Awe

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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Though the room was very large, the walls were all covered with pictures of the most lascivious nature; for the general's son, who was very rich, painted mostly for his own delight. Many were only half-finished sketches, for his ardent yet fickle imagination could not dwell long on the same subject, nor could his talent for invention be long satisfied with the same way of painting. "In some of his imitations of the libidinous Pompeian encaustics he had tried to fathom the secrets of a bygone art. Some pictures were executed with the minute care and the corrosive paints of Leonardo da Vinci; whilst others looked more like Greuze's pastels, or wrought in Watteau's delicate hues. Some flesh tints had the golden haze of the Venetian school, whilst——" "Please finish this digression on Briancourt's paintings, and tell me something of the more realistic scene." "Well, on faded old damask couches, on huge pillows made out of priests' stoles, worked by devout fingers in silver and in gold, on soft Persian and Syrian divans, on lion and panther rugs, on mattresses covered over with electric cats' skins, men, young and good-looking, almost all naked, were lounging there by twos and threes, grouped in attitudes of the most consummate lewdness such as the imagination can never picture to itself, and such as are only seen in the brothels of men in lecherous Spain, or in those of the wanton East." "It must indeed have been a rare sight, seen from the cage in which you were cooped; and I suppose your cocks were crowing so lustily that the naked fellows below must have been in great danger of receiving a shower of your holy water, for you must have brandled each other's sprinklers rapturously up there." "The frame was well worth the picture, for, as I was saying before, the studio was a museum of lewd art worthy of Sodom or of Babylon. Paintings, statues, bronzes, plaster casts—either masterpieces of Paphian art or of Priapean designs, emerged from amidst deep-tinted silks of velvety softness, amidst sparkling crystals, gem-like enamel, golden china or opaline majolica, varied with yataghans and Turkish sabres, with hilts and scabbards of gold and silver filigree mark, all studded with coral and turquoise, or other more sparkling precious stones. "From huge Chinese bowls rose costly ferns, dainty Indian palms, creeping plants and parasites, with wicked-looking flowers from American forests, and feathery grasses from the Nile in Sèvres vases; whilst from above, ever and anon, a shower of full-blown red and pink roses came pouring down, mingling their intoxicating scent with that of the attar which ascended in white cloudlets from censers and silver chafing-dishes.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  There is, however, a residue among his works which has a distinct literary and even greater psychological value. His principal literary ambition was never completely fulfilled. It was a somewhat programmatic plan to give a picture of contemporary life in all its various aspects and interrelations under the general title of the Heritage of Cain. This idea was probably derived from Balzac’s Comedie Humaine. The whole was to be divided into six subdivisions with the general titles Love, Property, Money, The State, War, and Death. Each of these divisions in its turn consisted of six novels, of which the last was intended to summarize the author’s conclusions and to present his solution for the problems set in the others. This extensive plan remained unachieved, and only the first two parts, Love and Property, were completed. Of the other sections only fragments remain. The present novel, Venus in Furs, forms the fifth in the series, Love. The best of Sacher-Masoch’s work is characterized by a swift narration and a graphic representation of character and scene and a rich humor. The latter has made many of his shorter stories dealing with his native Galicia little masterpieces of local color. There is, however, another element in his work which has caused his name to become as eponym for an entire series of phenomena at one end of the psycho-sexual scale. This gives his productions a peculiar psychological value, though it cannot be denied also a morbid tinge that makes them often repellent. However, it is well to remember that nature is neither good nor bad, neither altruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the human psyche as well as through crystals and plants and animals with the same inexorable laws. Sacher-Masoch was the poet of the anomaly now generally known as masochism. By this is meant the desire on the part of the individual affected of desiring himself completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex, and being treated by this person as by a master, to be humiliated, abused, and tormented, even to the verge of death. This motive is treated in all its innumerable variations. As a creative artist Sacher-Masoch was, of course, on the quest for the absolute, and sometimes, when impulses in the human being assume an abnormal or exaggerated form, there is just for a moment a flash that gives a glimpse of the thing in itself. If any defense were needed for the publication of work like Sacher-Masoch’s it is well to remember that artists are the historians of the human soul and one might recall the wise and tolerant Montaigne’s essay On the Duty of Historians where he says, “One may cover over secret actions, but to be silent on what all the world knows, and things which have had effects which are public and of so much consequence is an inexcusable defect.