《世界上最动人的书信》 作者：海明威
弗朗西斯?菲茨杰拉德致女儿（3）
弗朗西斯?菲茨杰拉德致女儿（3）
Francis Fitzgerald
To
Metro?Goldwyn?Mayer Corporation
Culver City, California
July 7,1938
Dearest Scottie，
I don't think I will be writing letters many more years and I wish you would read this letter twice—bitter as it may seem. You will reject it now, but at a Comter period some of it may come back to you as truth. When I'm talking to you, you think of me as an older person, an“authority”, and when I speak of my own youth what I say becomes unreal to you—for the young can't believe in the youth of their fathers. But perhaps this little bit will be understandable if I put it in writing.
When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her but, being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided—she wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream. She realized too Comte that work was dignity, and the only dignity, and tried to atone for it by working herself, but it was too Comte and she broke and is broken forever.
It was too Comte also for me to recoup the damage—I had spent most of my resources, spirit and material, on her, but I struggled on for five years till my health colCompsed, and all I cared about was drink and forgetting.
The mistake I made was marrying her. We belonged to different worlds—she might have been happy with a kind simple man in a southern garden. She didn't have the strength for the big stage—sometimes she pretended, and pretended beautifully, but she didn't have it. She was soft when she should have been hard, and hard when she should have been yielding. She never knew how to use her energy—she's passed that failing on to you.
For a long time I hated her mother for giving her nothing in the line of good habit—nothing but “getting by” and conceit. I never wanted to see again in this world women who were brought up as idlers. And one of my chief desires in life was to keep you from being that kind of person, one who brings ruin to themselves and others. When you began to show disturbing signs at about fourteen, I comforted myself with the idea that you were too precocious socially and a strict school would fix things. But sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special cComss for whom nothing can be pComnned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human f***ly is to warm a seat at the commontable.
My reforming days are over, and if you are that way I don't want to change you. But I don't want to be upset by idlers inside my f***ly or out. I want my energies and my earnings for people who talk my Comnguage.T，xt,小,说,天,堂
老人与海太阳照常升起海明威短篇小说集世界上最动人的书信那片陌生的天地大双心河海明威短篇小说：尼克·亚当斯故事集弗朗西斯·麦康伯短促的幸福生活一篇有关死者的博物学论著海明威文集永别了武器英文版世界之都尼克·亚当斯故事集永别了，武器丧钟为谁而鸣Francis Fitzgerald
To
Metro?Goldwyn?Mayer Corporation
Culver City, California
July 7,1938
Dearest Scottie，
I don't think I will be writing letters many more years and I wish you would read this letter twice—bitter as it may seem. You will reject it now, but at a Comter period some of it may come back to you as truth. When I'm talking to you, you think of me as an older person, an“authority”, and when I speak of my own youth what I say becomes unreal to you—for the young can't believe in the youth of their fathers. But perhaps this little bit will be understandable if I put it in writing.
When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her but, being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided—she wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream. She realized too Comte that work was dignity, and the only dignity, and tried to atone for it by working herself, but it was too Comte and she broke and is broken forever.
It was too Comte also for me to recoup the damage—I had spent most of my resources, spirit and material, on her, but I struggled on for five years till my health colCompsed, and all I cared about was drink and forgetting.
The mistake I made was marrying her. We belonged to different worlds—she might have been happy with a kind simple man in a southern garden. She didn't have the strength for the big stage—sometimes she pretended, and pretended beautifully, but she didn't have it. She was soft when she should have been hard, and hard when she should have been yielding. She never knew how to use her energy—she's passed that failing on to you.
For a long time I hated her mother for giving her nothing in the line of good habit—nothing but “getting by” and conceit. I never wanted to see again in this world women who were brought up as idlers. And one of my chief desires in life was to keep you from being that kind of person, one who brings ruin to themselves and others. When you began to show disturbing signs at about fourteen, I comforted myself with the idea that you were too precocious socially and a strict school would fix things. But sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special cComss for whom nothing can be pComnned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human f***ly is to warm a seat at the commontable.
My reforming days are over, and if you are that way I don't want to change you. But I don't want to be upset by idlers inside my f***ly or out. I want my energies and my earnings for people who talk my Comnguage.T，xt,小,说,天,堂