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 Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  oh, all too quietly, and that's only because I'm extremely go to work with caution. We haven't progressed, not significantly, since father was called away. Times are really not good for the merchant now... In short, there is not much joy in it. Our daughter is marriageable and able to make a match that will catch everyone's eye as advantageous and laudable - let her make it! Waiting is not advisable, not advisable, Bethsy! Talk to her again; I did my best to persuade her this afternoon..." – Tony was in a tight spot, the Consul was right about that. She didn't say "no" anymore, but she couldn't bring herself to say "yes" either - God help her! She herself didn't quite understand why she couldn't win the promise. In the meantime her father took her aside here and spoke a serious word, there her mother let her sit down to demand a final resolution … Uncle Gotthold and his family had not been let in on the matter because they were always a bit snarky that were tuned in Mengstraße. But even Sesemi Weichbrodt had found out about the matter and, with correct pronunciation, advised the good thing, even Mamsell Jungmann said: "Tonychen, my little child, don't worry, stay in the first circles..." and Tony couldn't leave the revered silk salon outside in front Visit the castle gates without old Madame Kröger beginning: " By the way , I've heard about an affair, I hope you'll see reason, little one..." One Sunday, when she was sitting with her parents and siblings in St. Mary's Church, Pastor Kölling spoke in strong terms about the text, which says that the woman should leave her father and mother and follow the man - and he suddenly became abusive. Tony stared up at him, horrified, wondering if he might even be looking at her... No, thank God, he turned his stout head the other way, preaching only generally to the devout crowd; and yet it was only too clear that this was a new attack on her, and that every word was meant for her. A young woman, still a child, he announced, that still have no will of their own and no insight of their own and yet oppose the loving advice of their parents, that is punishable, that the Lord wants to spit out of his mouth ... and with this turn of phrase, which was one of those that Pastor Kölling raved about and which he shared Despite the excitement, Tony got a piercing look from his eyes, accompanied by a horrible movement of the arm... Tony saw her father raise a hand beside her as if to say, “There! not too violently...' But there was no doubt that Pastor Kolling had obtained his or his mother's consent.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  4Belonging, as he did by choice, to the great classless intelligentsia of Russia, my father thought it right to have me attend a school that was distinguished by its democratic principles, its policy of nondiscrimination in matters of rank, race and creed, and its up-to-date educational methods. Apart from that, Tenishev School differed in nothing from any other school in time or space. As in all schools, the boys tolerated some teachers and loathed others, and, as in all schools, there was a constant interchange of obscene quips and erotic information. Being good at games, I would not have found the whole business too dismal if only my teachers had been less intent in trying to save my soul. They accused me of not conforming to my surroundings; of “showing off” (mainly by peppering my Russian papers with English and French terms, which came naturally to me); of refusing to touch the filthy wet towels in the washroom; of fighting with my knuckles instead of using the slaplike swing with the underside of the fist adopted by Russian scrappers. The headmaster who knew little about games, though greatly approving of their consociative virtues, was suspicious of my always keeping goal in soccer “instead of running about with the other players.” Another thing that provoked resentment was my driving to and from school in an automobile and not traveling by streetcar or horsecab as the other boys, good little democrats, did. With his face all screwed up in a grimace of disgust, one teacher suggested to me that the least I could do was to have the automobile stop two or three blocks away, so that my schoolmates might be spared the sight of a liveried chauffeur doffing his cap. It was as if the school were allowing me to carry about a dead rat by the tail with the understanding that I would not dangle it under people’s noses. The worst situation, however, arose from the fact that even then I was intensely averse to joining movements or associations of any kind. I enraged the kindest and most well-meaning among my teachers by declining to participate in extracurricular group work—debating societies with the solemn election of officers and the reading of reports on historical questions, and, in the higher grades, more ambitious gatherings for the discussion of current political events. The constant pressure upon me to belong to some group or other never broke my resistance but led to a state of tension that was hardly alleviated by everybody harping upon the example set by my father.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  EVERY YEAR OR SO I START PONDERING AT HOW silly the whole God thing is. Every Christian knows they will deal with doubt. And they will. But when it comes it seems so very real and frightening, as if your entire universe is going to fall apart. I remember a specific time when I was laying there in bed thinking about the absurdity of my belief. God. Who believes in God? It all seems so very silly. I felt as if believing in God was no more rational than having an imaginary friend. They have names for people who have imaginary friends, you know. They keep them in special hospitals. Maybe my faith in God was a form of insanity. Maybe I was losing my marbles. I start out believing in Christ, and the next thing you know I am having tea with the Easter Bunny or waltzing with my toaster, shouting, “The redcoats are coming!” And then I started thinking about other religions. I wasn’t seriously cheating on God or anything, I was just thinking about them. I read through the Koran before it was even popular. It never occurred to me that if Christianity was not rational, neither were other religions. There were times I wished I was a Buddhist, that is, I wished I could believe that stuff was true, even though I didn’t know exactly what a Buddhist believed. I wondered what it would be like to rub some fat guy’s belly and suddenly be overtaken with good thoughts and disciplined actions and a new car. I would go into real estate and marry a beautiful blond, and when the beautiful blond tilted her head to the side as I talked about socialized education, I could rub the Buddha, and she would have the intellect of Susan Faludi. Or Katie Couric. About the time I was thinking through some of this stuff, really letting my imagination go into creative answers about the meaning of the universe, I took the bus to Powells because one of my favorite authors was scheduled to read from his new book. Powells, I should tell you, is the largest bookstore in the world. New and used books. Cheap food, one of my friends says about it. Powells is one of the reasons I love Portland. The old down-town building houses more than a half million books, all of them smelling like dust and ink, two terrible smells that blend mystically to make something beautiful. Powells is another church to me, a paperback sort of heaven.