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She was nude in her dark furs. Her right hand played with a lash, while her bare foot rested carelessly on a man, lying before her like a slave, like a dog. In the sharply outlined, but well-formed linaments of this man lay brooding melancholy and passionate devotion; he looked up to her with the ecstatic burning eye of a martyr. This man, the footstool for her feet, was Severin, but beardless, and, it seemed, some ten years younger. “Venus in Furs,” I cried, pointing to the picture. “That is the way I saw her in my dream.” “I, too,” said Severin, “only I dreamed my dream with open eyes.” “Indeed?” “It is a tiresome story.” “Your picture apparently suggested my dream,” I continued. “But do tell me what it means. I can imagine that it played a role in your life, and perhaps a very decisive one. But the details I can only get from you.” “Look at its counterpart,” replied my strange friend, without heeding my question. The counterpart was an excellent copy of Titian’s well-known “Venus with the Mirror” in the Dresden Gallery. “And what is the significance?” Severin rose and pointed with his finger at the fur with which Titian garbed his goddess of love. “It, too, is a ‘Venus in Furs,’” he said with a slight smile. “I don’t believe that the old Venetian had any secondary intention. He simply painted the portrait of some aristocratic Mesalina, and was tactful enough to let Cupid hold the mirror in which she tests her majestic allure with cold satisfaction. He looks as though his task were becoming burdensome enough. The picture is painted flattery. Later an ‘expert’ in the Rococo period baptized the lady with the name of Venus. The furs of the despot in which Titian’s fair model wrapped herself, probably more for fear of a cold than out of modesty, have become a symbol of the tyranny and cruelty that constitute woman’s essence and her beauty. “But enough of that. The picture, as it now exists, is a bitter satire on our love. Venus in this abstract North, in this icy Christian world, has to creep into huge black furs so as not to catch cold—” Severin laughed, and lighted a fresh cigarette. Just then the door opened and an attractive, stoutish, blonde girl entered.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  When I grew up and read about the Great War, how clouds of mustard gas floated over trenches and seared the lungs of soldiers, I couldn’t begin to fathom the doctors’ reasoning in applying it to that old woman, whose fair-complected leg was charred by the treatment into something petrified-looking. But of course the leg was flesh and bone, from which the marrow cooked away. She did indeed, according to my mother, scream without break for weeks, not days, this despite morphine. Gangrene set in, and they had to amputate anyway. The idea of Grandma losing her leg didn’t bother me much at first because it stayed in the realm of make-believe. Lecia and I fancied her having a wheelchair we could take for rides. We were big on Peter Pan at the time, so I tended to imagine her with a peg leg, like a pirate. Riding in the car to the hospital that first day, I even drew a picture of her with a wooden peg and a plumed hat with skull and crossbones à la Captain Hook. Lecia had the infinite good sense to fold this into quarters and rathole it in her back pocket before Mother got a glimpse of it. But Mother was running on such psychic overdrive that it might not have even registered. As Nervous as she tended to be, she could always rally in times of crisis. Really, she was something to watch. I have seen her dismantle and reassemble a washing machine, stitch up a dress from a thirty-piece Vogue pattern in a day, ace a college calculus course after she’d gone back to school at forty, and lay brick. We used to say that if she really had her titty in a wringer, she could flat go to work wrestling it out. Grandma’s sickness was such a time. All trace of Nervous just evaporated from my mother. Her chin tilted up to suggest a kind of determined ease. She slimmed down and moved only when absolutely necessary, yet she seemed never to rest. It’s no wonder that she collapsed after the funeral, since she was running on fumes from the git-go. There must have been rules back then about kids not being on cancer wards. But Mother had the idea that we would cheer Grandma up. Plus Daddy was working days, and she had run out of people to leave us with. I’d never been in a hospital before. And of course what you generally remember from that era is the smell of Pine Sol, that and all the impressive running around, people being wheeled in and out of places with tubes and bottles swaying over them. The hospital gets vivid at the instant when Lecia pulled my elbow to turn me away from a guy horking up what looked like clean water into a little kidney-shaped silver pan.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I mean, there’s a real Gordy—Gordy the white boy genius in the book—there’s a real character he’s based on. He had a different name in the early drafts; I think I called him Henry? JW: Oh, and it just never felt right, I guess. SA: No, and I sent the manuscript to the real Gordy, and he said, “Yeah, this is good, but why are you calling him Henry? Call him Gordy.” So he wanted his real name in the book. To this day I think he’s the only real person I’ve seen at a reading of True Diary . He lives in Arizona and I gave a reading in Arizona, and I knew he was coming, but I didn’t have a cell phone back then so I had no contact with him, and I was reading the book and I decided to read that chapter—even though I hadn’t seen him yet—where Gordy teaches Arnold about books and boners and how to read and the importance of education.…That’s also an interesting thing to write in the book, that positive idea of education. I think that was quietly revolutionary for a Native American character. JW: It really is a quest to have the best education you can get. SA: It’s the Iliad of public school education, the Odyssey of public school education. And I was reading the chapter and I was getting emotional just thinking about Gordy being out there, not seeing him yet, and then as I was reading I looked up and we locked eyes and he was in the crowd and he was weeping .