Awe

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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 The Divine Comedy (1950)

  yonder. 4 And if the lowest step gathereth so large a light within itself, what then the amplitude of the rose’s outmost petals? My sight in the breath and height lost itself not, but grasped the scope and nature of that joyance. Near and far addeth not nor subtracteth there, for where God governeth without medium the law of nature hath no relevance. 5 Within the yellow of the eternal rose, which doth expand, rank upon rank, and reeketh perfume of praise unto the Sun that maketh spring for ever, me—as who doth hold his peace yet fain would speak—Beatrice drew, and said: “Behold how great the white-robed concourse! See how large our city sweepeth! See our thrones so filled that but few folk are now awaited there. On that great seat where thou dost fix thine eyes, for the crown’s sake already placed above it, ere at this wedding feast thyself do sup, shall sit the soul (on earth’t will be imperial), of the lofty Henry 6 who shall come to straighten Italy ere she be ready for it. The blind greed which bewitcheth you hath made you like the little child who dieth of hunger and chaseth off his nurse; and he who then presideth in the court of things divine shall be such an one as, openly and covertly, shall not tread the same path with him. 7 But short space thereafter shall he be endured 8 of God in the sacred office; for he shall be thrust down where Simon Magus is for his desert, and lower down shall force him of Anagna.” 9 1. The redeemed and the Angels. The former as though reclad with the body. 2. Cf. Canto xxxiii, and Argument. Harsh, literally unmellowed, and therefore “repellent to the senses”; here “repellent to the mind”; not to be assimilated by it without jar. 3. Bearing in mind Dante’s careful use of the word splendour (cf. Canto xxix, note 2), and following the descriptions of this canto closely, we may conclude that the perpetual reflection of the light of God cast back from the primum mobile upon the eyes of the saints, ministers to their perpetual power of looking direct into the light itself. Nearly the same phrase is used in Canto xiv for internal light, or power of vision. 4. All the redeemed that had regained their native heaven. 5. It had been maintained by Democritus, but was denied by Aristotle, that were it not for the medium, even the smallest things could be seen at any distance whatsoever. This is one of the many instances in which Dante gives a spiritual turn to the physical speculations of the Greeks. 6. See Gardner i, and the account of Henry’s expedition in Villani. 7. The translation should be taken as meaning that Clement, while outwardly favouring Henry, would secretly oppose him; which agrees with Canto xvii, and is a not inaccurate description of Clement’s conduct. Cf. Epist. v. § 10. But the Italian, like the translation, will also bear the meaning “who will work against him (Henry) openly and covertly,” and this interpretation is preferred by many scholars, perhaps as bringing a more concrete charge against Clement, and so leading up better to the thereafter of the next stanza. 8. Henry died in August, 1313, Clement in April, 1314. 9. Cf. Inf. xix.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Wherefore, if it behoveth my desire to find its goal in this wondrous and angelic temple which hath only love and light for boundary, 7 needs must I further hear wherefore the copy and the pattern go not in one fashion; for, for myself, I gaze on it in vain.” “And if for such a knot thy fingers are not able, no marvel is it; so hard hath it become by never being tried.” So my Lady; and then said: “Take that which I shall tell thee, wouldst thou be satisfied, and ply thy wit around it. The corporeal circles are ample or strait according to the more or less of the virtue which spreadeth over all their parts. Greater excellence hath purpose to work greater wed; and greater weal is comprehended in the greater body if that the parts be equally consummate. Therefore the one which sweepeth with it all the rest of the universe, correspondeth to the circle that most loveth and most knoweth. 8 Wherefore, if thou draw thy measure round the virtue, not the semblance of the substances which appear to thee in circles, 9 thou wilt see a wondrous congruence of greater unto more and smaller unto less in every heaven to its intelligence.” As the hemisphere of air becometh shining and serene when Boreas bloweth from his gentler cheek, 10 whereby is purged and is resolved the film which erst obscured it, so that the heaven laugheth with the beauties of its every district; so did I, when my Lady had made provision to me of her clear-shining answer; and like a star in heaven the truth was seen. And when her words stayed, no otherwise doth iron shoot forth sparkles, when it boileth, than did the circles sparkle. And every spark followed their blaze; and their numbers were such as ran to thousands beyond the duplication of the chessboard. 