HARUKI MURAKAMI
TRANSLATED BY TED GOOSSEN
To the best of my recollection, I was in my late thirties when I started telling people I was going to translate The Great Gatsby when I turned sixty. Having made that pronouncement, I then conducted my daily affairs as if I were moving toward that fixed point, so that much of what I did was pushed along by a kind of reverse calculation. Metaphorically speaking, I had placed Gatsby securely on my kamidana, the high shelf that serves as a household shrine to the Shinto gods, and then lived my life glancing up at it from time to time.
For some strange reason, however, it became harder and harder to wait till my sixtieth birthday. Restlessly, my eyes sought the book in the shrine more and more often until I finally had to give in. So, three years ahead of schedule, I sat down to work on this translation. Initially I told myself that I would just pick away at it in my spare time, but once I got going I found I couldn’t stop, and I finished the whole translation with unanticipated speed, in a single burst of energy. I was like the impatient child who can’t wait until his birthday to open his presents. This tendency to jump the gun never seems to change, no matter how old I get.
I had decided to wait until I was sixty to translate The Great Gatsby for a number of reasons. For one thing, I figured (or hoped) that by that age my skill would have improved to the point where I could do the job properly. Given Gatsby’s importance to me, I wanted my translation to be as precise and thorough as possible so that I would have no regrets. Another reason was the existence of several prior translations, which meant there was no need to rush yet another into print, especially when so many contemporary novels had to be translated as quickly as possible. Finally, there was the picture I had constructed of myself at sixty. By that stage, I thought, life will be more leisurely, and I can enjoy playing with Gatsby in the same way that old men enjoy puttering around with bonsai on their verandas. When I was in my thirties, the world of sixty seemed absurdly far away.
Once the reality of the problems and possibilities of that age had come into clear view, however, I became acutely aware that “bonsai on the veranda” wasn’t going to fit my situation at all. When I stopped to think about it, I could see clearly that no sudden, drastic change was going to take place when I turned sixty; for better or worse, I would be the same man continuing the same very undramatic life. That being the case, I reconsidered my position and decided there was no need to wait. Moreover, at the risk of sounding presumptuous, I had gained a fair degree—only a degree, mind you—of confidence as a translator. The time had come, I realized, for me to tackle Gatsby. I could feel it in my bones.
There was another reason, too, which probably has something to do with my age: the number of current works I felt the urgent need to translate was gradually shrinking. Most of the important books by writers crucial to my generation were already available in Japanese. As for the new crop of younger novelists, well, I could leave their work to a new group of eager young translators. Such a move would allow me the luxury of stepping slightly outside the current of the times to translate works I had long dreamed of putting my hand to. This would not mean that I would forgo contemporary literature altogether. Indeed, I fully expected—or at least hoped for—new works to pop up that I would want to translate. What would certainly change, though, was the ratio between old and new: now classics and semiclassics would come to make up the greater part of my repertoire. These were the texts I had kept close at hand over the years, the books I loved. Most of them, of course, already existed in standard translations; yet if I could refresh them—“wash them anew,” as we say—even slightly, my efforts would have been worth it.
My translation of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which I published several years ago, is part of this “rewashed” series, as is, of course, this version of The Great Gatsby. I have no desire to take exception with the translations of my predecessors. Each is outstanding in its own way. In fact, if a reader who had grown attached to a novel through one of those translations were to demand to know why I had gone to the trouble of producing yet another version, I would find it hard to justify myself. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that, as I wrote when my version of Catcher came out, every translation possesses its own “best before date.” Although numerous literary works might properly be called “ageless,” no translation belongs in that category. Translation, after all, is a matter of linguistic technique, which naturally ages as the particulars of a language change. Thus, while there are undying works, on principle there can be no undying translations. Just as dictionaries eventually become outdated, so, to some extent, does every translation (including, of course, my own) grow obsolete as times change. I would even go so far as to say that when a specific translation is imprinted too deeply on the minds of its readers for too long, it runs the risk of damaging the original. It is therefore imperative that new versions appear periodically in the same way that computer programs are regularly updated. At the very least this provides a broader spectrum of choices, which can only benefit prospective readers.
