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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  Before they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking, Vronsky’s valet went up to him with a letter on a tray. “From Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger,” he said with a significant expression. “Astonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky,” said one of the guests in French of the valet, while Vronsky, frowning, read the letter. The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he knew its contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that the letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not reached her yet. The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was unexpected, and particularly disagreeable to him. “Annie is very ill, the doctor says it may be inflammation. I am losing my head all alone. Princess Varvara is no help, but a hindrance. I expected you the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where you are and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself, but thought better of it, knowing you would dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know what to do.” The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter ill, and this hostile tone. The innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy, burdensome love to which he had to return struck Vronsky by their contrast. But he had to go, and by the first train that night he set off home. Chapter 32 Before Vronsky’s departure for the elections, Anna had reflected that the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left home, might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded her, and before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed. In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same point—the sense of her own humiliation. “He has the right to go away when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,” she thought. “That glance shows the beginning of indifference.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  What had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not go to a club. Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky’s type—she knew now what that meant ... it meant drinking and going somewhere after drinking. She could not think without horror of where men went on such occasions. Was he to go into society? But she knew he could only find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the society of young women, and that she could not wish for. Should he stay at home with her, her mother and her sisters? But much as she liked and enjoyed their conversations forever on the same subjects—“Aline-Nadine,” as the old prince called the sisters’ talks—she knew it must bore him. What was there left for him to do? To go on writing at his book he had indeed attempted, and at first he used to go to the library and make extracts and look up references for his book. But, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything. And besides, he complained that he had talked too much about his book here, and that consequently all his ideas about it were muddled and had lost their interest for him. One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened between them here in town. Whether it was that their conditions were different, or that they had both become more careful and sensible in that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow from jealousy, which they had so dreaded when they moved from the country. One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of view, did indeed happen—that was Kitty’s meeting with Vronsky. The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty’s godmother, who had always been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Kitty, though she did not go into society at all on account of her condition, went with her father to see the venerable old lady, and there met Vronsky. The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting was that at the instant when she recognized in his civilian dress the features once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush—she felt it—overspread her face. But this lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who purposely began talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished, she was perfectly ready to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if necessary, exactly as she spoke to Princess Marya Borissovna, and more than that, to do so in such a way that everything to the faintest intonation and smile would have been approved by her husband, whose unseen presence she seemed to feel about her at that instant.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I also dismissed him as one crazy guy—but a year later, newspapers carried reports of rural militia members in Montana who gathered on the ranch of one of them, threatened to shoot down all helicopters, and had the weapons to do it. I wondered if my driver was among them. Still, when I came back to New York and said, “You know, there are ultra-right-wing groups out there, and they’re well armed,” urbanites would reply, “Just a few nuts, nothing to worry about.” Only later did the media begin to take extremist groups seriously. By then they had committed racist murders in several cities—starting with the liberal Jewish talk show host Alan Berg, who was shot down in his driveway by a white nationalist group—then also bombing a government building in Oklahoma City, shooting Jewish children in a child care center in Los Angeles, and attempting to bomb a Martin Luther King parade in Spokane. I still don’t see reports in newspapers about white supremacists who are trying to establish an armed and separatist homeland in the rural Northwest and parts of Canada, yet when I ask drivers or gas station attendants or other down-home authorities, they are quite matter-of-fact about the local Aryan Brotherhood, or methamphetamine labs operating with impunity in small towns, or certain rural areas where it’s best not to go. Since drivers have time and a captive audience, they can also be vectors of modern myths. In Boulder, for example, I learned that Jack Kennedy was the Lindbergh baby. A Salt Lake City driver told me that “godless Communists created the women’s movement,” and a Dallas driver said feminism was “a Jewish plot to destroy the Christian family,” something I would hear a lot from right-wing Christian fundamentalists. Because it’s a long ride to the Denver airport, I got the entire story of the Trilateral Commission as part of an international Jewish conspiracy that stretched all the way from the killing of Jesus Christ to David Rockefeller, the founder of this private group of leaders who came from the United States, Europe, and Japan. I thought he had won the Conspiracy Prize—until another driver picked me up at Newark Airport and was sure that the Trilateral Commission was behind the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. No kidding. I can also tell which new immigrant groups are going to what cities, since driving is so often a first job. In Washington, I always get a disproportionate number of drivers from African countries. They may not know the fastest route, but they instruct me on more important issues. From the late 1960s to the present, drivers from Ethiopia and Eritrea kept me up to date on the armed conflict between those two countries. The United States, the Soviet Union, and Castro’s Cuba all supported Ethiopia in a thirty-year war—assuming that this much larger country would defeat Eritrea. But according to drivers, it was always clear that Eritrea would prevail.

