Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I protested against everything that I saw all around me, against my parents, these tradesmen, this city that is torn apart in separate communities that hate each other, against all their ways of thinking. I wanted to study philosophy, perhaps a strange idea in the eyes of all these people, but I refused to be a money-earner, and even this was being refused me. Well, I would study all the same, and I found again, deep within myself, some violent emotion to confirm me in this decision. They would all see whether, yes or no, I would manage to study what I wanted, not what Monsieur Bismuth wanted! I would indeed study philosophy, instead of pharmacy or medicine. It never even occurred to me that any difficulties might arise in my path. I felt too much vigor in me, too much momentum carrying me ahead. Today, without any useless pride, I can really admit that I have sometimes regretted not having studied medicine. I chose, instead, this terrifying and exhausting search for one’s real identity that philosophy implies, and also the ceaseless attempt to master the universe that is the writer’s fate. But are these preferable, I mean this proud choice, the constant anxiety, the look in one’s eyes that is always restless, are these better than stability, security, no matter how mediocre? I might even have forgotten philosophy and remembered it only as a boyhood love, nostalgic and yet ridiculous. As a physician, however, I would have preserved the somewhat simple complacency and intellectual security and pride of one of those petty-bourgeois representatives of culture. On that day, however, when Monsieur Bismuth informed me that he was withdrawing his financial support, I saw it as but one more obstacle to surmount. I no longer had anybody on whom I could rely. This was one more rope that had once guaranteed my security and that had now broken and failed me. I was not afraid, I only felt that it would mean all the more glory if I made a success of my life, battling my way ahead by the sheer strength of my own wrists. I contemplated myself with some emotion and self-complacency: Alexandre Benillouche, professor of philosophy! To me, it seemed prodigious, so full of promise. For this wonderful goal remained, after all, only one of many stages on my way. As a physician, I had no chance of fame; nor could I have remained content with a profession that clearly imposed on me such intolerable limitations.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I am willing to admit that my anxiety often increased my suspicion, and I frequently suspected people of meaning more than they said; but what they said was quite unbearable enough for any ordinary pride, and I had the greatest contempt for my Jewish classmates, for their tolerance and so-called fair play, as if fair play did not imply equality for both players. One day, and I recall it with terror, my exasperation almost made me lose my head. We were climbing the steps to the new science wing in our school. Behind me, I could hear a political discussion between Dunand, one of the few French Socialists in our class, and Papachino, a French boy of Italian origin. Those whose naturalization is recent or whose family background is vague are always more involved in race prejudice and more nationalistic than others. I detested Papachino, with his head that leaned over on one shoulder, and his yellow face full of a snarling craftiness. Although the discussion was violent, I was not paying much attention to it, until suddenly the word Jew struck my ear. I might be anywhere in the world, surrounded by respect and confidence and enjoying every honor, but the slippery sound of the word would still make me prick up my ears and listen. Papachino’s bitter, whining voice concluded: “It is they who are ruining France.” In a second, I had whipped around and grabbed him by the neck with my tense fingers. I was two steps above him, and my rigid fist forced him to look up as I strangled him in his own shirt collar : “Repeat that! Repeat it, and I’ll throw you over the railing.” He hesitated, wondering whether to take it as a joke or to be angry. “Say it again,” I repeated, furious. Around us, everything had stopped. The look on my face could not have been very reassuring. From above, I could see Papachino’s eyes rolling in his motionless face as he tried to measure the fall in the stairwell. He must also have felt the trembling of my hand around his neck, as I could too, and he muttered: “You’re mad... you’re mad...” I let go, suddenly afraid myself; my fear was greater than my anger. Dunand had said nothing during all this scene. I only noticed the color come back to his cheeks as he smiled and said, at last: “Chicken shit!” Papachino was stammering, trying to explain what he had meant and what he had not. I turned my back on him and went on up the stairs, without quite understanding my sudden exasperation. But I could not be continually defending myself against the constant hostility and slyness, the very atmosphere of the place. Every time a native, whether Jewish or Moslem, said something silly, our mathematics teacher, a fat and placid Alsatian, would declare in a radio-announcer’s voice: “This is the Voice of Africa calling!”

