Collage about F. Scott Fitzgerald

史考特‧費茲傑羅——爵士年代的旗手
史考特‧費茲傑羅說起來，是美國這個國家青春期的激烈又美麗的散發。那吐氣在空中忽然神話性地結晶的東西，就是費茲傑羅的作品群，還有他這個人。他把美國這個國家所擁有的最純真而浪漫的部份，靈魂的安靜震動，以自然的有生命的語言鮮活地描寫出來，寄託在有美麗陰影的故事形式中。
——P.255 , 村上春樹雜文集／賴明珠譯, 時報出版, 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s, or the Roaring Twenties, from which jazz music and dance emerged with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has lived on in American pop culture for decades. With the introduction of jazz came an entirely new cultural movement in places like the United States, France and England. The birth of jazz music is often accredited to African Americans but expanded and modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white Americans. White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz music in America. Even though the jazz movement was taken over by the middle class white population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and ideals with the white middle class society. Cities like New York and Chicago were cultural centers for jazz, and especially for African American artists. In urban areas, African American jazz was played on the radio more often than in the suburbs. 1920s youth used the influence of jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations. This youth rebellion of the 1920s went hand-in-hand with fads like bold fashion statements (flappers) and new radio concerts. As jazz flourished, American elites who preferred classical music sought to expand the listenship of their favored genre, hoping that jazz wouldn't become mainstream.


24 September 1896
Birth of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald at 481 Laurel Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota.

July 1918
FSF and Zelda Sayre meet at country club dance in Montgomery.

In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. The romance intensified Fitzgerald’s hopes for the success of his novel, but after revision it was rejected by Scribners for a second time. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement.

一九一九年二月份，退伍令一下來，他立刻趕往紐約，抵達之後第一件事就是給塞爾坦拍一封鼓勵的電報：……當我確定你對我的愛／沒有什麼是不可能的／我在野心與成功的國度裡。
(P.49, 費茲傑羅／亞瑟‧麥茲納／楊慧君譯, 貓頭鷹出版, 2000)


16 September 1919
Maxwell Perkins of Scribners accepts novel, now titled This Side of Paradise.

The publication of This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920, made the twenty-four-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. They embarked on an extravagant life as young celebrities. Fitzgerald endeavored to earn a solid literary reputation, but his playboy image impeded the proper assessment of his work.

22 September 1922
Publication of Tales of the Jazz Age, FSF’s second collection of short stories.

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010427160　
譯者序 / 柔之
寧靜的喧鬧──史考特‧費茲傑羅的爵士時代故事
　　以《大亨小傳》（The Great Gatsby，1925）傳世的美國桂冠作家史考特‧費茲傑羅（F. Scott Fitzgerald，1896-1940），其實也是一位豐富多產的短篇小說流行作家。他在1920到1930年代期間，曾在《星期六晚郵》（The Saturday Evening Post）、《時髦人士》（The Smart Set）等刊物上發表過許多膾炙人口的短篇小說，引起眾多迴響，不比長篇小說遜色。這些小說內容一如《大亨小傳》的主題──有錢人的生活，婚姻、財富、社會階級等問題，故事的女主角皆美麗善變，男主角則癡情守護，只為了擄獲芳心。本書所收錄的七篇故事寫於1919到1924年間，正值作者與其妻賽爾妲（Zelda Sayre）初戀至結婚，一直到《大亨小傳》出版前一年期間，也是《塵世樂園》（This Side of Paradise，1920）讓他一夜成名的狂歡時刻。此時，史考特‧費茲傑羅才二十三歲。
　　1920年代是史考特‧費茲傑羅所稱的美國「爵士時代」（Jazz Age）。這個時期的美國年輕人，剛從第一次世界大戰的破壞中復甦過來，意識到他們這一代歷經戰後，生活型態已經被導向與他們父母輩迥異的方向；他們嚮往新時代高度羅曼蒂克的道德觀、奢侈歡樂的生活；因為有汽車代步；他們的活動力比上一代更大，平常的雞尾酒舞會、市區的戲院排場及夜間俱樂部，也日趨繁複豪華。因此當時新一代的美國年輕人，便在他的小說主題裡找到了這樣的認同與皈依。

