different ?

Here are the translations:

§ Passai a New York i miei sabato sera perché quei suoi ricevimenti sfavillanti, abbaglianti, erano rimasti così vivi in me, che udivo ancora la musica e le risate lievi e incessanti che giungevano dal suo giardino e le automobili che continuavano a percorrere il suo viale. Una sera udii un’automobile vera, e vidi i fari fermarsi ai gradini d’ingresso. Ma non andai ad informarmi ( . . . )

L’ultima sera, col baule già chiuso e la macchina già venduta al droghiere, uscii a rivedere per l’ultima volta quell’enorme e incoerente tentativo fallito di casa. Sui gradini bianchi una parola oscena, scarabocchiata con un pezzo di mattone da qualche ragazzino, risaltava chiara sotto la luce della luna; la cancellai, raschiando la pietra con la scarpa. Poi scesi lentamente sulla spiaggia e mi distesi sulla sabbia.

Quasi tutte le grandi ville costiere oramai erano chiuse e le luci erano rare, se si toglieva il chiarore di un ferry – boat la cui ombra si spostava attraverso lo Stretto. E mentre la luna si levava più alta, le case caduche incominciarono a fondersi, finché lentamente divenni consapevole dell’antica isola che una volta fiorì per gli occhi dei marinai olandesi: un seno fresco, verde, del nuovo mondo. Gli alberi scomparsi, gli alberi che avevano ceduto il posto alla casa di Gatsby, avevano una volta incoraggiato bisbigliando il più immane dei sogni umani; per un attimo fuggevole e incantato, l’uomo deve aver trattenuto il respiro di fronte a questo continente, costretto ad una contemplazione estetica, da lui non capita né desiderata, mentre affrontava per l’ultima volta nella storia qualcosa di adeguato alla sua possibilità di meraviglia.

E mentre meditavo sull’antico mondo sconosciuto, pensai allo stupore di Gatsby la prima volta che individuò la luce verde all’estremità del molo di Daisy. Aveva fatto molta strada per giungere a questo prato azzurro e il suo sogno doveva essergli sembrato così vicino da non poter sfuggire più. Non sapeva che il sogno era già alle sue spalle, in questa vasta oscurità dietro la città, dove i campi oscuri della repubblica si stendevano nella notte.

Gatsby credeva nella luce verde, il futuro orgiastico che anno per anno indietreggia davanti a noi. C’e sfuggito allora, ma non importa: domani andremo più in fretta, allungheremo di più le braccia . . . e una bella mattina . . .

Così continuiamo a remare, barche contro corrente, risospinti senza posa nel passato.

( Mondadori, pgs. 181 – 182 )

And:

§ Me ne andavo a New York il sabato sera, perché quei suoi ricevimenti sfavillanti, abbaglianti, erano così vividi in me che ancora ne udivo la musica, con quel ridere lieve e incessante che proveniva dal giardino, e le automobili che percorrevano il viale in un senso e nell’altro. Una sera udii un’automobile vera, e vidi i fari fermarsi davanti ai gradini d’ingresso. Ma non volli indagare ( . . . )

L’ultima sera, col baule già pronto e la macchina già venduta al droghiere, uscii a vedere ancora una volta quell’immensa e incoerente massa di costruzione. Sui gradini bianchi una parola oscena, scarabocchiata con un pezzo di mattone da qualche ragazzino, si delineava chiaramente nella luce lunare. La cancellai raschiando la pietra con la mia scarpa. Poi, scesi a passi lenti sulla spiaggia e mi distesi sulla sabbia.

Quasi tutte le grandi ville lungo la costa erano ormai chiuse, ed era difficile vedere altre luci intorno, a parte la mobile luminosità di un traghetto che attraversava lo stretto. E mentre la luna si levava più alta, quelle case giustapposte cominciarono a fondersi e a svanire finché a poco a poco presi consapevolezza della vecchia isola che era qui e che una volta fiorì per gli occhi dei marinai olandesi – un fresco, verde seno del nuovo mondo. Quegli alberi svaniti, gli alberi che avevano ceduto il posto alla casa di Gatsby, avevano propiziato coi loro bisbigli l’ultimo e più grande di tutti i sogni umani; per un’attimo fuggevole e incantato, l’uomo deve aver trattenuto il suo respiro in presenza di questo continente, spinto a una contemplazione estatica da lui non compresa né desiderata, faccia a faccia, per l’ultima volta nella storia, con qualcosa commisurato alla sua capacità di meravigliarsi.

