n  n
This is one of the best novels I read about the American dream. The prose is perfect in every way, and this novel's ending is one of the best endings I have ever read.

I first read Fitzgerald's masterpiece when I was a young teenager. After I finished reading it, I simply hated it. I had no clue why the people were so much obsessed with it. After many years I decided to give this novel another try when I started to hear my friends frequently discussing it.

It took me almost ten years after the initial read to understand the beauty of this book. The manner in which the author wrote it can't be compared to any other literary creation. The symbolism in it makes it a true masterpiece that no one should miss.

n  n   

“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.”

n  n

- لا يمكن قراءة هذه الرواية الا في سياقها التاريخي، فهي تتحدث عن المرحلة التي تلت الحرب العالمية الأولى وما خلّفته تلك الحرب من ضياع وفوضى وخلل اخلاقي ساد العالم برمته.

- "جاتسبي العظيم"، واغلب الظن ان العظيم تعني عكس معناها تماماً، وقد استعملها الكاتب كنوع من السخرية ليس من جاتسبي بل من العصر السائد حينها والذي لا زال مستمراً بالكثير من تفاصيله الى وقتنا هذا.

- لنبدأ من الخاتمة " لقد آمن غاتسبي بالضوء الأخضر، بالمستقبل الحسي الممتع الذي يتراجع عاماً بعد عام امامنا. حينئذٍ كان يراوغنا، ولكن لا يهم – غداً سنركض أسرع، نفتح أذرعنا اكثر... وذات صباح – وهكذا نتقدم، كقوارب تسير عكس التيار، عائدين دون توقف الى قلب الماضي.": هذه الخاتمة الرائعة تقول لنا ببساطة ان غاتسبي آمن بالدولار (الضوء الأخضر) وبالمستقبل المادي (الحسي الذي تشتريه المادة) لكنه خاب امله وبينما كان يرنو للمستقبل قفلت الحياة به الى الماضي..

- القصة عبارة عن خيبة امل كبيرة اصابت هذا المسكين فقد كان يبحث عن الحب، الحب المبني على الدولار، فدأب يجمع المادة من اجل حب مراهق قد آفل، ومن اجل حبيبة ظنها على مستوى مشاعره لكنها كانت على مستوى الدولار الذي يملكه غيره كما يملكه هو. هذا الحلم الكبير اضحى كابوساً وسقط في نهاية القصة.

- الشخصيات المنتقاة لهذا العمل كانت ممتازة، فإلى جانب جاتسبي تتواجد حبيبته المادية وزوجها الدنيء، والآنسة جوردان لاعبة الجولف (الرياضات التي درجت بعد الحرب واصبح نجومها محط الأنظار)، "مرتيل" الفقيرة المعدمة التي تخون زوجها من اجل قشرة من الرفاهية، ويلسون (زوج مرتيل) المخدوع ا��موهوم القاتل والمنتحر في النهاية، بعض الرأسماليين والنصابين (الذين درجوا بعد الحرب ايضاً بشكل كبير)، اناس نيويورك الحالمون بعيش الحلم الأمريكي من سهرات وشرب ومضاجعات تحت اضواء القمر بالإضافة الى الخدم والسائق (الفقراء)، هذا المزيج من الفوضى رواه صوت عاقل (السيد نيك كاراوي) ليكون صوت الكاتب وصوت العقل معاً في هذه المعمعة الفوضوية.

- السرد كان لابأس به، رغم ثقله وبطئه في العديد من الأمكنة، والترجمة كانت سيئة جداً ومن دون هوامش تشرح للقارئ العربي ما المقصود ببعض الجمل في اللغة الإنكليزية (كالضوء الأخضر مثلاً كناية عن الدولار)، وهذه احدى الكلاسيكيات التي تحتاج الى اعادة ترجمة فورية.

- بشكل عام القصة كانت جيدة.

n  “The tragedy of a life unfulfilled, unloved and ultimately unlived!”n

THE GREAT GATSBY is a sad book. But perhaps the saddest thing of all is that F Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic, moving portrayal of the American Dream demonstrates that the typical American’s pre-occupation with the yearning for wealth, class and an easier life can ultimately be so empty, so meaningless and so utterly unfulfilling.

