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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Again. The soul that enjoys God will adhere to Him most completely, and will participate in His goodness in the highest degree possible that is consistent with its mode of being. Wherefore both the body will be perfectly subject to the soul, and it will share in the soul’s properties, as far as possible, in acuteness of sense, in the orderliness of the bodily appetite, and in the superlative perfection of its nature. For a thing is so much the more perfect in nature, as its matter is more completely subject to its form. Hence the Apostle says (1 Cor. 15:44): It is sown a natural (animal) body; it shall rise a spiritual body. In the resurrection, the body will be spiritual, not that it will be a spirit, as some wrongly understood (whether spirit mean a spiritual substance, or air or wind), but because it will be completely subject to the spirit. Even so, we speak of the animal body, not that it is an animal, but because it is subject to animal passions, and needs food. From the foregoing it follows that just as man’s soul will be raised to the glory of the heavenly spirits, by seeing God in His essence, as above stated, so will his body be uplifted to the properties of the heavenly bodies, in brightness, impassibility, easy and unwearying movement, and in being perfected by its most perfect form. This is what the Apostle meant when he said that man will rise again with a celestial body, celestial indeed not in nature, but in glory. Hence, after saying that there are bodies celestial, and bodies terrestrial, he adds that one is the glory of the celestial, and another the glory of the terrestrial (1 Cor. 15:40). And just as the glory to which the human soul is uplifted surpasses the natural power of the heavenly spirits, as we have proved, so does the glory of risen bodies surpass the natural perfection of heavenly bodies in greater brightness, more changeless impassibility, and more perfect agility and dignity of nature. CHAPTER LXXXVII THE PLACE OF THE GLORIFIED BODIESSINCE a place should be proportionate to that which is in it, it follows that, as the bodies of those who rise again acquire the properties of heavenly bodies, they have a place in heaven also, or rather above all the heavens, in order that they may be together with Christ, by whose power they will be brought to that glory; and of whom the Apostle says (Eph. 4:10) that he ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PSEUDO-ORIGEN. (Hom. in div. 5.) And now also when the heads of Churches, holy men and acceptable to God, enter your roof, then in them the Lord also enters, and do you think of yourself as receiving the Lord. And when you eat and drink the Lord’s Bodya, then the Lord enters under your roof, and you then should humble yourself, saying, Lord, I am not worthy. For where He enters unworthily, there He enters to the condemnation of him who receives Him. JEROME. The thoughtfulness of the centurion appears herein, that he saw the Divinity hidden beneath the covering of body; wherefore he adds, But speak the word only, and my servant will be healed. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. He knew that Angels stood by unseen to minister to Him, who turn every word of his into act; yea and should Angels fail, yet diseases are healed by His life-giving command. HILARY. Also he therefore says that it needed only a word to heal his son, because all the salvation of the Gentiles is of faith, and the life of them all is in the precepts of the Lord; therefore he continues saying, For I am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. He has here developed the mystery of the Father and the Son, by the secret suggestion of the Holy Spirit; as much as to say, Though I am under the command of another, yet have I power to command those who are under me; so also Thou, though under the command of the Father, in so far as Thou art Man, yet hast Thou power over the Angels. But Sabellius perhaps affirms, seeking to prove that the Son is the same as the Father, that it is to be understood thus; ‘If I who am set under authority have yet power to command, how much more Thou who art under the authority of none.’ But the words will not bear this exposition; for he said not, ‘If I being a man under authority,’ but, ‘For I also am a man set under authority;’ clearly not drawing a distinction, but pointing to a resemblance in this respect between himself and Christ. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) If I who am under command have yet power to command others, how much more Thou whom all powers serve! GLOSS. (ord.) Thou art able without Thy bodily presence, by the ministry of Thy Angels, to say to this disease, Go, and it will leave him; and to say to health, Come, and it shall come to him.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I was drawn the more to this aim by my love of things foreign; I liked to deal with the barbarians. This great country lying between the mouths of the Danube and the Borysthenes, a triangular area of which I have covered at least two sides, is one of the most remarkable regions of the world, at least for us who are born on the shores of the Interior Sea and are used to the clear, dry line of southern landscape, with its hills and promontories. At times there I worshipped the goddess Earth in the way that we here worship the goddess Rome; I am speaking not so much of Ceres as of a more ancient divinity, anterior even to the invention of the harvest. Our Greek and Latin lands, everywhere supported by bone-structure of rock, have the trim beauty of a male body; the heavy abundance of the Scythian earth was that of a reclining woman. The plain ended only where the sky began. My wonder never ceased in presence of the rivers: that vast empty land was but a slope and a bed for their waters. Our rivers are short; we never feel far from their sources; but the enormous flow which ended there in confused estuaries swept with it the mud of an unknown continent and the ice of uninhabitable regions. The cold of Spain's high plateaus is second to none, but this was the first time that I found myself face to face with true winter, which visits our countries but briefly. There it sets in for a long period of months; farther north it must be unchanging, without beginning and without end. The evening of my arrival in camp the Danube was one immense roadway of ice, red at first and then blue, furrowed by the inner working of currents with tracks as deep as those of chariots. We made use of furs to protect ourselves from the cold. The presence of that enemy, so impersonal as to be almost abstract, produced an indescribable exaltation, and a feeling of energy accrued. One fought to conserve body heat as elsewhere one fights to keep one's courage. There were days when the snow effaced the few differences in level on the steppes; we galloped in a world of pure space and pure atoms. The frozen coating gave transparency to the most ordinary things, and the softest objects took on a celestial rigidity. Each broken reed was a flute of crystal.