E mentre me ne stavo lì a meditare su quel lontano, ignoto mondo, pensai allo stupore di Gatsby allorché per la prima volta identificò la luce verde all’ estremità del molo di Daisy. Aveva fatto un lungo cammino per giungere a questo azzurro prato, e il suo sogno dovette sembrargli così vicino che difficilmente poteva mancare d’afferrarlo. Non sapeva che era invece già alle sue spalle, in qualche parte, nella vasta oscurità dietro la città, dove i campi oscuri della repubblica si stendevano nella notte.

Gatsby credeva nella luce verde, nella pienezza eccitante del futuro che anno dopo anno indietreggia davanti a noi. Ci è sfuggito una volta, allora, ma non importa – domani correremo più in fretta, tenderemo di più le braccia . . . E in un bel mattino . . .

Così procediamo a fatica, barche contro corrente, risospinti senza sosta nel passato.

( Newton, pgs. 185 – 186 )

Both translations use "automobile vera" to translate "material car". The adjective "vera" means "real", "true". Like the word "real", "vera" stresses authenticity, genuineness, truly possessing the essence of what the noun implies, as in the expressions "un vero eroe", "un vero amico", "un vero inglese" or "una vera macchina" ( "a real heroe", " a real friend", " a real Englishman", " a real car" ). So considered , it is standard to refer to a car as being "real", "vera", whereas it is peculiar to mention a car as being "material". Failure to mention the car that turns up at Gatsby’s house as being "material" means that the translations do not pick up on the important theme of materialism, and more specifically of cars as a clear index of material success.

§ ( . . . ) uscii a rivedere per l’ultima volta quell’enorme tentativo fallito di casa. ( Mondadori, pg. 181 )

§ ( . . . ) uscii a vedere ancora una volta quell’immensa e incoerente massa di costruzione. ( Newton, pg. 185 )

In the Mondadori translation, Fitzgerald’s bold use of the adjective "incoherent" to describe a house has not been translated. What is lost in this translation is the idea of Gatsby’s "incoherent house" as a metaphor for his broken dream, his dream that does not hold together ( "incoherent") but disintegrates, collapses instead. By describing Gatsby’s house as an "enormous failed attempt" ( "enorme tentativo fallito" ) the language limits us to the context of an enormous house that seems to have been badly built. An attempt ( "tentativo " ) to build a decent house has been made, but that attempt has failed ("tentativo fallito" ) and the result is quite simply an enormous house that has been badly built ( " un enorme tentativo fallito di casa" ).

The Newton translation uses the adjective "incoerente", but Gatsby’s house is an enormous mass ("immensa massa") of a construction ("costruzione"). "Incoherent" is inappropriate to describe a house since it means lacking clarity in expression. On the other hand "incoerente", which also has the meaning of lacking physical coherence or adhesiveness, can be used to describe a house or a construction that lacks in solidity: in fact "materiali incoerenti", technically speaking, are materials that haven’t been cemented ( "incoerente" with its meaning of "non cementato"). So by describing Gatsby’s house as an "immensa e incoerente massa di costruzione", even the language in this translation limits us to the context of an enormous construction ("immensa massa di costruzione" ) and how poor the quality of the materials used to build it are ( "incoerente" as in "non cementato", "privo di compattezza" ). The suggestiveness of the original, with its allusion to Gatsby’s dream, is lost in the translation. We should also notice that in the original the allusion to Gatsby’s dream ultimately not holding together, disintegrating, was not only suggested through the word "incoherent" but also through the word "failure". This word has not been translated at all.