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can , and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. In Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some admirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his treatment. The first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible . Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. The second maxim is: Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life . Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. As Professor Bain says: "The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary, above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  talk to him and he would nod his head and say, “Don, man, I didn’t know you were feeling any of this.” But I was. And it got worse. I would mope around the house all day, and I couldn’t get any writing done. It had been the same in all my relationships. There was always, within me, this demand for affection, this needy, clingy monkey on my back. I wouldn’t be satisfied unless the girl wanted to get married right away, unless she was panicky about it, and even then I would imagine a non-existent scenario in which she finds another man or breaks up with me because of the way I look. I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place. Finally, Andrew said I should meet with Diane, who is this beautiful married woman who goes to our church and mothers us and speaks love into our lives because most of us are basket cases. Diane was studying at a local seminary to be a counselor, and Andrew recommended that I ask her to take a shot at all my troubles. I didn’t want to do it at first because Diane’s husband is an elder, and I had spoken at church a few times, so everybody thought I was normal. Certainly if I talked to Diane she would go home and tell her husband I was nuts and then it would get around the church, and when everybody thinks you are nuts you finally just give in to their pressure and actually go nuts. But I was desperate. So I called Diane. She was beautiful and soft and kind with a tender voice, and she showed up at the house, and I put some coffee on. We went into my office, and I closed the door, in case one of my roommates walked by and saw me talking to Diane and discovered I was nuts. I sat in a chair, and Diane sat on the couch, and I wrung my hands a bit before starting in: “Well, you see, Diane, I am in this relationship with this girl, and she is great, she really is. It’s just that it is very hard for me, you know.” “You mean it is hard for you to have feelings for her?” “I’m not gay.” Diane laughed. “I didn’t mean it that way, Don.” “I do have feelings for her,” I said, with sincerity. “They are almost too strong, you know. I have trouble sleeping and eating and thinking about anything else. It is hard for me to be in a relationship, it always has been. And that makes me want to bail. I would just rather not be in the relationship at all than go through this torture. But I promised myself I wouldn’t run from it this time. But I feel like the meaning of life is riding on whether or not she likes me, and I think she does, she says she does, but

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  It's better that such things remain in family use..." "Even if it were only as a souvenir from Mother," Christian said defiantly. 'Dear friend,' said the senator, rather impatiently... 'I'm not in the mood for a joke... but judging by your words, it seems you're going to put a soup tureen on the dresser as a souvenir of Mother? I beg you not to assume that we want to take advantage of you. What you get less of in effects will of course soon be replaced in a different form. It's the same with the white stuff..." "I don't want money, I want linen and crockery." "But why on earth?" But now Christian gave an answer that caused Gerda Buddenbrook to turn to him in a hurry and answer him with a mysterious expression in her eyes, the senator very quickly took his pince-nez off his nose and stared straight into his face, and Frau Permaneder even clasped her hands. For he said: "Well, in a word, I think of getting married sooner or later." He said it rather quietly and quickly, with a quick wave of his hand, as if he were throwing something across the table to his brother, whereupon he leaned back and let his eyes wander wildly with a sullen, as it were, offended and strangely absent-minded expression. There was a longer pause. Finally the senator said: "One must admit, Christian, these plans come a little late ... assuming, of course, that they are real and practicable plans, not of the kind that you have previously presented to the blessed mother out of imprudence ..." "My intentions have remained the same," said Christian, always not looking at anyone and always with the same facial expression. “Surely that's impossible. You would have waited for Mother to die to—” 'I have shown that consideration, yes. You seem inclined to think, Thomas, that you alone have all the tact and delicacy in the world..." “I don't know why you use that expression. By the way, I have to admire the extent of your consideration. The day after Mother's death you make a show of proclaiming disobedience to her..." 'Because the conversation came up. And then the main thing is that mother can no longer alter herself over my step. She can't do that today any more than she will in a year... Good Lord, Thomas, Mother wasn't necessarily right, but only from her point of view, which I took into account as long as she was alive. She was an old woman, a woman from another time, with a different outlook..." "Well, let me tell you that this way of looking at the point in question is also mine." "I can't take care of that." "You will take care of it, my friend." Christian looked at him. he cried. "I can not! If I tell you I can't?!... I need to know what to do. I'm a grown man..." “Oh, the 'adult' thing about you is very external!