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On this point, however, credence is to be given rather to Dionysius, who is an eyewitness as to this having occurred by the moon eclipsing the sun. For he says (Ep. ad Polycarp): “Without any doubt we saw the moon encroach on the sun,” he being in Egypt at the time, as he says in the same letter. And in this he points out four miracles. The first is that the natural eclipse of the sun by interposition of the moon never takes place except when the sun and moon are in conjunction. But then the sun and moon were in opposition, it being the fifteenth day, since it was the Jewish Passover. Wherefore he says: “For it was not the time of conjunction.”—The second miracle is that whereas at the sixth hour the moon was seen, together with the sun, in the middle of the heavens, in the evening it was seen to be in its place, i.e. in the east, opposite the sun. Wherefore he says: “Again we saw it,” i.e. the moon, “return supernaturally into opposition with the sun,” so as to be diametrically opposite, having withdrawn from the sun “at the ninth hour,” when the darkness ceased, “until evening.” From this it is clear that the wonted course of the seasons was not disturbed, because the Divine power caused the moon both to approach the sun supernaturally at an unwonted season, and to withdraw from the sun and return to its proper place according to the season. The third miracle was that the eclipse of the sun naturally always begins in that part of the sun which is to the west and spreads towards the east: and this is because the moon’s proper movement from west to east is more rapid than that of the sun, and consequently the moon, coming up from the west, overtakes the sun and passes it on its eastward course. But in this case the moon had already passed the sun, and was distant from it by the length of half the heavenly circle, being opposite to it: consequently it had to return eastwards towards the sun, so as to come into apparent contact with it from the east, and continue in a westerly direction. This is what he refers to when he says: “Moreover, we saw the eclipse begin to the east and spread towards the western edge of the sun,” for it was a total eclipse, “and afterwards pass away.” The fourth miracle consisted in this, that in a natural eclipse that part of the sun which is first eclipsed is the first to reappear (because the moon, coming in front of the sun, by its natural movement passes on to the east, so as to come away first from the western portion of the sun, which was the first part to be eclipsed), whereas in this case the moon, while returning miraculously from the east to the west, did not pass the sun so as to be to the west of it: but having reached the western edge of the sun returned towards the east: so that the last portion of the sun to be eclipsed was the first to reappear. Consequently the eclipse began towards the east, whereas the sun began to reappear towards the west. And to this he refers by saying: “Again we observed that the occultation and emersion did not begin from the same point,” i.e. on the same side of the sun, “but on opposite sides.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxvii.) Why did He enter into Peter’s house? I think to take food; for it follows, And she arose, and ministered to them. For He abode with His disciples to do them honour, and to make them more zealous. Observe Peter’s reverence towards Christ; though his mother-in-law lay at home sick of a fever, yet he did not force Him thither at once, but waited till His teaching should be completed, and others healed. For from the beginning he was instructed to prefer others to himself. Wherefore he did not even bring Him thither, but Christ went in of Himself; purposing, because the centurion had said, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, to shew what He granted to a disciple. And He did not scorn to enter the humble hut of a fisherman, instructing us in every thing to trample upon human pride. Sometimes He heals by a word, sometimes He reaches forth His hand; as here, He touched her hand, and the fever left her. For He would not always work miracles with display of surpassing power, but would sometimes be hid. By touching her body He not only banished the fever, but restored her to perfect health. Because her sickness was such as art could cure, He shewed his power to heal, in doing what medicine could not do, giving her back perfect health and strength at once; which is intimated in what the Evangelist adds, And she arose, and ministered to them. JEROME. For naturally the greatest weakness follows fever, and the evils of sickness begin to be felt as the patient begins to recover; but that health which is given by the Lord’s power is complete at once. GLOSS. (non occ.) And it is not enough that she is cured, but strength is given her besides, for she arose and ministered unto them. CHRYSOSTOM. This, she arose and ministered unto them, shews at once the Lord’s power, and the woman’s feeling towards Christ. BEDE. (in loc.) Figuratively; Peter’s house is the Law, or the circumcision, his mother-in-law the synagogue, which is as it were the mother of the Church committed to Peter. She is in a fever, that is, she is sick of zealous hate, and persecutes the Church. The Lord touches her hand, when He turns her carnal works to spiritual uses. REMIGIUS. Or by Peter’s mother-in-law may be understood the Law, which according to the Apostle was made weak through the flesh, i. e. the carnal understanding. But when the Lord through the mystery of the Incarnation appeared visibly in the synagogue, and fulfilled the Law in action, and taught that it was to be understood spiritually; straightway it thus allied with the grace of the Gospel received such strength, that what had been the minister of death and punishment, became the minister of life and glory.