11 From choir to choir I heard Hosanna sung to that fixed point which holdeth and shall ever hold them to the where, in which they have been ever; and she who saw the questioning thoughts within my mind, said: “The first circles have revealed to thee the Seraphs and the Cherubs. So swift they follow their withies that they may liken them unto the point as most they may; and they may in measure as they are sublime in vision.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  On a day Fotis came running to me in great feare, and said that her mistresse, to work her sorceries on such as shee loved, intended the night following to transforme her selfe into a bird, and to fly whither she pleased. Wherefore she willed me privily to prepare my selfe to see the same. And when midnight came she led me softly into a high chamber, and bid me look thorow the chink of a doore: where first I saw how shee put off all her garments, and took out of a certain coffer sundry kindes of Boxes, of the which she opened one, and tempered the ointment therein with her fingers, and then rubbed her body therewith from the sole of the foot to the crowne of the head, and when she had spoken privily with her selfe, having the candle in her hand, she shaked the parts of her body, and behold, I perceived a plume of feathers did burgen out, her nose waxed crooked and hard, her nailes turned into clawes, and so she became an Owle. Then she cried and screeched like a bird of that kinde, and willing to proove her force, mooved her selfe from the ground by little and little, til at last she flew quite away.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O V I I I At the pemive hour of sunset the souls devoutly join in their evening hymn, with eyes uplifted to heaven. As though to remind them that while outside the gate of the true Purgatory their wills are not intrinsically above the reach of temptation, but are guarded only by the express intervention and protection of divine grace, two angels descend and stand on either bank of the dell to guard them against the serpent who would enter this counterpart of Eden. At the mention of the serpent Dante shrinks close up to Virgil; but Sordello invites them to descend, as the twilight deepens, into the little vale, where Dante meets his friend Nino, Judge of Gallura, and in answer to his question tells him that he is still in the first life; wnereon both he and Sordello start back in amazement. Nino summons Conrad Malaspina to witness this wonder of God’s grace, and then turning to Dante again, implores him to obtain the prayers of his daughter; for his wife, betrothed to a Visconte, has surely forgotten him. Dante, looking to heaven, notes thai in this season of repose the four stars that represent the moral virtues have vanished behind the mountain, and the three that represent the theological virtues shine in the sky. This is one of the many indications that the proper business of Purgatory is ethical, the recovery of the sound moral will. The season in which the souls may actually ascend is the one over which the four stars preside. Meanwhile the dreaded serpent approaches, but the angels swoop like celestial hawks upon it, and having put it to flight return to their posts. During the whole assault Conrad has not ceased to gaze on Dante; and he now asks him for news of his country of Valdemagra, and of his kinsfolk there; to which Dante replies that he has never visited those parts, but the noble character of the Malaspini rings through all Europe; whereon he receives the significant comment that ere six years are gone be shall know the worth of the Malaspini better than reportingly. ’TWAS NOW the hour 1 that turns back the desire of Jiose who sail the seas and melts their heart, that day when they have said to their sweet friends adieu, and that pierces the new pilgrim with love, if from afar he hears the chimes which seem to mourn for the dying day; when I began to annul my sense of hearing, and to gaze on one of the spirits, uprisen, that craved a listening with its hand. It joined and lifted up both its palms, fixing its eyes towards the east, as though ’twere saying to God: “For aught else I care not.” “Te lucis ante” 2 so devoutly proceeded from its mouth, and with such sweet music, that it rapt me from my very sense of self.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  incessu gestuosi, Graecanicam saltaturi Pyrrhicam dispositis ordinationibus decoros ambitus inerrabant, nunc in orbem rotatum flexuosi, nunc in obliquam seriem connexi et in quadratum patorem cuneati et in catervae discidium separati. At ubi discursus reciproci multinodas ambages tubae terminalis cantus explieuit, aulaeo subducto et complicitis siparis scaena disponitur. 