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  20. Josephine Butler: Victorian Feminist 156 The 1870s saw enormous advances for social reformers in general. Children aged 5 to 10 were now required to attend school, which dramatically improved the literacy rate, especially for girls. Women were able to keep their wages, to sue for divorce on the grounds of violence, and to see their children after divorce. Perhaps the most sensational episode of this period was an article that appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. The piece focused on the trafficking and abuse of English children. Butler was involved in the most spectacular part of the reporting. The journalist, William Thomas Stead, had enlisted one of Butler’s house guests, Rebecca Jarrett, a reformed brothel keeper, to pose in the guise of her former profession and purchase a young girl. In his published account, Eliza Armstrong was duly bought from her own mother and taken to a brothel, where Stead claimed Eliza spent the night unharmed before being brought to the Butlers. These events were later contradicted in court by testimony from Jarrett, by Eliza herself, and by her mother. Stead was jailed for several months, while Jarrett served six months’ hard labor, which Butler thought was terribly unjust. The uproar pushed Parliament to act: They finally raised the age of consent to 16 and imposed strict penalties for traffickers. But the same legislation had unintended consequences, including harsh punishments for the very women Butler hoped to help. Police now had greater power

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  As soon as I had all the facts clear, I asked the nephew to dine with me and laid the situation before him. I had only one loyalty—to my employers and the good of the ship. To my astonishment he seemed displeased at first; “more trouble,” he began, “why can’t you stick to your own job and leave the others alone? What’s in a commission after all?” When he came to understand what the commission amounted to and that he himself could do the buying in half an hour a day, he altered his tone. “What will my uncle say now?” he cried and went off to tell the owner his story. There was a tremendous row two days later for Mr. Cotton was a business man and went to the butcher we dealt with and ascertained for himself how important the ‘rake-off’ really was. When I was called into the uncle’s room Payne tried to hit me; but he found it was easier to receive than to give punches and that “the damned kid” was not a bit afraid of him. Curiously enough, I soon noticed that the “rake-off” had had the secondary result of giving us an inferior quality of meat; whenever the butcher was left with a roast he could not sell, he used to send it to us confident that Payne wouldn’t quarrel about it. The negro cook declared that the meat now was far better; all that could be desired in fact, and our customers too were not slow to show their appreciation. One other change the discharge of Payne brought about; it made me master of the dining-room. I soon picked a smart waiter and put him as chief over the rest and together we soon improved the waiting and discipline among the waiters out of all comparison. For over a year I worked eighteen hours out of the twenty four and after the first six months or so, I got one hundred and fifty dollars a month and saved practically all of it. Some experience in this long, icy-cold winter in Chicago enlarged my knowledge of American life and particularly of life on the lowest level. I had been about three months in the hotel when I went out one evening for a sharp walk, as I usually did, about seven o’clock. It was bitterly cold, a western gale raked the streets with icy teeth, the thermometer was about ten below zero. I had never imagined anything like the cold. Suddenly I was accosted by a stranger, a small man with red moustache and stubbly unshaven beard:

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  despair offerings of the 8 A.M. News reminding us we are still at war and not with each other “give us 22 minutes and we will give you the world . . .” and still we dare to say we are committed sometimes without relish. Ten blocks down the street a cross is burning we are a Black woman and a white woman with two Black children you talk with our next-door neighbors I register for a shotgun we secure the tender perennials against an early frost reconstructing a future we fuel from our living​different precisions In the next room a canvas chair whispers beneath your weight a breath of you between laundered towels the flinty places that do not give. V Your face upon my shoulder a crescent of freckle over bone what we share​illuminates what we do not the rest is a burden of history we challenge bearing each bitter piece to the light we hone ourselves upon each other’s courage loving as we cross the mined bridge​fury tuned like a Geiger counter to the softest place. One straight light hair on the washbasin’s rim difference intimate as a borrowed scarf the children arrogant as mirrors our pillows’ mingled scent this grain of our particular days keeps a fine sharp edge to which I cling like a banner in a choice of winds seeking an emotional language in which to abbreviate time. I trace the curve of your jaw with a lover’s finger knowing the hardest battle is only the first how to do what we need for our living with honor and in love we have chosen each other and the edge of each other’s battles the war is the same if we lose someday women’s blood will congeal upon a dead planet if we win there is no telling. Equal Opportunity The american deputy assistant secretary of defense for Equal Opportunity and safety is a home girl. Blindness slashes our tapestry to shreds. The moss-green military tailoring sets off her color beautifully she says “when I stand up to speak in uniform you can believe everyone takes notice!” Superimposed skull-like across her trim square shoulders dioxin-smear the stench of napalm upon growing cabbage the chug and thud of Corsairs in the foreground advance like a blush across her cheeks up the unpaved road outside Grenville, Grenada An M–16 bayonet gleams slashing away the wooden latch of a one-room slat house in Soubise mopping up​weapons search​pockets of resistance Imelda​young​Black​in a tattered headcloth standing to one side on her left foot takes notice one wrist behind her hip the other palm-up beneath her chin​watching armed men in moss-green jumpsuits turn out her shack watching​mashed-up nutmeg trees the trampled cocoa pods graceless broken stalks of almost ripe banana her sister has been missing now ten days Beside the shattered waterpipe downroad Granny Lou’s consolations If it was only kill they’d wanted to kill we many more would have died look at Lebanon