§ E mentre la luna si levava più alta, le case caduche incominciarono a fondersi . . . ( Mondadori, pg. 181 )

§ E mentre la luna si levava più alta, quelle case giustapposte cominciarono a fondersi . . . ( Newton, pg. 185)

In the original the adjective "inessential", which means not of the essence, points to some sort of metaphysical, "inessential" reality ( an "essence" is a metaphysical idea ) that is not the reality of the physical world that surrounds us. This capacity to envisage possibilities beyond the material, beyond the obvious and the given ( which we saw was one of Gatsby’s special qualities ) is not suggested at all in the adjective "caduco", which means transient, fleeting, nor is it suggested in the adjective "giustapposto", which means juxtaposed, placed face to face.

§ . . . antica isola che una volta fiorì per gli occh dei marinai olandesi. . . ( Mondadori)

§ . . . vecchia isola che era qui e che una volta fiorì per gli occhi dei marinai olandesi. . . ( Newton)

In the English the word "flowered" holds an allusion to Daisy since her name is also the name of a flower. " Fiorì " means "flowered" ( "fiorire" = "to flower" ), but the allusion to Daisy is possible with " fiorì " only by translating her name to Margherita, which is also the Italian word for a daisy.

§ . . . un seno fresco , verde, del nuovo mondo.

( Mondadori )

§ . . . un fresco, verde seno del nuovo mondo.

( Newton)

The translators do not have a problem with "fresh, green breast of the new world" because the syntactical collocation is equally possible in both languages. Like the original, the translations also contain an allusion to Daisy. In fact "fresco" can be associated with Daisy’s youthfulness ("fresh" ), "verde" with the green light at the end of her dock, and "seno" ( "breast" ) with the fact that Daisy is a mother.

§ Gli alberi scomparsi ( . . .) avevano una volta incoraggiato bisbigliando il più immane dei sogni umani. (Mondadori )

§ Quegli alberi svaniti ( . . .) avevano propiziato coi loro bisbigli l’ultimo e più grande di tutti i sogni umani.

( Newton)

The first thing we notice is that "pandered in whispers", "incoraggiato bisbigliando" and "propiziato coi loro bisbigli", applied to trees, are bizarre formulations. Whereas in the original the trees "pandered in whispers" to the dreams, in the Mondadori translation the trees encouraged ("incoraggiato" ) the dreams, and in the Newton translation the trees propitiated ( "propiziato") them. In the English the dreams of infinite possibilities ( "greatest of all human dreams" ) belong to the Dutch sailors and animate their imagination when they first set eyes on the beauty ( "fresh, green") of the new world. However, the trees are pandering in whispers to these dreams of success and fulfillment as if they could somehow corrupt the dreams of these Dutch sailors and thus destroy their hopes. We saw that perhaps Fitzgerald was suggesting the corruption of the early idealism of America through the idea of the trees in America pandering to the dreams of happiness and success that the settlers had. This suggestion is not present in the translations since the trees are not pandering in whispers to the dreams of the Dutch sailors ( = ai sogni ) but seem instead to be encouraging human dreams themselves ( "gli alberi avevano incoraggiato il più immane dei sogni umani") or somehow propitiating, making these dreams favourable (" gli alberi avevano propiziato il più grande di tutti i sogni umani" ).

In the original Nick writes " . . . 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." Fitzgerald repeats " wonder" twice and this draws our attention to the contrast between the grandiose wonder that the Dutch sailors must have felt at their first sight of this newly discovered and unspoilt country, and Gatsby’s far less grandiose wonder on picking out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. The green light was, after all, nothing more than a lightbulb shining at the end of a dock.

The translations do not repeat their word for "wonder": both use "meraviglia" ( "meravigliarsi", in the Newton, is the verb from which "meraviglia" is derived ) for the Dutch sailors’ wonder and "stupore" for Gatsby’s wonder. However, the translations still suggest a contrast between the two different types of "wonder". In fact "meraviglia" and "stupore" both mean "wonder", but "stupore" is a far greater wonder than "meraviglia", a wonder that stupefies and leaves us almost speechless. The suggestion that Gatsby’s wonder is ridiculous compared to the grandiose wonder of the sailors is achieved not by repeating the word "wonder", as in the English, but through exaggeration: "stupore" is more appropriate to the immense wonder that the Dutch sailors must have felt whereas "meraviglia" suits Gatsby’s more trivial kind of wonder. "Stupore", referred to Gatsby’s wonder, is a mocking comment.