…I mean, his shoulders were shaking and tears were running down his face. To see somebody I had written about and somebody who meant so much to me from my past and somebody who did become part of that group I ended up in—where education was so valued, where education was seen as a great path, where there was this heroic quality to it, to the idea of going to college, to aspiring to intellectualism, to aspiring to academic achievement—to be a successful writer having gone through that path and succeeded in all sorts of ways and then to look in the crowd and see my old friend, who had also succeeded intellectually…to be the men we’ve become and to look across that room and remember the kids we were, it was really incredible. JW: That need and ability to fight for your own education—that’s another universal thing. I look at where we are now…Kids are going to have to take all the belligerence, all the anger, everything they have, and turn it toward their own education. SA: I mean, look, I collected aluminum cans one summer to pay for the SAT prep course—aluminum beer cans on the rez to pay for my SAT prep course.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  V. H. Stanton: The Jewish, and the Christian Messiah. Lond. 1886. B. Stade: Gesch. des Volkes Israel. Berlin, 1888, 2 vols. Radical. E. Renan: Hist. du peuple d’Israel. Paris, 1887 sqq., 3 vols. Engl. translation, London, 1888 sqq. Radical. B. Kittel: Gesch. der Hebräer. Gotha, 1888 sqq. Moderate. (b) By Jewish authors. J. M. Jost: Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage. Leipz. 1820–’28, 9 vols. By the same: Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten. 1857–159, 3 vols. Salvador: Histoire de la domination Romaine en Judée et de la ruine de Jerusalem. Par. 1847, 2 vols. Raphall: Post-biblical History of the Jews from the close of the 0. T. about the year 420 till the destruction of the second Temple in the year 70. Lond. 1856, 2 vols. Abraham Geiger (a liberal Rabbi at Frankfort on the M.): Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte. Breslau; 2d ed. 1865–’71, 3 vols. With an appendix on Strauss and Renan. Comes down to the 16th century. English transl. by Maurice Mayer. N. York, 1865. L. Herzfeld: Geschichte des Volkes Jizrael. Nordhausen, 1847–’57, 3 vols. The same work, abridged in one vol. Leipz. 1870. H. Grätz (Prof. in Breslau): Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart. Leipz. 1854–’70, 11 vols. (to 1848). "Salvation is of the Jews."53 This wonderful people, whose fit symbol is the burning bush, was chosen by sovereign grace to stand amidst the surrounding idolatry as the bearer of the knowledge of the only true God, his holy law, and cheering promise, and thus to become the cradle of the Messiah. It arose with the calling of Abraham, and the covenant of Jehovah with him in Canaan, the land of promise; grew to a nation in Egypt, the land of bondage; was delivered and organized into a theocratic state on the basis of the law of Sinai by Moses in the wilderness; was led back into Palestine by Joshua; became, after the Judges, a monarchy, reaching the height of its glory in David and Solomon; split into two hostile kingdoms, and, in punishment for internal discord and growing apostasy to idolatry, was carried captive by heathen conquerors; was restored after seventy years’ humiliation to the land of its fathers, but fell again under the yoke of heathen foes; yet in its deepest abasement fulfilled its highest mission by giving birth to the Saviour of the world. "The history of the Hebrew people," says Ewald, "is, at the foundation, the history of the true religion growing through all the stages of progress unto its consummation; the religion which, on its narrow national territory, advances through all struggles to the highest victory, and at length reveals itself in its full glory and might, to the end that, spreading abroad by its own irresistible energy, it may never vanish away, but may become the eternal heritage and blessing of all nations.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He appointed her the first female Sea Org lieutenant. That day, she had a photograph made of herself in her Sea Org uniform—white shirt, dark tie and jacket, with a lanyard over one shoulder. She is young and elegant, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. After that, she rose through the Sea Org ranks with astonishing speed, often wondering if the revelation about the red-haired man was responsible for her rapid promotions. Hubbard would drive over from his villa in Las Palmas to inspect the work on the Avon River . The lower holds of the ship were converted into offices and berthing spaces; new equipment—including radar and a gyrocompass—were installed, the screw replaced, and the hydraulic system completely overhauled. The inexperienced Sea Org members did most of the work, although Spanish laborers did the welding and sandblasting. Whenever Hubbard spotted something wrong, he would be instantly transformed from the jovial and avuncular figure the crew adored into a raging, implacable tyrant. Hana, who was serving as master-at-arms, would dread seeing the “Commodore”—as Hubbard titled himself—arrive, since she felt responsible if anything went wrong. One day, when the Spanish workmen were painting a rust coat on the hull of the ship, she spotted Hubbard walking across the beach with his chief officer and his first mate, smoking and chatting happily. Then he suddenly stopped. His eyes went into slits and he began bellowing, “ The rollers! The rollers!” Puzzled, Hana leaned over the side of the ship, then saw what had caught Hubbard’s attention: tiny threads poking through the paint, which had been left by the cheap rollers that the workmen were using. “As those threads decomposed, they would leave little apertures for seawater to leak behind the rust coating,” she realized. “It destroyed the integrity of the entire rust coating, and that’s what Hubbard was screaming about as he lumbered toward the ship. And what amazed me was that he saw it at forty to sixty feet away from the ship. Later on, I walked that distance from the ship to see if I could see those little hairs coming out of the rust coat. There was no way I could see them. That added to my feeling of wonder and mystique about Hubbard.” IN TRUTH , Hubbard had very poor eyesight. Before the war, both the Naval Academy and the Naval Reserve had rejected him because of his vision, and all during the war he wore glasses. In 1951, when he was being evaluated for a medical disability, his vision tested at 20/200 for each eye, correctable to 20/20 with glasses, much the same as it had been before the war. The examiner noted, “ Eyes tire easily, has worn all types of glasses but claims he sees just as well without as with glasses.” Was that even possible? Eyesight does change over the years, but Hubbard’s eyes were astigmatic—meaning they were more football-shaped than round—and not likely to have improved, certainly not dramatically.