30 Erat mons ligneus ad instar incliti montis illius quem vates Homerus Idaeum cecinit, sublimi in- structus fabrica, consitus virectis et vivis arboribus, summo cacumine de manibus fabri fonte man- ante, fluviales aquas eliquans. Capellae pauculae tondebant herbulas, et in modum Paridis Phrygii pastoris barbaricis amiculis humeris defluentibus pulchre indusiatus adolescens, aurea tiara contecto capite, pecuarium simulabat magisterium. Adest luculentus puer nudus, nisi quod ephebica chlamida sinistrum tegebat humerum, flavis crinibus usque- quaque conspicuus, et inter comas eius aureae pinnulae cognatione simili sociatae prominebant, quem caduceum et virgula Mercurium indicabant. Is saltatorie procurrens malumque bracteis inauratum dextra gerens, ei qui Paris videbatur porrigit, quid 526 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X of excellent beauty and attired gorgeously, dancing and moving in comely order, according to the dis- position of the Grecian Pyrrhic dance; for sometime they would trip round together, sometime in length obliquely, sometime divide themselves in four parts, and sometime loose hands and group them on every side. But when the last sound of the trumpet gave warning that every man should retire to his place from those knots and circlings about, then was the curtain taken away and all the hangings rolled apart, and then began the triumph to appear. First there was a hill of wood, not much unlike that famous hill which the poet Homer called Ida, reared up exceeding high and garnished about with all sort of green verdures and lively trees, from the top whereof ran down a clear and fresh fountain, made by the skilful hands of the artificer, distilling out waters below. There were there a few young and tender goats, plucking and feeding daintily on the budding grass, and then came a young man, a shepherd representing Paris, richly arrayed with vestments of barbary,! having a mitre of gold upon his head, and seeming as though he kept the goats. After him ensued another fair youth all naked, saving that his left shoulder was covered with a rich cloak such as young men do wear, and his head shining with golden hair, and as it hung down you might perceive through it two little wings of gold; and him the rod called Caduceus and the wand did shew to be Mercury. He bare in his right hand an apple of gold, and with a seemly and dancing gait went towards him that represented Paris, and after that he had delivered him the apple, he made a sign t je, un-Greek. Paris would naturally be represented in Phrygian costume. n 527 31 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Now, son, expands, now distends, the virtue which proceeds from the heart of the begetter, where nature intends all human members; but how from an animal it becomes a human being 5 thou seest not yet; this is that point which made one wiser than thou to err; so that by his teaching he made the intellectual faculty separate from the soul, because he saw no organ occupied by it. 6 Open thy breast to the truth which is coming, and know that so soon as the organization of the brain is perfect in the embyro, the First Mover turns him to it, rejoicing over such handiwork of nature, and breathes into it a new spirit with virtue filled, which draws into its substance that which it finds active there, and becomes one single soul, that lives, and feels, and turns round upon itself. 7 And that thou mayst marvel less at my words, look at the sun’s heat, that is made wine when combined with the juice which flows from the vine. And when Lachesis has no more thread, 8 it frees itself from the flesh, and bears away in potency both the human and the divine; the other powers, the whole of them mute; memory, intelligence and will, 9 keener far in action than they were before.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Here my memory doth outrun my wit, for that cross so flashed forth Christ I may not find example worthy. But whoso taketh his cross and followeth Christ shall yet forgive me what I leave unsaid, when he shall see Christ lighten in that glow. From horn to horn, from summit unto base, were moving lights that sparkled mightily in meeting one another and in passing. So we see here, straight, twisted, swift, or slow, changing appearance, long or short, the motes of bodies moving through the ray which doth sometimes streak the shade, which folk with skill and art contrive for their defence. And as viol and harp tuned in harmony of many cords, make sweet chiming to one by whom the notes are not apprehended, so from the lights that there appeared to me was gathered on the cross a strain that rapt me albeit I followed not the hymn. Well I discerned it was of lofty praise, for there came to me “Rise thou up and conquer,” as to who understandeth not, but heareth. And so was I enamoured there, that up till then there had been naught that me had bound with so sweet chains. Perchance my saying may appear too bold, as slighting the delight of those fair eyes, gazing in which my longing hath repose. But he who doth advise him how the living signets of all beauty have ever more effect in higher region, and that I there had not yet turned to them, may find excuse from my own accusation, brougnt that I may excuse it; and may see that I speak truth; for the sacred joy is not excluded here, which as it mounteth groweth more unalloyed. 