When Nick Carraway left what he saw as a comfortable but mundane existence in the Midwest, he moved East to a magnetic New York City to learn the bond business. Renting a “weather beaten cardboard bungalow” in a town called West Egg on Long Island, he met a distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan; her husband, Tom, struggling to live up to the brilliance of a university football career in New Haven; and his next door neighbour, Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic man whose wealth had originated from mysterious means. The many rumours hinted at everything from Prohibition rum-running to murder.

The actual plot of the story, told through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, is so utterly pointless and virtually directionless as to leave the reader wondering how such simplistic, almost mindless melodrama manages to be so compelling and so captivating. Nick tells the story of his move to New York City. We learn that Jay Gatsby had fallen in love with Daisy Buchanan several years earlier, at a time when he was an impoverished nobody and couldn’t hope to marry someone like her. Her subsequent marriage to Tom Buchanan is ultimately unsuccessful as Tom has an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a local mechanic. Jay Gatsy, now wealthy almost beyond imagining as a result of his involvement in criminal activities - the details of which are never fully disclosed in the story – asks Nick to re-connect him with his former love as he seeks to have Daisy admit that she had never stopped loving him since their first affair many years earlier. Gatsby desperately wants Daisy to confess she had never actually loved her husband at all.

The reader witnesses a non-stop whirl of debauchery as the shadowy Gatsby hosts an endless string of decadent, liquor-soaked parties at his Long Island mansion. The readers are left to question Gatsby’s motives as he is portrayed as an observer who never truly participates in his own parties. Indeed, the majority of his guests are clearly pretenders to his acquaintance and wannabe seekers of the trappings of wealth who have never even met their host and wouldn’t know him to speak to him on the street.

The climax of the story arrives after a tragic-comic confrontational gathering of virtually the entire cast of Fitzgerald’s tale – Tom and Daisy, Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway and his erstwhile lover, tennis player Jordan Baker – sitting in a steamy, overheated, hotel room sipping on iced mint juleps casually discussing whether or not Daisy’s future rests with Tom or with Gatsby.

The brim of the cup that is THE GREAT GATSBY runneth over with licentiousness, hypocrisy, greed, amorality, false friendship and weak-kneed love – in other words, a veritable cocktail of moral turpitude to sip or swill and digest while pondering its base flavours plus a variety of notes and subtle overtones. In hindsight, it is also worth considering the irony that, as a bond trader on Wall Street in 1925, Carraway had but a scant four years remaining before he would have encountered the Wall Street Crash and the utter collapse of his fantastical New York world. Perhaps F Scott Fitzgerald was prescient as well as a brilliant writer who would have us take away the message that it might be worth a moment to reconsider the true meaning and value of every American’s fondest “American Dream”!

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

Szanuję i doceniam

„Der große Gatsby" is a truly brilliant and dazzling masterpiece. The book is written in such a way you can´t stop reading it, because the language and presentation are stylistic and atmospheric. But you should read this book carefully. I am enthusiastic about the verbosity of this writer. Overall, the characters were very successful and unique. This story was definitely a highlight for me. It´s story and a character which I absolutely like. Almost quietly and calmly, he brings us closer to the milieu of the rich people and shows us the decadence, debauchery and, consequently, the inner emptiness and boredom of the protagonists. Without a doubt this book is considered as one of the greatest novels of his time and offers an exciting view of former times and the people who lived in it.

As a spotty fifteen-year old in the late 1970s, when presented with the task of reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald in year ten English class, I was too gormless to realise just how good a story this was. I hurriedly stuffed it to the bottom of my school bag, among the squashed three-day old Vegemite sandwiches and even older half-eaten apple cores and rushed outside to kick a ball around with the boys. Sadly, the book destined never to be opened. Some forty-two years later, I've finally got around to reading this story and regret having waited so long. Oh, to be able to turn back time.

Jay Gatsby is hopelessly in love with Daisy, a woman he met five-years before, just as he was about to fight in the Great War. It was clear they loved (or were infatuated with) each other at that time, a period when he was a poor man, trying to make his way in the world and ashamed of his upbringing. He believed he was destined for greater things, the American Dream perhaps. Daisy and Gatsby end up losing contact, she marries the obscenely wealthy and ultimately detestable, Tom Buchanan. This husband of hers is a prolific adulterer and is having an affair with the wife of a local mechanic at the time Gatsby returns to seek out Daisy to rekindle their ‘lost love’.