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I want to study you!” she said and took my sex in her hands and then my balls: “What are they for?” she asked and I had to explain that that was where my seed was secreted: she made a face, so I added, “You have a similar manufactory, my dear; but it’s inside you, the ovaries they are called, and it takes them a month to make one egg whereas my balls make millions of tadpoles in an hour. I often wonder why?” After getting Kate an excellent breakfast, I put her in a cab and she reached her friend’s house just at the proper time; but the girl-friend could never understand how they had missed each other at the station. I returned to Lawrence the same day, wondering what Fortune had in store for me! I was soon to find out that life could be disagreeable. The University of Kansas had been established by the first Western outwanderers and like most pioneers they had brains and courage and accordingly they put in the statutes that there should be no religious teaching of any kind in the University, still less should religion ever be exalted into a test or qualification. But in due course Yankees from New England swarmed out to prevent Kansas from being made into a slave-state and these Yankees were all fanatical so-called Christians belonging to every known sect; but all distinguished or rather deformed by an intolerant bigotry in matters of religion and sex. Their honesty was by no means so pronounced: each sect had to have its own professor; thus history got an Episcopalian clergyman who knew no history, and Latin a Baptist who, when Smith greeted him in Latin, could only blush and beg him not to expose his shameful ignorance; the lady who taught French was a joke but a good Methodist, I believe, and so forth and so on: education degraded by sectarian jealousies. As soon as Professor Smith left the University, the Faculty passed a resolution establishing “College Chapel” in imitation of an English University custom. At once I wrote to the Faculty protesting and citing the Statutes of the Founders. The Faculty did not answer my letter; but instituted roll-call instead of chapel and when they got all the students assembled for roll-call, they had the doors locked and began prayers, ending with a hymn. After the roll-call I got up and walked to the door and tried in vain to open it. Fortunately the door on this side the hall was only a makeshift structure of thin wooden planks. I stepped back a pace or two and appealed again to the Professors seated on the platform: when they paid no heed, I ran and jumped with my foot against the lock; it sprang and the door flew open with a crash.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Say, mate, can you help a man to a meal?” The fellow was evidently a tramp: his clothes shabby and dirty: his manner servile with a backing of truculence. I was kindly and not critical. Without a thought, I took my roll of bills out of my pocket. I meant to take off a dollar bill. As the money came to view the tramp with a pounce grabbed at it, but caught my hand as well. Instinctively I held on to my roll like grim Death, but while I was still under the shock of surprise the hobo hit me viciously in the face and plucked at the bills again. I hung on all the tighter, and angry now, struck the man in the face with my left fist. The next moment we had clenched and fallen. As luck and youth would have it, I fell on top. At once I put out all my strength, struck the fellow hard in the face and at the same time tore my bills away. The next moment I was on my feet with my roll deep in my pocket and both fists ready for the next assault. To my astonishment the hobo picked himself up and said confidingly: “I’m hungry, weak, or you wouldn’t have downed me so easy.” And then he went on with what to me seemed incredible impudence: “You should peel me off a dollar at least for hittin’ me like that,” and he stroked his jaw as if to ease the pain. “I’ve a good mind to give you in charge,” said I, suddenly realizing that I had the law on my side. “If you don’t cash up,” barked the hobo, “I’ll call the cops and say you’ve grabbed my wad.” “Call away,” I cried: “we’ll see who’ll be believed.” But the hobo knew a better trick. In a familiar wheedling voice he began again: “Come, young fellow, you’ll never miss one dollar and I’ll put you wise to a good many things here in Chicago. You had no business to pull out a wad like that, in a lonely place to tempt a hungry man....” “I was going to help you,” I said hesitatingly. “I know,” replied my weird acquaintance, “but I prefer to help myself,” and he grinned. “Take me to a hash-house: I’m hungry and I’ll put you wise to many things; you’re a tenderfoot and show it.” Clearly the hobo was the master of the situation and somehow or other his whole attitude stirred my curiosity. “Where are we to go!” I asked. “I don’t know any restaurant near here except the Fremont House.” “Hell,” cried the hobo, “only millionaires and fools go to hotels. I follow my nose for grub,” and he turned on his heel and led the way without another word down a side street and into a German dive set out with bare wooden tables and sanded floor.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  'But you can have a life with Hella. With that moon-faced httle girl who thinks babies come out of cabbages— or frigidaires, I am not acquainted with the mythology of your country. You can have a life with her.' Tes/ I said, wearily, 1 can have a life with her/ I stood up. I was shaking. What kind of life can we have in this room?— this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have to- gether, anyway? All this love you talk about isn't it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl That's what you want. That's what you mean and that's all you mean when you say you love me. You say I want to kill you. What do you think you've been doing to me?' 1 am not trying to make you a little girl. If I wanted a little girl, I would be with a little girl/ *Why aren't you? Isn't it just that you're — GIOVANNrS ROOM 189 afraid? And you take me because you haven't got the guts to go after a woman, which is what you really want?' He was pale. Tou are the one who keeps talk- ing about what I want. But I have only been talking about who I want.' 'But I'm a man,' I cried, 'a man! What do you think can happen between us?' Tou know very well,' said Giovanni slowly, Vhat can happen between us. It is for that reason you are leaving me.' He got up and walked to the window and opened it. 'Bon,' he said. He struck his fist once against the window sill. 7f I could make you stay, I would,' he shouted. If I had to beat you, chain you, starve if I could make you stay, I would.' He you turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. *One day, perhaps, you will wish I had/ It's cold,' I said. 'Close the window.' He smiled. TMow that you are leaving—you want the windows closed. Bien sur/ He closed the window and we stood staring at each other in the center of the room. *We will not fight any more,' he said. Tighting will not make you stay. In French we have what is called une separation de corps—not a divorce, you under- stand, just a separation. Well. We will separate. But I know you belong with me. I believe, I must believe— that you will come back.' 'Giovanni,' I said. Til not be coming back. You know I won't be back.'