§ ( . . . ) Aveva [ Gatsby ] fatto molta strada per giungere a questo prato azzurro (. . . ) ( Mondadori)

§ ( . . . ) Aveva [Gatsby ] fatto un lungo cammino per giungere a questo azzurro prato ( . . . ) ( Newton)

In the original Nick, walking on Gatsby’s lawn, calls it a "blue lawn". "Blue" suggests the idea of Nick feeling dejected and depressed over Gatsby’s death. The word "azzurro" only means the colour light blue. It does not have the same meaning of feeling down, dispirited that the word

"blue" has. So what is lost in the translations is the suggestion of Nick being depressed over Gatsby’s death.

§ Gatsby credeva nella luce verde, il futuro orgiastico che anno per anno . . . ( Mondadori )

§ Gatsby credeva nella luce verde, nella pienezza eccitante . . . (Newton )

Fitzgerald insisted to his editor on retaining the word "orgastic" instead of "orgasmic". "Orgastic" was exactly the word Fitzgerald wanted and no other word would do. "Orgiastico", in the Mondadori translation, means "orgiastic", the adjective derived from "orgy". In the Newton translation, whatever "pienezza eccitante" means ( exciting height ? stimulating fullness ? ) the idea of orgasm which "orgastic" or orgasmic immediately suggest is lost. Because Fitzgerald believed that only the word "orgastic" had the special quality of somehow being able to describe an ecstatic experience that stands outside the flow of historical time (!), he felt that "orgastic" and not "orgasmic", the word his editor suggested to use, was appropriate to the complicated treatment of time that characterizes the final paragraphs of the novel.

CONCLUSION

What is "great" about Jay Gatsby ? This question must surely arise in the course of any attempt to interpret Fitzgerald’s novel. The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, in the middle of a decade of hero worship in America. Newspapers were extravagant in celebrating a feat such as Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, while the careers of screen idols ranging from the romantic Rudolph Valentino to the comic Charlie Chaplin filled the pages of magazines ( such as "Town Tattle", which Myrtle Wilson reads ) eagerly purchased by Americans hungry for glamorous images.

But America, since its declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776, had been proud of its identity as a modern democracy. In such a society, which boasted of the fundamental equalities of all its citizens, the concept of greatness was far from straightforward. The Old World had its "great" rulers: Alexander the Great, Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great. In America, the epithet "the great" was likely to be attached to the name of some vaudeville magician or stage illusionist. Jay Gatsby certainly defines himself according to European values,

importing clothes ( "I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season", he tells Nick ) and cars from England, living in a mansion based on a French model, and affecting the lifestyle of an Old World aristocrat. But his efforts do not convince; the traces of the boy from the American Midwest are evident throught the veneer of sophistication, surfacing in moments of nervousness and uncertainty. As Nick observes, "He [ Gatsby ] was never quite still; there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand." Gatsby seems, then, to be closer to the New World version, "The Great Gatsby" surrounded by props and assistants, performing magic tricks which are almost, but not quite, believable.

In the same year that Fitzgerald published his novel, John Dos Passos published Manhattan Transfer, another book about New York, but a book without a hero. Dos Passos created a panorama of the city, moving from scene to scene, and from character to character, with no event and no individual standing out significantly from the rest. In the 1920s America was becoming an urban society, its life was increasingly city – based, and that also complicates the notion of "greatness" since inhabitants of cities tend to become anonymous, to be drawn into the mass, and Fitzgerald shared Dos Passos’s sense that America had indeed become a culture of mass production and mass

consumption. In the urban, industrialised, standardised world of the twentieth century heroic literary figures have become more and more scarse. The individual achieving distinction through "great", heroic deeds has been largely displaced by an anti – hero whose aspirations are seen not as "great" but as meaningless, a passive victim carried along on the tide of events, at the mercy of large and impersonal forces, without control over his or her destiny. After the experiences of the First World War the anti – hero is often portrayed as a powerless figure, caught up in social processes that are rigidly mechanical, with no room to prove personal worth. Gertrude Stein called this the "Lost Generation", characterizing an age which seemed to have no sense of historical purpose. It is depicted in the early novels of Fitzgerald’s friend Ernest Hemingway, such as The Sun Also Rises ( 1926 ) and A Farewell to Arms ( 1929 ), where the war is seen to be directly responsible for the impotence of the characters.