1. Solomon. Cf. Canto x. 2. Cf. Inf. vi. Aquinas says: “The soul without the body hath not the perfection of its nature.” 3. Cf. Canto xxviii. 4. Bernard writes on the resurrection of the body in his treatise On Loving God. It is his consistent doctrine that the blessedness of heaven is found in the complete absorption of the soul in God, self-consciousness being, as it were, replaced not by unconsciousness but by God-consciousness. “But if, as is not denied, they [the disembodied spirits of the blessed] would fain have received their bodies again, or at any rate desire and hope to receive them, it is clear beyond question that they are not yet utterly transmuted from themselves, since it is admitted that there is still somewhat proper to themselves toward which, though it be but a little, their thought is deflected. Therefore, until death be swallowed up in victory, and the perennial light so invade the boundaries of darkness and take possession of them on every side that the celestial glory shine forth even in the very bodies, the souls cannot utterly empty themselves and pass over into God, since they are even yet bound to their bodies, if not by life and sense, yet by natural affection, because of which they have neither the will nor the power to be consummated without them. And so, before the restoration of the bodies there cannot be that lapse of the souls [into God) which is their perfect and supreme state. N01 is it any marvel if the body, now of glory, seems to confer somewhat upon the spirit, since even in its infirmity and mortality it of a surety was of no small avail to it. Oh how true did he speak who said that all things work together for the good of them that love God! To the soul that loveth God, its body availeth in its infirmity, availeth in its death, availeth in its resurrection; first for the fruit of penitence, second for repose, third for consummation. And rightly doth the soul not will to be made perfect without that which it feeleth hath in every state served it in good things.” 5. This makes it clear that this third circle specially represents the Holy Spirit, and so completes the symbol of the Trinity- Cf. Canto xxxiii. In its dimness at first and brightness afterwards, there may be a reference to the difficulty that has always been experienced in finding an adequate philosophical basis for the doctrine of the Third Person of the Trinity corresponding to the clearness of the distinction between the conceptions of God in his essence (Father) and God as manifested (Son); whereas to the more strictly theological speculation, or rather to the religious experience, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (God regarded not as the Creator or the Redeemer, but as the Inspirer) has always had a special vividness. Cf. Canto xii, note 29. 6. Cf. Conv. ii. 15, a passage interesting on many grounds.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  When they descended into the flower, from rank to rank they proffered of the peace and of the ardour 1 which they acquired as they fanned their sides, nor did the interposing of so great a flying multitude, betwixt the flower and that which was above, impede the vision nor the splendour; for the divine light so penetrateth through the universe, in measure of its worthiness, that nought hath power to oppose it. This realm, secure and gladsome, 2 thronged with ancient folk and new, had look and love all turned unto one mark. O threefold light, which in a single star, glinting upon their sight doth so content them, look down upon our storm! If the Barbarians coming from such region as every day is spanned by Helice, 3 wheeling with her son towards whom she yearneth, 4 on seeing Rome and her mighty works—what time the Lateran transcended mortal things—were stupefied; 5 what then of me, who to the divine from the human, to the eternal from time had passed, and from Florence to a people just and sane, with what stupor must I needs be filled! verily, what with it and what with joy, my will was to hear nought and to be dumb myself. As the pilgrim who doth draw fresh life in the temple of his vow as he gazeth, and already hopeth to tell again how it be placed, so, traversing the living light, I led mine eyes along the ranks, now up, now down, and now round circling. I saw countenances suasive of love, adorned by another’s light and their own smile, and gestures graced with every dignity. The general form of Paradise my glance had already taken in, in its entirety, and on no part as yet had my sight paused; and I turned me with rekindled will