During these missing five-years he has accumulated massive wealth and has managed to purchase and develop a dream home with his ‘new money’ on a fictional peninsula on the coast of Long Island, a place called West Egg. This home is across the water to Tom and Daisy’s home in East Egg. West Egg represents ‘new money’, East Egg ‘old money’. Aren’t they both literally delicious place names? I was so disappointed when I found out they are fictional.

Gatsby’s palace on West Egg hosts perpetual, lavish parties for the rich and famous. It seems he is using these parties to attract Daisy so they can renew their acquaintance. However, this doesn’t happen and Daisy’s cousin Nick (Gatsby’s next-door neighbour) is asked, by Gatsby, to set up an afternoon tea at his humble home. Anyway, the reunion occurs, and this is where the story gets interesting. Ultimately, there’s a shocking event which results in the death of one of the characters which has major implications on the eventual ending.

My main fascination here was, who the hell was Gatsby and how did he become so wealthy? Fitzgerald never really lets this cat out of the bag (not to me anyway), did he gather his wealth through nefarious means? I reckon he did – bootlegging perhaps? The other thing that smacks you in the face is the obscene, and what seems like, the pointless hedonistic partying of the upper class. All they seemed to do was drink, dance, party, have sex with each other and gossip. Good fun for an afternoon sure, but all the time?

Gatsby was trying to breathe life back into the brief fling he had with Daisy five-years ago. Could he pull it off? I suppose we have all thought whether we could go back to a period of our own life and pick up where things left off. These thoughts, fantasies, dreams – must burn up considerable mind-time for humankind. I wonder how many people pull it off. I would suggest people and places move on very quickly, revisiting and then reliving the past is a pipe dream. Nothing remains the same.

The 1920s sounds like a dreadful time to live. You’d either be scraping a living on dusty farmland, flogging yourself in a dirty factory or living a dreadfully empty existence bouncing from one party to another. Fitzgerald really does create a vivid picture of these times – I found this to be an exciting, riveting page turner.

As I have considerable time on my hands at the moment, I reckon I’ll watch The Great Gatsby on Netflix today, and see how well the flamboyant Director Baz Luhrmann does with this story. It’s got to be good, how could it not, with the wonderful Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and the sublimely gorgeous Carey Mulligan as Daisy. I’m sure it will be excessively extravagant Old Sport!!



I am so glad I've moved on from being that pimply kid who stuffed a copy of this classic among the smelly half-eaten sandwiches at the bottom of his school bag, to an old bastard who manages to treasure the experience - so what if it's forty plus years too late!!!

4 Stars

Gatsby deserved better.

Nick Carraway left his native Midwest to work in finance in New York. By happy coincidence, he finds accommodation on Long Island, the city's posh suburb. His tiny house had wedged between two large buildings, one of which was the sumptuous villa of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby. The place seems to host a permanent party where all New York flock to enjoy the generosity of the house's master. But no one knows Gatsby, and the wildest rumors surround him. Where does his come from his fortune? It even said that he would have killed a man. Nick is invited to one of these excellent receptions, where he will bond with his mysterious neighbor and collect some secrets. If James Gatz has risen above his condition, amassed a colossal fortune, and has become Gatsby, it is worthy of Daisy, his love of youth. Daisy lives across the strait with her wealthy husband, Tom Buchanan. Daisy does not seem happy with a husband who cheats on her with a confident Myrtle, an ordinary woman married to a mechanic—Daisy, who is none other than Nick's cousin. The latter will, therefore, help to bring former lovers together. But by a chain of unfortunate circumstances.
They are young, superficial, and arrogant. Spend without counting the family fortune. They are dizzy with music, alcohol, speed, and sex. They are the privileged youth of America in their 20s who cheat their alcoholic parties on trips to New York palaces. If they frequent Gatsby, it is not without a certain condescension towards this nouveau riche with a fortune of dubious origin. And yet, he amassed this fortune for the purest of motives, for a dream of love. But, as is often the case, they will not confront the idea with reality, and Gatsby will learn it tragically.
It is the novel of an era with a bittersweet tone, but beneath its classic air, it hides a very affordable gem of emotions.