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I couldn’t back down. That wasn’t how our friendship worked. “We’re going to die,” I said. “Probably,” Rowdy said. So we walked over to the tree and looked up. It was way tall. I got dizzy. “You first,” Rowdy said. I spit on my hands, rubbed them together, and reached up for the first branch. I pulled myself up to the next branch. And then the next and the next and the next. Rowdy followed me. Branch by branch, Rowdy and I climbed toward the top of the tree, to the bottom of the sky. Near the top, the branches got thinner and thinner. I wondered if they’d support our weight. I kept expecting one of them to snap and send me plummeting to my death. But it didn’t happen. The branches would not break. Rowdy and I climbed and climbed and climbed. We made it to the top. Well, almost to the top. Even Rowdy was too scared to step on the thinnest branches. So we made it within ten feet of the top. Not the summit. But close enough to call it the summit. We clung tightly to the tree as it swung in the breeze. I was scared, sure, terrified… but it was also fun, you know? We were more than one hundred feet in the air. From our vantage point, we could see for miles. We could see from one end of the reservation to the other. We could see our entire world. And our entire world, at that moment, was green and golden and perfect. “Wow,” I said. “It’s pretty,” Rowdy said. “I’ve never seen anything so pretty.” It was the only time I’d ever heard him talk like that. We stayed in the top of the tree for an hour or two. We didn’t want to leave. I thought maybe we’d stay up there and die. I thought maybe two hundred years later, scientists would find two boy skeletons stuck in the top of that tree. But Rowdy broke the spell. He farted. A greasy one. A greasy, smelly one that sounded like it was half solid. “Jeez,” I said. “I think you just killed the tree.” We laughed. And then we climbed down. I don’t know if anybody else has ever climbed that tree. I look at it now, years later, and I can’t believe we did it. And I can’t believe I survived my first year at Reardan. After the last day of school ended, I didn’t do much. It was summer. I wasn’t supposed to do anything. I mostly sat in my room and read comics. I missed my white friends and white teachers and my translucent semi-girlfriend. Ah, Penelope! I hoped she was thinking about me. I’d already written her three love letters. I hoped she’d write me back.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  A thousand lamps of varied form filled the room with a strong yet hazy light. There were wax tapers upheld by Japanese cranes, or glowing in massive bronze or silver candlesticks, the plunder of Spanish altars; star- shaped or octagonal lamps from Moorish mosques or Eastern synagogues; curiously-wrought iron cressets of tortured and fantastic designs; chandeliers of murous, iridiscent glass work reflected in Dutch gilt, or Castel-Durante majolica sconces. "Though the room was very large, the walls were all covered with pictures of the most lascivious nature; for the general's son, who was very rich, painted mostly for his own delight. Many were only half-finished sketches, for his ardent yet fickle imagination could not dwell long on the same subject, nor could his talent for invention be long satisfied with the same way of painting. "In some of his imitations of the libidinous Pompeian encaustics he had tried to fathom the secrets of a bygone art. Some pictures were executed with the minute care and the corrosive paints of Leonardo da Vinci; whilst others looked more like Greuze's pastels, or wrought in Watteau's delicate hues. Some flesh tints had the golden haze of the Venetian school, whilst——" "Please finish this digression on Briancourt's paintings, and tell me something of the more realistic scene." "Well, on faded old damask couches, on huge pillows made out of priests' stoles, worked by devout fingers in silver and in gold, on soft Persian and Syrian divans, on lion and panther rugs, on mattresses covered over with electric cats' skins, men, young and good-looking, almost all naked, were lounging there by twos and threes, grouped in attitudes of the most consummate lewdness such as the imagination can never picture to itself, and such as are only seen in the brothels of men in lecherous Spain, or in those of the wanton East."

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "And here you have a terrace," Monsieur de Gernande went on, leading me out into a little garden on a level with the apartment, "but its elevation above the ground ought not, I believe, give you the idea of measuring the walls; the Countess is permitted to take fresh air out here whenever she wishes, you will keep her company... adieu." I returned to my mistress and, as at first we spent a few moments examining one another without speaking, I obtained a good picture of her Ä but let me paint it for you. Madame de Gernande, aged nineteen and a half, had the most lovely, the most noble, the most majestic figure one could hope to see, not one of her gestures, not a single movement was without gracefulness, not one of her glances lacked depth of sentiment: nothing could equal the expression of her eyes, which were a beautiful dark brown although her hair was blond; but a certain languor, a lassitude entailed by her misfortunes, dimmed their e'clat, and thereby rendered them a thousand times more interesting; her skin was very fair, her hair very rich; her mouth was very small, perhaps too small, and I was little surprised to find this defect in her: 'twas a pretty rose not yet in full bloom; but teeth so white... lips of a vermillion... one might have said Love had colored them with tints borrowed from the goddess of flowers; her nose was aquiline, straight, delicately modeled; upon her brow curved two ebony eyebrows; a perfectly lovely chin; a visage, in one word, of the finest oval shape, over whose entirety reigned a kind of attractiveness, a naivete, an openness which might well have made one take this adorable face for an angelic rather than mortal physiognomy. Her arms, her breasts, her flanks were of a splendor... of a round fullness fit to serve as models to an artist; a black silken fleece covered her mons veneris, which was sustained by two superbly cast thighs; and what astonished me was that, despite the slenderness of the Countess' figure, despite her sufferings, nothing had impaired the firm quality of her flesh: her round, plump buttocks were as smooth, as ripe, as firm as if her figure were heavier and as if she had always dwelled in the depths of happiness.