to question my Lady concerning things whereanent my mind was in suspense. One thing I purposed, and another answered me; I thought to see Beatrice, and I saw an elder clad like the folk in glory. His eyes and cheeks were overpoured with benign gladness, in kindly gesture as befits a tender father. And: “Where is she?” all sudden I exclaimed; whereunto he: “To bring thy desire to its goal Beatrice moved me from my place; 6 and if thou look up to the circle third from the highest rank, thou shalt re-behold her, on the throne her merits have assigned to her.” Without answering I lifted up mine eyes and saw her, making to herself a crown as she reflected from her the eternal rays. From that region which thundereth most high, no mortal eye is so far distant, though plunged most deep within the sea, as there from Beatrice was my sight; but that wrought not upon me, for her image descended not to me mingled with any medium.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  But since lightning ceases even as it cometh, and that enduring, brighter and brighter shone, in my mind I said: “What thing is this?” And a sweet melody ran through the luminous air; wherefore righteous zeal made me reprove Eve’s daring, who, there where heaven and earth obeyed, a woman alone and but then formed, did not bear to remain under any veil, 2 under which, if she had been devout, I should have tasted those ineffable joys ere this, and for a longer time. While I was going amid so many first-fruits of the eternal pleasance, all enrapt and still yearning for more joys, the air in front of us under the green boughs, became even as a flaming fire to us, and the sweet sound was heard as a chant. O holy, holy, Virgins, if e’er for you I have endured fastings, cold, or vigils, occasion spurs me to crave my reward. Now ’tis meet that Helicon for me stream forth and Urania aid me with her choir to set in verse things hard to conceive. 3 A little farther on, a delusive semblance of seven trees of gold 4 was caused by the long space that was yet between us and them; but when I had drawn so nigh to them that the general similitude of things, 5 which deceives the senses, lost not by distance any of its features, the faculty 6 which prepares material for reason distinguished them as candlesticks, 4 even as they were, and in the words of the chant, “Hosannah.” 7 Above, the fair pageant was flaming forth, brighter far than the moon in clear midnight sky in her mid month. Full of wonderment I turned me to the good Virgil, and he answered me with a face not less charged with amazement. Then I turned my countenance back to the sublime things, which moved towards us so slowly, that they would be vanquished by new- wedded brides. The lady cried to me: “Wherefore art thou so ardent only for the vision of these bright lights, and heedest not that which comes after them?” Then I beheld people, clad in white, following as after their leaders; and whiteness so pure here never was with us. Bright shone the water on my left flank, and reflected to me my left side, if I gazed therein, even as a mirror. When I was so placed on my bank that the river alone kept me distant, to see better I gave halt to my steps, and I saw the flames advance, leaving the air behind them painted, and of trailing pennants they had the semblance; so that the air above remained streaked with seven bands, all in those colours whereof the sun makes his bow, and Delia her girdle. These banners streamed to the rearward far beyond my sight, and as I might judge, the outermost were ten paces apart.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  It was also a deliverance from my father. Since he slept all day, I seldom saw him. But sometimes my mother would say, “Your father’s awake. Why don’t you go in and rub his back?” Reluctantly I’d enter the bedroom, in which the drawn curtains stained the late afternoon light. On the bed, face down, lay my naked father under sheets, like a sea monster beached and sick in a tide pool of foam. The mingled smells of night sweat and stale cigar smoke awed me; I toddled out and told my mother he was still sleeping. “No, no,” she said, smiling and guiding me back in. I looked around the room from which I was usually barred. Everything was silent except for his breathing and the tick of his gold pocket watch on the night table beside him. Within my father’s half-closed closet I could see his shoes. I intuited one shoe from no more than a single burning vertical line of light that followed me by traveling glassily across the black leather rondure above the heel. Floating up there, high above the shoes, hung a smoky cashmere Olympus of all his discarded but potential selves: his suits. Now to the bed. I sat beside him and lightly patted his back. He murmured encouragingly and I worked my way up the thickly padded torso to the shoulders. The pores looked huge, some of them specked with black. A film of sweat seemed to be methodically seeping out of him; I sniffed my right hand; it smelled funny. My job seemed to be to creep over him as a lone climber, with nothing but rope and crampons, might assault a glacier. If he was fully awake he didn’t let on, as though a state of torpor were all a father owed a very little son—or at least all the son would accept from such a massive father. He was entirely naked but shrouded up to the waist in sheets. Whereas my sheets were small, sufficient for my cot where I slept in the governing shade and disturbingly intimate smell of my black nurse, these sheets were sculpturally white, vast and twisted, testimony to adult nights of passion or strife.