• From Untrue (2018)

  These questions and the issue of pleasure bring us to one of our very closest primate relatives, the bonobo, with whom we share nearly 99 percent of our DNA. Bonobos (Pan paniscus), formerly known as “pygmy chimps,” do in fact look like taller, slimmer versions of their other close relatives, chimps (Pan troglodytes). They live in only one place in the wild: the Congo Basin of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Bonobos also live under human care in seven zoos in the United States, and in several European countries. My questions about female sexuality, female pleasure, female sociality, and female “infidelity” brought me to San Diego for several days to speak with Dr. Amy Parish, a primatologist who trained with both Sarah Hrdy and Frans de Waal. Parish, who had been inspired and mentored by the same woman who sparked my own interest in primatology at the University of Michigan, Barbara Smuts, had created a considerable commotion in her field very early in her career by reporting what she observed in her work with bonobos. Since then, she has periodically lobbed insights based on her research at the San Diego, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt zoos that blew up the prevailing view of primate social behavior—that humans, like chimps, are inherently prone to (mostly male) conflict and violence, and that male dominance, including infanticide and sexual coercion of females, is deeply woven into our evolutionary legacy. Through careful study and many hours of observation and data collection, Parish brought forward groundbreaking insights about bonobos, insights that reveal an important, surprising, and untold aspect of our hominin prehistory.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  complement to the injunctions of the moralists and the dictates of law. Literature is capable of expressing, in a way more intimate than mere commands, the shape of sexual morality, when actually projected onto the fur-rowed plane of human life. Pagans, Christians, and Jews alike used stories as vehicles to express their deepest beliefs about the relationships between the sexual body, the mechanics of society, and the nature of the cosmos. Th e Christian transformation of sex can be retraced in the history of literature, which mirrors quite sensitively the passage from a public sexual ideology or ga nized around the imperatives of social reproduction to a mentality founded in ecclesiastical norms. In short, the history of literature recapitulates the passage from shame to sin. Chapter 4 is focused on one of the central preoccupations of ancient fi ction, female chastity. Feminine purity was a transcendent symbol, capable of bearing the most consequential meanings. Th e authors of the imperial romances invested no small part of their talents in contriving elaborate threats to the chastity of their heroines. Th ese scenes, looked at across the genre, provide direct access to the ideological code of romance. Th e romances are stories in which essence precedes existence. What is most remarkable about the imperial romances is the extent to which they are explicitly built on an acute awareness that forces beyond the individual’s control shape his or her life. Fate furnishes us with moral ends, and more instru-mentally, society constitutes us as selves. Th e romances make their most daring approaches to the inscrutable mysteries of fate in the image of the heroine’s endangered chastity. Th e romances fl irt with the possibility of her violation, because the transgression of her body would mark a visceral con-travention of the social and cosmic order. Th ese typological scenes are very I N T R O D U C T I O N  near the deep theology of the romance. In the end, she is always rescued, and the deeper order of the cosmos prevails against the fl ux and frustration that is experienced in human time. Th e heroine is reserved, by the will of the gods, for marriage. Th ere is salvation in the cycle of nature, which imparts to us the gift of eros within its mysterious order. Christians and Jews would rework these very scenes of feminine imperil-ment to express their deepest reservations about the world and the place of eros in the constitution of the self. Already in the primitive phases of the religion, Christian authors were adept at reformulating the fi ctional tropes of Greco- Roman literature. A whole body of legend grew up around the heroes of Christianity, the apostles. In the apocryphal acts, we fi nd the sexual mechanics of the romance deliberately inverted. Th e ruling Roman order

• From Untrue (2018)

  Bonobos are harder still to find in their native habitat and even harder to study. Because they live in an area with a long history of political unrest and violence, for decades it was impossible for primatologists to observe them in any sustained way. It’s only within the last quarter century or so, thanks to fieldworkers in Congo and others, including Parish, who study them under human care in zoos, that anyone got a handle on who and what they are. There was no bonobo gene sequencing until 2012, at which point we learned that bonobos are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas and at least as closely related to us as are chimps. A 2017 studying comparing human, chimp, and bonobo muscles confirmed what previous molecular research had suggested: “Bonobo muscles have changed the least [from our common ancestor], which means they are the closest we can get to having a ‘living’ ancestor,” according to the research head of the George Washington University Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology. Some paleontologists believe that bonobos look a great deal like our pre-hominin ancestor Australopithecus afarensis. Female bonobos have more pronounced breasts than other female primates (though a bit less pronounced than ours), and posturally, bonobos resemble humans quite a bit, especially with their tendency to walk bipedally. Like us, they have sex ventrally, or face-to-face, something very rare in other primates. And bonobos are known to both spontaneously console victims of harassment and revel in being consoled. Researchers say that in doing so, bonobos follow the same “empathic gradient” that humans do, offering support to kin, friends, and acquaintances. Except for a difference in frequency, human and bonobo babies have extraordinarily similar laughs when they are tickled.