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It is the great and difficult task of the biographer of Jesus to show how he, by external and internal development, under the conditions of a particular people, age, and country, came to be in fact what he was in idea and destination, and what he will continue to be for the faith of Christendom, the God-Man and Saviour of the world. Being divine from eternity, he could not become God; but as man he was subject to the laws of human life and gradual growth. "He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."96 Though he was the Son of God, "yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."97 There is no conflict between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the ideal Christ of faith. The full understanding of his truly human life, by its very perfection and elevation above all other men before and after him, will necessarily lead to an admission of his own testimony concerning his divinity. "Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine, Within our earthly sod! Most human and yet most divine, The flower of man and God!" Jesus Christ came into the world under Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, before the death of king Herod the Great, four years before the traditional date of our Dionysian aera. He was born at Bethlehem of Judaea, in the royal line of David, from Mary, "the wedded Maid and Virgin Mother." The world was at peace, and the gates of Janus were closed for only the second time in the history of Rome. There is a poetic and moral fitness in this coincidence: it secured a hearing for the gentle message of peace which might have been drowned in the passions of war and the clamor of arms. Angels from heaven proclaimed the good tidings of his birth with songs of praise; Jewish shepherds from the neighboring fields, and heathen sages from the far east greeted the newborn king and Saviour with the homage of believing hearts. Heaven and earth gathered in joyful adoration around the Christ-child, and the blessing of this event is renewed from year to year among high and low, rich and poor, old and young, throughout the civilized world. The idea of a perfect childhood, sinless and holy, yet truly human and natural, had never entered the mind of poet or historian before; and when the legendary fancy of the Apocryphal Gospels attempted to fill out the chaste silence of the Evangelists, it painted an unnatural prodigy of a child to whom wild animals, trees, and dumb idols bowed, and who changed balls of clay into flying birds for the amusement of his playmates. The youth of Jesus is veiled in mystery. We know only one, but a very significant fact.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  S’ils ne regardaient pas l’aliéné comme en proie a la visitation d’un dieu (idée orientale et fataliste), du moins ils savaient que l’amour est une sorte d’envoûtement, une folie où se manifeste l’animosité des puissances cosmiques. Plus tard, le christianisme enveloppa les âmes de ténèbres. Ce fut la grande nuit. L’Église condamna tout ce qui lui parût neuf ou menaçant pour les dogmes implaçable qui reduisaient le monde en esclavage.” Among Sacher-Masoch’s works, Venus in Furs is one of the most typical and outstanding. In spite of melodramatic elements and other literary faults, it is unquestionably a sincere work, written without any idea of titillating morbid fancies. One feels that in the hero many subjective elements have been incorporated, which are a disadvantage to the work from the point of view of literature, but on the other hand raise the book beyond the sphere of art, pure and simple, and make it one of those appalling human documents which belong, part to science and part to psychology. It is the confession of a deeply unhappy man who could not master his personal tragedy of existence, and so sought to unburden his soul in writing down the things he felt and experienced. The reader who will approach the book from this angle and who will honestly put aside moral prejudices and prepossessions will come away from the perusal of this book with a deeper understanding of this poor miserable soul of ours and a light will be cast into dark places that lie latent in all of us. Sacher-Masoch’s works have held an established position in European letters for something like half a century, and the author himself was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French Government in 1883, on the occasion of his literary jubilee. When several years ago cheap reprints were brought out on the Continent and attempts were made by various guardians of morality—they exist in all countries—to have them suppressed, the judicial decisions were invariably against the plaintiff and in favor of the publisher. Are Americans children that they must be protected from books which any European school-boy can purchase whenever he wishes? However, such seems to be the case, and this translation, which has long been in preparation, consequently appears in a limited edition printed for subscribers only. In another connection Herbert Spencer once used these words: “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.” They have a very pointed application in the case of a work like Venus in Furs. F. S. Atlantic City April, 1921 VENUS IN FURS “But the Almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman.” —The Vulgate, Judith, xvi. 7. My company was charming.