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The November night went on and on endlessly, exactly like that ghost train in my story, dim rolling stock gliding slowly over the clicking place where the tracks switched, the constant bass hum of that somnolent progress passing over that one tenor break, the riveted and rusting bulkheads emblazoned with the mud-spattered logos of distant places, everything stately as destiny. I could hear the night’s freight cars clicking past, and the sky shook out its hair, silver clouds backlit by the moon. In this measured silence Rachel told me about her own conversion from Judaism to the Church of England, an enlightenment she attributed to her chance reading of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters and the simultaneous revelation that Jesus had quite literally died for her sins. She spoke with peculiar emphasis about the nails in Christ’s wrists and hands and she even drew a little sketch on the telephone message pad of how she thought the nails had looked (she’d been doing some research into Aramaic pig iron). When I nodded respectfully but with a visible mote of scorn in my eye, she quite accurately read my thoughts. “Oh, I see, you think I’m some no ’count Baptist, huh, some raving redneck?” She spoke with an unaccustomed crudeness. “Well, I respect your religion,” I spluttered, “but I’m a bit of an agnostic personally and I—” “You’re full of shit,” she told me. She was looking right into my eyes. She was breathing emphatically, as though breath were psychic italic marks. She’d pushed her pageboy back from her face and shoved the sleeve of her madras blouse up to expose a pale biceps. She was halfway up out of her chair and leaning toward me. “Shit,” she said, her eyes darting for a second up to some invisible cue card before fixing me again. I felt she was torn between shyness and holy fury. “Jesus died for you,” she said, “and that’s something the greatest poets, Eliot and Dante and Donne, that’s something they knew—and they weren’t Florida crackers.” “Bravo,” DeQuincey whispered in awe. He turned to me with an isn’t-this-gal-great? grin—“She’s done it again, she’s really done it this time”—and he shook his head in admiring disbelief at the sheer wacky brilliance of his wife’s spiritual daredevilry. Exhausted by her performance, she shrank back into her chair, then rose and toddled off to the dark bedroom beyond. The moment DeQuincey and I were alone he stiffened, which I attributed to the embarrassment he must be feeling about his confession to me of his homosexual past. Not that he was attracted to me, nor I to him, but the possibility of attraction existed now and our sexual self-consciousness richocheted like sunlight in the Hall of Mirrors.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Those other loves which course around them are named Thrones of the divine aspect, because they brought to its completion the first ternary. 12 And thou shouldst know that all have their delight in measure as their sight sinketh more deep into the truth wherein every intellect is stilled. Hence may be seen how the being blessed is founded on the act that seeth, not that which loveth, which after followeth; 13 and the measure of sight is the merit which grace begetteth and the righteous will; and thus from rank to rank the progress goeth. The second ternary which thus flowereth in this eternal spring which nightly Aries doth not despoil, 14 unceasingly unwintereth 15 Hosanna with three melodies which sound in the three orders of gladness, whereof it is three-plied. In that hierarchy are the three divinities, first Dominations, and then Virtues; the third order is of Powers. Then in the two last-save-one up-leapings, Principalities and Archangels whirl; the last consisteth all of Angelic sports. These orders all gaze upward, and downward have such conquering might that toward God all are drawn and all draw. And Dionysius with such yearning set himself to contemplate these orders that he named them and distinguished them as I. But Gregory afterward departed from him, 16 wherefore so soon as he opened his eye m this heaven he smiled at his own self. And if so hidden truth was uttered forth by mortal upon earth, I would not have thee marvel; for he who saw it here above revealed it to him, with much beside of truth about these circles.” 