Anxiety

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 Shunned (2018)

  Following the protocol my mother established years earlier, I mailed them a letter informing them of my plans and my desire to stop in and pay my respects. Though I had no assurances they would receive me, when I phoned upon arrival, my mother invited me over the following day. In honor of the occasion, I brought them flowers and wine. I believe they were happy to see me, but they offered only coffee—much less than the easy hospitality I was raised with—which I took as subtle encouragement to keep my visit short. Based on that experience, I did not expect Dad to offer me a meal now, so I ate breakfast on the plane. The flight was uneventful. As the plane touched down, I felt a stirring of nerves and foreboding. It was the last day of January, and the weather was bleak and soggy. Dad said it had been raining there incessantly for a full month. After securing the rental car, I called Dad from my cell phone to let him know I was on the ground and headed for his house. I was ready to put the car in gear and leave the parking garage. It was then that he informed me Mom had taken the day off work and was going to accompany me to see Grandma. Not only that, but my sister had also rearranged her schedule to be with us. Mom would fix us breakfast while we waited for Lory to arrive. I felt like a steel elevator dropped from my chest to my stomach. An immediate increase in my blood pressure shattered whatever shards of tranquility I possessed. I almost missed the turnoff from the airport feeder road onto the Banfield freeway, a route I knew by heart. My well-planned day was taking a turn. Was it for better or for worse? What would it be like to see her after all these years? What would she look like? I did the math. Lory was forty-nine years old. When I had last found myself in Portland, for the wedding and the brief pilgrimage to see my parents, we had sat drinking coffee on their back patio, on the part of my parents’ property that abuts Lory’s backyard. At that time, Lory had refused to come over, choosing to hole up in her house instead. Mom made excuses, saying she was not up for seeing me—though I wasn’t sure whether she meant Lory found it emotionally trying or morally objectionable. So what had changed now? Back then I’d felt regret that my sister was suffering and wished her some peace. Did her choice to see me today indicate a sign of healing or resignation? As I drove along the I-5 interchange, the city of Portland came into view. The US Bank Tower dominated the horizon. Under sheets of rain, the Willamette River was the same gray as the retaining walls of the boat docks.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He then made dark remarks about his lieutenant, saying that he certainly had no suspicion of “Master Philip,” or any of the other Wittenbergers, “because, in public, Satan did not even dare to grumble.”67 Just what he meant by these ominous words became all too plain a few weeks later, when Luther began to preach vigorously against the sacramentarians in their midst, and seemed to have Melanchthon in mind.68 Shaken, Melanchthon began to think of leaving Wittenberg. Luther, he said, was utterly “outraged and inflamed” and was preaching against both him and Bucer.69 In the summer of 1545, Luther set out to see his old friend Amsdorf, a journey he had long planned but had been forced countless times to postpone. No sooner had he arrived in Zeitz than he wrote to Katharina, telling her to sell everything and give the monastery back to the Elector. Let’s leave Wittenberg and move to Zülsdorf, where you have your farm, he wrote: “better to do it now while I’m alive, for it will have to happen then [that is, when he died].” What made the old, ill man suddenly want to leave Wittenberg? He told Katharina that he had heard bad things about Wittenberg now that he was out of town, castigating in particular the Wittenbergers’ love of indecent dancing, where women’s skirts flew up, revealing their private parts “back and front.” “My heart has grown cold,” Luther wrote.70 Melanchthon immediately set off to find Luther, while the Elector arranged for Luther’s personal physician, Matthäus Ratzeberger, to plead with him.71 The university also became involved, and the Elector wrote personally to both Luther and Amsdorf, pressing the latter to persuade the old man to come back. In the end, Melanchthon thought better of confronting Luther and returned home. Luther’s old sparring partner the Saxon chancellor Gregor Brück had the measure of the two men: If Luther just wants to “sit on his head,” that is, turn his life’s work upside down, then he was sure that Philip would leave Wittenberg, too. He predicted that Luther would stay because he would not find it easy to sell all that property: There was the huge monastery in Wittenberg, several gardens, and other houses, too.72

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As a result, his mood became increasingly apocalyptic, and his tone to correspondents more and more strident. In early January 1527 he worried that even his old friend Nikolaus Hausmann might be falling for the sacramentarians. When reassured by Hausmann, Luther replied that he had not credited the rumor, “for I always believed this about you,” going on to ask for his friend’s prayer that God might guide his pen against Satan.17 Even a rumor that the town council of Memmingen had decided to abolish Communion as a compulsory sacrament was enough to make Luther pick up his pen and hector the councilors: “Oh dear lords, act before matters become worse! The Devil, let in this far, will not rest until he has made things yet worse. Be warned, watch out, dear friends. It is time, it is an emergency.”18 Luther’s relief when Michael Stifel in Tollet, a long-standing correspondent, turned out to have remained “constant in faith” leaps off the page. Luther goes on to tell him that it is because of “God’s anger” that so many are persuaded by the “absurd and childish” arguments of those who say that since Christ is at God’s right hand, he cannot be in the bread.19 In a letter to Johann Hess in Silesia in 1526, he mourned the loss of Crautwald and Schwenckfeld to “these evils” and warned that the fight with the dragon of the Apocalypse was at hand.20 In another