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The fourth century saw in the city of Rome above forty great churches.1128 In Constantinople the Church of the Apostles and the church of St. Sophia, built by Constantine, excelled in magnificence and beauty, and in the fifth century were considerably enlarged and beautified by Justinian. Sometimes heathen temples or other public buildings were transformed for Christian worship. The Emperor Phocas (602–610), for example, gave to the Roman bishop Boniface IV, the Pantheon, built by Agrippa under Augustus, and renowned for its immense and magnificent dome (now called chiesa della rotonda), and it was thenceforth consecrated to the virgin Mary and the martyrs. But generally the heathen temples, from their small size and their frequent round form, were not adapted for the Christian worship, as this is held within the building, and requires large room for the congregation, that the preaching and the Scripture-reading may be heard; while the heathen sacrifices were performed before the portico, and the multitude looked on without the sanctuary. The sanctuary of Pandrosos, on the Acropolis at Athens, holds but few persons, and even the Parthenon is not so capacious as an ordinary church. The Pantheon in Rome is an exception, and is much larger than most temples. The small round pagan temples were most easily convertible into Christian baptisteries and burial chapels. Far more frequently, doubtless, was the material of forsaken or destroyed temples applied to the building of churches. § 104. The Consecration of Churches. New churches were consecrated with great solemnity by prayer, singing, the communion, eulogies of present bishops, and the depositing of relics of saints.1129 This service set them apart from all profane uses, and designated them exclusively for the service and praise of God and the edification of his people. The dedication of Solomon’s temple,1130 as well as the purification of the temple after its desecration by the heathen Syrians,1131 furnished the biblical authority for this custom. In times of persecution the consecration must have been performed in silence. But now these occasions became festivals attended by multitudes. Many bishops, like Theodoret, even invited the pagans to attend them. The first description of such a festivity is given us by Eusebius: the consecration of the church of the Redeemer at the Holy Sepulchre,1132 and of a church at Tyre.1133 After the Jewish precedent,1134 it was usual to celebrate the anniversary of the consecration.1135 Churches were dedicated either to the holy Trinity, or to one of the three divine Persons, especially Christ, or to the Virgin Mary, or to apostles, especially Peter, Paul, and John, or to distinguished martyrs and saints.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  somewhat reddish beard. (2) The Ecce Homo picture of the suffering Saviour with the crown of thorns. This is traced back by tradition to St. Veronica, who accompanied the Saviour on the way to Golgotha, and gave Him her veil to wipe the sweat from His face; whereupon the Lord miraculously imprinted on the cloth the image of His thorn-crowned head.1216 The Abgarus likeness and the Veronica both lay claim to a miraculous origin, and profess to be eijkovne" ajceiropoivhtai, pictures not made with human hands. Besides these, however, tradition tells of pictures of Christ taken in a natural way by Luke and by Nicodemus. The Salvator picture in the Lateran chapel Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, which is attributed to Luke, belongs to the Edessene or Byzantine type. With so different pretended portraits of the Lord we cannot wonder at the variations of the pictures of Christ, which the Iconoclasts used as an argument against images. In truth, every nation formed a likeness of its own, according to its existing ideals of art and virtue. Great influence was exerted upon the representations of Christ by the apocryphal description of his person in the Latin epistle of Publius Lentulus (a supposed friend of Pilate) to the Roman senate, delineating Christ as a man of slender form, noble countenance, dark hair parted in the middle, fair forehead, clear eyes, faultless mouth and nose, and reddish beard.1217 An older, and in some points different, description is that of John of Damascus, or some other writer of the eighth century, who says: "Christ was of stately form, with beautiful eyes, large nose, curling hair, somewhat bent, in the prime of life, with black beard, and sallow complexion, like his mother."1218 No figure of Christ, in color, or bronze, or marble, can reach the ideal of perfect beauty which came forth into actual reality in the Son of God and Son of man. The highest creations of art are here but feeble reflections of the original in heaven, yet prove the mighty influence which the living Christ continually exerts even upon the imagination and sentiment of the great painters and sculptors, and which He will exert to the end of the world. § 111. Images of Madonna and Saints. Besides the images of Christ, representations were also made of prominent characters in sacred history, especially of the blessed Virgin with the Child, of the wise men of the east, as three kings worshipping before the manger,1219 of the four Evangelists, the twelve Apostles, particularly Peter and Paul,1220 of many martyrs and saints of the times of persecution, and honored bishops and monks of a later day.1221 According to a tradition of the eighth century or later, the Evangelist Luke painted not only Christ, but Mary also, and the two leading apostles. Still later legends ascribe to him even seven Madonnas, several of which, it is pretended, still exist; one, for example, in the Borghese chapel in the church of Maria Maggiore at Rome.