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Jeremiah 43 In Egypt Jeremiah Warns of Judgment 1 N OW IT happened when Jeremiah, whom the LORD their God had sent, had finished telling all the people all the words of the LORD their God—that is, all these words— 2 Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the proud and insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are not telling the truth! The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘Do not go into Egypt to live there.’ 3 “But Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to hand us over to the Chaldeans, so they may [either] put us to death or exile us to Babylon.” 4 So Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people disobeyed the voice of the LORD [which told them] to stay in the land of Judah. 5 But Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to live in the land of Judah from all the nations to which they had been driven— 6 the men, women, and children, the king’s daughters (ladies of the court), and every person whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan; he also took Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah. 7 So they entered the land of Egypt (for they did not obey the voice of the LORD ) and they went in as far as a Tahpanhes. 8 Then came the word of the LORD to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, 9 “Take some large stones in your hands and hide them in the mortar in the brickwork [of the terrace] which is at the entrance of Pharaoh’s b house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of some of the men of Judah; 10 and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am going to send and get c Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and I am going to set his throne over these stones that I have hidden; and his [majestic, royal] canopy will be spread over them. [Ezek 29:19 , 20 ] 11 “He will also come and d strike the land of Egypt, giving those who are [destined] for death, to death, and those who are [destined] for captivity, to captivity, and those who are [destined] for the sword, to the sword. 12 “And [through him] I will set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he will burn them and take them (Egyptian idols) captive. He will wrap himself with the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself with his garment, and he will go away from there safely.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In line with Edwards’s observations, Hedgeman’s memoir resists both the historical and historiographical attempt of Black men, literally and figuratively, to write Black women out of the story and make them merely ornamental on stage; it exposes the power-laden gender relationships that informed the most symbolic of all Black marches; and it demonstrates the ways in which women attending the March were attuned in the immediate moment to the gendered hierarchy they witnessed. Hedgeman presciently connected Black women’s marginalization within the March to the burgeoning white feminist movement, a connection that would not resound fully for Black women until later in the decade. Therefore, her race leadership memoir is an important site in Black women’s intellectual geography because it contests and makes quite plain the fictive, yet violent, nature of accounts of Black leadership built upon recourse to the most charismatic, well-known Black leadership figures. That all these things were apparent to Hedgeman, and that she then fought back by telling her own story of Black political belonging, adds yet another dimension to the story of twentieth-century Black political leadership. Though Hedgeman’s book was called Trumpet Sounds, her bugle calls went largely unnoticed. Her book foretold an approaching problem: How would Black men make space for Black women within the bounds of racial leadership? Though Hedgeman tried to intervene, she confronted a deep cultural resistance to even acknowledging Black women’s intellectual capacity and contribution to discussions of movement building. The Negro Woman Intellectual as Problem Ponchitta Pierce’s Ebony article, which appeared just two years after Hedgeman’s book, provides compelling insight into how Black communities thought about intellectual Black women at the height of the Civil Rights era. First, the article is entitled “Problems of the Negro Woman Intellectual,” though it might just as easily have been titled “The Problem of the Negro Woman Intellectual.” In a late-twentieth-century remix to Du Bois, the magazine article essentially asked of Black women intellectuals, “How does it feel to be a problem?” The designation of Black women as intellectuals was so perplexing as to constitute a conceptual anomaly. By way of comparison, a content analysis of the rest of this special issue on women reveals that in the range of articles that profiled women in the arts, politics, and entertainment, this article is the only one in the issue that constructed its titular category and subject matter as “a problem.” Gwendolyn Brooks, interviewed for the article, asserted that though there were many Black women whom we might call “bright or brilliant, productive, effective, intelligent, creative, eminent, discerning, distinguished ... the right to such adjectives [would not] automatically entitle them to the security also of the title, ‘intellectual.’ That is something else.” 17 At face value, her final declaration that “intellectual” was “something else” effectively suggested that an intellectual is something else other than a Black woman—that no matter how many commendable traits a Black woman might possess, being an intellectual was a feat just beyond her reach.