letter to Thomas Neuenhagen in Eisenach, whom he hardly knew, Luther admonished him not to follow the Eisenach preacher Jacob Strauss. “You should serve Christ, he has served Satan,” he wrote.21 Shortly afterward, he wrote to Nikolaus Hausmann that the heresies were Satan’s “ragings,” for “the Last Days are at the door.” He felt “sorry” for Oecolampadius, “such a man, captured by such frivolous and worthless arguments.”22 The same phrases recur again and again in his letters: Satan “rages,” Luther’s opponents suffer from furia and “rage” against him, the Last Days are at hand. There are lurid warnings about backsliders, injunctions to remain firm, heartfelt requests that the recipient pray for Luther in his fight against Satan, and often a final confident proclamation that Luther is on Christ’s side. “Now I understand what it means that the world has gone to the bad and that Satan is the Prince of the World,” he wrote to Michael Stifel in May 1527. “Up until now I thought these were mere words, but now I see that it is reality, and that the Devil truly rules in the world.”23

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  27. RTA 2, 534–37: on March 6 the emperor had summoned Luther to Worms, but on March 10 he had ordered sequestration of his books, so it seemed unlikely that he would have a fair hearing; Spalatin was advised that some were arguing the safe conduct applied only if Luther were traveling to Worms to recant. If he did not, he was a heretic and therefore excluded from a safe conduct. The signs were not good; on the other hand, others argued that the safe conduct would have to be honored because of the loss to reputation if it were disregarded; and it would also be playing into the hands of the papists not to come. 28. WB 2, 396, [April 14] 1521, 298:9–10; WB 2, 455, March 5, 1522; Walch, XV, 1828 (Spalatins Annales). 29. This unusual phrase was what Myconius reports Luther as saying in his version of the trip to Worms; Geschichte, 34–35. As the editor points out, he may have taken it from a much later letter of Luther’s to Lang of 1540, which he could easily have seen, and which referred to forthcoming negotiations; so this may either be accurate oral history or else part of Reformation mythmaking: WB 9, 3510, July 2, 1540. 30. Litaneia Germanorvm, Augsburg, c.1521, VD 16 ZV 25246, fos. A iii (v); B i. Walch, XV, 1832. 31. WB 2, 395, April 7, 1521. 32. WT 5342a; see also WT 3, 3357, from 1533, 5342b, from 1540. 33. Kalkoff, Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander, 133; Aleander, who commented on Luther’s “demonic eyes,” was convinced people would soon be saying he performed miracles. 34. Walch, XV, 39 (Spalatins Annales); and see also the report of Veit Warbeck, Walch, XV, 1836–37, RTA 2, 859. 35. Kalkoff, Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander, 23–24. Aleander complained of constant attacks and insults from Lutheran supporters, and he again mentioned the slurs that he was of Jewish origin; Kalkoff, Briefe, 40–45, letter of Feb. 17, 1521. Everyone was supporting Luther, and not just all the people, “even wood and stones proclaim the name of Luther,” 42. 36. LW 32, 106; WS 7, 827:11–12. It is not clear who wrote this report, but it evidently came from Luther’s side. It was translated into German by Spalatin. 37. Kalkoff, Briefe, 49–50. 38. LW 32, 106; WS 7, 828:8. It had another purpose, for some of the writings published under Luther’s name were not his. For instance, in 1518, a pointed summary of a sermon on excommunication he had held in Wittenberg was circulated in manuscript, and this eventually reached Emperor Maximilian, convincing him that Luther was a heretic who must be stopped: WS 1, 635. 39. LW 32, 107; WS 7, 829:8–10; 11–12.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  ONE DAY I HAD to pose for an illustrator of stories. When I arrived I found two other people already there, a girl and man. We were to compose scenes together, love scenes for a romance. The man was about forty, with a very mature, very decadent face. It was he who knew how to arrange us. He placed me in position for a kiss. We had to hold the pose while the illustrator photographed us. I was uneasy. I did not like the man at all. The other girl played the jealous wife who burst in upon the scene. We had to do it many times. Each time the man acted the kiss I shrank inside of myself, and he felt it. He was offended. His eyes were mocking. I acted badly. The illustrator was shouting at me as if we were taking a moving picture, “More passion, put more passion into it!” I tried to remember how the Russian had kissed me on returning from the dance, and that relaxed me. The man repeated the kiss. And now I felt he was holding me closer than he needed to, and surely he did not need to push his tongue into my mouth. He did it so quickly that I had no time to move. The illustrator started other scenes. The male model said, “I have been a model for ten years now. I don’t know why they always want young girls. Young girls have no experience and no expression. In Europe young girls of your age, under twenty, do not interest anyone. They are left in school or at home. They only become interesting after marriage.” As he talked I thought of Stephen. I thought of us at the beach, lying on the hot sand. I knew that Stephen loved me. I wanted him to take me. I wanted now to be made a woman quickly. I did not like being a virgin, always defending myself. I felt that everyone knew I was a virgin and was all the more keen to conquer me. That evening Stephen and I were going out together. Somehow or other I must tell him. I must tell him that I was in danger of being raped, that he’d better do it first. No, he would then be so anxious. How could I tell him? I had news for him. I was the star model now. I had more work than anyone in the club, there were more demands for me because I was a foreigner and had an unusual face. I often had to pose in the evenings. I told Stephen all this. He was proud of me. “You like your posing?” he said. “I love it. I love to be with painters, to see them work—good or bad, I like the atmosphere of it, the stories I hear. It is varied, never the same. It is really adventure.” “Do they . . . do they make love to you?” Stephen asked.