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The candle flared, and he was seen straight up and staring fixedly at the dancing flame with eyes as cold and intent as they had not looked at all afternoon. – »On the one hand: You give 33,335 to Gotthold and 15,000 to the one in Frankfurt, and that makes 48,335 in total. On the other hand: you only give 25,000 to the ones in Frankfurt, and that means a profit of 23,335 for the company. But that's not all. Assuming you pay Gotthold compensation for his share in the house, then the principle has been breached, if he was not finally settled at the time, after your death he can claim an inheritance of the same size as my sister and I, and then act it's a loss of hundreds of thousands for the company, which they can't count on, which I, as the future sole proprietor, can't count on... No, Papa!« he decided with an energetic hand movement and straightened up even higher. "I must advise you not to give in!" "So what! Period! N'en parlons plus! In advance! To bed!" The last little flame went out under the metal hat. In thick darkness the two walked through the columned hall, and outside, on the way up to the second floor, they shook hands. 'Good night, Jean... Courage, you? These are such annoyances… See you tomorrow at breakfast!” The Consul climbed the stairs to his apartment and the old man felt his way down the banister to the mezzanine. Then the wide old house lay locked up in darkness and silence. Pride, hopes and fears rested while outside in the quiet streets the rain trickled and the autumn wind whistled around gables and corners. Second part First chapter Two and a half years later, around the middle of April, spring had come earlier than ever, and at the same time an event had occurred that made old Johann Buddenbrook sing with delight and moved his son most joyfully. At nine o'clock, on a Sunday morning, the Consul was sitting in the breakfast-room in front of the large brown desk, which stood by the window and whose arched lid had been pushed back by a witty mechanism. A thick leather folder filled with papers lay before him; but he had taken out a notebook with a pressed cover and gilt edges, and was hunched over it, writing in his thin, tiny, hurrying hand--busily and without stopping, except when he dipped the goose-quill in the heavy metal inkwell... The two windows were open, and from the garden, where a mild sun shone on the first buds, and where a few little birdsong gave each other bold answers, the spring air blew in, full of fresh and delicate spice, and now and then gently and noiselessly drove the curtains a little up.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  4Very soon I turned away from politics and concentrated on literature. I invited to my Cambridge rooms the vermilion shields and blue lightning of the Song of Igor’s Campaign (that incomparable and mysterious epic of the late twelfth or late eighteenth century), the poetry of Pushkin and Tyutchev, the prose of Gogol and Tolstoy, and also the wonderful works of the great Russian naturalists who had explored and described the wilds of Central Asia. At a bookstall in the Market Place, I unexpectedly came upon a Russian work, a secondhand copy of Dahl’s Interpretative Dictionary of the Living Russian Language in four volumes. I bought it and resolved to read at least ten pages per day, jotting down such words and expressions as might especially please me, and I kept this up for a considerable time. My fear of losing or corrupting, through alien influence, the only thing I had salvaged from Russia—her language—became positively morbid and considerably more harassing than the fear I was to experience two decades later of my never being able to bring my English prose anywhere close to the level of my Russian. I used to sit up far into the night, surrounded by an almost Quixotic accumulation of unwieldy volumes, and make polished and rather sterile Russian poems not so much out of the live cells of some compelling emotion as around a vivid term or a verbal image that I wanted to use for its own sake. It would have horrified me at the time to discover what I see so clearly now, the direct influence upon my Russian structures of various contemporaneous (“Georgian”) English verse patterns that were running about my room and all over me like tame mice. And to think of the labor I expended! Suddenly, in the small hours of a November morning, I would become conscious of the silence and chill (my second winter in Cambridge seems to have been the coldest, and most prolific one). The red and blue flames wherein I had been seeing a fabled battle had sunk to the lugubrious glow of an arctic sunset among hoary firs. Still I could not force myself to go to bed, dreading not so much insomnia as the inevitable double systole, abetted by the cold of the sheets, and also the curious affection called anxietas tibiarum, a painful condition of unrest, an excruciating increase of muscular sense, which leads to a continual change in the position of one’s limbs. So I would heap on more coals and help revive the flames by spreading a sheet of the London Times over the smoking black jaws of the fireplace, thus screening completely its open recess. A humming noise would start behind the taut paper, which would acquire the smoothness of drumskin and the beauty of luminous parchment. Presently, as the hum turned into a roar, an orange-colored spot would appear in the middle of the sheet, and whatever patch of print happened to be there (for example, “The League does not command a guinea or a gun,” or “… the revenges that Nemesis has had upon Allied hesitation and indecision in Eastern and Central Europe …”) stood out with ominous clarity—until suddenly the orange spot burst. Then the flaming sheet, with the whirr of a liberated phoenix, would fly up the chimney to join the stars. It cost one a fine of twelve shillings if that firebird was observed.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  People would come up to us and ask what we were doing, and we told them that the next day we would be on campus to take confessions. They looked at us in amazement, sometimes asking us whether we were serious. We told them to come and see us, that we were going to build a confession booth. The next morning, while everybody was sleeping off their hangovers, Mitch, Tony, and I started building the thing. Mitch had the plans drawn out. The booth was huge, much bigger than I expected, almost like a shed complete with a slanted roof and two small sections inside, one for the monk and the other for the confessor. We built a half-high wall between the two rooms and installed a curtain so the confessor could easily get in and out. On our side we installed a door with a latch so nobody could come in and drag us away. Nadine painted “Confession Booth” in large letters on the outside of the booth. As the campus started to gather energy, people walking along the sidewalk would ask what we were doing. They stood there looking at the booth in wonder. “What are we supposed to do?” they would ask. “Confess your sins,” we told them. “To who?” they would say. “To God,” we would tell them. “There is no God,” they would explain. Some of them told us this was the boldest thing they had ever seen. All of them were kind, which surprised us. I stood there outside the booth as a large blue mob started running across campus, all of them, more than a hundred people, naked and painted with blue paint. They ran by the booth screaming and waving. I waved back. Naked people look funny when they are for-real naked, outside-a-magazine naked. Saturday evening at Ren Fayre is alive and fun. The sun goes down over campus, and shortly after dark they shoot fireworks over the tennis courts. Students lay themselves out on a hill and laugh and point in bleary-eyed fascination. The highlight of the evening is a glow opera that packs the amphitheater with students and friends. The opera is designed to enhance mushroom trips. The actors wear all black and carry colorful puppets and cutouts that come alive in the black light. Everybody ooohs and aaahs. The party goes till nearly dawn, so though it was late we started working the booth. We lit tiki torches and mounted them in the ground just outside the booth. Tony and Iven were saying that I should go first, which I didn’t want to do, but I played bold and got in the booth. I sat on a bucket and watched the ceiling and the smoke from my pipe gather in the dark corners like ghosts. I could hear the rave happening in the student center across campus.