• From Querelle (1953)

  36 I JEAN GENET sailor's, and standing up, he always kept his legs well apart. This murderer had traveled a great deal . . . ," we know that this description of Campi, beheaded April 30, 1884, fits like a glove. Being an interpretation, it is exact. Yet his mates were able to say of Querelle : "What a funny guy," for he presented them, almost daily, with another disconcerting and scandalous vision of himself. He shone among them with the brightness of a true freak. Sailors of our Fighting Navy exhibit a certain honesty which they owe to the sense of glory that attracts them to the service. If they wanted to go in for smuggling or any other form of trafficking they would not really know how to _ go about it. Heavily and lazily, because of the boredom inherent in their task, they perform it in a manner that seems to us like an act of faith . But Querelle kept his eye on the main ch ance. He felt no nostalgia for his time as a petty hoodlum-he had never really outgrown it-but he continued, under the protection of the French Bag, his dangerous exploits. All his early teens he had spent in the company of dockers and merchant seamen. He knew their game. Querelle strode along, his face damp and burning, without thinking about anything in particular. He felt a little uneasy, haunted by the unformulated glimmer of a suspicion th at his exploits would gain him no glory in the eyes of Mario and Nona, who themselves were (and were for each other) glory personified. On reaching th e Recouvrance bridge he went down the steps to the landing stage. It was then that it occurred to him, while passing the Customs House, that he was letting his six kilos of opium go too ch eap. But then again it was important. to get business off to a good start. He walked to the quayside to wait for the patrol boat that would come to return seamen and officers to the Vengeur which was lying at anchor out in the Roads. He checked his watch : ten of four. The boat would be there in ten minutes. He took a tum up and down to keep

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the Shtcherbatskys’ house, from which the young people were to set out the same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit. The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the Shtcherbatskys’. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up—it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan Arkadyevitch’s and brought a shirt—it was impossibly wide and short. They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys’ to unpack the things. The bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Kitty and what she might be thinking now. At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt. “Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van,” said Kouzma. Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not looking at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings. “You won’t help matters like this,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. “It will come round, it will come round ... I tell you.” Chapter 4 “They’ve come!” “Here he is!” “Which one?” “Rather young, eh?” “Why, my dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!” were the comments in the crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her into the church. Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride. Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever—not because these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression of guileless truthfulness. “I was beginning to think you meant to run away,” she said, and smiled to him. “It’s so stupid, what happened to me, I’m ashamed to speak of it!” he said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who came up to him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The narrow room, in which they were smoking and taking refreshments, was full of noblemen. The excitement grew more intense, and every face betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for the leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had reckoned up every vote. They were the generals organizing the approaching battle. The rest, like the rank and file before an engagement, though they were getting ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or sitting at the table; others were walking up and down the long room, smoking cigarettes, and talking with friends whom they had not seen for a long while. Levin did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he did not want to join his own friends, that is Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, Sviazhsky and the rest, because Vronsky in his equerry’s uniform was standing with them in eager conversation. Levin had seen him already at the meeting on the previous day, and he had studiously avoided him, not caring to greet him. He went to the window and sat down, scanning the groups, and listening to what was being said around him. He felt depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw, eager, anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old, toothless little man with mumbling lips wearing a naval uniform, sitting beside him, had no interest in it and nothing to do. “He’s such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no difference. Only think of it! He couldn’t collect it in three years!” he heard vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered, short, country gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Levin, this gentleman sharply turned his back. “Yes, it’s a dirty business, there’s no denying,” a small gentleman assented in a high voice. Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general, hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably seeking a place where they could talk without being overheard. “How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! He’d better not say it, the beast!” “But excuse me! They take their stand on the act,” was being said in another group; “the wife must be registered as noble.” “Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We’re all gentlemen, aren’t we? Above suspicion.” “Shall we go on, your excellency, _fine champagne?_” Another group was following a nobleman, who was shouting something in a loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I sought—in you. I love you, and offer you my hand.” Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces from Varvara. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha. “Come here, little ones! There are so many!” she was saying in her sweet, deep voice. Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence and was glad of it. “Well, did you find some?” she asked from under the white kerchief, turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him. “Not one,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “Did you?” She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her. “That one too, near the twig,” she pointed out to little Masha a little fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the fungus, breaking it into two white halves. “This brings back my childhood,” she added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch. They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent. After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said: “So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always fewer, though.” Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after a pause of some length, as though against his own will, he made an observation in response to her last words. “I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at the edge of the wood, though I can’t tell them apart.” Some minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the children, and were quite alone. Varenka’s heart throbbed so that she heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red again.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “And so am I.” “You’re going, no doubt, to hear Patti?” said Tushkevitch. “Patti? You suggest the idea to me. I would go if it were possible to get a box.” “I can get one,” Tushkevitch offered his services. “I should be very, very grateful to you,” said Anna. “But won’t you dine with us?” Vronsky gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a complete loss to understand what Anna was about. What had she brought the old Princess Oblonskaya home for, what had she made Tushkevitch stay to dinner for, and, most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a box? Could she possibly think in her position of going to Patti’s benefit, where all the circle of her acquaintances would be? He looked at her with serious eyes, but she responded with that defiant, half-mirthful, half-desperate look, the meaning of which he could not comprehend. At dinner Anna was in aggressively high spirits—she almost flirted both with Tushkevitch and with Yashvin. When they got up from dinner and Tushkevitch had gone to get a box at the opera, Yashvin went to smoke, and Vronsky went down with him to his own rooms. After sitting there for some time he ran upstairs. Anna was already dressed in a low-necked gown of light silk and velvet that she had had made in Paris, and with costly white lace on her head, framing her face, and particularly becoming, showing up her dazzling beauty. “Are you really going to the theater?” he said, trying not to look at her. “Why do you ask with such alarm?” she said, wounded again at his not looking at her. “Why shouldn’t I go?” She appeared not to understand the motive of his words. “Oh, of course, there’s no reason whatever,” he said, frowning. “That’s just what I say,” she said, willfully refusing to see the irony of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove. “Anna, for God’s sake! what is the matter with you?” he said, appealing to her exactly as once her husband had done. “I don’t understand what you are asking.” “You know that it’s out of the question to go.” “Why so? I’m not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to dress, she is going with me.” He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair. “But do you mean to say you don’t know?...” he began.