In the case of The Great Gatsby, I found that none of the translations I looked at satisfied me, regardless of their quality. Inevitably, I would think, This feels a bit (or a lot!) different from the Gatsby I know. I must hasten to add that this reaction was personal, based on the image I carried in my mind, and had nothing at all to do with objective—or academic—critical assessments of the works at hand, such evaluations being beyond my power anyway. All I could do was scratch my head at how wide the gap was between “my Gatsby” and the impression I received from the translations—this again from a purely subjective perspective. I don’t normally discuss my reactions to others’ work so frankly. But this is The Great Gatsby we are talking about, so I am willing to stick my neck out.
Put differently, I translated Gatsby at an extremely personal level. I wanted to make my long-standing image of Gatsby clear and concrete, so that readers could picture the distinct colors and contours of the novel and feel its textures. To do this, I strove to eliminate anything that was the slightest bit obscure or that might leave the reader feeling as if they had somehow missed something.
I have always felt that translation is fundamentally an act of kindness. It is not enough to find words that match: if images in the translated text are unclear, then the thoughts and feelings of the author are lost. In this particular case, I tried hard to be as kind a translator as possible. As I went over passage after passage, I attempted to clarify the meaning of each in Japanese to the best of my ability. Still, as with everything, there were limits. All I can say is, I tried my best.
I have written of the crucial importance that The Great Gatsby holds for me. As a responsible translator, therefore, it behooves me to try to explain that importance in more concrete terms.
When someone asks, “Which three books have meant the most to you?” I can answer without having to think: The Great Gatsby, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. All three have been indispensable to me (both as a reader and as a writer); yet if I were forced to select only one, I would unhesitatingly choose Gatsby. Had it not been for Fitzgerald’s novel, I would not be writing the kind of literature I am today (indeed, it is possible that I would not be writing at all, although that is neither here nor there).
Whatever the case, you can sense the level of my infatuation with The Great Gatsby. It taught me so much and encouraged me so greatly in my own life. Though slender in size for a full-length work, it served as a standard and a fixed point, an axis around which I was able to organize the many coordinates that make up the world of the novel. I read Gatsby over and over, poking into every nook and cranny, until I had virtually memorized entire sections.
Remarks such as these are bound to perplex more than a few readers. “Look, Murakami,” they’ll say, “I read the novel, and I don’t get it. Just why do you think it’s so great?” My first impulse is to challenge them right back. “Hey, if The Great Gatsby isn’t great,” I am tempted to say, inching closer, “then what the heck is?” Yet at the same time I am not without sympathy for their point of view. Gatsby is such a finely wrought novel—its scenes so fully realized, its evocations of sentiment so delicate, its language so layered—that, in the end, one has to study it line by line in English to appreciate its true value. Fitzgerald was a master stylist, and when he wrote Gatsby at the age of twenty-eight he was at the absolute peak of his craft. Unavoidably, Japanese translations have stumbled over some of the fine points of his novel, while others have been entirely omitted. As they say, a delicate wine doesn’t travel well. Try as one may, it will lose at least a portion of its aroma, mellowness, and texture en route.
The only answer, I guess, is to read a work such as Gatsby in the original; yet that is more easily said than done. The beauty of Fitzgerald’s fluent, elastic prose lies in his ability to alter tone, pattern, and rhythm to create infinitesimal shifts in atmosphere. To be perfectly honest, a work that achieves this stylistic level is too difficult for a person with limited English to comprehend—only a truly advanced reader is able to see what he is really up to.
This is why, if I may be allowed to exaggerate in a somewhat highhanded manner, it is my impression that Japanese readers have never truly appreciated The Great Gatsby. At the very least, judging from the overall reaction of those I have exchanged views with (most of whom are, at least to some extent, professionally connected to the literary world), I can only be pessimistic about Gatsby’s reception in Japan. And standing behind this pessimism is the imposing barrier of the translation process itself.