I didn't like the book. I found it bland and boring. It is a short novel with 9 Chapters and yet nothing much happened until the middle of Chapter 7! Although it was simply written it was hard to follow. Don't understand why it is considered one of the classic novels of the 20th century. I realize I am in the minority with my review. I did like the setting of the "roaring 20's."

Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are two of the most memorable characters in literature. F. Scott Fitzgerald weaves them tragically together in this perfectly plotted masterpiece.

Every scene is unforgettable--so distinct and unique--from the grandest party ever recorded, to the most tense fight ever written, to the most perfectly dark twisted love affair of all time, to the most pathetically sad funeral imaginable.

When people say this is the best book ever written, they're not kidding. It's so good that almost daily I wish I could experience this for the first time again.

What really makes The Great Gatsby unique is that EVERYONE at some point in life wants to be great in just the way that Jay does--for reasons more or less the same. We all have this implicit desire to get the validation from others that we're acceptable, and so at some point most of us turn to wanting to be "great"--but just for the sake of it. Combine that with the fact that all the characters are despicable--but so well written that you can't help but root for them and grow emotionally attached to them--and also how effortlessly the words transport you back in time, and The Great Gatsby truly becomes a one-of-a-kind story.

Then there's the love story in which someone as mystically personable as Jay Gatsby falls for someone as pathetically self-centered and stupid as Daisy Buchanan. It's equal parts realistic, depressing, twisted, and somehow reassuring. We've all fallen for that one person we know there's no reason. This is the greatest case of that ever devised.

How F. Scott Fitzgerald accomplishes all this in such few pages is truly astounding.

Every time I read this book, I fall more and more in love.

COSÌ CONTINUIAMO A REMARE, BARCHE CONTRO LA CORRENTE, SOSPINTI SENZA POSA VERSO IL PASSATO



Romanzo che mi è parso molto, molto cinematografico (anche se non credo Fitzgerald avesse ancora incominciato a lavorare a Hollywood quando Gatsby fu pubblicato).
Ma il cinema per gli US (e per noi italiani) è la forma d’arte esportata meglio nel corso del Novecento, quella che si è diffusa di più, è diventata più famosa. Fitzgerald anche in questo seppe cogliere l’aria del tempo (e poi restare eterno come solo i classici possono).


Il primo adattamento per lo schermo apparve a un solo anno di distanza dalla prima pubblicazione, 1926, film muto, con Warner Baxter nel ruolo del titolo, Lois Wilson in Daisy, e Neil Hamilton in Nick. La regia di Herbert Brenon. Il film fu un fiasco, come tutti gli altri che seguirono nel tempo. Fitzgerald e sua moglie Zelda detestarono questo primo adattamento e uscirono dalla sala prima della fine della proiezione. Di questo film è rimasto solo il trailer, il resto si è dissolto.

Cinematografico non solo nell’attenzione alle luci: le finestre, aperte e chiuse, i controluce, i colori (il verde della luce del faro, il giallo della macchina e degli occhiali, il rosa e l’oro degli abiti di Gatsby, l’oro della ricchezza, l’azzurro dei prati, l’argento della luna…) - pure se all’epoca la pellicola era ancora in bianco e nero, la realtà ricostruita nei set era ovviamente colorata.
Squisitamente cinematografica la prima apparizione di Gatsby, in silhouette, uscito per decidere quanto gli spettasse del nostro cielo, protende il braccio verso la luce verde al di là della baia, il faro davanti alla casa di Daisy (questa luce verde ritorna più volte nel romanzo, diventa il simbolo della ricerca di Gatsby, del sogno individuale e collettivo, infatti è lo stesso verde che appare ai primi marinai che raggiunsero la costa americana, loro sì inseguirono il sogno diretti da est a ovest).
Ma, l’effettiva entrata in scena di Gatsby è articolata in un crescendo, per i primi due capitoli e metà del terzo, come l’ingresso della primadonna. Preparata dalle voci (…è parente del Kaiser… ha ucciso un uomo… è cugino di secondo grado del diavolo…), dalle chiacchiere, dai mormorii, la curiosità sale nel protagonista io narrante e nel lettore (sicuramente nel sottoscritto lettore).
E poi, colpo di genio, Gatsby all’improvviso è già in scena: niente occhio di bue, niente rullo di tamburi, accanto a Nick, il nostro Virgilio in questa divina tragedia americana, è seduto un uomo di qualche anno più grande di lui, che parla con cura e formalità, probabilmente un ex commilitone durante la Grande Guerra. Ed è proprio lui, Gatsby, il mitico grande Gatsby, colui che dispensava la luce delle stelle a falene indifferenti.