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  By the time Luther had left the monastery and broken with the Church of Rome, the Anfechtungen were more clearly centered on his battle with the Devil, though they still took physical form. He suffered from fits of ringing in the ears, sure that they were a diabolic attack. As he grew older, he confided to trusted companions about his temptations. Complaining in 1529 to a friend in Breslau that he had suffered headaches, nausea, and a dull noise in his ears for eight days, he wondered “whether it was exhaustion or a temptation of Satan.”31 In 1530 he wrote to Melanchthon about a weakness in his head that stopped him from working: Like Paul’s suffering, the angel of Satan was “beating him with his fists.”32 At the same time he suggested that those suffering from melancholia should not only eat and drink more, but also joke and play games so as to spite the Devil.33 We do not know how far the early Anfechtungen were the same as the attacks of depression and sadness he experienced later, nor whether at this early stage he thought that the Devil was involved, but it is clear that they concerned his relationship with God—and to that extent, Staupitz was quite right that they were essential to Luther’s form of devotion.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  ONE DAY I HAD to pose for an illustrator of stories. When I arrived I found two other people already there, a girl and man. We were to compose scenes together, love scenes for a romance. The man was about forty, with a very mature, very decadent face. It was he who knew how to arrange us. He placed me in position for a kiss. We had to hold the pose while the illustrator photographed us. I was uneasy. I did not like the man at all. The other girl played the jealous wife who burst in upon the scene. We had to do it many times. Each time the man acted the kiss I shrank inside of myself, and he felt it. He was offended. His eyes were mocking. I acted badly. The illustrator was shouting at me as if we were taking a moving picture, “More passion, put more passion into it!” I tried to remember how the Russian had kissed me on returning from the dance, and that relaxed me. The man repeated the kiss. And now I felt he was holding me closer than he needed to, and surely he did not need to push his tongue into my mouth. He did it so quickly that I had no time to move. The illustrator started other scenes. The male model said, “I have been a model for ten years now. I don’t know why they always want young girls. Young girls have no experience and no expression. In Europe young girls of your age, under twenty, do not interest anyone. They are left in school or at home. They only become interesting after marriage.” As he talked I thought of Stephen. I thought of us at the beach, lying on the hot sand. I knew that Stephen loved me. I wanted him to take me. I wanted now to be made a woman quickly. I did not like being a virgin, always defending myself. I felt that everyone knew I was a virgin and was all the more keen to conquer me. That evening Stephen and I were going out together. Somehow or other I must tell him. I must tell him that I was in danger of being raped, that he’d better do it first. No, he would then be so anxious. How could I tell him? I had news for him. I was the star model now. I had more work than anyone in the club, there were more demands for me because I was a foreigner and had an unusual face. I often had to pose in the evenings. I told Stephen all this. He was proud of me. “You like your posing?” he said. “I love it. I love to be with painters, to see them work—good or bad, I like the atmosphere of it, the stories I hear. It is varied, never the same. It is really adventure.” “Do they . . . do they make love to you?” Stephen asked.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  He looks serene. I suppose I look the same. Gary calls heads, but the ref’s quarter comes up tails. I win the toss. Shit. That means our first wrestler gets his choice of top or bottom in the second round. It will work out so that Gary’ll have the choice in our match. And he’ll choose top so he’ll be on bottom in the third round. If there is a third round. Shit. I wanted the choice. I guess I’ll have to score my points in rounds one and two. The David Thompson fans scream happily as Gary and I shake hands and return to our benches. I twist my jump rope into knots watching Little Konigi and the Sausage Man lose. Raska wins and Mike Konigi pins his man. The closer it gets to my match, the calmer I become. Even in this madhouse. That’s the way it always is. Seeley gets pinned. Schmooz beats Terry Muzzy, who beat him for the district championship last year. Williamson is doing okay in the first round as I walk behind the bench to get warm. I glance over and see Gary get up, too. It seems like the crowd cheers every step I take, every whack of my rope against the warm-up mat. Evergreen cheers Gary just as crazily. I reverse the rope a time or two and our fans yell and stomp as though I were scoring points. Some Evergreen fans jeer and call me a hot dog. I do a few pushups and stretch my groin. Bridging from my back to my neck, I see a Channel 4 camera guy shooting videotape of me. He shoots me while I look upside down. He’s balding and he reminds me of Lemon Pie. And Lemon Pie reminds me that in about seven minutes my life will be back to normal. I’ll study during the day and work at night. I’ll develop a new routine and maybe make some new friends and enlarge my world a little. Williamson lets his man escape just at the buzzer and loses by a point. “Shit to the thirteenth, man!” shouts Balldozer as I walk out to the mats. “Banzai, man! Banzai!” yells the Big Konig. “May you live a thousand years!” I hear everything, as I always do. Kuch yelps and yips and screams, “Munch ’im up, Swain! Munch ’im up!” “It’s dinnertime!” yells Otto. “Eat ’im, eat ’im, eat ’im, eat ’im!” All the guys chime in. From the bleachers Leeland and Joretta and Sharon and Rosalie wave clenched fists. Tanneran screams unintelligibly. Dad claps and Cindy chants, “WIN . . . WIN . . .” along with the cheerleaders. Mom looks worried. Arney claps along with the chant. Carla smiles and shines and doesn’t make a sound. I’m calm as I enter the circle. Behind me trails a brief tradition. It’s made up, but it’s mine. Win or lose, the river flows again. Shute and I cross and shake hands. The whistle blows.