I cannot be so presumptuous as to claim that my translation of Gatsby clears that barrier entirely. No one is more aware than I am of what a heavy undertaking it is to translate Gatsby, so I am not being falsely modest when I concede that my effort, too, is bound to have some faults. Whoever looks hard enough, I fear, can probably locate any number of places where I have failed. Yet is there a way of transferring a work of such beauty and completeness in English into another language without the occasional failure?
Until Gatsby, I had always tried to keep the fact that I was a writer far from my mind when translating: I wanted to make myself invisible, like a black-garbed puppet handler on the Bunraku stage. What mattered, I believed, was fidelity to the original. True, my being a writer had to be involved to a certain degree, since it formed part of the context I brought to the work, but that was something that arose naturally, without any conscious intent on my part. Gatsby, however, was a different story. From the outset, I set my sights on putting my novel-writing experience to as good a use as possible. This did not mean that I translated loosely or substituted my own phrases for those of the original. Rather, it meant that, at strategic moments, I brought my imaginative powers as a novelist into play. One by one, I dug up the slippery parts of Fitzgerald’s novel, those scattered places that had proved elusive, and asked myself, If I were the author, how would I have written this? Painstakingly, I examined Gatsby’s solid trunk and branches and dissected its beautiful leaves. When necessary, however, I stepped back to take a broader view, forsaking a word-by-word approach. Had I gone about translating Gatsby any other way, I wouldn’t have been able to convey the power of Fitzgerald’s prose. To fully grasp its essence, I had to plunge into its heart—then and only then could his writing burst into bloom.
To put it in extreme terms, I turned The Great Gatsby into a final goal of sorts—through focusing on it, I was able to complete one stage of my journey as a translator. In this sense, while my Gatsby marked the end of something, a consummation and a conclusion, it also was a step forward into a new and broader realm. This is of course a purely personal concern, a task I set for myself, which has little direct relevance for readers who may pick up this book.
I had several objectives in mind when I set to work on the “Murakami version” of The Great Gatsby, what I guess you could call the fundamental principles of this translation.
The first was to make Gatsby a modern tale. The work was written in 1924, and set in 1922, so that more than eighty years had elapsed by the time I launched the translation. Long enough, in other words, for the novel to be considered ancient history. Yet I didn’t want it lumped with the other classics: whatever else, the story had to live in the present day. Thus I kept only those old-fashioned turns of phrase and descriptions of the period that I considered essential and eliminated the rest, or at the very least toned their colors down. Nick, Gatsby, and Daisy, Jordan and Tom—all had to exist as if they were literally standing beside us, breathing the same air that we do. They had to be our relatives and friends, our acquaintances and neighbors, which meant that their conversations had to come to life. One of the things I had absorbed over the years was an appreciation of just how crucial dialogue can be in the fashioning of a novel, a lesson I had originally picked up from Gatsby itself.
As readers will see, each of the characters in this novel is fully formed, with his or her distinctive manner of speech. This does not mean, however, that they are fixed and unmoving. While each character acts within a consistent framework, their feelings and thoughts shift—as do yours and mine—when their environment and circumstances change, and that in turn alters the way they speak. Yes, not only must their words come alive, their every breath must be seen to carry some sort of meaning.
Capturing Fitzgerald’s rhythm was another goal. Fitzgerald’s prose flows as does a piece of elegant music, and his sentences ride upon this rhythm. Like a fairy-tale beanstalk, they soar endlessly into the air, carrying the reader with them. Each word gives birth to the next in a single, ascending stream. Searching for space to grow, they spread out until they cover the sky. It is a beautiful sight. Principles such as logic and consistency do not rule here; indeed, they may be banished entirely. When that happens, words are sucked upward with their ambiguities and multiple meanings intact, so that they bulge with implications and possibilities. This in turn causes me, as a responsible translator, to shake my head in wonder over why a particular word has seemingly popped up from nowhere. Readers caught in the flow, however, are not discomfited in the slightest—they naturally apprehend what Fitzgerald is doing, for the writing is of unparalleled beauty, and the resonance of his language leaves nothing unsaid. This, I guess, is what literary genius is all about. For the translator, however, rendering such prose into colloquial Japanese is virtually impossible.