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In his 2008 book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, Vanderbilt University Professor and literary critic Houston Baker offers a scathing assessment of those engaged in Black thought leadership in the forty years since the passing of the Civil Rights era. Interestingly enough, Baker returns to the figure of the “race man/woman” as a Black leadership ideal, reasserting the primacy of both a race-centered analysis and a certain level of racial kinship and loyalty in defining this aggregate group that he terms race people. The problem, to wit, is that the intellectuals who have taken center stage in the post–Civil Rights era fall into two lamentable categories according to Baker: “black centrists and black neoconservatives.”9 Taking on black celebrity public intellectuals, including Princeton professor Cornel West, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, and Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, among others, Baker accuses them of the high crime of racial betrayal. More specifically, they have refused or failed (it is unclear which) to carry forth the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, whom Baker characterizes as “not only the most exemplary race man ever born in the United States, but also the greatest black public intellectual leader of the liberation struggle our world has ever known.”10 Although Baker raises a number of important concerns about the ways in which the radical messaging of the contemporary Black intellectual elite has been co-opted by mainstream forces and the seduction of celebrity, his turn back to King should give us pause.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  You cannot eliminate an idea by suppressing it, and the idea which is linked with this issue is one of freedom to read what one chooses. Freedom, in other words, to read what is bad for one as well as what is good for one—or, what is simply innocuous. How can one guard against evil, in short, if one does not know what evil is? But it is not something evil, not something poisonous, which this book Sexus offers the Norwegian reader. It is a dose of life which I administered to myself first, and which I not only survived but thrived on. Certainly I would not recommend it to infants, but then neither would I offer a child a bottle of aqua vite . I can say one thing for it unblushingly—compared to the atom bomb, it is full of lifegiving qualities. Henry Miller 1 See his A Challenge to Sex Censors and other works. 2 From the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Philadelphia, November, 1938. 3 More Essays of Love and Virtue . 4 Plexus (version française), Corrêa, Paris, 1952; Plexus (English version), Olympia Press, Paris, 1953. 5 Le Monde du Sexe , Corrêa, Paris, 1952. (Publisher’s Note.) 6 In Remember to Remember , New Directions, and The Intimate Henry Miller , New American Library. (Publisher’s Note.) 7 In Sunday After the War , New Directions, 1944, 1962; and The Intimate Henry Miller , New American Library, 1959. (Publisher’s Note.) ALSO BY HENRY MILLERTHE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE ALLER RETOUR NEW YORK BIG SUR AND THE ORANGES OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI THE COSMOLOGICAL EYE A DEVIL IN PARADISE THE DURRELL-MILLER LETTERS FROM YOUR CAPRICORN FRIEND HENRY MILLER ON WRITING INTO THE HEART OF LIFE JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY LETTERS TO EMIL THE NIGHTMARE NOTEBOOK THE SMILE AT THE FOOT OF THE LADDER STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINS THE WISDOM OF THE HEART Copyright © 1964 by Henry Miller Copyright © 1944, 1957 by Henry Miller Copyright © 1939, 1941, 1957 by New Directions Publishing Corporation All Rights Reserved. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-10675 eISBN 978-0-8112-2137-5 ISBN 978-0-8112-0112-4 First published as ND Paperbook 151 in 1964. The author, editor and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reprint selections from works by Henry Miller, first published or copyrighted by others, as indicated: Carrefour, Edition du Laurier, and Daphne Fraenkel, for the selection from Hamlet, Third Printing 1962, London. Editions du Chêne, Paris, for selections from Nexus (Copyright © 1959 by Henry Miller): Black Spring, first published by Obelisk Press, Paris, 1936. Copyright © 1958 by Editions du Chêne; and Nexus © 1960 by Editions du Chêne. Grove Press, Inc. and Barney Rosset, New York, for the selections from Black Spring.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  12 Let them give glory to the LORD And declare His praise in the islands and coastlands. 13 The LORD will go forth like a warrior, He will stir up His zeal like a man of war; He will shout out, yes, He will raise a war cry. He will prevail [mightily] against His enemies. The Blindness of the People 14 “I [the LORD ] have been silent for a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will moan like a woman in labor, I will both gasp and pant. 15 “I will lay waste the mountains and hills And wither all their vegetation; I will turn the rivers into coastlands And dry up the ponds. 16 “I will lead the blind by a way they do not know; I will guide them in paths that they do not know. I will make darkness into light before them And rugged places into plains. These things I will do [for them], And I will not leave them abandoned or undone.” 17 Those who trust in carved idols will be turned back, And utterly put to shame, Who say to cast images, “You are our gods.” 18 Hear, you deaf! And look, you blind, that you may see. 19 Who is blind but My servant [Israel], Or deaf like My messenger whom I send? Who is blind like the one who is at peace with Me [in a covenant relationship], Or so blind as the servant of the LORD ? 