What makes Gatsby "great" is by no means the only intriguing issue generated by the novel. In 1945 the critic Lionel Trilling suggested that Jay Gatsby stands for America itself. Indeed one of the concerns of the novel is the condition of America in the early twentieth century, but more specifically Fitzgerald is examining the fate of American ideals during a period when the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence, issued in

1776, were under threat from the pressures of modern life. Fitzgerald’s favoured title for the novel was, after all, "Under the Red, White, and Blue", invoking the Stars and Stripes, the national flag as an emblem of those ideals. Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers who formulated the Declaration enshrined within it the ideal of equal opportunity for all. Yet Fitzgerald depicts a society that is without fundamental equalities and riven by class distinctions, dramatically rendered in the different fortunes of the Buchanans, who live in fashionable East Egg, and the Wilsons, trapped in the dismal valley of ashes. The novel thus raises the question of what makes a successful nation. Does material prosperity lead to loss of valuable ideals such as honesty, loyalty, and fairness ? Does the success of some in acquiring wealth necessarily disadvantage many others and so create a divided and failed society ? America has traditionally cherished the notion of the self – determining individual, living with minimal interference or regulation from government and social pressures. The Great Gatsby portrays a society in which individuals have been regimented during wartime, and subjected to Prohibition during peacetime. We are told that as a young officer, Jay Gatsby was "liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world." More generally the novel shows the emergence of a mass society with pressure placed upon individual integrity from such sources as advertising

and fashion and through images spread by cinema and magazines. The concept of the self – regulating individual must be revised in a society where you are what you wear, and where you are defined by the car you drive or the house in which you live.

The famous concluding vision of the Dutch sailors encountering with wonder a "fresh, green breast of the new world" evokes an ideal America which has been perpetuated in American culture in the form of the American Dream. Fitzgerald was interested in the tensions that exist between two variant definitions of the American Dream. The first is an idealised version which preserves the sense of wonder and of limitless possibility at the heart of what America means. This America is an embodiment of human potential, free from any limits set by past experience. It is this aspect of Gatsby that Nick Carraway admires unequivocally. However, another version of the American Dream has come to be predominant. This is a materialistic version in which the process of creating one’s self is equated with getting rich. Gatsby has recreated himself, shedding the past, abandoning his parents, just as America tried to jettison European history and values with its Declaration of Independence. Gatsby’s intention was to create an ideal self ("he sprang from his Platonic conception of himself", Nick writes) held together by hope and wonder. But this ideal is tainted by the criminal means he employed to attain his wealth. It is this aspect of

Gatsby, the corruption within his lifestyle, and his vulgar exhibitions of affluence that provoke Nick’s scorn. Fitzgerald presents the tensions that exist between these two definitions of the American Dream in terms of an apparent paradox in which success in material terms inescapably means failure in terms of the ideal. Still in terms of Fitzgerald’s meditation on American ideals, the New World’s "fresh, green breast", which represented a dream of infinite possibilities and fulfillment, has diminished to become the "green light" at the end of the Buchanans’ dock, the artificial marker of a rich man’s property. In this way Fitzgerald’s disappointment in the American Dream is the disappointment of all those whose idealistic dreams have been betrayed in the materialistic wasteland that America has become.