Sempre in bianco e nero, ma in sonoro, si comincia a entrare nel mito, con Alan Ladd nella parte di Gatsby, Betty Field per Daisy, e Macdonald Carey che fa Nick. Dirige Elliott Nugent. È il 1949, e anche questo film incassa male, la maledizione di Gatsby contagia lo schermo.

Esistono molti tipi di sorriso: quello di Gatsby però è unico, e FSF lo descrive a meraviglia.
Dimentica tuttavia di dirci la cosa che spiega tutto: non basta scrivere che era uno di quei rari sorrisi capaci di rassicurazione eterna, come si incontrano quattro o cinque volte nella vita - il sorriso di Gatsby era uno di quei sorrisi che ti fanno sentire importante. Prima di tutto proprio per il fatto che sia uno come Gatsby a sorriderti. Quel genere di sorriso che si accompagna quasi sempre a laconicità. Perché a quel sorriso si affida l’essenza della comunicazione.


Ed eccoci alla versione del 1974, con la star delle star, Robert Redford [che quest’anno ne fa ha 81, e quando lui non ci sarà più, per me non esisterà più neanche Hollywood], Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Lois Chiles. Firma Jack Clayton, che rifiuta la sceneggiatura di Truman Capote e opta per quella di Francis Ford Coppola. Il film finalmente incassa, ma l’alchimia Redford-Farrow è sotto zero. Clayton non raggiunge purtroppo le vette di The Innocents (in italiano: Suspense, 1961), l’adattamento di ‘Giro di vite’ di Henry James.

Sempre per restare nell’ambito cinematografico, Nick, l’io narrante è al contempo regista e interprete/testimone, racconta ciò che vede, assiste e partecipa, ma anche ciò che ha sentito, ricostruendo l’intreccio per noi lettori come farebbe una voce fuori campo.
Fitzgerald glielo lascia fare in modo che la storia e il personaggio principale siano costruiti su vuoti ed ellissi, elementi strutturali quanto mai filmici – alcuni degli eventi fondamentali del romanzo non sono messi in scena, non sono rappresentati: per esempio, l’incontro tra Gatsby e Daisy, l’investimento di Myrtle, la morte di Gatsby, tutti momenti clou che rimangono per così dire ‘fuori campo’.
Nick è il punto di vista dominante, ma è qualcuno che ammette di essere allo stesso tempo dentro e fuori i fatti, è qualcuno che ci dice esplicitamente quanto il suo racconto sia in soggettiva piuttosto che oggettivo - per questo non si trattiene dal manipolare il piano temporale dei fatti, l’ordine degli eventi, spostandosi avanti e indietro nel tempo, proprio come farebbe un regista in fase di montaggio.
E proprio come un regista che interviene sulla lente e gioca con la messa a fuoco, la percezione visiva di Nick è spesso annebbiata, distorta, come sottolineano i molteplici riferimenti alla vista, allo sguardo, al punto di vista, all’illusione ottica (lo stesso passato di Gatsby riassume in sé contorni sfumati e incerti).
In contrapposizione allo sguardo del grande manifesto pubblicitario che ritorna più volte, quello del dott. J.T. Eckleburg, che dietro i giganteschi occhiali nasconde quasi sicuramente gli occhi miopi di dio (metafora della cecità eterna, la pubblicità mercifica il divino).


Questa versione nasce modesta, destinata alla tv: è il 2000, Toby Stephens interpreta Gatsby, Mira Sorvino Daisy e Paul Rudd Nick. Dirige Robert Markowitz.