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Ascyltos, when he had secured silence, adroitly put a stop to their laughter by exclaiming, “We can see that each puts the greater value upon his own property. Let them return our tunic to us, and take back their mantle!” This exchange was satisfactory enough to the peasant and the young woman, but some night-prowling shyster lawyers, who wished to get possession of the mantle for their own profit, demanded that both articles be deposited with them, and the judge could look into the case on the morrow, for it would appear that the ownership of the articles was not so much to the point as was the suspicion of robbery that attached to both sides. The question of sequestration arose, and one of the hucksters, I do not remember which, but he was bald, and his forehead was covered with sebaceous wens, and he sometimes did odd jobs for the lawyers, seized the mantle and vowed that HE would see to it that it was produced at the proper time and place, but it was easily apparent that he desired nothing but that the garment should be deposited with thieves, and vanish; thinking that we would be afraid to appear as claimants for fear of being charged with crime. As far as we were concerned, we were as willing as he, and Fortune aided the cause of each of us, for the peasant, infuriated at our demand that his rags be shown in public, threw the tunic in Ascyltos’ face, released us from responsibility, and demanded that the mantle, which was the only object of litigation, be sequestered. As we thought we had recovered our treasure, we returned hurriedly to the inn, and fastening the door, we had a good laugh at the shrewdness of the hucksters, and not less so at that of our enemies, for by it they had returned our money to us. (While we were unstitching the tunic to get at the gold pieces, we overheard some one quizzing the innkeeper as to what kind of people those were, who had just entered his house. Alarmed at this inquiry, I went down, when the questioner had gone, to find out what was the matter, and learned that the praetor’s lictor, whose duty it was to see that the names of strangers were entered in his rolls, had seen two people come into the inn, whose names were not yet entered, and that was the reason he had made inquiry as to their names and means of support. Mine host furnished this information in such an offhand manner that I became suspicious as to our entire safety in his house; so, in order to avoid arrest, we decided to go out, and not to return home until after dark, and we sallied forth, leaving the management of dinner to Giton. As it suited our purpose to avoid the public streets, we strolled through the more unfrequented parts of the city, and just at dusk we met two women in stolas, in a lonely spot, and they were by no means homely. Walking softly, we followed them to a temple which they entered, and from which we could hear a curious humming, which resembled the sound of voices issuing from the depths of a cavern. Curiosity impelled us also to enter the temple. There we caught sight of many women, who resembled Bacchantes, each of whom brandished in her right hand an emblem of Priapus. We were not permitted to see more, for as their eyes fell upon us, they raised such a hubbub that the vault of the temple trembled. They attempted to lay hands upon us, but we ran back to our inn as fast as we could go.)

• From Shunned (2018)

  Better to hide the brochure from Unity Church and avoid mentioning my current exploration into shamanism or that I had met my two best friends at a meditation workshop. The next day, swimming in uncertainty about what Mom intended for our time together or how long she would be in town, I placed an emergency call to my therapist. She encouraged me to get clear about what I wanted. I still needed other people to remind me it was okay to want things, that it wasn’t selfish or un-Christian. I wanted to hear news about the family. Details. Stories. Was everyone healthy? Had Mom and Dad grown a big vegetable garden? Where had they gone for vacation? What funny thing had my nephew said lately? I wanted a good old-fashioned catch-up session with my mom. There was also the matter of my pride. I wanted her to see me happy, successful, and prospering in my new life—no worse for wear, so to speak. As the week progressed and my mother’s visit got closer, anticipation and dread increased in equal measure. The eternal optimist in me believed we could have fun together. Each day I cleaned and tidied a certain room of the house, hiding piles of clutter and scanning the bookshelves for potentially offensive items. I finally got around to buying houseplants for the empty spots in each room. I swept and organized the pantry. I polished my shoes and got a haircut. I called all my friends and asked them to say a prayer for me. I considered introducing Mom to some of my friends. Her communication left me with few details to plan around. After showing her around my apartment, I thought about taking her sightseeing around Chicago. My boyfriend offered to take us sailing. “There isn’t a better way to take in the grandeur of the skyline,” he said, “than from a boat in Lake Michigan.” We’d both agreed that, should this happen, we’d simplify things by telling Mom we were just friends. He agreed to keep his day open, awaiting my call. The day before her visit, I bought fresh flowers for the house. That evening I stayed home, just in case Mom called. She did not call. Had I not been disfellowshipped, she would be sitting there with me on the couch, sipping chamomile tea and giving my spare bedroom some use. Curious about where she was, I started phoning hotels that cater to the business traveler but gave up after a few tries. Mom did not want to connect until the morning, and that was that. [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] The phone rang at ten o’clock sharp. I’d been carrying a cordless phone around the house and was on the deck, watering the flowers. I answered the call. “Hi, Lindy. How are you, my dear?” It was my mother. “Are you actually here, in my city?” “Sort of.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I followed his lead, closing my eyes. His prayer was brief, sticking to the basics. “Thank you, Jehovah, for this day, and this food, and please be with Grandma and those looking after her. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.” He rushed over the words, but his reverence was genuine, unmistakable. Apparently, my father had deepened his spiritual practice while I had been away. I admired him for it. After taking a few bites of food, Mom stood up and fished out a glossy brochure from the desk near the dining table and gave it to me. It was for barge cruises in France, and the page was turned to the trip they’d taken the year before, to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They spoke of Dad’s disdain for Paris, Mom dragging him through the sites, pleading for a photo on the Pont Neuf. Dad preferred the tranquility of the barge cruise through rural communities and told funny stories about the captain and other characters they met along the way. “Congratulations,” I said. “Fifty years. That’s amazing.” The very ordinariness of such mundane chatter was a quiet thrill for me. I missed this. It was almost as good as spending time alone with my dad. “We were so surprised when we got your letter saying you’d left Chicago,” Dad said. “You were crazy about that city.” “I still am. I didn’t think I would ever leave. But Visa offered me a great job and the chance to relocate me to paradise on their dime. How could I refuse?” I went on to describe the joys and challenges of working for Visa, and my decision to resign and launch my own business. Over the years, I had established a warm and reliable community of friends and wanted to share what that meant to me, and how meeting Bob had expanded the web of connection I felt to the world. I remembered Mom’s warning, proclaimed at this very table: your only true friends can be found in The Truth— worldly people will always let you down . Part of me wanted to tell her how wrong she was, to emphasize the good and true companions I had in my life. But I hadn’t come for that purpose and was enjoying the connection too much to clutter the experience with comments she would dismiss as quixotic. Lory’s arrival was imminent, and my angst about seeing her was mounting. The two breakfasts I’d consumed—one on the plane, this second one to be polite—were churning in my belly. I could feel the entirety of my body tensing in anticipation. While Mom cleared the table, Dad offered to show me the rest of the house. Few things had changed. We were downstairs in the pantry when I heard a door open and close upstairs, then two women talking. My sister had arrived. I waited for Lory to join us downstairs, but she did not. Dad was talking, and I was growing impatient.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The expectant mood of the time is reflected in a mock Ash Wednesday pamphlet Litany of the Germans, which gave voice to people’s anxious identification with Luther. It begged Christ, Mary, all the holy bishops (“of whom there are few”), and all the saints to pray “for the Germans” and to protect them not only from such things as lightning and storms, but also “the Pope’s tyranny,” and “the terrible threats, bulls and fulminations” of the popes. “May Martin,” the author continued, “the pillar of Christian faith who cannot be overturned, be protected from all Venetian poison, when he soon arrives in Worms,” a reference to rumors of assassination plots.30 His traveling companion Peter Suave likened their entry to Erfurt to Palm Sunday, and Luther wondered to Melanchthon whether this was Satan tempting him with pomp, or whether it was a sign he would be martyred; in any case, he enclosed Suave’s description. Clearly Luther was entertaining the parallel with Christ.31 Talking to his companions at table years later, he remembered his own emotional state with some surprise: He had felt, he said, “unshocked,” and recalled that “I was not frightened,” commenting, “God can make you that crazy—I don’t know if I would be so crazy now.”32 When he arrived at Worms on April 16, two thousand people thronged the streets trying to get a look at him. The papal nuncio Aleander noted that as Luther climbed down from the wagon, a monk stepped forward to embrace him and then touched his cassock three times as if he were a saint.33 He was lodged in a house of the Knights of the Order of St. John where Ulrich von Pappenheim, the imperial marshal, and the knights Friedrich von Thun and Philipp von Feilitzsch were also staying.34 Accommodation worthy of nobles, it was situated close by the hall where the Diet was meeting. It was a reversal of the situation at Augsburg: Now it was the papal nuncio Aleander who had to make do with a tiny room without heating, so unpopular was his cause.35

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  22. How this relationship worked emerges in a story Luther told about when he was grappling with the interpretation of a biblical passage, and the Devil disputed with him; the Devil was winning and he “just about strangled me, as if my heart would melt in my body” (WT 1, 141, 62:32). He asked Bugenhagen to read the same text, and Bugenhagen, not realizing Luther was presenting the Devil’s interpretation, apparently agreed with him. The reformer had to spend the whole night “with a heavy heart” (WT 1, 141, 63:5–6), only to be relieved the next day when an angry Bugenhagen appeared, telling him that his abstruse interpretation of the passage had been “ridiculous.” At one level, Luther of course knew the interpretation was wrong, but he needed Bugenhagen’s pastoral authority to believe it. 23. Posset, Front-Runner, 101. 24. Kolb, Amsdorf, 16, 27–30. 25. Luther had tried to persuade him to visit in the monastery, offering him a new room, in 1531; WB 6, 1885, Nov. 22, 1531. Nikolaus Hausmann, another friend from Luther’s generation, remained a lifelong bachelor; his death in 1538 from a stroke, which he suffered when he gave his first sermon as superintendent in Freiberg, was a bitter blow. 26. WB 8, 3400, Nov. 6, 1539, 586:23–24. 27. The situation was further complicated by the tensions generated in the friendship with Melanchthon and the need to show loyalty both to Luther and Melanchthon, not always on the same side. For example, Veit Amerbach was forced to leave Wittenberg in 1543 after a dispute with Melanchthon; WB 10, 3838, Jan. 13, 1543; 3943, Dec. 3, 1543; 3967, Feb. 9, 1544. 