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And guess what they found? Stupid Horse washed up on shore again.” Despite being burned at the dump, and burned again in the lake of fire, Stupid Horse was untouched. Well, the horse was still dead, of course, but it was unburned. Nobody went near the horse after that. They just let it rot. But it took a long time—too long. For weeks, the dead body just lay there. Didn’t go bad or anything. Didn’t stink. The bugs and animals stayed away. Only after a few weeks did Stupid Horse finally let go. His skin and flesh melted away. The maggots and coyotes ate their fill. Then the horse was just bones. “Let me tell you,” Dad said. “That was just about the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. That horse skeleton lying there. It was freaky.” After a few more weeks, the skeleton collapsed into a pile of bones. And the water and the wind dragged them away. It was a freaky story! “Nobody swam in Turtle Lake for ten, eleven years,” Dad said. Me, I don’t think anybody should be swimming in there now. But people forget. They forget good things and they forget bad things. They forget that lakes can catch on fire. They forget that dead horses can magically vanish and reappear. I mean, jeez, we Indians are just weird. So, anyway, on that hot summer day, Rowdy and I walked the five miles from my house to Turtle Lake. All the way, I thought about fire and horses, but I wasn’t going to tell Rowdy about that. He would’ve just called me a wuss or a pussy. He would’ve just said it was kid stuff. He would’ve just said it was a hot day that needed a cold lake. As we walked, I saw that monster pine tree ahead of us. It was so tall and green and beautiful. It was the only reservation skyscraper, you know? “I love that tree,” I said. “That’s because you’re a tree fag,” Rowdy said. “I’m not a tree fag,” I said. “Then how come you like to stick your dick inside knotholes?” “I stick my dick in the girl trees,” I said. Rowdy laughed his ha-ha, hee-hee avalanche laugh. I loved to make him laugh. I was the only one who knew how to make him laugh. “Hey,” he said. “You know what we should do?” I hated when Rowdy asked that particular question. It meant we were about to do something dangerous. “What should we do?” I asked. “We should climb that monster.” “That tree?” “No, we should climb your big head,” he said. “Of course, I’m talking about that tree. The biggest tree on the rez.” It wasn’t really open to debate. I had to climb the tree. Rowdy knew I had to climb the tree with him.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  As we have already seen, religion has been one of the most effective bulwarks against anomy throughout human history. It is now important to see that this very fact is directly related to the alienating propensity of religion. Religion has been so powerful an agency of nomization precisely because it has also been a powerful, probably the most powerful, agency of alienation. By the same token, and in the exact sense indicated above, religion has been a very important form of false consciousness (14). One of the essential qualities of the sacred, as encountered in “religious experience,” is otherness, its manifestation as something totaliter aliter as compared to ordinary, profane human life (15). It is precisely this otherness that lies at the heart of religious awe, of numinous dread, of the adoration of what totally transcends all dimensions of the merely human. It is this otherness, for example, that overwhelms Arjuna in the classic vision of Krishna’s divine form in the Bhagavad Gita: With many faces and eyes, presenting many wondrous sights, bedecked with many celestial ornaments, armed with many divine uplifted weapons; wearing celestial garlands and vestments, anointed with divine perfumes, all-wonderful, resplendent, boundless, and with faces on all sides. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One. (16) And then, in more sinister images: Beholding Thy great form, O Mighty Lord, with myriads of mouths and eyes, with myriads of arms and 106

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Whatever faults the general's son had, his manners were those of the French nobility, therefore perfect; his stately gait might even have graced the court of the grand Monarque ; his politeness was unrivalled—in fact, he possessed all those 'small, sweet courtesies of life,' which, as Sterne says, 'beget inclinations to love at first sight.' He was about to usher us in, when Teleny stopped him. "'Wait a moment,' said he, 'could not Camille have a peep at your harem first? You know he is but a neophyte in the Priapean creed. I am his first lover.' "'Yes, I know,' interrupted Briancourt, sighing, 'and I cannot say sincerely, may you long be the last.' "'And not being inured to the sight of such revelry he will be induced to run away like Joseph from Mrs. Potiphar.' "'Very well, do you mind giving yourself the trouble to come this way?' "And with these words he led us through a dimly-lighted passage, and up a winding staircase into a kind of balcony made out of old Arab mouchambiè , brought to him by his father from Tunis or Algiers. "'From here you can see everything without being seen, so ta-ta for a while, but not for long, as supper will soon be served.' "As I stepped in this kind of loggia and looked down into the room, I was, for a moment, if not dazzled, at least perfectly bewildered. It seemed as if from this every-day world of ours I had been transported into the magic realms of fairy-land. A thousand lamps of varied form filled the room with a strong yet hazy light. There were wax tapers upheld by Japanese cranes, or glowing in massive bronze or silver candlesticks, the plunder of Spanish altars; star-shaped or octagonal lamps from Moorish mosques or Eastern synagogues; curiously-wrought iron cressets of tortured and fantastic designs; chandeliers of murous, iridiscent glass work reflected in Dutch gilt, or Castel-Durante majolica sconces. "Though the room was very large, the walls were all covered with pictures of the most lascivious nature; for the general's son, who was very rich, painted mostly for his own delight. Many were only half-finished sketches, for his ardent yet fickle imagination could not dwell long on the same subject, nor could his talent for invention be long satisfied with the same way of painting. "In some of his imitations of the libidinous Pompeian encaustics he had tried to fathom the secrets of a bygone art. Some pictures were executed with the minute care and the corrosive paints of Leonardo da Vinci; whilst others looked more like Greuze's pastels, or wrought in Watteau's delicate hues. Some flesh tints had the golden haze of the Venetian school, whilst —— " "Please finish this digression on Briancourt's paintings, and tell me something of the more realistic scene."