• From The Hours (1998)

  It seems that she had it for years and years, and then suddenly didn’t have it anymore. She turns down Bleecker, goes up Thompson. The neighborhood today is an imitation of itself, a watered-down carnival for tourists, and Clarissa, at fifty-two, knows that behind these doors and down these alleys lies nothing more or less than people living their lives. Grotesquely, some of the same bars and coffeehouses are still here, done up now to resemble themselves for the benefit of Germans and Japanese. The stores all sell essentially the same things: souvenir T-shirts, cheap silver jewelry, cheap leather jackets. At Richard’s building she lets herself in through the vestibule door and thinks, as she always does, of the word “squalid.” It is almost funny, the way the entrance to Richard’s building so perfectly demonstrates the concept of squalor. It is so obviously, dreadfully squalid that it still surprises her slightly, even after all these years. It surprises her in almost the way a rare and remarkable object, a work of art, can continue to surprise; simply because it remains, throughout time, so purely and utterly itself. Here again, surprisingly, are the faded yellow-beige walls, more or less the color of an arrowroot biscuit; here is the fluorescent panel on the ceiling emitting its sputtering, watery glare. It is worse—much worse—that the cramped little lobby was cheaply and half heartedly renovated a decade ago. The lobby is far more discouraging with its soiled white brick-patterned linoleum and its artificial ficus tree than it could possibly have been in its original decrepitude. Only the ancient marble wainscoting—a palomino-colored marble, veined in blue and gray with a deep yellow, smoky overlay, like a very fine old cheese, now hideously echoed by the yellowish walls—indicates that this was once a building of some consequence; that hopes were nurtured here; that upon entering the lobby people were expected to feel as if they were moving in an orderly fashion into a future that held something worth having. She gets into the elevator, a tiny chamber of intensified, bleached brightness, paneled in wood-grain metal, and pushes the button for the fifth floor. The elevator door sighs and rattles shut. Nothing happens. Of course. It works only intermittently; in fact, it is something of a relief to abandon it and climb the stairs instead. Clarissa presses the button marked with a chipped white “O” and, after a nervous hesitation, the door rattles open again. She is always afraid of getting trapped between floors in this elevator—she can all too easily imagine the long, long wait; the cries for help to tenants who might or might not speak English and who might or might not care to intervene; the strange numbing deathlike fear of standing there, alone, for a considerable time, in the brilliant, stale-smelling emptiness, either looking or not looking at her distorted reflection in the dim circular mirror fastened to the upper right-hand corner.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Tietge, appeared, holding some books with a trembling hand on his back, squinting in an impossible way, crooked, yellow and spitting, he said in a resonant voice: "Hello, you corpse." Then what he looked somewhere in the air with a clear and sharp gaze ..... At that moment the bell rang loudly, and immediately the students began to flock to the entrances from all sides. But Hanno didn't stop laughing; he was still laughing so hard on the stairs that his classmates who surrounded him and Kai looked him in the face coldly, alienated and even a little disgusted by so much silliness... It was quiet in the class, and everyone stood up in unison when Head Teacher Doctor Mantelsack entered. He was the Ordinary, and it was customary to have respect for the Ordinary. He closed the door behind him by crouching, craned his neck to see if everyone was standing, hung his hat on a nail, then walked briskly to the lectern, raising and lowering his head in quick succession. Here he stood and looked a little out of the window, moving his outstretched index finger, on which was a large signet ring, back and forth between his collar and his neck. He was a man of medium height, with thinning graying hair, a frizzy Jovian beard, and nearsighted bulging sapphire blue eyes that gleamed behind sharp spectacles. He was clad in an open frock coat of gray soft cloth, which he loved to touch gently in the waist area with his short-fingered and wrinkled hand. As with all teachers, except for the fine doctor Goldener, his trousers were too short and revealed the shafts of an extraordinarily wide pair of boots waxed to a glossy marble finish. Suddenly he turned his head away from the window, let out a small, friendly sigh while looking into the silent class, said "Yes, yes!" and smiled trustingly at several students. He was in a good mood, it was obvious. A movement of relief went through the room. So much happened, it all depended on whether Doctor Mantelsack was in a good mood or not, for one knew that he was unconscious of his moods and without them left the slightest self-criticism. He was of a most exceptional, boundlessly naive injustice, and his favor was sweet and fickle like luck. He always had a couple of favourites, two or three, whom he called "du" and by their first names, and who had it as good as in paradise. They could say almost what they liked and it was still right; and after the lesson Dr. Mantelsack chatted with them in the most humane way. One day, however, perhaps after the holidays, God alone knew why, one was overthrown, destroyed, abolished, rejected, and another was called by his first name... He used to mark the mistakes in the extratemporaries very lightly and delicately for these blessed ones, so that their work retained a clean aspect even when it was very defective.