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  For my doctoral dissertation, I went a step further, using new information about manakin anatomy to produce a reasonably complete and well-resolved phylogeny of the entire manakin family. This research involved hundreds of dissections of the syrinx—the unique little gizmo the birds sing with—of all manakin species. I then used this evolutionary tree to test my hypotheses about behavioral homology. For example, I found common features of syringeal structure that confirmed my hypothesis that the Pin-tailed, Golden-winged, and White-throated Manakin genera had an exclusive common ancestor. And, as I had proposed based on their display behavior, these features also pointed to the Golden-winged and White-throated Manakins’ being more closely related to each other than either was to the Pin-tailed Manakin. [image "Phylogeny of the White-throated, Golden-winged, and Pin-tailed Manakins depicting the evolutionary origins and losses of the behavioral elements within the display repertoires of each species and their shared ancestors. Based on Prum (1997) ." file=image_rsrc3N2.jpg] Phylogeny of the White-throated, Golden-winged, and Pin-tailed Manakins depicting the evolutionary origins and losses of the behavioral elements within the display repertoires of each species and their shared ancestors. Based on Prum (1997). Today, what we know of the aesthetic radiation of manakins provides many evolutionary lessons about how Beauty Happens over the Tree of Life. We’ve learned that manakin aesthetic repertoires include many elements that are older than the individual species themselves. We can see that each species’ display repertoire is contingent upon both the evolutionary legacy of that species—what it inherited from its various ancestors—and any new display elements—aesthetic elaborations, innovations, or losses—that have evolved in that species alone. — How the elements of a given display repertoire come into being over the course of time shows us the inherently serendipitous and unpredictable nature of aesthetic evolutionary process. From a common history, sister species evolve in many different and unpredictable aesthetic directions. Through each aesthetic change, mate choice also creates new aesthetic opportunities, which can unleash an evolutionary cascade of effects. These include the evolution of further aesthetic extremity and complexity. As Beauty Happens, different species evolve off in ever more different, arbitrary directions from their shared ancestral repertoires. Especially when sexual selection is strong, as in manakins and other lekking birds, Beauty Happening over the course of long evolutionary timescales results in explosive aesthetic radiations.

• From Untrue (2018)

  [image file=image_rsrc1S6.jpg] Beyoncé’s ballads of self-determination literally interrogate asymmetrical male sexual privilege, as in Lemonade, which is framed by the central question “Are you cheating on me?” Against a backdrop of enduring cultural hypocrisy about female desire, Beyoncé asserts that some of us experience nearly unquenchable bacchanalian lust, as in “Drunk in Love.” Performing at the 2017 Grammys as a pregnant queen, she invoked various goddesses—Oshun, the Black Madonna, and the Virgin Mary among them—who derived their awesome power from sex and reproduction. (Getty Images) [image file=image_rsrc1S7.jpg] Issa Rae’s series Insecure, with its rich plotline about a “nice girl” cheating on her boyfriend, set social media aflame. (Shutterstock) [image file=image_rsrc1S8.jpg] June Dobbs Butts, a hidden figure of American sex research, was the first African American trained at the Masters and Johnson Institute. Her articles on sexuality for Ebony and Essence reached thousands of black readers. (Louie Favorite, Atlanta Journal-Constitution) [image file=image_rsrc1S9.jpg] Dr. Gail E. Wyatt, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist, was the first African American woman to be licensed as a psychologist in the state of California and the first African American woman PhD to reach full professor in a school of medicine. Wyatt published an ambitious update to Alfred Kinsey’s work in 1988. (UCLA) [image file=image_rsrc1SA.jpg] When married Hollywood superstar Ingrid Bergman had an affair with Roberto Rossellini and became pregnant in 1950, she was savaged by the press and even denounced on the floor of the US Senate as a “powerful influence for evil.” (Gordon Parks, The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images) [image file=image_rsrc1SB.jpg] Kristen Stewart experienced comparable blowback in 2012 when she had an affair with a married director while in a relationship with Robert Pattinson. Stewart here wears an updated version of Bergman’s all-white ensemble. She also mirrors Bergman’s sidelong gaze, a photographic framing that gives them both a haunted look while also seeming to suggest that women who step outside monogamy are “shifty,” indirect, or dishonest. (Backgrid USA) [image file=image_rsrc1SC.jpg] Bucking the script of masculine possession, the man married to a “hotwife” embraces her infidelities, often encouraging her by setting up her dates and paying witness to and otherwise reveling in her being untrue. [image file=image_rsrc1SD.jpg] About the Author [image file=image_rsrc1SE.jpg] Wednesday Martin, PhD, is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Primates of Park Avenue. Her book Stepmonster, unique in its feminist approach to stepmothering, was a finalist for a Books for a Better Life Award, and she has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Forward, the Hollywood Reporter, the Sunday Times (London), the Daily Beast, and Refinery29, among others. She has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, CNN, and the Today show. Wednesday earned her doctorate in comparative literature and cultural studies at Yale and lives in New York City with her husband and their two sons. twitter.com/WednesdayMartin facebook.com/WednesdayMartinPhD instagram.com/WednesdayMartinPhD