夜夜笙歌
(1922年)十月份他們決定搬回紐約。兩人在大頸區(Great Neck)租了一棟房子，買了一輛二手的勞斯萊斯汽車(他們買的總是二手的炫車)。夫妻倆常常整天在外盤桓，深夜才從皇家宮殿、開墾園、相約或豪華俱樂部的派對回到大頸區；他們的日本僕人通常在隔天早晨發現他們倆人睡在草坪上。
(P.68, 費茲傑羅／亞瑟‧麥茲納／楊慧君譯, 貓頭鷹出版, 2000)

May 1925
FSF meets Ernest Hemingway in Dingo bar.

In Paris Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemingway then unknown outside the expatriate literary circle with whom he formed a friendship based largely on his admiration for Hemingway’s personality and genius. The Fitzgeralds remained in France until the end of 1926, alternating between Paris and the Riviera. Fitzgerald made little progress on his fourth novel, a study of American expatriates in France provisionally titled “The Boy Who Killed His Mother,” “Our Type,” and “The World’s Fair.” During these years Zelda Fitzgerald’s unconventional behavior became increasingly eccentric.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
(A Moveable Feast On F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway)
他的才氣是天賜之物，如同灰塵留在翅膀上的圖案一樣自然。
有段時間，他卻像蝴蝶一樣對此全然不知，他更不知道那圖案何時被拂去，何時被攪亂。
後來他逐漸意識到自己被毀壞的羽翼，懂得其構造。
他學會思考，但無法再度翱翔，因為他已不愛飛行，只能回憶當初輕鬆自如地展翼天空的日子。
(P.182, 流動的饗宴／成寒譯, 時報出版, 2008)

10 April 1925
Publication of The Great Gatsby.

The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris when the novel was published in April. The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income.

There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
整個夏天，我的鄰居家夜夜傳來音樂聲。在他幽藍色調的花園裡，男男女女像忙碌的飛蛾，在笑語、香檳和星光間往來穿梭。下午海水漲潮時，客人在他庭院前的海邊高臺上跳水，或者躺在他沙灘的熱沙上曬太陽。同時，他的兩艘小汽艇則忙著拖曳滑水板，駛過海灣激起翻騰的浪花，像前奔去。每到周末，他的勞斯萊斯轎車就成了免費公車，從早上九點到深更半夜在城市裡來來去去，接送客人。而他的接駁用車也像蹦跳忙碌的黃色小蟲，疾駛去火車站接駁所有班車的旅客……
(P.61, 大亨小傳／徐之野譯, 新經典文化出版, 2012)

The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.
鐵軌拐了一個彎，現在他背對著太陽。太陽落下，彷彿是在將祝福鋪向這個正在消失的、她曾生活過的城市。他絕望地伸出手，想抓住一縷空氣，存留一個碎片——在他心中，這個城市因她而可愛。但是他淚眼朦朧……，這一切都跑得太快了，他知道自己已經失去了那一部分，永永遠遠地失去了那最新鮮、最美好的部分。
(P.219, 大亨小傳／徐之野譯, 新經典文化出版, 2012)

21 December 1940
FSF dies of heart attack at Sheilah Graham’s apartment, 1443 North Hayworth Avenue, Hollywood.

After MGM dropped his option at the end of 1938, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short-short stories for Esquire. He began his Hollywood novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had written more than half of a working draft when he died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment on December 21, 1940. Zelda Fitzgerald perished at a fire in Highland Hospital in 1948.


在靈魂的漫漫黑夜中，每一天都是凌晨三點鐘。
“ In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. ”
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Crack-Up (1936)


Reference：
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html
A Brief Life of Fitzgerald
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/chronology.html
A Fitzgerald Chronology