20 You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; Your ears are open, but no one hears. 21 The LORD was pleased for His righteousness’ sake To make the law great and prove to be glorious. 22 But this is a people despoiled and plundered; All of them are trapped in holes, Or are hidden away in prisons. They have become a prey with no one to rescue them, And a spoil, with no one to say, “Give them back!” [Luke 19:41–44 ] 23 Who among you will listen to this? Who will listen and pay attention in the time to come? 24 Who gave up Jacob [the kingdom of Judah] for spoil, and [the kingdom of] Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the LORD , He against whom we [of Judah] have sinned, And in whose ways they [of Israel] were unwilling to walk, And whose law and teaching they did not obey? 25 Therefore He poured out on Israel the heat of His anger And the fierceness of battle; And engulfed him in fire, Yet he did not recognize [the lesson of repentance which the Assyrian conquest was intended to teach]; It burned him, but he did not take it to heart.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I was asked once whether I thought that “Shaddy”, as we called the House-master, had ever had a woman. The idea of “Shaddy” as a virgin filled us with laughter; but when one spoke of him as a lover, it was funnier still. He was a man about forty, tall and fairly strong: he had a degree from some college in Manchester, but to us little snobs he was a bounder because he had not been to either Oxford or Cambridge. He was fairly capable, however. But for some reason or other he had a down on me and I grew to hate him, and was always thinking of how I might hurt him. My new habit of forcing myself to watch and observe everything came to my aid. There were five or six polished oak-steps up to the big bedroom where fourteen of us slept. “Shaddy” used to give us half an hour to get into bed and then would come up, and standing just inside the door under the gas-light would ask us, “Have you all said your prayers?” We all answered: “Yes, sir”, then would come his “Goodnight, boys”, and our stereotyped reply: “Good night, Sir.” He would then turn out the light and go downstairs to his room. The oak-steps outside were worn in the middle and I had noticed that as one goes downstairs one treads on the very edge of each step. One day “Shaddy” had maddened me by giving me one hundred lines of Vergil to learn by heart for some trifling peccadillo. That night, having provided myself with a cake of brown Windsor soap, I ran upstairs before the other boys and rubbed the soap freely on the edge of the two top steps, and then went on to undress. When “Shaddy” put out the light and stepped down to the second step, there was a slip and then a great thud as he half slid, half fell to the bottom. In a moment, for my bed was nearest the door, I had sprung up, opened the door and made incoherent exclamations of sympathy as I helped him to get up. “I’ve hurt my hip”, he said, putting his hand on it. He couldn’t account for his fall. Grinning to myself as I went back, I rubbed the soap off the top step with my handkerchief and got into bed again, where I chuckled over the success of my stratagem. He had only got what he richly deserved, I said to myself. At length the long term wore to its end; the Exam was held and after consulting Stackpole I was very sure of the second prize. “I believe”, he said one day, “that you’d rather have the second prize than the first.” “Indeed I would”, I replied without thinking.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  But that doesn’t absolve us when it’s destructive or misdirected. Or when we use it as a decoy to avoid responsibility for what is actually our side of the street. Instead of addressing the underlying reason for the unrest, the focus goes squarely on the shoulders of the anger that was expressed—as if that’s the real problem. While anger can be helpful in certain situations, like motivating us to change things that aren’t working, we don’t want to do what Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and peace activist, calls “training in aggression” or “rehearsing our anger,” which only cements unhelpful patterns of holding on to anger. When left unchecked, anger isolates us, injures our relationships, hurts others, and damages our physical and mental health, making us more prone to chronic inflammation, depression, heart attacks, stroke, and even cancer. Again, anger in and of itself isn’t the problem. It’s how we cope with it that matters. Just as we don’t want to let our resentments drive the bus, we don’t want to suppress or neglect our anger, either. That would be another example of abandoning our own needs. Remember, anger is especially common and appropriate in the face of all kinds of loss, including betrayal, divorce, and death. If you’re feeling it, welcome to the party. The mocktails are on the table in the back. No vodka. Too dangerous. Again, we act out instead of crying out because anger feels powerful, while grief feels powerless. That’s why some of us have an easier time turning to anger instead of grief. In essence, that’s what anger is trying to communicate: “ Ow! This hurts!” Other times, we point our anger in directions that don’t deserve our wrath. Our rational minds understand that we’re not to blame for what happened, and yet we’re angry at ourselves for not doing more. Or we’re angry at the person for not taking better care of themselves. Angry they chose to drive down that street the day of the accident. Angry we didn’t drive instead. Angry at other family members for not showing up. Meanwhile, they’ve got their own traumas and dramas that have nothing to do with us, yet we take their absence personally. Angry at God for not protecting us. If he, she, it can’t keep us safe, how the heck are we supposed to trust life or anyone in it? Simply put, when it comes to anger, there’s often more than meets the eye.