Faced with this dilemma, I decided to emphasize the musical rhythm that lies at the heart of Fitzgerald’s style. If I could somehow re-create that rhythm in Japanese, then the melody and the lyrics would fall into place. This musical analogy made natural sense when it came to approaching Fitzgerald. I occasionally found myself reading sections of the novel aloud as I worked, sometimes in the original English and sometimes in Japanese. I’m not sure how effective this was. But you should know that I used this technique in carrying out this translation, and that it reflects my fundamental approach to his art. What makes Fitzgerald’s prose so striking is that rhythm—once established, the words flow naturally. This is the beauty of the Fitzgerald style as I see it.
I fear I have gone on a little too long talking about my relationship to The Great Gatsby, and what it took to translate it. Still more might well be said, but that could go on forever, so I will set it aside and turn to another of my duties as translator: laying out the historical context of Fitzgerald’s novel and the circumstances under which he wrote it. By necessity this will be a simple and fairly rough account, a quick trip across an immensely detailed landscape.
The idea of writing Gatsby first came to Fitzgerald in 1923. He started serious work on the novel the following spring in France, where he and his wife, Zelda, had gone to live, and completed it by the end of that year; it was then published in the United States in April 1925.
Fitzgerald had become the golden boy of the literary world after his sensational 1920 debut, and had already published two long novels, This Side of Paradise (his first novel) and The Beautiful and the Damned, as well as two collections of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age. Americans had been swept up in the unprecedented economic boom that followed the First World War, and they were looking for a hero who would embody the blossoming new culture. Young, handsome, and utterly fearless, Fitzgerald was precisely the literary icon they required, an elegant and magnanimous voice that could speak on behalf of the new generation. Meanwhile, Zelda, his beautiful young wife, reigned as the princess of the flappers: poised at the cutting edge of fashion and liberated from old-fashioned morality, she indulged herself to her heart’s content in a life of carefree consumption.
Even while enmeshed in this flamboyant lifestyle, Fitzgerald raked in the money, turning out one high-priced short story after another for the popular journals. Most were simple, guileless stories with happy endings, designed merely to amuse, but included in the mix were a few that were breathtaking. How a callow young man such as Fitzgerald was able to produce such masterpieces despite his ignorance of the world, and his general lack of stability and self-discipline, remains a mystery. Unless, that is, one chalks it up—as one does with Mozart, Schubert, and their comrades—to that single word, genius.
Despite the noisy disorder of his life, Fitzgerald was filled with a burning ambition—to write an epoch-making novel. Certainly, the short stories he kept spinning out meant that he would never want for money. While novels forced one to wait in the hope that royalties would eventually start rolling in, the big magazines were offering fantastic rates for commissioned stories, and they paid right away. Financially, therefore, short stories were by far the better option. Professionally, however, Fitzgerald knew he would never be considered a first-class author until he had bequeathed a solid, weighty novel to posterity. This was the way the literary world worked then—and, with very few exceptions, still does. Fitzgerald was convinced that he was no lightweight; that if he could create just the right circumstances, he was capable of turning out a novel that would become an enduring classic. This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned had not been bad efforts, and their critical reception had been reasonably good. They had sold well. Yet his inner voice told him that he was capable of writing a novel with much more depth. Success was within his grasp.