28. WB 4, 1017, June 8, 1526. He asked Johann Rühel to let Agricola know, adding “for he must be thinking about this time of year what it means to have sons” (87:10–11). On Agricola, see Kawerau, Agricola. 29. See, for example, WB 4, 1009, May 11, 1526. 30. WB 4, 1111, [June 10, 1527]; 1119 [early July 1527]. 31. WB 4, 1322, Sept. 11, 1528, 558:10–11; 1325, second half Sept. 1528; WB 5, 1378, Feb. 1, 1529. 32. WB 5, Sept. 9, 1529 (Graf Albrecht of Mansfeld), Sept. 9, 1529 (Agricola); Kawerau, Agricola, 110–15. Passavant dedicated his attack to the Mansfeld counts. 33. WB 5, 1473, Sept. 9, 1529, 151:12–18. 34. Ratzeberger, Die handschriftliche Geschichte, 97. 35. Kawerau, Agricola, 168–71. He left behind a letter to Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, to whom he owed his position in Eisleben, in which he poured out his frustration at his “low” salary. The count responded in kind, accusing him of drunkenness, failure to perform his teaching duties, and preaching more against his colleagues than against the papists. 36. Kawerau, Agricola, 172–73; see WT 4, 4043 (1538). He later moved to the house of Melanchthon’s mother-in-law. 37. Förstemann, Urkundenbuch, I, 298; see also Ernst Koch, “ ‘Deutschlands Prophet, Seher und Vater.’ Johann Agricola und Martin Luther. Von den Enttäuschungen einer Freundschaft,” in Peter Freybe, ed., Luther und seine Freunde, 63.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Karlstadt’s road to this position was directly connected to his totemic emphasis on suffering—by which one gave up all “lusts,” emptied oneself for God, and arrived at Gelassenheit.57 As a Christian, he wrote in On the Manifold, Singular Will of God, you “must feel a cross in your life, work, labor and resting if you intend to be in Christ. And you must die to self-will.” Although he was now married, his writings continued to display awkwardness about sexuality, defensively arguing that it was all right to be with a woman, if there were no “lust” involved. He wrote of how “the flesh gnaws at us with its desires,” warning, “If we develop pleasure and love of our own flesh and desires and establish friendship with our nature, our hostile flesh is like a beam in our eyes.” This convoluted position sprang from his radical separation of flesh and spirit, a dualism that marked his entire theological output, and determined his mature Eucharistic theology. He distinguished between the “inner” reception of the sacrament and its “outer” material form, the bread, and because he was emphatic that only the spiritual dimension mattered, he was drawn to argue that the divine could not be inherent in material objects.58 Karlstadt’s Eucharistic theology also informed his views on morals, gender, and politics. Committed to the communal Reformation, he rejected everything that smacked of priestly tyranny—the elevation of the Host, Communion in one kind, confession before Communion, the priest placing the wafer in the communicant’s mouth—while his admiration of mysticism, prophecy, and the power of the spirit enabled him to be more open to women’s role in the Church.59 Aiming to escape his intellectual formation, and to reach for a purer emotional mysticism, he found his outlook difficult to express within the constraints of a traditionally written and argued pamphlet, the form at which Luther excelled. He tried several other genres, including dialogues, in which he put words into the mouths of his opponents so that he could refute them, but as he rejected images, and was neither a poet nor musician, he had no other practical outlet. While Luther’s rhetorical style was becoming ever clearer and more rebarbative, Karlstadt pushed the pamphlet format to its limit, eschewing intellectual, linear thinking. The result was a manner of writing that seems unfinished and obscure. So, for example, he could write in The Meaning of the Term “Gelassen”: “However, we must be on guard constantly that this same yielded egoism or self-absorption is seriously judged and surrendered, for the Devil sits in wait of unsurrendered yieldedness as a fox looks out for chickens which he plans to devour.”60 He is clearly striving for emotional honesty as well as memorable imagery, but achieves this at the cost of clarity.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “But,” demanded Trimalchio, “what did you have for dinner’?” “I’ll tell you if I can,” answered he, “for my memory’s so good that I often forget my own name. Let’s see, for the first course, we had a hog, crowned with a wine cup and garnished with cheese cakes and chicken livers cooked well done, beets, of course, and whole-wheat bread, which I’d rather have than white, because it puts strength into you, and when I take a crap afterwards, I don’t have to yell. Following this, came a course of tarts, served cold, with excellent Spanish wine poured over warm honey; I ate several of the tarts and got the honey all over myself. Then there were chick-peas and lupines, all the smooth-shelled nuts you wanted, and an apple apiece, but I got away with two, and here they are, tied up in my napkin; for I’ll have a row on my hands if I don’t bring some kind of a present home to my favorite slave. Oh yes, my wife has just reminded me, there was a haunch of bear-meat as a side dish, Scintilla ate some of it without knowing what it was, and she nearly puked up her guts when she found out. But as for me, I ate more than a pound of it, for it tasted exactly like wild boar and, says I, if a bear eats a man, shouldn’t that be all the more reason for a man to eat a bear? The last course was soft cheese, new wine boiled thick, a snail apiece, a helping of tripe, liver pate, capped eggs, turnips and mustard. But that’s enough. Pickled olives were handed around in a wooden bowl, and some of the party greedily snatched three handfuls, we had ham, too, but we sent it back.” CHAPTER THE SIXTY-SEVENTH. “But why isn’t Fortunata at the table, Gaius? Tell me.” “What’s that,” Trimalchio replied; “don’t you know her better than that? She wouldn’t touch even a drop of water till after the silver was put away and the leftovers divided among the slaves.” “I’m going to beat it if she don’t take her place,” Habinnas threatened, and started to get up; and then, at a signal, the slaves all called out together “Fortunata,” four times or more.