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  and there followed, interrupted only by a quick breakfast with the old ship consul and lunch with Gerda, after which he spent half an hour on the divan with a cigar and the newspaper, until the evening a lot of work: was it his own business or customs, taxes, construction, railroad, post, poor relief; He also gained insight into areas that were actually remote from him and were generally reserved for the "scholars," and he quickly demonstrated brilliant talent, particularly in financial matters... He was careful not to neglect social life. It is true that his punctuality left a lot to be desired in this respect, and it was only at the last second, when his wife, in a large dress, and the car had been waiting downstairs for half an hour, that he appeared with a "Pardon, Gerda; Business…” to hastily throw on his tails. But on the spot, at dinners, balls, and soirees, he knew how to take a keen interest in showing himself an amiable causeur . . . and he and his wife were not inferior to the other rich houses in representation; his kitchen and his cellar were considered "tip-top", he was valued as an obliging, attentive and circumspect host, and the wit of his toasts rose above the average level. So he worked, forcing success, for his reputation grew in the town, and despite the drain on capital from Christian's establishment and Tony's second marriage, the firm prospered. With all that, however, there were some things that took hours Courage paralyzed, the resilience of his mind impaired, his spirits dulled. There was Christian in Hamburg, whose partner, Mr. Burmeester, suddenly died of a stroke in the spring of this year '58. His heirs withdrew the deceased's capital from the firm, and the consul strongly advised his brother not to continue it with his own funds, knowing well how difficult it was to run a large-scale business with suddenly greatly reduced capital. But Christian insisted on continuing his independence, taking over the assets and liabilities of H. C. F. Burmeester & Comp. ... and inconveniences were to be feared. There was also the consul's sister, Klara, in Riga... The fact that her marriage to Pastor Tiburtius had remained childless may well be true, for Klara Buddenbrook had never wanted children and undoubtedly possessed very little maternal talent. But her health, according to her and her husband's letters, left too much to be desired, and the cerebral pains, from which she had suffered as a young girl, were said to have recurred intermittently to an almost unbearable degree. That was worrying. A third concern, however, was that here, on the spot itself, there was still no guarantee that the family name would live on. Gerda dealt with this question with a sovereign indifference that came extremely close to a discredited rejection. Thomas concealed his grief. But the old consul took matters into her own hands and pulled Grabow aside.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  whereas all men endowed with understanding by God, but especially the Buddenbrook ladies, had to say to themselves, that the invariably reddish-blond parting under the old lady's cap could no longer be called "her" hair. Even more rewarding was getting Cousin Tony to say a little about the people who had hated her life up to that point. Tear Trieschke! Greenish! permaneder! Hagenstroms!... These names, which Tony, when irritated, like so many little trumpets of disgust, with somewhat hunched shoulders, uttered in the air, sounded quite pleasant in the ears of Uncle Gotthold's daughters. Incidentally, they did not hide from themselves - and in no way took on the responsibility of concealing it - that little Johann was learning to walk and speak so slowly, frighteningly... They were right about that, and it must be admitted that Hanno - that was the nickname Frau Senator Buddenbrook had introduced for her son - at a time when he was able to name all members of his family with reasonable accuracy, was still unable to form the names Friederike, Henriette and Pfiffi in an understandable way. As for walking, he had not yet managed to take an independent step at the age of five quarters, and it was about this time that the Buddenbrook ladies, shaking their heads hopelessly, declared that this child would remain mute and lame for life. They were later allowed to recognize this sad prophecy as an error; but nobody denied that Hanno was a little behind in his development. He had fought hard battles from the earliest days of his life, and kept those around him in constant fear. He had been born a quiet and weak child, and soon after his baptism a bout of diarrhea lasting only three days had almost been enough to stop his hard-worked little heart for good. He survived, and the good Doctor Grabow now took precautions against the threatening crises of teething with the most careful nutrition and care. But no sooner was the first white tip about to break through the jaw than the spasms set in, only to repeat itself louder and a few more terrifying times. Again, the old doctor just shook his parents' hands without a word... The child lay in the deepest state of exhaustion, and the fixed sideways glance from the deeply shadowed eyes pointed to a brain disorder. The ending almost seemed desirable. Nevertheless, Hanno regained some strength, his eyes began to grasp things, and even if the hardships he had endured slowed down his progress in speaking and walking, there was no longer any immediate danger to fear. Hanno was slim and quite tall for his age. During this time his light brown, very soft hair began to grow extremely quickly and soon fell, barely perceptibly wavy, onto the shoulders of his wrinkled, apron-like dress. The family resemblances were already beginning to manifest themselves in him in a completely recognizable way.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Public prosecutor Doctor Moritz Hagenstrom, whose beautiful wife, née Puttfarken from Hamburg, is also present, shows his pointed, gapping teeth somewhere with a smile. For a moment one sees how the old Doctor Grabow holds Senator Buddenbrook's right hand between his two hands, only to be pushed aside by Master Builder Voigt. Pastor Pringsheim, dressed in middle-class clothes and showing his dignity only by the length of his frock coat, comes up the stairs with outstretched arms and a completely transfigured face. Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus is also present. Those gentlemen who represent any body, the senate, the citizenry, the chamber of commerce, appeared in tails. - Half past eleven. The heat has become very strong. Suddenly there is a stomping and slurping noise down in the porch, as if many people were entering the hall at once, and at the same time a noisy and resounding voice is heard, which fills the whole house... Everyone is pressing towards the banister; one gathers in the whole corridor, in front of the doors to the salon, dining room and smoking room, and peers down. Down there a group of fifteen or twenty men with musical instruments are forming, commanded by a gentleman with a brown wig, a gray sailor's beard and false teeth with broad yellow teeth, which he shows while speaking out loud... What is happening? Consul Peter Döhlmann makes his entrance with the chapel from the Stadttheater! Already he himself is climbing the stairs in triumph, brandishing a packet of programs in his hand! And now, in this impossible and immoderate acoustic, in which the tones flow together, the chords intertwine and render meaningless, and in which the overly loud creaking grunt of the great bass trumpet, which a fat man with a desperate expression is playing, dominates everything else, the Serenade that is brought to the house of Buddenbrook on its anniversary - it begins with the chorale »Nun dankt alle Gott«, which is soon followed by a paraphrase about Offenbach's »Schöne Helena« first onepotpourriof folk songs will ring out... It's quite an extensive program. A nice idea from Döhlmann! The Consul is congratulated, and no one is now inclined to leave before the concert is over. You stand and sit in the salon and in the corridor, listen and chat... Thomas Buddenbrook, together with Stephan Kistenmaker, Senator Doctor Gieseke and master builder Voigt, stayed on the other side of the main staircase, by the outer door to the smoking room and not far from the staircase to the second floor. He stood leaning against the wall, throwing a word here and there into the conversation of his group and otherwise staring silently over the railing into space. The heat had increased, it had become even more oppressive; but rain could not be ruled out now, for judging by the shadows that passed across the Incoming Light there were clouds in the sky.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Andrew the Protester, the one who looks like Fidel Castro, was living in the house back then, and he is such an amazing listener that I would talk to him and he would nod his head and say, “Don, man, I didn’t know you were feeling any of this.” But I was. And it got worse. I would mope around the house all day, and I couldn’t get any writing done. It had been the same in all my relationships. There was always, within me, this demand for affection, this needy, clingy monkey on my back. I wouldn’t be satisfied unless the girl wanted to get married right away, unless she was panicky about it, and even then I would imagine a non-existent scenario in which she finds another man or breaks up with me because of the way I look. I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place. Finally, Andrew said I should meet with Diane, who is this beautiful married woman who goes to our church and mothers us and speaks love into our lives because most of us are basket cases. Diane was studying at a local seminary to be a counselor, and Andrew recommended that I ask her to take a shot at all my troubles. I didn’t want to do it at first because Diane’s husband is an elder, and I had spoken at church a few times, so everybody thought I was normal. Certainly if I talked to Diane she would go home and tell her husband I was nuts and then it would get around the church, and when everybody thinks you are nuts you finally just give in to their pressure and actually go nuts. But I was desperate. So I called Diane. She was beautiful and soft and kind with a tender voice, and she showed up at the house, and I put some coffee on. We went into my office, and I closed the door, in case one of my roommates walked by and saw me talking to Diane and discovered I was nuts. I sat in a chair, and Diane sat on the couch, and I wrung my hands a bit before starting in: “Well, you see, Diane, I am in this relationship with this girl, and she is great, she really is. It’s just that it is very hard for me, you know.” “You mean it is hard for you to have feelings for her?” “I’m not gay.” Diane laughed. “I didn’t mean it that way, Don.” “I do have feelings for her,” I said, with sincerity. “They are almost too strong, you know. I have trouble sleeping and eating and thinking about anything else. It is hard for me to be in a relationship, it always has been. And that makes me want to bail. I would just rather not be in the relationship at all than go through this torture. But I promised myself I wouldn’t run from it this time.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " I pray you to believe, madam," rejoined Parlamente, " that nothing can be more simple-willed and easy to deceive than a woman who has never loved ; for love is a passion which takes possession of the heart before one is aware ot it. Besides, this passion is so pleasing that, provided one can wrap oneself up in virtue as in a cloak, it will be scarcely known before some mischief will come of it." fourth day.] QUEEN^ OF NAVARRE. 323 " What mischief can come of loving a good man," said Oisille. "There are plenty, madam," replied Parlamente^ " who pass for good men as far as ladies are concerned ; but there are few who are so truly good before God that one may love them without any risk to honour or con- science. I do not believe that there is one such man living. Those who are of a different opinion, and trust in it, become its dupes. They begin this sort of tender intimacy with God, and often end it with the devil. 1 have seen many a one who, under colour of talking about divine things, began an intimacy which at last they wished to break off, but could not, so fast were they held by the fine cloak with which it was covered. A vicious love perishes and has no long abode in a good heart ; but decorous love has bonds of silk so fine and delicate that one is caught in them before one perceives them." " According to your views, then," said Ennasuite, " no woman ought ever to love a man. Your law is too violent ; it will not last." " I know that," replied Parlamente, "but for all that, it is desirable that every woman should be content with her own husband, as I am with mine." Ennasuite, taking these words personally, changed colour, and said, " You ought to think everyone the same at heart as yourself, unless you set yourself up for being more perfect than the rest of your sex." "To avoid dispute," said Parlamente, "let us see to whom Hircan will give his voice." " I give it to Ennasuite," said he, " in order to make up matters between her and my wife." " Since it is my turn to speak," said Ennasuite, " I will spare neither man nor woman, so as to make both 324 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE lAmel ;}£>. sides even. You find it hard to overcome yourselves and admit the probity and virtue of men. This obhges me to relate a story of the same nature as the preceding >> one. NOVEL XXXVI. A President of Grenoble, becoming aware of his wife's irregular ities, took his measures so wisely that he revenged himselt without any public exposure of his dishonour.