Once the flurry of activity surrounding his literary debut and marriage had subsided, Fitzgerald escaped the hubbub of New York with Zelda for the more peaceful community of Great Neck in suburban Long Island. It was 1922, and he was twenty-six. He was committed to settling down there to do some serious writing; yet there was no way the hyperactive and glamour-loving Zelda could submit to a quiet suburban lifestyle and so, once again, the boisterous parties resumed. It would be a mistake, however, to see them as profitless, for the endless round of revelry they enjoyed in Great Neck paid off later, when it came time for Fitzgerald to craft the scenes we find in The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald was the type of novelist who could only write about what he had actually experienced or seen, which is why it was imperative that he live near the eye of the typhoon that was Zelda. We can therefore presume that had it not been for their wild nights in Great Neck, the masterpiece that is Gatsby would never have been written or, failing that, would have taken a very different shape. Certainly, Fitzgerald could never have described the parties in the book in such a fresh and lively way. One of Fitzgerald’s weak points was his difficulty in striking a balance between input and output. When his input passed a certain level, the excess energy reduced his output (this is the story of the first half of his career); conversely, cutting back on his input deprived him of the material he needed to write (this is the story of the second half). In Gatsby’s case, miraculously, Fitzgerald was able to hold these two sides in a beautiful, albeit precarious, balance. Such perfect equilibrium, however, would never occur again in his life.
In 1924, seeking a quieter, more relaxing spot that would allow him to concentrate on his novel and enable both of them to cut back on their escalating expenses (a futile goal, however often they might move), the Fitzgeralds changed locations yet again. Putting Great Neck behind them, they steamed across the Atlantic to their new home on the French Riviera. The couple seemed fated to spend their lives restlessly moving from one temporary abode to another (I am hardly one to talk here, by the way). Settling down in one place was quite beyond them. As a result, as long as he lived Fitzgerald never owned his own house, choosing instead to rent. Nor did he try to build up any sort of financial security. One can see these choices as reflecting a kind of purity, I suppose, but the upshot was that Fitzgerald’s life lacked any semblance of stability, whether in his home life or in his finances.
In any case, once ensconced in the fabled beauty of southern France, Scott—in what was a rarity for him—threw himself into his work. For Zelda, this was no fun at all. Being left on her own for long periods of time sent her boredom level skyrocketing. For the life of her, she couldn’t fathom why her husband was so wrapped up in his project. Why, she would complain, did he have to work like a horse on his damned novel? If he just went back to scribbling his stories during spare moments they would be free to go out and party. They would never have any fun this way—and after having taken so much trouble to find such a gorgeous spot! … As Scott resolutely poured his heart and soul into his writing, Zelda, out of boredom and a desire for revenge, entered into an affair with a dashing young French flyer. This was in the summer of that year.
Zelda’s fling was a replay of the many flirtations she had enjoyed as a girl with the young officers—including Scott—stationed near her home in Montgomery, Alabama. For better or for worse, she was the type of young woman who needed to be constantly admired by the men around her. Scott had learned to accept the fact that men were crazy for Zelda and to put his trust in the strength of their bond, so much so that when she began stepping out with other men he welcomed it as the elimination of a major distraction from his work. His lighthearted reaction turned to shock, however, when he realized how serious she was about her new beau. Those around Zelda assumed her relationship with the flyer was sexual, although it is impossible, looking back from today’s vantage point, to know for certain. We are only left to imagine that in all probability they were right.
At any rate, when Scott heard the rumors, he grilled Zelda about what was going on. Zelda admitted she had fallen in love and raised the possibility of a divorce. This was a devastating blow for Scott. As one might expect, he broke off his writing and confronted the couple with a final ultimatum (much as Tom does to Daisy and Gatsby in the novel). There followed a long series of histrionic exchanges, at the end of which it was decided that Zelda and her French airman would call an end to their brief summer of love. Given time to think the situation over coolly, Zelda had decided (as does Daisy) that it would be a foolish mistake to give up the life she shared with Scott. Nevertheless, the wounds the couple suffered from the affair were deep.
The work-obsessed husband and the wife who looks elsewhere for her pleasure are such common figures that we might dismiss them with a brief word and move on, yet the impact of these events on Scott was incalculable. In a single stroke, his ability to write his novel in peace and his unquestioning trust in his wife had been shattered. To gauge his reaction, we need only look at his portrait of Daisy, which in all likelihood was shaped by his pain and frustration. Or, at a deeper level, how the novelist in him unconsciously drew from the emotional turmoil generated by the affair to gain the creative “nourishment” he needed to write Gatsby.