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  You don’t want to get that pretty nose broken.’ ‘I don’t do it any more. Don’t worry.’ ‘It’s been a great interest of mine. You’ll have to find out about all that side if you go into this.’ I looked at him humorously. ‘Go into what?’ He was unlocking a door under the shadow of the cantilevered stairs and groping for the light switch. ‘Come down here. Whoopsy! That’s it.’ In front of us a narrow staircase ran steeply down between unplastered rubble walls. It was a squeeze for us side by side, and I tended to be half a step behind, as he, one hand on the rope banister, committed himself with a heavy, lurching tread to each new stair. ‘This is the most remarkable thing,’ he said in a tone of enthusiasm. ‘Oh, he’ll like this, won’t he. There’s no other house in the world that has anything like this. Come along in, come along in.’ He took on for a moment the air of a horror-film villain, muttering gleeful asides while leading his victim into the trap. The stairs turned a corner, and we went down two or three more steps and under a rough wooden lintel into a cool, mildewy darkness. Various fleeting ideas, tinged with alarm, went through my mind as I stood and brushed at my upper arm where it had rubbed against the chalky staircase wall. Then Charles found the second light switch and the darkness fled, revealing a squarish quite lofty cellar room. Though it contained nothing at all there were two remarkable things about it. The walls, which were plastered and painted cream, had a continuous frieze running round, which, being above head height, looked tastefully classical at a glance but, like the library over-door, were homosexual parodies when inspected close to. And the floor, uneven, pitted in places, was a mosaic. We made our way along the walls on old drugget, through which the roughness of the floor obtruded, so that I was afraid of Charles stubbing his toe or even twisting his ankle. On the further side of the room he stopped. ‘You see it best from here,’ he explained. The colours were very subdued, the white almost a light brown, the reds rusty like dried blood. ‘Now, what do you make out?’ I thought about it; it was evidently a Roman pavement—a relic of some riverside palace or temple? I knew nothing about Roman London, had forgotten all but a handful of images from some illustrated lectures that Gavin had given several years before. In the top quarter was a large bearded face, with open mouth and the vestiges of neck and shoulders above a broad rent in the fabric where the tesserae merged into the restorer’s grey cement.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  This was not servile obedience; that wild energy was applied to the support of my program for security; nothing had cost too much, and nothing had been neglected. I thought of having Arrian compose a treatise on tactics and discipline as perfect as is a body well-formed. In Athens, three months later, the dedication of the Olympieion was occasion for festivals which recalled the Roman solemnities, but what in Rome had been celebrated on earth seemed there to occur in the heavens. Late on a luminous day of autumn I took my station in that porch which had been conceived on the superhuman scale of Zeus himself; the marble temple, built on the spot where Deucalion had watched the Deluge recede, seemed to lose its weight and float like a great white cloud; even my ritual robe was in tone with the evening colors on nearby Hymettus. I had entrusted Polemo with the inaugural discourse. It was at this time that Greece granted me those divine appellations wherein I could recognize both a source of prestige and the most secret aim of my life's work: Evergetes, Olympian, Epiphanios, Master of All. And the most beautiful of all these titles, and most difficult to merit, Ionian and Friend of Greece. There was much of the actor in Polemo, but the play of features in a great performer sometimes translates the emotion shared by a whole people, and a whole century. He raised his eyes to the heavens and gathered himself together before his exordium, seeming to assemble within him all gifts held in that moment of time: I had collaborated with the ages, and with Greek life itself; the authority which I wielded was less a power than a mysterious force, superior to man but operating effectively only through the intermediary of a human person; the marriage of Rome with Athens had been accomplished; the future once more held the hope of the past; Greece was stirring again like a vessel, long becalmed, caught anew in the current of the wind. Just then a moment's melancholy came over me; I could not but reflect that these words of completion and perfection contained within them the very word end; perhaps I had offered only one more object as prey to Time the Devourer. We were taken next inside the temple where the sculptors were still at work; the immense, half-assembled statue of Zeus in ivory and gold seemed to lighten somewhat that dim shade; at the foot of the scaffolding lay the great python brought from India at my order to be consecrated in this Greek sanctuary. Already reposing in its filigree basket, the divine snake, emblem of Earth on which it crawls, has long been associated with the nude youth who symbolizes the emperor's Genius.