17 1. Mine own = “eyes.” “The heavens declare the glory of God,” Psalm xix. 1; and whoso looketh at them aright perceives that glory. 2. “And it has been shown that this Being [the Divine Being] hath not magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible” (Aristotle). 3. Cf. Canto x. 4. Iris = the rainbow. Cf. Canto xii. 5. thereof, i.e., of the pure spark. 6. “Now from such a principle heaven and earth depend” (Aristotle). Wallace, 39, note 1. 7. “It is not contained in space” Cf. Canto xxx. 8. The Seraphs, who “see more of the First Cause than any other angelic nature” (Conv. ii. 6) and therefore must needs love more. Cf. Canto xxvi. 9. “If thou consider the intensive quantity and not the extensive. For extensive quantity is corporeal and apparent, whereas intensive quantity is spiritual and unapparent” (Benvenuto). 10. North-east, the sky-clearing wind, as opposed to north-west, the sky-clouding wind. The usage of the Latin writers (e.g., Boethius and Virgil) leaves no room to doubt that this is the meaning. 11. If one grain of corn were reckoned for the first square of a chess-board, two for the second, four for the third, etc., it may be seen by a calculation which a logarithmic table will make extremely easy, that the total will be about 18 1/2 million million million. 12.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  For I am not onely of kindred to thy mother by blood, but also by nourice, for wee both descended of the line of Plutarch, lay in one belly, sucked the same paps, and were brought up together in one house. And further there is no other difference betweene us two, but that she is married more honourably than I: I am the same Byrrhena whom you have often heard named among your friends at home: wherfore I pray you to take so much pains as to come with me to my house, and use it as your owne. At whose words I was partly abashed and sayd, God forbid Cosin that I should forsake myne Host Milo without any reasonable cause; but verily I will, as often as I have occasion to passe by thy house, come and see how you doe. And while we were talking thus together, little by little wee came to her house, and behold the gates of the same were very beautifully set with pillars quadrangle wise, on the top wherof were placed carved statues and images, but principally the Goddesse of Victory was so lively and with such excellencie portrayed and set forth, that you would have verily have thought that she had flyed, and hovered with her wings hither and thither. On the contrary part, the image of the Goddesse Diana was wrought in white marble, which was a marvellous sight to see, for shee seemed as though the winde did blow up her garments, and that she did encounter with them that came into the house. On each side of her were Dogs made of stone, that seemed to menace with their fiery eyes, their pricked eares, their bended nosethrils, their grinning teeth in such sort that you would have thought they had bayed and barked. An moreover (which was a greater marvel to behold) the excellent carver and deviser of this worke had fashioned the dogs to stand up fiercely with their former feet, and their hinder feet on the ground ready to fight. Behinde the back of the goddesse was carved a stone in manner of a Caverne, environed with mosse, herbes, leaves, sprigs, green branches and bowes, growing in and about the same, insomuch that within the stone it glistered and shone marvellously, under the brim of the stone hanged apples and grapes carved finely, wherein Art envying Nature, shewed her great cunning. For they were so lively set out, that you would have thought if Summer had been come, they might have bin pulled and eaten; and while I beheld the running water, which seemed to spring and leap under the feet of the goddesse, I marked the grapes which hanged in the water, which were like in every point to the grapes of the vine, and seemed to move and stir by the violence of the streame.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  His merit and clout stem from his cerebral allusiveness, his physical beauty and sexual precocity. Like all prep school boys his age, he has been forced to read Death in Venice . But our young man’s view of the work remains very much his own: I … luxuriated in the tale of a dignified grown-up who died for the love of an indifferent boy my age. That was the sort of power I wanted over an older man. And I awakened to the idea that a great world existed in which things happened and people changed, took risks—more, took notice: a world so sensitive, like a grand piano, that even a step or a word could awaken vibrations in its taut strings. Music is still a distant father. And yet, who else in literature has ever identified, not with Thomas Mann’s deranged older Venetian tourist, the poor man, his face streaming rivulets of orange hair