At any rate, Scott was somehow able to right himself, and in late October of that year he sent the completed manuscript to the publisher. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, sent back a letter full of praise that basically said, Fabulous! This thrilled Fitzgerald, who anticipated sales on an unprecedented scale. Yet the book never got off the ground. Although Fitzgerald had privately embraced the hope that one hundred thousand copies might be sold (ensuring the financial security he longed for), in fact barely twenty thousand moved, despite overwhelmingly excellent reviews. This feeble performance meant that, once his advance was subtracted, he received almost nothing. Why were sales so low? Probably the reason was that the young readers who had supported Fitzgerald’s popularity up to that point found Gatsby’s content a little too deep, and the novel as a whole a little too difficult. What they wanted from him were urban novels that were bright and fashionable, and slightly sad. In a way, Fitzgerald had outgrown his own audience. Intellectually, and abruptly.
It was not to be until after Fitzgerald’s death that Gatsby was accorded the rank of “masterpiece” and placed on high school reading lists, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold annually. Scott had fulfilled his goal of creating an undying novel, although, sadly, he was not around to enjoy the sight. In fact, he had been ignored for many years, a “once-popular writer” left to languish in the dimly lit margins of history. He had single-handedly borne the burdens of his dependency on alcohol, Zelda’s mental and physical illnesses, and the care of their only daughter, all while living under chronically straitened circumstances; yet even so he had never lost his literary ambition or his literary conscience, pushing himself to keep writing novels and stories (still well worth reading, though they lack the sparkle of his heyday) until finally, having whittled himself down to almost nothing, he passed away at the young age of forty-four. Toward the end, Fitzgerald often compared his career to that of Hemingway. Hemingway was a modern literary titan, he lamented, whereas he himself amounted to no more than a master of technique, a sort of literary prostitute. In a sense, Fitzgerald truly believed this. Many saw this as an example of his characteristic defeatism, but who could blame him, given the way events were unfolding? There was a time in the late 1930s when The Great Gatsby was out of print, and one year the total royalties from Fitzgerald’s books amounted to a mere thirty-three dollars. In the meantime, Hemingway had become a culture hero for his times, worshipped by the young and celebrated around the world.
After the Second World War, however, Hemingway’s literary reputation steadily declined (or, one could say, returned to its proper, uninflated level) while Fitzgerald’s, propelled by the efforts of a handful of critics, rose dramatically, so that by now his fame is virtually unshakable. I am a bit shocked today when rereading Hemingway’s novels to see how quickly they have aged while Gatsby has managed to cement Fitzgerald’s reputation. It stands unblemished, a seamless work of art, clearly a level above The Sun Also Rises, my choice as Hemingway’s best novel. There is a common saying that one cannot assess a life until the lid to the coffin has been nailed shut; Fitzgerald’s case shows just how much time may pass after the coffin is closed without a final appraisal being reached.
In any event, one thing for certain is that, were it not for The Great Gatsby, such a reassessment of Fitzgerald’s work—had one occurred at all—would have been much less dramatic. That is how central Gatsby is to Fitzgerald’s legacy. Among his other works, Tender Is the Night is a special favorite of mine, an unforgettably beautiful and moving novel; yet there is no getting around the fact that, unlike Gatsby, there are a number of places where it fails to cohere. Fitzgerald himself was well aware of this situation. Looking back over his career in 1934, he said that the only time he had been able to sustain a pure state of artistic conscience was several months during the writing of The Great Gatsby. Why was such a feat impossible at other times? Clearly, the reasons are complex. Hemingway, who for a time was close friends with Scott, was characteristically forthright on the issue. He had found it impossible to fathom, he said, why a man capable of writing something as good as The Great Gatsby would waste his time playing drunken games. Then he met Zelda and it all became clear. In Hemingway’s opinion, Zelda was envious of Scott’s immense talent and took great satisfaction in preventing him from doing any serious work. In a letter to Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway wrote, “There are only two ways Scott can be saved. Either Zelda dies, or his stomach gets so bad he can’t drink another drop.” Hemingway also warned Scott that Zelda was crazy and that he should leave her (unsurprisingly, Scott ignored him).