• From Untrue (2018)

  At the San Diego Zoo, the bonobos are tucked away, hard to find, even, relative to their primate brethren. To get to the gorillas, for example, you just amble up Treetops Way, one of the more heavily trafficked routes through the beloved SoCal institution, until you come across the signs leading you to their enclosure, often lined four or five rows deep with spectators. But getting to the bonobos requires a trek through the Treetops Café at one of the highest points of the zoo and then a meander down around a longish, winding staircase. After that, you hope you’re headed the right way, as there is minimal bonobo signage. When I finally arrived at their enclosure at 9:30 a.m. for my first day observing them, it was already hot and sunny, and I could hear a chorus of screeches and squawks from the nearby aviary. I was as impressed by the bonobos’ setup as I was perplexed by their far-flung location: there are several different sets of massive windows through which to watch the nine bonobos doing their thing in a one acre or so enclosure complete with tire swings, a waterfall and stream, an elaborate and extensive jungle gym made of ropes, plenty of greenery growing up from the ground, and lots of boulders and grassy patches on which to sun and socialize. Bonobos are slimmer than chimps; they have longer necks and smaller heads and often somewhat longish hair that is parted down the middle, giving them an uncannily human—and more specifically, late Beatles—aspect. At the opposite end of the enclosure from where I stood, I saw an adult bonobo who reminded me of Ringo taking the measure of me.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Nothing could have been more in contradiction to the views which I was beginning to hold about war, but those barbarous rites creating bonds of life and death between the affiliates all served to flatter the most secret aspirations of a young man impatient of the present, uncertain as to the future, and thereby open to the gods. My initiation took place in a turret constructed of wood and reeds on the banks of the Danube, with Marcius Turbo, my fellow officer, for sponsor. I remember that the weight of the bull in its death throes nearly brought down the latticed floor beneath which I lay to receive the bloody aspersion. In recent years I have reflected upon the dangers which this sort of near-secret society might entail for the State under a weak ruler, and I have finally restricted them, but I admit that in presence of an enemy they give their followers a strength which is almost godlike. Each of us believed that he was escaping from the narrow limits of his human state, feeling himself to be at the same time himself and his own adversary, at one with the god who seems to be both the animal victim and the human slayer. Such fantastic dreams, which sometimes terrify me now, were not so very different from the theories of Heraclitus upon the identity of the mark and the bow. They helped me in those days to endure life. Victory and defeat were inextricably mixed like rays of the same sun. These Dacian footsoldiers whom I crushed under my horse's hoofs, those Sarmatian cavalrymen overthrown in the close combat of later years when our rearing horses tore at each other's chests, were all struck down the more easily if I identified myself with them. Had my body been abandoned on the battlefield, stripped of its attire, it would not have differed greatly from theirs. The shock of the final sword thrust would have been the same. I am confessing to you here some extraordinary thoughts, among the most secret of my life, and a strange intoxication which I have never again experienced under that same form. A certain number of deeds of daring, which would have passed unnoticed, perhaps, if performed by a simple soldier, won me a reputation in Rome and a sort of renown in the army. But most of my so-called acts of prowess were little more than idle bravado; I see now with some shame that, mingled with that almost sacred exaltation of which I was just speaking, there was still my ignoble desire to please at any price, and to draw attention upon myself. It was thus that one autumn day when the Danube was swollen by floods I crossed the river on horseback, wearing the full heavy equipment of our Batavian auxiliaries. For this feat of arms, if it was a feat, my horse deserved credit more than I.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  The short and obscene sentence of Poseidonius about the rubbing together of two small pieces of flesh, which I have seen you copy in your exercise books with the application of a good schoolboy, does no more to define the phenomenon of love than the taut cord touched by the finger accounts for the infinite miracle of sounds. Such a dictum is less an insult to pleasure than to the flesh itself, that amazing instrument of muscles, blood, and skin, that red-tinged cloud whose lightning is the soul. And I admit that the reason stands confounded in presence of the veritable prodigy that love is, and of the strange obsession which makes this same flesh (for which we care so little when it is that of our own body, and which concerns us only to wash and nourish it, and if possible to keep it from suffering) inspire us with such a passion of caresses simply because it is animated by an individuality different from our own, and because it presents certain lineaments of beauty, disputed though they may be by the best judges. Here human logic stops short, as before the revelations of the Mysteries. Popular tradition has not been wrong in regarding love always as a form of initiation, one of the points of encounter of the secret with the sacred. Sensual experience is further comparable to the Mysteries in that the first approach gives to the uninitiated the impression of a ritual which is more or less frightening, and shockingly far removed from the familiar functions of sleeping, eating, and drinking; it appears matter for jest and shame, or even terror. Quite as much as the dance of the Maenads or the frenzy of the Corybantes, love-making carries us into a different world, where at other times we are forbidden to enter, and where we cease to belong as soon as the ardor is spent, or the ecstasy subsides. Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of that same law which ordains that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  He probably thinks that you are really fighting with him and he loves you and can’t stand that.” Larry looked at me for a long minute and then said a quiet, “I gotcha.” I thought it interesting that the residue of Larry’s violent boyhood should show up in play with his son. He had been able to master his impulses in relation to women, but unbeknownst to him, the violence had crept into his relationship with the child he loved. I realized how little we know about human behavior and about the insidious legacy of family violence. On every questionnaire, Larry would have answered honestly that he had been fully able to escape being a violent person with his wife and his children. Who would have thought to ask him how he plays with his son? A Window of Opportunity I HAVE TOLD LARRY’S story in detail because it’s a remarkable account of the mind of a boy who slowly, painfully, and successfully extricates himself from his violent origins. Larry shows us how divorce can provide a window of opportunity through which the child can climb to freedom—with the proviso that the growing child must provide his or her own energy, resourcefulness, and courage to make it happen. The divorce by itself won’t do it. Larry’s moral and emotional evolution from delinquent boy to loving husband, father, and responsible citizen captures the psychological steps needed. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, who relies on the help of the Scarecrow in search of a brain, the Tin Woodsman in want of a heart, and the Cowardly Lion in search of courage, a child growing up in a violent family needs the full use of his intelligence, capacity to love, and courage to climb out of the lower depths to which he has been exposed. He has to put together for himself a value system that rejects violence, respects women, and places decency and human kindness at the core. In his personal relationships, he has to achieve the capacity for love and intimacy without exploitation, loyalty to his family and friends, and responsibility to his professional community and society. Counter to the system in vogue in family courts that emphasizes the importance of continuity in parent-child relationships after the divorce, the child has to find the strength within himself to reject the violent parent and the values and attitudes that that person represents. If the child continues to embrace those values, he will repeat the ugliness that he was exposed to during his most impressionable years.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  In the last light of the horizon Castor and Pollux gleamed faintly; the Serpent gave way to the Archer; next the Eagle mounted toward the zenith, wings widespread, and beneath him appeared the constellation at that time unnamed by astronomers, but to which I have since given that most cherished of names. The night, which is never so black as people think who live and sleep indoors, was at first more dark, and then grew lighter. The fires, left burning to frighten the jackals, went out; their dying coals made me think of my grandfather warming himself as he stood in his vineyard, and of his prophecies, which by then had become the present, and were soon to be the past. I have tried under many a form to join the divine, and have known more than one ecstasy; some of these have been atrocious, others overpoweringly sweet, but the one of the Syrian night was strangely lucid. It inscribed within me the heavenly motions with greater precision than any partial observation would ever have allowed me to attain. I know exactly, at the hour of this writing, what stars are passing here at Tibur above this stuccoed and painted ceiling; and elsewhere, far away, over a tomb. Some years later it was death which was to become the object of my constant contemplation, the thought to which I was to give every faculty of my mind not absorbed by the State. And who speaks of death speaks also of that mysterious world to which, perhaps, we gain access by death. After such long reflection, and so many experiments, some of them reprehensible, I still know nothing of what goes on behind death's dark curtain. But the Syrian night remains as my conscious experience of immortality. SAECULUM AUREUM The summer following my meeting with Osro�s was passed in Asia Minor: I made a stop in Bithynia in order to supervise in person the annual felling in the State forests there. At Nicomedia, that lustrous, well-ordered, and learned city, I stayed with the procurator of the province, Cneius Pompeius Proculus, who lived in the ancient palace of King Nicomedus, where voluptuous memories of the young Julius Caesar abound. Breezes from the Propontis fanned those cool, shaded rooms. Proculus was a man of taste; he arranged some readings for my pleasure. Some visiting sophists and several small groups of students and poetry-lovers met together in the gardens, beside a spring consecrated to Pan. From time to time a servant would dip a great jar of porous clay into the cooling waters; even the most limpid verses lacked the sparkle of that clear stream.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Charles was diverted by the opening of the door, and Graham’s smiling but deferential approach through the broken plinths, the imaginary colonnade of stacked and toppling books. ‘Splendid, splendid. Graham. Thank you. From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, while China’s earth receives the smoking tide’—this last said with heavy ironic relish. ‘I’ve been rereading Pope,’ he explained, tapping what must have been a very early edition on the coffee-table. ‘Such a bitch. As one nears the end, I feel one should only read things which are really most frightfully good. I learnt the whole of the “Rape of the Lock” by heart once.’ He looked at the picture-rail as if trying to recall something, but his mind had clearly gone blank again. Graham poured the grateful liquors and withdrew. ‘I wanted to ask you about your meeting with Ronald Firbank.’ Charles looked round; he had got what he wanted. ‘Sandy Labouchère was fearfully funny about that other thing in Pope, you know, the thing that’s Waller. There used to be this place, a vespasienne in Soho he used to go to—which everyone knew as Clarkson’s Cottage, because it was just by Clarkson’s theatrical outfitters, in Wardour Street. Most of them had sort of trefoil holes in, so you could look out and check if the police were coming, or who was coming in. Not Clarkson’s Cottage, until one day, somebody hammered out a little peephole. You can guess what Sandy said.’ Charles lifted his cup, and I looked pained and dim, so that he patted it out for me: ‘Now Clarkson’s Cottage, battered and decayed, lets in new light through chinks that queens have made.’ I grinned excessively and said, ‘Of course.’ ‘I think he may have said “buggered and decayed”,’ said Charles. I sipped at my hot, weak coffee and after a bit asked, ‘Did you meet Firbank again?’ ‘You’ve read about that, then? Most extraordinary creature I ever met. Met him at the Savoy. He belongs to another age—even then he belonged to another age.’ ‘I’ve been reading him recently.’ ‘Do you find him pretty maddening?’ ‘I’m keen on him, actually. I have a friend who’s a great fan.’ ‘He always had a small following,’ explained Charles, as though this were something rather sinister. ‘I only met him once, not long before he died. He drank most frightfully and never ate a crumb. Did you want something to eat?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘That’s very much what he would have said. He went off abroad—he liked Africa: That’s what we were supposed to have in common. We did write to each other—just one letter each way, I think. Then I was out of the country of course. I heard about his death years later, from Gerald Berners. He was with him at the time as far as I recall.’ ‘You don’t still have his letter?’ I asked, preparing for disappointment, and disparaging the possibility in my own mind. ‘Perhaps,’ said Charles.

• From Untrue (2018)

  As I stood at the large window of the enclosure at the zoo, a bonobo knuckle-walked over to me, clearly curious. I surmised from the chart of photos I had been studying that her name was Lisa. She seated herself at the window and stared at me. I stared back. A family with a toddler and a baby in a stroller stood next to me. Lisa stuck her finger up her anus, pulled out a greenish-yellow dollop of feces, and considered it. Then she popped it into her mouth and chewed with gusto. The woman near me shouted, “Did you see that?!” She exclaimed loudly, over and over, “That monkey is disgusting!” The couple grabbed their toddler’s hand, pivoted their stroller, and rushed away, the mother announcing repeatedly that she simply couldn’t believe what she had witnessed. Eventually I couldn’t hear her anymore. I was alone, staring at Lisa, who stared at me and picked at her teeth. It occurred to me that the bonobos might be tucked away because, with all their screwing and sucking and scissoring and shit eating, they are not exactly rated-G great apes. Our very closest relatives are far from family friendly.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  The higher degrees which were later conferred upon me in the course of private talks with the Hierophant added almost nothing to that first emotion which I shared in common with the least of the pilgrims who made the same ritual ablutions and drank at the spring. I had heard the discords resolving into harmonies; for one moment I had stood on another sphere and contemplated from afar, but also from close by, that procession which is both human and divine, wherein I, too, had my place, this our world where suffering existed still, but error was no more. From such a perspective our human destiny, that vague design in which the least practiced eye can trace so many flaws, gleamed bright like the patterns of the heavens. And it is here that I can best speak of a habit which led me throughout my life along paths less secret than those of Eleusis, but after all parallel to them, namely, the study of the stars. I have always been friend to astronomers and client to astrologers. The science of the latter is questionable, but if false in its details it is perhaps true in the total implication; for if man is part and parcel of the universe, and is ruled by the same laws as govern the sky, it is not unreasonable to search the heavens for the patterns of our lives, and for those impersonal attractions which induce our successes and our errors. On autumn evenings I seldom failed to greet Aquarius to the south, that heavenly Cup Bearer and Giver of Gifts under whose sign I was born. Nor did I forget to note in each of their passages Jupiter and Venus, who govern my life, nor to measure the dangerous influence of Saturn. But if this strange refraction of human affairs upon the stellar vault preoccupied many of my waking hours, I was still more deeply absorbed in celestial mathematics, the abstract speculations to which those flaming spheres give rise. I was inclined to believe, along with certain of our more daring philosophers, that earth, too, takes part in that daily and nightly round which the sacred processions of Eleusis are intended to reproduce in human terms. In a world which is only a vortex of forces and whirl of atoms, where there is neither high nor low, periphery nor center, I could ill conceive of a globe without motion, or a fixed point which would not move. At other times I was haunted in my nightly vigils by the problem of precession of the equinoxes, as calculated long ago by Hipparchus of Alexandria.