translate this to persian:
We went out into the street again and took a look at the cathedral. Cohn
made some remark about it being a very good example of something or
other, I forget what. It seemed like a nice cathedral, nice and dim, like
Spanish churches.
Being too specific or knowing too much is unforgivable. The rules of the
group are clear, if unstated: say little, and nothing of substance. “Nice” is good,
even “nice and dim,” but go no further. Were people talking this way in the years
just after the war? Yes, if they were of a certain age, if they had suffered through
the war, and if they were disaffected, alienated, rootless, unhappy. It was a big
club. The 1920s may have been, as Fitzgerald named them, the jazz age, but the
Hemingway decade could have been called the deracinated age. Not quite the
same pop, is it? Still, those were his people: uprooted, footloose, aimless, and
quite as self-destructive as Fitzgerald’s. But there is more than mere historical
accuracy here.
What does “nice” mean? It was “a nice cathedral.” What is a nice cathedral?
What is one that isn’t nice? What does it mean when Lady Brett says of Mike,
“He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful”? Bill says that Brett is “nice,” Jake that
the count is. People they don’t like are occasionally “nice.” The rioja alta is
“nice.” Probably the Fundador (a Spanish brandy) is “nice.” I don’t remember
any of the bulls being “nice,” but I wouldn’t rule it out. But why?
Because it doesn’t mean anything. Or rather, because it can mean so many
things and yet nothing in particular. Or because it is capable of meaning what it
says and also its opposite, depending on context, delivery, and inflection. You
can’t do that with “red,” you know. There’s simply no inflection you can give to
“red” that will make it mean “green,” or even “not red.” “Nice,” on the other
hand, can mean pleasant, diverting, pretty, agreeable, rewarding, or even, in a
pinch, nice. It can also mean lousy, distasteful, unpleasant, disagreeable,
obnoxious, or any of dozens of other not-nice qualities. Why can it do that?
Because, unlike “red,” it has no firm meaning in the first place. If I tell you the
balloon is red, you have a solid idea at least of the range of possible colors for
the balloon. But if I say it’s nice, then what? Consider this famous, if generally
misquoted, statement from that eminent literary critic, Oliver Hardy: “Well,
here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.” We tend to remember it as
“fine mess,” but he evidently never actually said that. Do you think he means
“nice”? Or is it more like terrible, awful, sticky, vexatious? If you’re Stan Laurel
and your pudgy pal says this to you, do you believe you’ve been complimented?
I didn’t think so. And anyone who has ever been set up with a blind date knows
what “nice” means in that context: your guy (or gal) for the evening is not
winning any beauty prizes.
That’s Hemingway’s “nice,” or one of them. And his “pretty” and “good,”
too. They mean what you make them mean. His prose is the art of the unspoken.
Readers sometimes mistake his simplicity of style for simplicity of thought.
They do so at their peril. Robert Frost, another deceptively “simple” writer, said
he wrote his poems “in parable, so the wrong people won’t hear them and so be
saved.” That explanation will cover Hemingway’s case very, um, nicely.
Faulkner is a cascade of information and elaboration, Hemingway a trickle
of insinuation and understatement. Ultimately, both Hemingway and Faulkner
demand that readers conspire in creating meaning. We may not always think of
those two writers as belonging to the same party, but on this point they are pretty
unified. Is the narrator (or character) being truthful? Simple? Ironic? Sarcastic?