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, you needn’t be in any hurry. You don’t understand, you know. I’m certain I’m not wanted, still I’ve promised, and if you like, I’ll come. But there’s no hurry. Please sit down; won’t you have some coffee?” Levin stared at him with eyes that asked whether he was laughing at him; but the doctor had no notion of making fun of him. “I know, I know,” the doctor said, smiling; “I’m a married man myself; and at these moments we husbands are very much to be pitied. I’ve a patient whose husband always takes refuge in the stables on such occasions.” “But what do you think, Pyotr Dmitrievitch? Do you suppose it may go all right?” “Everything points to a favorable issue.” “So you’ll come immediately?” said Levin, looking wrathfully at the servant who was bringing in the coffee. “In an hour’s time.” “Oh, for mercy’s sake!” “Well, let me drink my coffee, anyway.” The doctor started upon his coffee. Both were silent. “The Turks are really getting beaten, though. Did you read yesterday’s telegrams?” said the doctor, munching some roll. “No, I can’t stand it!” said Levin, jumping up. “So you’ll be with us in a quarter of an hour.” “In half an hour.” “On your honor?” When Levin got home, he drove up at the same time as the princess, and they went up to the bedroom door together. The princess had tears in her eyes, and her hands were shaking. Seeing Levin, she embraced him, and burst into tears. “Well, my dear Lizaveta Petrovna?” she queried, clasping the hand of the midwife, who came out to meet them with a beaming and anxious face. “She’s going on well,” she said; “persuade her to lie down. She will be easier so.” From the moment when he had waked up and understood what was going on, Levin had prepared his mind to bear resolutely what was before him, and without considering or anticipating anything, to avoid upsetting his wife, and on the contrary to soothe her and keep up her courage. Without allowing himself even to think of what was to come, of how it would end, judging from his inquiries as to the usual duration of these ordeals, Levin had in his imagination braced himself to bear up and to keep a tight rein on his feelings for five hours, and it had seemed to him he could do this. But when he came back from the doctor’s and saw her sufferings again, he fell to repeating more and more frequently: “Lord, have mercy on us, and succor us!” He sighed, and flung his head up, and began to feel afraid he could not bear it, that he would burst into tears or run away. Such agony it was to him. And only one hour had passed.

• From Querelle (1953)

  used to meet sailors in the bars. He mingled with them, while never daring to hope that he could become one of their company, but he respected them for their membership in that gallant organization. But that night, secretly, to himself only, he was one of them. In the morning he left. The fog was extremely dense. He headed for the railroad station. He held his head low, hoping to conceal his face in the tall collar of the peacoat. It was unlikely that any laborer, one of his old buddies, would cross his path, or that he would be recognized even then, in this disguise. Having arrived in the vicinity of the station Gil turned onto tl)e road that goes down to the docks. The train was due at ten after six. Gil was carrying the revolver Querelle had given him. Would he shoot if the officer yelled for help? He went into the small one-patron pissoir that stood next to the guard rails above the sea. If anyone passed by, all he would see was the back of a sailor taking a leak. Gil did not have to fear either officers or policemen. Querelle had arranged everything per- • fectly. All Gil had to do now was to wait for the train : the Lieutenant would certainly come this way. Would Gil recognize him? He recapitulated all the details of the plan of action. Suddenly he stopped to consider whether he should address the officer familiarly or with the customary respect. "Talk tough, to get the message across." But it would be strange for a sailor to address a superior thus. Gil decided to flaunt formality, but felt some regret that he wouldn't, even on the morning he had donned it for the very first time, be able to know all the pleasures and consolations of his uniform, consisting largely of one's being able to forget oneself in the profound security hierarchy and ritual provide. Hands in the pockets of his peacoat, Gil stood and waited. The fog dampened and cooled his face, softened his wish to be brutal. Querelle was probably still sleeping in his hammock. Gil heard the train whistle, clatter across the iron bridge, pull into the station. A few minutes later occasional silhouettes flitted by: women and children. His heart was thumping. The Lieutenant appeared in the fog, all alone. Gil 229 I QUERELLE stepped out of the pissoir, holding the gun pointed at the ground at his side. He caught up with the Lieutenant, stopped him. "No noise. Give me that satchel or I'll shoot."