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SIXTY-FIFTH. The dainties that followed this display of affability were of such a nature that, if any reliance is to be placed in my word, the very mention of them makes me sick at the stomach. Instead of thrushes, fattened chickens were served, one to each of us, and goose eggs with pastry caps on them, which same Trimalchio earnestly entreated us to eat, informing us that the chickens had all been boned. Just at that instant, however, a lictor knocked at the dining-room door, and a reveler, clad in white vestments, entered, followed by a large retinue. Startled at such pomp, I thought that the Praetor had arrived, so I put my bare feet upon the floor and started to get up, but Agamemnon laughed at my anxiety and said, “Keep your seat, you idiot, it’s only Habinnas the sevir; he’s a stone mason, and if report speaks true, he makes the finest tombstones imaginable.” Reassured by this information, I lay back upon my couch and watched Habinnas’ entrance with great curiosity. Already drunk and wearing several wreaths, his forehead smeared with perfume which ran down into his eyes, he advanced with his hands upon his wife’s shoulders, and, seating himself in the Praetor’s place, he called for wine and hot water. Delighted with his good humor, Trimalchio called for a larger goblet for himself, and asked him, at the same time, how he had been entertained. “We had everything except yourself, for my heart and soul were here, but it was fine, it was, by Hercules. Scissa was giving a Novendial feast for her slave, whom she freed on his death-bed, and it’s my opinion she’ll have a large sum to split with the tax gatherers, for the dead man was rated at 50,000, but everything went off well, even if we did have to pour half our wine on the bones of the late lamented.” CHAPTER THE SIXTY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Karlstadt evidently meant them. 31 But Wittenberg and the university also faced other problems. Luther’s renown had attracted hordes of students and the university had seen a strong growth in numbers up to 1521, so much so that Luther had fretted about how to house them all. Melanchthon’s lectures were also famed, and students had thronged the halls to hear them. But the Reformation’s attack on scholasticism was also a general assault on intellectual training itself, and it offered little to replace it. With theology the most important intellectual discipline of the day, a crisis in theology heralded a crisis of intellectual life. After hearing Karlstadt preach, the student Philipp Eberbach, who had come to Wittenberg to study the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, no longer saw the point: “I said farewell to the Muses.” 32 With begging, the major source of student funding, gone, and with intellectual endeavor put into question, student numbers dropped precipitously. Many were reported to be leaving town; even Melanchthon was rumored to be planning to leave Wittenberg by Easter. 33 The fall in enrollments greatly worried the Elector and Spalatin, but the problem did not concern just Wittenberg. Right across the empire student numbers collapsed throughout the rest of the 1520s. The University of Greifswald even had to close its doors for a generation. The clergy too was transformed by the evangelical message. The immediate effect of the attack on private Masses was to destroy at a stroke the whole ecclesiastical career structure. And who would now want their sons to enter the Church? Whatever else the Reformation meant, it would entail a massive reduction in the numbers of clergy, culling both the clerical proletariat of priests saying private Masses and the upper clerical ranks with their substantial benefices. Neither priests nor university men had a monopoly on religious truth any longer. Anyone, even the unlettered, could understand the Bible for themselves. In late December 1521, a group of three prophets arrived in Wittenberg from nearby Zwickau, claiming that God spoke to them directly. Nikolaus Storch and Thomas Drechsel were journeyman cloth-makers; the third, Markus Thomas or Stübner, had attended university in Wittenberg, but he was the son of a bathkeeper whose name “Stübner” betrayed his origins. Because of their close contact with the body, bathkeepers were regarded as dishonorable, their status so low that marriage to a bathkeeper’s child meant social death. Storch had already caused considerable excitement in his hometown, where he set up conventicles and stressed the importance of direct revelation. Stübner, who knew Melanchthon well, argued that infant baptism could not be found in Scripture. The Zwickau prophets represented a new kind of evangelical movement that owed little or nothing to universities.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I bounce away and dance a little and stand straight. His hand whips out again, but I duck, drop to one knee, and sweep his leg, hoisting it high as I move behind him. I trip the other leg and he goes down. I get the two points and our crowd cheers. Because he’s tall, I work on controlling his crotch. Most of his strength is in his legs, so I ride him low, my arm locked back around his hips and through his crotch rather than around his waist, my leg hooked through his at the knee. Romaine is really a tough guy. I never liked playing against him in football and I’d run away from him in a street fight. But for a wrestler he has poor balance. You ride his hips tight and you know right where he’s going. He doesn’t try much except to get back to his feet. I ride him out to the whistle. Romaine chooses top. I get down on my hands and knees in the referee’s position and Romaine gets down beside me and grabs hold. The ref checks our position and my nose begins to bleed. Just a couple drops at first. But it’s a steady stream by the time he moves back and sticks his whistle in his mouth. He calls time and motions to our bench. Tommy Reilly, our manager, runs out with the wet towel to wipe the blood off the mat. I pass him on my way to the bench to meet Coach. “I didn’t even get hit,” I say apologetically. Coach wipes my nose and mouth. “Better go all out this round, Louden,” he says as he stuffs the little gauze stoppers in. I nod. I can taste the blood. I breathe through my mouth