Alla ricerca dell’ultima frontiera, il confine da Ovest si è spostato a Est, e in questa terra di conquista dove il sogno di felicità e redenzione è universale ed eterno, in questa vicenda semplice, per certi versi addirittura banale, eppure complessa e intricata come solo i grandi classici possono essere, in queste pagine che sono simboliche e mitiche, americane al cento per cento (Under the Red, White, and Blue sembra che fosse il titolo preferito da Fitzgerald, lo propose all’editore troppo tardi, l’opera era già in stampa) ma universali, il sogno è destinato a fallire.
Gatsby è un cavaliere medioevale senza armatura che insegue il suo sogno, il suo Santo Graal che si chiama Daisy, ma si chiama anche successo, perché senza successo Daisy non si trova, non arriva.
Il sogno americano è già marcio negli anni Venti del Novecento, quando è ambientato questo romanzo: il proibizionismo stimola e diffonde corruzione, il successo arriva in fretta con metodi spicci, non serve più il duro lavoro. Anche se si arriva in cima, ci si muove in una terra desolata come quella che circonda il drugstore del marito di Myrtle, dove la donna viene travolta e uccisa, mischiando il suo sangue alla cenere, e in ultima analisi all’immondizia.
Proprio come Lancillotto, il più celebre cavaliere medievale, Gatsby conosce l’amore sia romantico che fisico (non credo di aver mai letto una scena d’amore più erotica di quella descritta da Chrétien de Troyes tra Lancillotto e Ginevra).

On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.
Un esempio dell’incanto che è una grande scrittura.


Nel 2002 ci fu uno strano tentativo, Gatsby diventa nero in questo insolito remake che trasporta la storia al terzo millennio: si intitola semplicemente G, dirige Christopher Scott Cherot, e Richard T.Jones interpreta il protagonista Summer G. Esperimento curioso, ma non indimenticabile.

Nel 1922, quando iniziò a pensare al romanzo che ultimò e fu pubblicato tre anni dopo, Fitzgerald scrisse al suo editor: Voglio scrivere qualcosa di nuovo - qualcosa di straordinario, di bello e semplice e dalla struttura intricata. Parole che sono cronaca di un capolavoro annunciato.
Figlio di Henry James, o come disse T.S.Eliot, il primo passo in avanti fatto dalla narrativa americana dai tempi di Henry James, mi piace pensare che Fitzgerald battezzò la sua non eroina ispirandosi proprio alla Daisy Miller di James.
Figlio della grande tradizione, dove Nick sopravvive alla morte di Gatsby per raccontare la storia proprio come Ismael sopravvive alla tragedia di Achab, Fitzgerald seppe spostare l’asticella più in alto, più avanti.
Così in alto e così avanti che un altro sommo scrittore, J.D. Salinger, fa pronunciare al suo incomparabile personaggio, Holden, catcher in the rye, parole di lode per Fitzgerald e il suo Gatsby (Mi fa impazzire, Il Grande Gatsby. Il vecchio Gatsby. Vecchio mio. Mi fa morire, capitolo 18). E come Nick alla fine del romanzo pulisce una parola oscena scritta sui gradini della villa di Gatsby, così Holden cancella le oscenità scritte sui muri della scuola della sorellina.
A questo punto mi piace citare Calvino, le cui parole trovo particolarmente adatte a questo capolavoro: un classico è un libro che non ha mai finito di dire quel che ha da dire - Di un classico ogni rilettura è una lettura di scoperta come la prima - I classici sono libri che quanto più si crede di conoscerli per sentito dire, tanto più quando si leggono davvero si trovano nuovi, inaspettati, inediti - Un classico è un'opera che provoca incessantemente un pulviscolo di discorsi critici su di sé, ma continuamente se li scrolla di dosso…


Ed ecco l’ultima leggenda, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan in Daisy, e Tobey Maguire fa Nick. La regia è affidata al geniale Baz Luhrmann. Siamo nel 2013. Il risultato non è memorabile.

Tentai poi di pensare a Gatsby per un momento ma lui era già troppo lontano.

Probabilmente non avevo diciotto anni quando ho letto Fitzgerald per la prima volta. I 28 racconti. Il primo, ‘Il diamante grosso come l’Hotel Ritz’, mi fulminò e mi conquistò col suo finale: I don't know any longer. At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion. Well, I have that last and I will make the usual nothing of it." He shivered. "Turn up your coat collar, little girl, the night's full of chill and you'll get pneumonia. His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours. Chiarendo e stabilendo per me sin da allora che l’adolescenza non è un periodo della vita, ma uno stato dell’anima.