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The vise grip in his tensed muscles begins to loosen. (These muscles had been engaged, as Nina Bull demonstrated, to inhibit the original urge to punch.) Bob sighs in relief as his legs begin, gently, to tremble. He “lets in” his wife’s supportive presence and then suddenly recalls, “Oh yeah, that’s what it was. Before I left the office, Alex, the supervisor, and I were discussing a marketing plan for the new widget. Alex and I had strongly differing opinions; we just couldn’t seem to agree. I felt competitive. We were combative, but in a good way. I felt forceful and clear. I suppose we could have hammered it out. Instead we stopped short of a solution when I remembered that Alex was dating the boss’s daughter. I stifled my power and ingenuity, and then, yes, that’s when I felt myself go into a rage. I wanted to throttle Alex but then retreated. I just wanted to leave and go home. The rest of the day I silently fumed. And then, when things were, well, the way they usually are at home, I wanted to explode. I felt the same seething rage I had felt at work. I guess I was triggered to blow when I set foot into the familiar mess at home; I just wanted to blow off steam. I was … well, really afraid that I could hurt you or the kids. So instead, I just went off to read the paper and simmered silently behind my paper fortress. I didn’t want to blow up at you and the kids. Really, what I wanted was the calm contact I am getting from you now.” This state of calm, unlike the temporary relief provided by the Valium in the first scenario, is a real shift in his perception of safety, an enduring one. It is achieved by a process of self-regulation and social engagement, rather than the temporary masking offered by a tranquilizer—though both act to relax the tight muscles. This collaborative experience is what brings Bob and Jane closer together. The feeling of combativeness that Bob experienced at the office was powerful, focused and motivating. Had he not stopped himself, he might have entered into a productive negotiation with Alex. However, when he thwarted this process (out of a perceived threat that may or may not have even really existed), his directed feeling of healthy aggression (for getting what he needed and protecting what he had), erupted into (impotent) rage. This abrupt transition—from a fluid, organizing feeling process into a disorganizing, nonproductive, reactive emotional state —is what was so brilliantly studied by Nina Bull. So why do we get stuck with our negative emotional states, habitually wearing them like our only set of shirt and trousers? Many people (like the young samurai) use their rage to intimidate. Others indulge habitual sadness and remain helpless victims. For Bob and Jane (in the initial scenario), their emotions served to separate them.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  It was with indescribable vexation that the gentle- man, who had undertaken to humanize her, carried back this answer to his master, whom he urged to carry his point by all possible means, representing to him that it would be shameful for him to have undertaken such a conquest and not achieve it. The young prince, who wished to employ only fair means, and who was afraid, besides, of his mother's anger if the story got abroad and reached her ears, durst not take any further step, until at last the gentleman suggested to him an expedient, which seemed to him so good, that he felt already as if the fair one was his own. To this end he spoke to the butler, who, being ready to serve his master on any ^66 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE lA^^r/42. terms, consented to everything required of him. It was arranged, then, that the butler should invite his wife and his sister-in-law to go see their vintage at a house he had near the forest ; he did so, and they agreed to the proposal. The appointed day being come, he gave notice to the prince, who was to go to the same place, accompanied only by his gentleman. But it pleased God that his mother was that day adorning a most beautiful cabinet, and had all her children to help her; so that the proper time passed by before the prince could get away. This was no fault of the butler's, who had fully performed his part ; for he made his wife counter- feit illness, and when he was on horseback with his sister-in-law on the croup, she came and told him that she could not go. But the hour having passed by and no prince appearing, " I believe," said he to his sister- in-law, " we may as well go back to town." " Who hinders us } " said Francoise. " I was waiting for the prince, who had promised to come," said the butler. His sister, clearly discerning his wicked purpose, replied, " Wait no longer for him, brother ; for I know that he will not come to-day." He acquiesced, and took her home again. On arriving there she let him know her dissatisfaction, and told him plainly he was the devil's valet, and did more than he was commanded ; for she was very sure that it was his work and the gentleman's, not the prince's ; that they both liked better to flatter his weaknesses, and gain money, than to do their duty as good servants ; but that since she knew this she would no longer remain in his house. Thereupon she sent for her brother to take her away to his own country, and immediately quitted hei sister's house. The butler having missed his blow, went to the Fifth Jay.] QUEE2V OF //A VARRF. ^67