• From Querelle (1953)

  62 I JEAN GENET sunken, severe. eyes, with hair and garments turned to stone, with knees perhaps enveloped in a fleece thick and curled like an Assyrian beard, whom this thing with its unreal fingers, wrapped in fog, had just done to death. The tenuous breath to which Querelle had been reduced was still clinging to the spiky branch of an acacia. Anxiously, it waited. The assassin snorted twice, very quickly, like a prize fighter, and moved his lips so that Querelle might enter, flow into the mouth, rise to the eyes, seep down to the fingers, fill the thing again. Querelle turned his head, gently, not moving his chest. He heard nothing. He bent down to pull out a handful of grass turf to clean t�e blade of his knife. He thought he was squashing strawberries into freshly whipped cream, wallowing in them. He raised himself up from his crouched position, threw the bunch of bloodstained grass onto the dead man's body, and, after bending down a second time to retrieve his package of opium, resumed his walk under the trees alone. That the criminal at the instant of committing his crime believes that he'll never be caught is a mistaken assumption. He refuses, no doubt, to see the terrible consequences of his act at all clearly, yet he knows that the act does condemn him to death. We find the word "analysis'' a little embarrassing. There are other ways of uncovering the workings of this self-condemnation. Let us simply call Quer � lle a happy moral suicide. Unable to know whether he'll be caught or not, the criminal lives in a state of anxiety, which he can only get rid of by negating, that is to say, by expiating his deed. And that is to say, by suffering the full penalty (for it would seem that it is the very impossibilitY of confessing to murders that provokes the panic, the metaphysical or religious terror in the cr iminal ). At the bottom of a dry moat, at the foot of the ramparts, Querelle was leaning against a tree, cut off from the world by fog and night. He had put the knife back in his pocket. His beret he was holding in fron t of him, with both hands, at the level of his belt, the pompon against his belly. The smile was gone. He was now, in fact, appearing before the

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the fundamental basis of all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply for social purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a remedy for all this—all was blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation of some solution near at hand. Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress that yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his leg, Levin did not fall asleep for a long while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky, though he had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Levin; but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required consideration. Levin could not help recalling every word he had said, and in imagination amending his own replies. “Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does not answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be forced on him by authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all without these improvements, you would be quite right. But the only system that does answer is where laborer is working in accordance with his habits, just as on the old peasant’s land half-way here. Your and our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to blame or the laborers. We have gone our way—the European way—a long while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force. Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as the _Russian peasant_ with his instincts, and we shall arrange our system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine, I ought to have said to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has, that you have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which they will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get twice or three times the yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and the share of labor will be greater too. And to do this one must lower the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in its success. How to do this?—that’s a matter of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting about together and made towards the green, slime-covered pool. Levin knew Laska’s method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too and expected a whole covey of snipe. “Veslovsky, beside me, walk beside me!” he said in a faint voice to his companion splashing in the water behind him. Levin could not help feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after that casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh. “Oh, I won’t get in your way, don’t trouble about me.” But Levin could not help troubling, and recalled Kitty’s words at parting: “Mind you don’t shoot one another.” The dogs came nearer and nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The expectation of snipe was so intense that to Levin the squelching sound of his own heel, as he drew it up out of the mire, seemed to be the call of a snipe, and he clutched and pressed the lock of his gun. “Bang! bang!” sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment towards the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Levin had time to look round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and some eight more rose one after another. Stepan Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds, and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its unhurt wing showing white beneath. Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed; he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant another snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so that he missed again. While they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Veslovsky, who had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the water. Stepan Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes looked at Levin. “Well, now let us separate,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and limping on his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog, he walked off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked in the other.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  * Then we took leave of him and departed, and when we were come without the gates of the town we perceived before us a great sepulchre standing out of the highway, in a privy and secret place. And thither we went and opened there certain coffins, half rotted with age, wherein we found the corruption of man, and the ashes and dust of his long-buried body, which should serve to hold the prey we were very soon to get: and then, according to the custom of our band, having a respect to the dark and moonless time of the night when we thought that every man was sunk in his first and strongest sleep, we went with our weapons and besieged the doors of Demo- chares round about, in earnest that we were soon to plunder the same. Then Thrasyleon was ready at hand, seizing upon that time of night which is for robbers most fit, and crept out of the cage and went to kill all such of his guards as he found asleep; but . when he came to the porter he slew him also and took the key and opened the gates and let us all in: and he shewed us now in the midst of the house a large counter, wherein looking sharply he saw put the night before a great abundance of treasure: which when by violence of us all we had broken open, I bade every one of my fellows take as much gold and silver as they could quickly bear away, and carry it to the sepulchre, and there quickly hide it in the house of those dead who were to us most faithful allies, and then come soon back to take another 171 LUCIUS APULEIUS tentem pro domus limine cuncta rerum exploraturum sollicite dum redirent; nam et facies ursae mediis aedibus discurrentis ad proterrendos, si qui de familia forte evigilassent, videbatur opportuna. Quis enim, quamuis fortis et intrepidus, immani forma tantae bestiae noctu praesertim visitata, non se ad fugam statim concitaret, non obdito cellae pessulo pavens et trepidus sese cohiberet ? 19 His omnibus salubri consilie recte dispositis occurrit scaevus eventus: namque dum reduces socios nostros suspensus opperior, quidam servulus, strepitu scilicet divinitus inquietus, proserpit leniter visaque bestia, quae libere discurrens totis aedibus commeabat, premens obnixum silentium vestigium suum replicat et uteumque cunctis in domo visa pro- nuntiat. Nec mora, cum numerosae familiae fre- quentia domus tota completur: taedis, lucernis, cereis, sebaciis, et ceteris nocturni luminis instru- mentis clarescunt tenebrae ; nec inermis quisquam de tanta copia processit, sed singuli fustibus, lanceis, destrictis denique gladiis armati muniunt aditus. Nec secus canes etiam venaticos, auritos illos et horricomes ad comprimendam bestiam cohortantur.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  So it was ordered, that after the pleadings of both sides was ended, they thought best to try and boult out the verity by witnesses, all presumptions and likelihood set apart, and to call in the servant, who onely was reported to know all the matter: by and by the servant came in, who nothing abashed, at the feare of so great a judgment, or at the presence of the Judges, or at his owne guilty conscience, which hee so finely fained, but with a bold countenance presented himselfe before the justices and confirmed the accusation against the young man, saying: O yee judges, on a day when this young man loathed and hated his stepmother, hee called mee, desiring mee to poyson his brother, whereby hee might revenge himselfe, and if I would doe it and keepe the matter secret, hee promised to give me a good reward for my paines: but when the young man perceived that I would not accord to his will, he threatned to slay mee, whereupon hee went himselfe and bought poyson, and after tempered it with wine, and then gave it me to give the child, which when I refused he offered it to his brother with his own hands. When the varlet with a trembling countenance had ended these words which seemed a likelihood of truth, the judgement was ended: neither was there found any judge or counsellor, so mercifull to the young man accused, as would not judge him culpable, but that he should be put and sowne in a skin, with a dogge, a Cocke, a Snake, and an Ape, according to the law against parricides: wherefore they wanted nothing but (as the ancient custome was) to put white stones and black into a pot, and to take them out againe, to see whether the young-man accused should be acquitted by judgment or condemned, which was a thing irrevocable.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays he avoided all thought or talk about it. Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it. So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life. Chapter 11 The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe was one of Levin’s most painful days. It was the very busiest working time, when all the peasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor, such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and would be highly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if the results of this intense labor were not so simple. To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow the meadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow the winter corn—all this seems so simple and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all everyone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toil incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying the sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in the twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia. Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and in the closest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt in this busy time that he was infected by this general quickening of energy in the people. In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the stacks, and returning home at the time his wife and sister-in-law were getting up, he drank coffee with them and walked to the farm, where a new thrashing machine was to be set working to get ready the seed-corn.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  In campus terms, you might say I’ve gone from mimeographing to tweeting; from curfews to hooking up; from no-credit women’s studies courses in summer school to the National Women’s Studies Association; from African American history as demanded by black students to such history as the expectation of all students; from gay and lesbian groups forbidden to meet on campus to transgender and transsexual students who challenge all gender binaries; from blue book exams to handwriting as a disappearing art; and from limited seminars to limitless Web hangouts. For instance, during early visits to campuses, I saw students painting a big red X on sidewalks wherever a woman had been sexually assaulted—and ending up getting arrested for vandalism instead of being praised. Now I see their daughters and granddaughters using Title IX—the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination in education, including sports—to threaten campuses with the loss of federal funding if sexual assault creates an environment hostile to women’s education. For decades, places of higher education obscured the rates of sexual assault, in order to protect a campus reputation and encourage parents to send their daughters. Now I see a few campuses that are honest about and have policies to deal with sexual assault—which happens to an average of one in five women on campus, and a few men, too.2 It shows this is beginning to be taken seriously, which is a reason for parents to trust those campuses. As feminism has changed academia by enlarging what is taught, academia has sometimes changed feminism. Scholarly language may be so theoretical that it obscures the source of feminism in women’s lived experience. One of the saddest things I hear as I travel is “I don’t know enough to be a feminist.” Or even “I’m not smart enough to be a feminist.” It breaks my heart. But despite all these differences, with the passage of time, I’ve found there is a pattern to campus visits. It goes like this: I arrive at the airport—or train station or bus station—where I’m met by one or more of the hardy band of activists who invited me. In the car on the way to the campus—or hotel or classroom or press conference—I learn they are worried. In the South or Midwest, they may warn that this is the most “conservative” place I’ve ever been. If we are on the East or West Coast, they’re more likely to say it’s the most “apathetic.” Or perhaps it’s “activist,” but on environmental and economic problems, without understanding that pressuring women to have too many children is the biggest cause of environmental distress, and economic courses should start with reproduction, not just production. They have reserved a hall for tonight and have publicized the event, but they’re worried that hardly anyone will come.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  They may describe rape as “a very small assault”; gape at bosoms and legs in the front row; encourage the hissing and booing from male colleagues that often follow a female colleague’s classroom remarks on women’s rights; and use “stupid woman” stories or sex jokes that humiliate women to illustrate some legal point….From now on, no man can call himself liberal or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home or in the office. Politics don’t begin in Washington. Politics begin with those who are oppressed right here. I’m so relieved to be finished that I can’t tell whether the applause is approving, disapproving, or just polite. But then something happens that, I will later learn, is unprecedented. A portly man in a tuxedo rises from his table, his face flushed with anger, and protests not the content of what I have said but the very idea that I dare to judge Harvard Law School at all. I don’t know who he is, but I definitely know he’s outraged. When he finally sits down, there is silence in the ballroom—then talk gradually resumes, like an ocean covering a volcano. Later Brenda tells me this was Vernon Countryman, a Harvard Law professor of debtor-creditor relations. I’m unsure whether to be scared or proud of his response, yet something tells me it’s more the latter. He has embodied what women at Harvard Law School are dealing with. Only decades later will that law student in the audience confirm my feeling in the moment. “I remember being shocked that a Harvard Law professor could publicly appear so incoherent and out of control,” Ira Lupu wrote. “His remarks seemed designed to put Steinem in her place as a young woman untutored in the facts and values of the Harvard Law School, rather than to rebut her comments in any rigorous way. The banquet ended with the quietly held yet widespread sense that Countryman had underlined Steinem’s theme of male boorishness and disrespect for women in a way that her words alone could not do.”5 Finally, Lupu solved the mystery of why I was invited in the first place. His belated essay explains that his then wife, Jana Sax, had felt “profound alienation from the principles and methods reflected in her spouse’s legal education.” She suggested me as a speaker, and the president of the Harvard Law Review said yes. We each played a role: a wife, women law students, Brenda, me, even the angry professor. In this way, Harvard Law School gives me a big gift: I worry less about hostile responses. Ultimately, they educate an audience. As the great Flo Kennedy will suggest later when we begin to speak together, “Just pause, let the audience absorb the hostility, then say, ‘I didn’t pay him to say that.’ ” • It’s 1972, and Margaret Sloan and I are traveling to Texas campuses.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Mario's eyebrows troubled the young fellow, as he saw so light a color casting such shadows, over so dark and stormy an expression. Desolation appears greater when pinpointed by light. And the whiteness of the brows troubled his peace of mind, the purity of it: not beca�e he knew that Mario went in fear of his life because of the return of a certain stevedore he had once arrested, but because he was watching the detective manifest unmistakable signs of acute mental struggle-by making him understand, in some indefinite way, that there was hope of seeing joy return to his friend's face as long as it still showed signs of su�h brightness. That "ray of light" on Mario's face was, in point of fact, a shadow. Dede put a bare forearm-his shirtsleeves were rolled up above the elbow-on Mario's shoulder and gazed attentively at his ear. For a moment he contemplated the attractions of Mario's hair, razor-cut from the nape of the neck to the temples : recently cut, it gave off a delicate, silky light. He blew gently on the ear, to free it of some blond hairs, longer ones, that fell from the forehead. None of this caused Mario's expression to change. "What a drag, you looking so grouchy! What do you think they're going to do, those guys?'' For a couple of seconds he was silent, as if reflecting; then he added : "And it's really . too damn bad you didn't think of having them arrested. Why didn't you?" He leant back a little way to get a better view of Mario's profile, whose face and eyes did not move. Mario was not even thinking. He was simply allowing his stare to lose itself, to dissolve, and to let his whole body be carried away in this dissolution. Only a short while ago Robert had informed him that five of the most detennined characters among the dockers had sworn they'd "get" him. Tony, whom he had arrested in a manner these sons of Brest regarded as unfair, had been released from the prison of Bougen the previous evening. 49 I QUERELLE "\Vhat would you like me to do?" Without shifting his knees, Dede had managed to lean back even farther. He now had the posture of a young female saint at the very moment of a visitation, fa11en on her knees at the foot of an oak tree, crushed by the revelation, by the splendor of Grace, then bending over backwards in order to save her face from a vision that is searing her eyelashes, her very eyeballs, blinding her. He smiled. Gently he put his arm round the detective's neck. With little kisses he pecked at, without ever touching them, his forehead, temples, and eyes, the rounded tip of the nose, his lips, yet always without actually touching them; Mario felt like being subjected to a thousand prickly points of flame, darting and flickering to and fro. He thought :

• From Querelle (1953)

  That curse makes them immerse themselves in their efforts with a vengeance. Whenever the occasion arises, they then bring up the notion of pederasty-in itself, and fortunately, a mystery they are unable to unravel. The inspectors had a vague feeling that the murder of that sailor over by the ramparts was not quite run-of-the-mill : what they should have found there was some "sugar daddy," assassinated, abandoned on the grass, picked clean of his money and valuables. Instead of which they had found the body of the most likely type of suspect, with his money in his pockets. No doubt this anomaly worried them a little, and interfered with the progress of their ruminations, but it did not really bother them overmuch. Mario had not been given any specific orders to participate in the investigation of this case. Thus, at first, he paid only cursory attention to it, being more preoccupied with the danger he was in after Tony's discharge. Had he taken time to interest himself in the case, he would have been no more able than anyone else to explain it in terms of homosexual goings-on. Indeed, neither Mario nor any of the heroes of this book (excepting Lieutenant Seblon, but then Seblon is not in the book ) is a pederast; for Mario, those people were of hvo kinds-those who wanted to get laid and paid for it and were known as sugar daddies, and, well, the others who catered to them. But then, quite suddenly, Mario became engrossed in the case. He felt a keen desire to unravel the plot, which he imagined carefully and tightly organized and so I JEAN GENET of potential danger to himself. Dede had returned without an}' precise information, yet Mario was sure of the risk he was running : he started going out again, came out into the open with the crazy notion that by his speed and agility he would outdistance death, and that even if he were killed, death would simply pass through him. His courage was designed to dazzle and blind whatever it was that was threat�ning him. All the same, secretly, he reserved the right to negotiate with the enemy along lines that will eventually become apparent: Mario was merely waiting for the occasion. In that, too, he demonstrated courage. The police made enquiries among all known "queens." There aren't many of those in Brest. Although it is a big naval base, Brest has remained a small provincial town. The avowed pederasts-self-avowed, that is-manage to remain admirably inconspicuous. They are peaceful citizens of irreproachable outward appearance, even though they may, the long day through, perhaps suffer from a timid itch for a bit of their fun.