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  This man, with his nagging concern for the honor of his home, his wife, his son, his name, his family, this worn-out man who with toil and art kept his body elegant, correct, and erect, he toiled for several days with the Ask how it is actually arranged: whether the soul actually reaches heaven immediately after death, or whether bliss only begins with the resurrection of the flesh ... And where was the soul until then? Had anyone ever taught him about it at school or at church? How was it responsible to leave man in such ignorance? - And he was about to visit Pastor Pringsheim and approach him for advice and consolation, until at the last moment he gave up for fear of ridicule. Finally he gave up everything and entrusted everything to God. But since he had come to such an unsatisfactory conclusion with the ordering of his eternal affairs, he resolved at least to arrange his earthly affairs conscientiously, thereby carrying out a long-cherished resolution. One day, after lunch, in the living room where his parents were drinking their coffee, little Johann overheard his father telling his mother that he was expecting the lawyer Dr. So-and-so to make his will with him, which he didn’t keep in mind may postpone into the unknown. Later Hanno practiced on the grand piano for an hour in the drawing room. But when he was about to go down the corridor, he met his father and a gentleman in a long black overcoat, who were coming up the main staircase. "Hanno!" said the senator curtly. And little Johann stopped, swallowed and answered softly and hastily: "Yes, papa..." "I have important work to do with this gentleman," his father went on. 'You stand in front of this door, if you don't mind me' - he pointed to the entrance to the smoking room - 'and make sure that no one is there, do you hear? absolutely nobody disturbs us.« "Yes, papa," said little Johann and stood in front of the door, which closed behind the two gentlemen. He stood there, one hand grasping the sailor's knot on his breast, rubbing his tongue on a tooth he distrusted, and listening to the grave and muffled voices that came to him from within the room. His head, with light brown hair falling in curls at his temples, was tilted to one side, and beneath knitted brows his golden brown eyes, rimmed with bluish shadows, blinked aside with a repelled and brooding expression, an expression very similar to the one he wore at his grandmother's bier the smell of flowers and that had inhaled another, strange and yet so strangely familiar scent. Ida Jungmann came and said: "Hannochen, my little boy, where are you, why are you standing around here?" The hunchbacked apprentice came out of the office, a dispatch in his hand, and asked for the senator.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Though Tom said Jean would never have admitted to letting go of his job in Valparaiso... but please: eight years almost since I haven't seen him! And then under these circumstances! No, I want them all around at this difficult time... it's natural for a mother..." "Certainly, certainly!" said Consul Kröger, for tears came to her eyes. 'Now Thomas agrees too,' she continued, 'because what better place for Christian to be than in his late father's shop, Tom's shop? He can stay here, work here ... oh, I'm also constantly afraid that the climate over there will hurt him ..." Now Thomas Buddenbrook came into the hall, accompanied by Herr Marcus. Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus, the deceased consul's longtime authorized officer, was a tall man in a brown lap coat with black ribbon. He spoke very softly, hesitatingly, a little stuttering, considering each word for a second, and would slowly and carefully stroke his reddish-brown mustache, which unkemptly covered his mouth, with the index and middle finger of his left hand, or carefully stroke his hands rubbing, his round brown eyes darting sideways so deliberately that he gave the impression of utter confusion and absence, though he was always intently examining the matter. Thomas Buddenbrook, who was already the head of the big trading house at such a young age, put on a serious expression and demeanor dignity to the day; but he was pale, and his hands in particular, one of which now gleamed with the great ring of inheritance with a green stone, were white like the cuffs that protruded from the black cloth sleeves, with a chilly pallor that showed that they were perfectly dry and were cold. These hands, whose beautifully manicured oval fingernails tended to show a bluish tinge, could at certain moments, in certain slightly spasmodic and unconscious positions, assume an indescribable expression of forbidding sensitivity and an almost timid reserve, an expression that quite hitherto alien to the Buddenbrooks' broad and bourgeois, if delicately articulated, hands, and little suited to them... Tom's first concern was Then he exchanged a handshake with Consul Kröger and took a seat at the table opposite Herr Marcus, raising an eyebrow at his sister Tony in some astonishment. But she laid her head back and her chin on her chest in such a way that he suppressed any remark about her presence. "So you're not allowed to say 'Herr Konsul' yet?" asked Justus Kröger... "The Netherlands is hoping in vain for your representation, old Tom?" “Yes, Uncle Justus; I thought it better... look, I could have taken over the consulate right away, with a lot of other responsibilities; but first of all I'm still a bit young ... and then I talked to Uncle Gotthold; he was pleased and accepted.” 'Very reasonable, my boy.

