He was 28 when it was first published. It is also his shortest book, which is crucial to its genius: the compacted language accelerates its force. If Robert Browning described Heaven as the desire to reach beyond our grasp, Fitzgerald went further, implying that aspiration can remake us, that our capability can be surpassed—and that the measure of art is how far it transcends the limits of its creator.
For Fitzgerald, that meant releasing his mysterious genius for language and taking it somewhere dazzling and profound. And no book can survive the majority impression of it being what people thought of it at fifteen.
Did you try to channel that frustration into this translation, or like a disdain for language in general? I think he talks about how you have to sacrifice your intellect in order to write in the first place.
Did that have any bearing on the translation process? But it is interesting that he did give up poetry for that long. One does wonder. And then afterwards to come back with some really amazing poems. Mandell: Yes, and it definitely helped. That sort of abstract language, that care for the way images appear, the order of images, I try to keep that.
But learning to be more careful about not falling for jerks is not the same as learning—or trying to teach oneself—not to need anyone, not to need romantic love at all.