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  problem of allocating power among its members and typically develops political institutions in consequence. The legitimation of these institutions has the special task of explaining and justifying the requisite employment of means of physical violence, which employment indeed gives their peculiar “majesty” to the institutions of political life. Again, the mystification of the empirical character of political arrangements in question transforms this “majesty” from a human to a more-than-human property. Realistic, empirically grounded apprehension concerning people with the power to chop off heads becomes transformed into numinous awe before the “dread sovereignty” of those who represent the divine will on earth. If circumstances should then develop that make head-chopping politically expedient, the activity in question can be made to seem as but the empirical result of supra-empirical necessities. Le Roi le veult becomes, as it were, an echo of “Thus says the Lord.” Again, it is easy to see how the “programs” of political institutionalization are strengthened in this way—once more, by alienating them from their roots in human activity. In both this and the previous example, it must be strongly emphasized that, when we speak of “transformation,” we do not imply a chronological progression from non-alienated to alienated apprehensions of these institutions. On the contrary, the progression, if it takes place at all, moves in the opposite direction. The institutions of sexuality and power first appear as thoroughly alienated entities, hovering over everyday social life as manifestations from an “other” reality. Only much later does the possibility of de-alienation appear. Very frequently this appearance goes together with a disintegration of the plausibility structures that previously maintained these institutions. Mutatis mutandis, the process of mystification extends to the roles clustered in the institutions in question. In other 111

• From Going Clear (2013)

  When Hana was about fifteen, she learned that Blavatsky had prophesied a new race that would arise in the Americas in the 1950s; Hana was under the impression that it would be led by a man with red hair. Hana escaped her traumatic family situation to become a nurse in Johannesburg, South Africa. A medical student there gave her a copy of Dianetics . It made immediate sense to her. She went to the local organization and said she wanted to learn more. “ There’s a course starting tonight,” she was told. In the hallway of the office Hana noticed a photograph of Hubbard standing outside the Saint Hill headquarters. She was transfixed by his red hair. This must be the man Blavatsky was talking about, she decided. “That sealed it for me,” she said. She moved to Saint Hill and became Clear #60. For three weeks she was in a state of euphoria, feeling slightly detached from her environment and her body. “This is who we were in eons past,” she thought. She was convinced that Hubbard was a returned savior who would bring all humanity to an enlightened state. Slender and stately, Hana was one of the first thirty-five Sea Org recruits. The mission of the Sea Org, according to the contract she signed, is “to get ETHICS IN on this PLANET AND THE UNIVERSE .” She agreed to “subscribe to the discipline, mores and conditions of this group.… THEREFORE, I CONTRACT MYSELF TO THE SEA ORGANIZATION FOR THE NEXT BILLION YEARS .”4 Hana married another Sea Org member, an American named Guy Eltringham, but they were separated when Hubbard ordered her to Las Palmas, where he was refitting an exhausted fishing trawler called the Avon River . The decks and the hold were coated with decades of fish oil that had to be scraped away. During the two months the Avon River was in dry dock, Hubbard would often linger for dinner with his Sea Org crew, and afterward he would sit on the deck and regale them with stories. Hubbard’s depression had lifted and he seemed completely in control—relaxed and confident, even jovial. The crew were mainly drinking Spanish wines, but Hubbard favored rum and Coke—an eighth of a glass of Coke and seven-eighths rum—one after another through the evening. The heavens seemed very close in the dark harbor. Hubbard would point to the sky and say, “ That is where the Fifth Invaders came from. They’re the bad guys, they’re the ones who put us here.” He said he could actually spot their spaceships crossing in front of the stars, and he would salute them as they passed overhead, just to let them know that they had been seen. During a session with her auditor, Hana revealed the story of Madame Blavatsky’s prophecy of the red-haired man. Soon afterward, Hubbard came up on deck and gave her an intense look. From that point on, she became his favorite.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  In a lecture aboard the ship, Hubbard said that in researching OT III, he had uncovered two “incidents”—which, for him, meant implants—that prevented thetans from being free. Incident One was a kind of Garden of Eden fall from grace that occurred four quadrillion years ago, which is when Hubbard dates the origin of the universe. Before Incident One, thetans were in a pure, godlike state. Suddenly, there was a loud snap and a flood of light. A chariot appeared, trailed by a trumpeting cherub; then darkness. This incident marked the moment when thetans became separated from their original static condition and created the physical universe of matter, energy, space, and time (MEST). In the process, they lost awareness of their immortality. Incident Two is central to the OT III saga. This one took place seventy-five million years ago in the Galactic Confederacy, which was composed of seventy-six planets and twenty-six stars. “ The world we live in now replicates the civilization of that period,” Hubbard said. “People at that particular time and place were walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute.… The cars they drove looked exactly the same, and the trains they ran looked the same, and the boats they had looked the same. Circa nineteen-fifty, nineteen-sixty.” A tyrannical overlord named Xenu ruled the Confederacy. “He was a Suppressive to end all Suppressives,” Hubbard told his followers. Xenu had been chosen by a kind of Praetorian guard called the Loyal Officers, but they realized that their leader was wicked and they decided to remove him. Xenu had other plans, Hubbard said. “He took the last moments he had in office to really goof the floof.” Xenu and a few evil conspirators—mainly psychiatrists—fed false information to the population to draw them into centers where Xenu’s troops could destroy them. “One of the mechanisms they used was to tell them to come in for an income-tax investigation,” Hubbard related. “So in they went, and the troops started slaughtering them.” The preferred method was to shoot a needle into a lung, paralyzing the thetan with an injection of frozen alcohol and glycol. The frozen bodies were packed into boxes and loaded onto space planes, which resembled the DC-8 jetliner. “No difference—except the DC-8 had fans—propellers—on it and the space plane didn’t.” In this fashion, billions of thetans were transported to Teegeeack, the planet now called Earth, where they were dropped into volcanoes and then blown up with hydrogen bombs. Thetans are immortal, however. Freed from their corporeal incarnations, they floated along on the powerful winds created by the explosion. Then they were trapped in an electronic ribbon and placed in front of a “ three-D, super colossal motion picture” for thirty-six days, during which time they were subjected to images called R6 implants. “These pictures contain God, the Devil, angels, space opera, theaters, helicopters, a constant spinning, a spinning dancer, trains and various scenes very like modern England.