Hemingway hit the bull’s eye from one angle; but from another I think he missed the target altogether. Scott intrinsically needed the fiery force that was Zelda, and she for her part intrinsically required the heat he produced. This exchange generated a vital energy, which heightened their inspiration and kept it vivid and fresh. Seen in this way, their choice of life partners could hardly be called mistaken. Nevertheless, the intensity of the heat so exceeded normal bounds that it became impossible to maintain a balance that allowed them to help each other. To make matters even worse, neither had a shred of practical sense when it came to running their lives, and the idea that they might cover for each other’s shortcomings seems never to have occurred to them. Even if it had, however, they fatally lacked the strength and patience to turn that awareness into action. Whatever shape their relationship might have taken, its collapse was unavoidable. No one, however, could have foreseen Zelda’s tragic and early descent into mental illness.
At all events, we can enjoy the fruit of the rare (once-in-a-lifetime may be more apt) dynamic that was Scott and Zelda in that almost flawless novel (“almost” here being purely rhetorical), The Great Gatsby. For this we can only rejoice. Though our hearts may ache at the thought of the strange vicissitudes of fate, so very magnificent and so terribly sad, that they had to endure. Yes, even then.
When I told Americans I was translating Gatsby, their first question was invariably: “How are you going to translate Gatsby’s pet phrase, ‘old sport’?” I suppose this was entirely natural. If I were American, I would probably ask the same thing. “Well,” I answered, “I plan to leave it as it is.” “But shouldn’t you try to find an appropriate expression in Japanese?” they replied, looking perplexed. Of course, I would have happily used “an appropriate Japanese expression,” had such a thing existed. But I couldn’t find one. Please understand, I have been batting the “old sport” problem around for more than twenty years, trying to come up with something. Nevertheless, when the time to commit myself to paper arrived, I could only shrug and go with the original English. It was not a question of laziness or a failure of nerve. Rather, after all those years, I had reached the conclusion that there could be no other solution. “Old sport” has to be left as “old sport”—there are no substitutes. Such is my thinking on the matter. Or, more hyperbolically, such is the path I have chosen. Had the word occurred just once in a specific situation, of course, there would have been any number of choices. That would be a mere technical problem. Since it was a key word that occurred throughout the text, though, I could only leave it as it was.
“Old sport” was probably a British expression around that time, somewhat similar to “old chap” today. Americans have used neither of these. If you were to look for an equivalent turn of phrase in American English, you would probably end up with something like “old friend.” Gatsby must have picked up “old sport” during the time he was enrolled at Oxford and then made it a habit after his return, a kind of personal affectation. Fitzgerald was able to suggest Gatsby’s innate theatricality, at once shady and naïve, through this form of address. Such transparently vulgar taste—also represented by things such as Gatsby’s pink suits and yellow sports car—is what grates on the nerves of Tom Buchanan, a true son of the upper class. “Old sport” clearly operates within this context, yet try as I might, I could find no Japanese word with similar associations. Even after twenty-odd years!
I also racked my brains over the opening and concluding sections of the novel. Why? For the very reason that both are lauded as examples of superb writing. Even after countless rereadings, they still take my breath away. Every word is filled with meaning and substance, laden with implication yet as light as ether; and when you reach out to grasp one, it slips through your fingers. It was my lack of confidence that I could handle these sections, I must confess, that led me to put off translating Gatsby for two decades. Instead, I placed it up on my kamidana and left it there. To be honest (and I should whisper this, or ask the publisher to print it in smaller type), I am still not entirely confident. All I can say is, once again, I gave it my best shot.
It is my sincere desire that you will enjoy The Great Gatsby, the sad, beautiful tale of a single summer, in whatever way you see fit. And that you will understand why I have treasured it for more than forty years. If I have been able to communicate even a portion of those feelings, and you are able to share my love of Fitzgerald’s novel, then I am happy. That is my one and only wish. I have written a great deal here, but, in the end, it seems that is really all that needs to be said.