The decade following the First World War in America has become popularly known as the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald played a major role in characterizing these years as a period of pleasure – seeking and of reckless exuberance. Many of his short stories provide an entertaining picture of youthful hedonism, but in his more substantial fiction, a far more gloomy and at times sinister version of the age emerges. The novel usually cited as capturing the essence of this version of the Jazz Age is The Sun Also Rises ( 1926 ) by Fitzgerald’s close friend Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway depicts a group of young expatriate Americans, wandering

aimlessly through Europe, sensing that they are powerless and that life is pointless in the aftermath of the Great War. But the feeling of loss and emptiness had already been identified by Fitzgerald when, at the end of This Side of paradise ( 1920 ), he wrote of a new generation "grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken." The Great Gatsby may also be seen to encapsulate this perception of life without purpose, of restlessness, dissatisfaction and drifting. Daisy Buchanan complains that she has "been everywhere and seen everything and done everything". The prospect of having to devise ways to while away the years ahead appals her: "What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon and the day after that, and the next thirty years ? ", she complains. Her social set shares this purposelessness. They drift, restless but without direction. In contrast to those who drift around him, Gatsby’s life is directed and purposeful. Nick writes that Gatsby was "committed . . . to the following of a grail." Gatsby, like a knight in Arthurian romance, has taken Daisy as his grail, the sacred object of his quest. He possesses the devotion, courage, and sense of purpose typical of the Arthurian Grail Knights, but his wasted land is a world in which materialism has taken the place of religion. Gatsby’s life ends in murder. His energy is cancelled out in a case of mistaken identity. Fitzgerald seems to be suggesting that such a hopeful attitude to life is untenable in the materialistic wasteland that modern America has become.

The general acceptance of Fitzgerald into the ranks of serious American novelists had to wait until his death in 1940. He was fourty – four when he died and the story of the early rise and abrupt fall of his literary reputation – as well as his personal fortunes – can be fitted into two dramatic decades of the American twentieth century, the twenties and the thirties. The twenties were less than three months old when Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, arrived and immediately became a famous American book. A collection of stories, Flappers and Philosophers ( 1921 ), and a second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned ( 1922 ), made it clear that Fitzgerald would be one of the brightest figures of that decade. The climax of his fortunes arrived, we can see now, very rapidly. In 1925 the splendid artisic success of The Great Gatsby, and then in the second half of the twenties the days and months of his private world began to descend into tragedy. He could not bring the order into his life that would allow him to write his next novel. By the end of the twenties he was living too high and drinking too much. In April 1930 his wife Zelda had the mental breakdown that ended the romantic life they had built together over the preceding ten years. During the thirties, his last decade, Fitzgerald’s life encompassed enough pathos

and agony to make his biography by Arthur Mizener (1951) one of the saddest records of an American literary life. Before he died he was dead as a writer. Nobody was buying his books though seven were still in print. What has become clearer since his death in 1940 is a final irony, at the expense not of Fitzgerald but of American literary culture: the neglect he suffered during the 1930s was hugely undeserved. It took posthumously published works to reveal to America how much serious work Fitzgerald had accomplished against great odds during the last ten years of his life. That he shortened his own life by dissipation and wasted his fine talent all along the way was the judgement passed by most of the critics at the time of his death. The severity of their judgements may have been justified, but this did not excuse the failure to see how hard Fitzgerald had written all his life, or the failure to distinguish his best work from the rest and to recognize how much good work there was. It will perhaps become less of a temptation as the decades pass to be preoccupied with Fitzgerald as a person, and with his life as a cautionary tale, at the expense of a close concentration on his stories and novels. He used himself so mercilessly in his fiction, there is often such a complete fusion between his life and his stories, that conscientious criticism will always have to remember D.H.Lawrence’s warning to biographically – minded critics: don’t trust the artist, trust the tale. It is hard in coming to terms with Fitzgerald to follow Lawrence’s

advice and learn to trust the tale, not the author. But if we succeed we shall learn that the aspects of himself that Fitzgerald continually made into the characters in his fiction are imaginatively re – created American lives. He often wrote that high order of self – revelation that reveals humanity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Malcolm Cowley, Exile’s Return, Penguin Books, 1994

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, Touchstone, 1996

Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1951

Tim Parks, Translating Style, Cassell, London, 1998

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, Penguin Books, 2000

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack – Up with other Pieces and Stories, Penguin Books, 1965

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas, Penguin Books, 1966

Lionel Trilling, The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, 1945, Columbia University Press

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