• From The Hours (1998)

  Flour cascades down the silver sides. Laura tells the boy to hold the cup steady, which he nervously manages to do, and with one quick gesture she dismisses the grainy little heap on top and creates a flawless white surface exactly level with the lip of the cup. He continues holding the cup with both hands. “Good,” she says. “Now we put it in the other bowl. Do you think you can do that by yourself ?” “Yes,” he says, though he is not at all certain. He believes this cup of flour to be singular and irreplaceable. It is one thing to be asked to carry a cabbage across the street, quite another to be asked to carry the recently unearthed head of Rilke’s Apollo. “Here we go, then,” she says. He cautiously moves the cup to the other bowl and holds it there, paralyzed, over the bowl’s gleaming white concavity (it is the next smaller in a series of nesting bowls, pale green, with the same band of white leaves at its rim). He understands that he’s expected to dump the flour into the bowl but it seems possible that he’s misunderstood the directions, and will ruin everything; it seems possible that by spilling out the flour he will cause some larger catastrophe, upset some precarious balance. He wants to look at his mother’s face but can’t take his eyes off the cup. “Turn it over,” she says. He turns it over in one hurried, frightened motion. The flour hesitates for a fraction of a second, then spills out. The flour falls solidly, in a mound that loosely echoes the shape of the measuring cup. A bigger cloud rises, almost touches his face, then vanishes. He stares down at what he’s made: a white hill, slightly granular, speckled with pinpoint shadows, standing up from the glossy, creamier white of the bowl’s interior. “Oopsie,” his mother says. He looks at her in terror. His eyes fill with tears. Laura sighs. Why is he so delicate, so prone to fits of inexplicable remorse? Why does she have to be so careful with him? For a moment—a moment—Richie’s shape subtly changes. He becomes larger, brighter. His head expands. A dead-white glow seems, briefly, to surround him. For a moment she wants only to leave—not to harm him, she’d never do that—but to be free, blameless, unaccountable. “No, no,” Laura says. “It’s good. Very good. That’s just exactly right.” He smiles tearfully, suddenly proud of himself, almost insanely relieved. All right, then; nothing was needed but a few kind words, a bit of reassurance. She sighs. She gently touches his hair. “Now, then,” she says. “Are you ready to do another one?” He nods with such guileless, unguarded enthusiasm that her throat constricts in a spasm of love. It seems suddenly easy to bake a cake, to raise a child.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  She left him nothing but to vote in the town hall for the election of her fiercely revered husband and, perhaps some day, to dedicate to her the translation of all the dramas of Lope de Vegas. Four Chapter Every vacancy in the Senate must be filled again within four weeks; that's what the constitution wants. Three weeks have passed since James Möllendorpf's resignation, and now election day has arrived, a thaw day at the end of February. In the Breite Straße, in front of the town hall with its openwork glazed brick facade, its pointed towers and turrets standing against the greyish-white sky, its covered staircase resting on protruding columns, its pointed arcades, which allow a view of the market square and its fountain ... in front of the Town halls crowd at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. They stand incessantly in the dirty, watery snow of the street, which completely melts under their feet, look at each other, look straight ahead again and crane their necks. Because there, behind that portal, in the council chamber, with its fourteen armchairs standing in a semicircle, the electoral assembly consisting of members of the senate and the citizenship is still awaiting the proposals of the electoral chambers at this very hour... The matter has dragged on. It seems that the debates in the chambers do not want to calm down, that the struggle is hard, and that, up to now, no one and the same person has been put forward to the meeting in the council chamber, for he would be declared elected by the mayor at once... Strange! No one understands where they come from, where and how they arise, but rumors leak out of the portal onto the street and spread. Is Herr Kaspersen standing in there, the older of the two council servants, who never calls himself anything other than a "civil servant," directing what he learns out through the corner of his mouth with his teeth closed and his eyes averted? Now it is said that the proposals have arrived in the courtroom, and that each of the three chambers has proposed a different one: Hagenstrom, Buddenbrook, Kistenmaker! God grant that now at least the general election by secret voting using ballot papers results in an absolute majority of votes! If you don't wear warm overshoes, you start lifting your legs and stomping, because your feet hurt from the cold. People from all walks of life are standing here and waiting.