and the blood bubbles. I swallow it. “Come on, you Swain, take him now!” yells Otto. I sit out at the whistle. Romaine can’t stay with me and I escape for a point. I go right after him. He reaches to lock up and I drag his arm. I take him to his knees and get control for two points. The ref calls time. Romaine’s back is covered with my blood. I pass Tommy again walking to the bench. I get one more time-out before I’m disqualified. “Have to do it pretty soon, son,” Coach says. He lays me down on my back and presses both thumbs along the bridge of my nose between my eyes. Things go a little black. He stuffs my nose full of stoppers and pats me on the back. I drive hard at the whistle, but Romaine stays steady on his hands and knees. I go for the half nelson and he counters by going to his feet. I lift him up with an arm through the crotch and bring him back to the mat hard. Too hard. The ref blows his whistle and gives Romaine a penalty point. The L.C.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  Everything is deeply covered and there’s a great softness even my running bootfalls can’t break. Shoveling the walk will be a perfect way to begin tomorrow. It’ll loosen me up without making me real tired. I hope Dad hasn’t already shoveled. We watched a couple films of Shute and had a brief workout, in which I was absolutely unstoppable. Probably because everybody but me was still filled with Japanese food from Konigi’s. I tried wrestling without anything in my nose and it didn’t bleed a bit. Coach and I figured that maybe the nose stoppers have been irritating the inside of my nose and making it bleed rather than protecting it. I won’t use any tomorrow. Coach showed a film of Shute’s match last week against Palouse and then another of him at last year’s state tournament. Then he showed the first one again. Kuch and Otto and I thought Shute looked better in the film from last year. But Coach said not to count on it, because Shute was probably a lot more psyched for the state tournament than for a duel meet with Palouse. That’s probably true. The Palouse film didn’t show much, anyway. Shute pinned his man in the first round. “That guy is faster than a fart on an oilskin,” Balldozer said. I think the French have an inordinate concern with flatulence. Bowden and Smith couldn’t come today because their families were out of town for New Year’s dinner. I made sure to thank Coach and the guys again for last night and for coming on New Year’s to watch films and help me work out. Shute looks real, real good. He may be faster than I am but I don’t think he’s stronger or has any better balance or knows his moves any better. He’s aggressive all the time, but he doesn’t seem to like to spend much time on his feet. I’ve noticed it before and I saw it again today in the films. I noticed in the state tournament film that he went for the takedown just as soon as he could and always tried to reverse rather than escape. Maybe I’ll try to spend a lot of time on my feet with him. I hope he wins the coin toss. If he does, it means their first wrestler gets the choice of positions in the second round. Then in the next match our guy gets to choose. It’ll work out so I’ll have my choice, and that’s important. You always want to choose the top position in the second round so you can be on the bottom in the third and score yourself some points. All you can do from the top position is try to pin the guy, and against guys like Shute that’s just not done. I wish he weren’t shorter than I am and so goddamn good-looking. Why can’t he be cretinous, monosyllabic, or maybe look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame instead of an anatomy sketch by Michelangelo?

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I’ve avoided Kuch all practice. Otto Lafte tied me to the trampoline as usual on wrestle-off days. We bounce around and wrestle on the trampoline and he always manages to get me on my stomach and then he sits on my back. Once he gets me down it’s all over. Otto weighs 243. He stretches the leg straps of my jock around my ankles; then he hooks the waistband through the tramp springs. I think it calms him somehow. Wrestle-offs shouldn’t bother Otto—he’s been David Thompson’s number-one heavyweight for two and a half years. Kuch usually participates in the trampoline ritual. Not that Otto needs the help. It’s just something we do. Sometimes Otto and I get Kuch. Sometimes Kuch and I and Balldozer get Otto. Sometimes we pluck the guy’s pubic hair. Little Jerry Konigi is plucked almost bald. He weighs ninety eight pounds. Everybody takes out their frustrations on Jerry. Coach Ratta untied me. Then as I jumped down from the tramp he caught me midair and drove me to the mat. He does this all the time. I think he got the idea from Peter Seller’s valet, Kato, the guy who’s always sneaking up and attacking him in the Pink Panther movies. Coach says he does it to keep us constantly alert when we’re on the mat, and especially when we’re in a match and one wrestler has just escaped and gotten to his feet. A lot of guys get taken down at that point in a match. If you’re the one who’s escaped, you have this tendency to relax, because you’ve just gotten out of a hold and scored yourself a point—and you leave yourself open to getting taken right back to the mat. And if you’re the one who’s let the other guy escape, you have this tendency to say shit and shake your head and relax for a second—and then the guy takes you down and gets two more points on you. He let me up without saying a word and turned toward the door to the main wrestling room. I untied my sweat pants and had my eyes on my crotch as I adjusted my jock when he knocked me down again. This time he took me right to my back. I was pinned before I could get my hands out of my pants. I guess Coach doesn’t want me getting overconfident. Not only do we hold our wrestle-offs after a full practice, but we wrestle nine minutes instead of the regular six. And even if you pin or get pinned, you still have to go the full nine. Kuch is ready. He’s spoken with the Everywhere Spirit and now he’s shouting his war cries. He took a lot of shit about his Indian stuff from crowds last season, especially on the road. People wrote the principal and called him on the phone to complain about Kuch’s aboriginal behavior on the mat.