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  That experience in common made Gertie and myself great friends. She used to kiss me and say I was sweet: once even she let me see her breasts when I told her a girl (I didn’t say who it was) had shown hers to me once: her breasts were nearly as large as my sister’s and very pretty. Gertie even let me touch her legs right up to the knee; but as soon as I tried to go further, she would pull down her dress with a frown. Still I was always going higher, making progress; persistence brings one closer to any goal; but alas, it was near the end of the Christmas holidays and though I returned to Rhyl at Easter, I never saw Gertie again. When I was just over thirteen I tried mainly out of pity to get up a revolt of the fags, and at first had a partial success, but some of the little fellows talked and as a ringleader I got a trouncing. The Monitors threw me down on my face on a long desk: one sixth form boy sat on my head and another on my feet, and a third, it was Jones, laid on with an ashplant. I bore it without a groan but I can never describe the storm of rage and hate that boiled in me. Do English fathers really believe that such work is a part of education? It made me murderous. When they let me up, I looked at Jones and if looks could kill, he’d have had short shrift. He tried to hit me but I dodged the blow and went out to plot revenge. Jones was the head of the cricket First Eleven in which I too was given a place just for my bowling. Vernon of the Sixth was the chief bowler, but I was second, the only boy in the lower school who was in the Eleven at all. Soon afterwards a team from some other school came over to play us: the rival captains met before the tent, all on their best behaviour; for some reason, Vernon not being ready or something, I was given the new ball. A couple of the masters stood near. Jones lost the toss and said to the rival captain very politely, “If you’re ready. Sir! we’ll go out.” The other captain bowed smiling, my chance had come: “I’m not going to play with you, you brute!” I cried and dashed the ball in Jones’s face.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The Germanic ideal which is also the English and American ideal, of the conquering male that despises all weaker and less intelligent races and is eager to enslave or annihilate them, must be set aside. A hundred years ago, there were only fifteen millions of English and American folk; today there are nearly two hundred millions and it is plain that in another century or so, they will be the most numerous, as they are already by far the most powerful, race on earth. The most numerous folk hitherto, the Chinese, has set a good example by remaining within its own boundaries, but these conquering, colonizing Anglo-Saxons threaten to overrun the earth and destroy all other varieties of the species man. Even now we annihilate the Red Indian because he is not subservient, while we are content to degrade the negro who doesn’t threaten our domination. Is it wise to desire only one flower in this garden of a world? Is it wise to blot out the better varieties while preserving the inferior? And the Anglo-Saxon ideal for the individual is even baser and more inept. Intent on satisfying his own conquering lust, he has compelled the female of the species to an unnatural chastity of thought and deed and word. He has thus made of his wife a meek, upper-servant or slave (die Hausfrau), who has hardly any intellectual interests and whose spiritual being only finds a narrow outlet in her mother-instincts. The daughter he has labored to degrade into the strangest sort of two-legged tame fowl ever imagined: she must seek a mate while concealing or denying all her strongest sex-feelings: in fine, she should be as cold-blooded as a frog and as wily and ruthless as an Apache on the war-path. The ideal he has set before himself is confused and confusing: really he desires to be healthy and strong while gratifying all his sexual appetites. The highest type, however, the English gentleman, has pretty constantly in mind the individualistic ideal of what he calls an “all-round man”, a man whose body and mind is harmoniously developed and brought to a comparatively high state of efficiency. He has no inkling of the supreme truth that every man and woman possesses some small facet of the soul which reflects life in a peculiar way or, to use the language of religion, sees God as no other soul born into the world, can ever see Him.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  He waved his hand. 1 said we would not fight James Baldwin 190 any more. The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever. They do not recognize doom when they see it/ He produced a bottle from beneath the sink. 'Jacques left a bottle of cognac here. Let us have a little drink—for the road, as I believe you people say sometimes.' I watched him. He carefully poured two drinks. I saw that he was shaking—with rage, or pain, or both. He handed me my glass. *A la tienne/ he said. *A la tienne* We drank. I could not keep myself from ask- ing: 'Giovanni. What are you going to do now?' *0h,' he said, 1 have friends. I will think of things to do. Tonight, for example, I shall have supper with Jacques. No doubt, tomorrow night I shall also have supper with Jacques. He has become very fond of me. He thinks you are a monster/ 'Giovanni,' I Please be careful.' said, helplessly, Tdc careful. He gave me an ironical smile. Thank you,' he said. Tou should have given me that advice the night we met.' That was the last time we really spoke to one another. I stayed with him until morning and then I threw my things into a bag and took them away with me, to Hella's place. I will not forget the last time he looked at me. The morning light filled the room, remind- ing me of so many mornings and of the mom-