dye, but instead with the roué’s secret love, that Polish boy-aristocrat self-sated, ringlets tossing as he looks back over the shoulder of his form-fitting middy? Our present narrator’s merit depends upon his learnedness and his social wit; both these require and facilitate his endless mutability. Whereas the boy heroes of Victorian novels were praised most when they showed unbending ethical standards, when demonstrating their gift for withstanding cold showers and colder lakes, while evincing their willingness to forgo sexual pleasure till Marriage sanctified it. A Boy’s Own Story is hardly a traditional coming-of-age novel in which some innocent is tested then formed by a gallery of his elders. Instead, this preternaturally observant (and therefore dubious) narrator often seems the oldest person in any company. And yet his own gangliness, his dread of making mistakes, offer us the deadpan humor that makes this work so mortifyingly funny. As in Buster Keaton’s films, the hero is forever being thrust into professional and social stances for which he has no training. —Picture Keaton trapped aboard a runaway locomotive headed downhill at terrifying speed, then retrofit this as Buster during his first bisexual three-way—a Buster flummoxed yet neutral-faced and, in the end, limber, ingenious, stoically accommodating. Both these protagonists somehow survive all such trials. Hilarity springs from their abrupt on-the-job training, their over-clever solutions to problems all too plain. We must pull for White’s young hero as he places himself in ever more perilous positions, going after one idealized new friend then the next. What he fails to admit about himself is this: No one alive can resist his campaign to win them. Once he decides, they are his. The sole figure divinely outfitted to withstand such armor-piercing charm? His own father, of course.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  A sweet breeze, itself invariable, was striking on my brow with no greater force than a gentle wind, before which the branches, responsively trembling, were all bending toward that quarter, where the holy mount casts its first shadow; 1 yet not so far bent aside from their erect state, that the little birds in the tops ceased to practise their very art; but, singing, with full gladness they welcomed the first breezes within the leaves, which were murmuring the burden to their songs; even such as from bough to bough is gathered through the pine wood on Chiassi’s shore, when Æolus looses Sirocco forth. 2 Already my slow steps had carried me on so far within the ancient wood, that I could not see whence I had entered; and lo, a stream took from me further passage which, toward the left with its little waves, bent the grass which sprang forth on its bank. All the waters which here are purest, would seem to have some mixture in them, compared with that, which hideth nought; albeit full darkly it flows beneath the everlasting shade, which never lets sun, nor moon, beam there. With feet I halted and with mine eyes did pass beyond the rivulet, to gaze upon the great diversity of the tender blossoms; and there to me appeared, even as on a sudden something appears which, through amazement, sets all other thought astray, a lady 3 solitary, who went along singing, and culling flower after flower, wherewith all her path was painted. “Pray, fair lady, who at love’s beams dost warm thee, if I may believe outward looks, which are wont to be a witness of the heart, may it please thee to draw forward,” said I to her, “towards this stream, so far that I may understand what thou singest. Thou makest me to remember, where and what Proserpine was in the time her mother lost her, and she lost the spring.” 4 As a lady who is dancing turns her round with feet close to the ground and to each other, and hardly putteth foot before foot, she turned toward me upon the red and upon the yellow flowerets, not otherwise than a virgin that droppeth her modest eyes; and made my prayers satisfied, drawing so near that the sweet sound reached me with its meaning. Soon as she was there, where the grass is already bathed by the waves of the fair river, she vouchsafed to raise her eyes to me. I do not believe that so bright a light shone forth under the eyelids of Venus, pierced by her son, against all his wont. 5 She smiled from the right bank opposite, gathering more flowers with her hands, which the high land bears without seed.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X X I The redeemed are seen, rank above rank, as the petals of the divine rose; and the angels flying between them and God minister peace and ardour to them, for passion is here peaceful and peace passionate. Nor does this angelic multitude intercept the piercing light of God nor the piercing sight of the redeemed. The realm, whose joy no longer needs the stimulus supplied by the fear of losing it or the effort to retain it, centres its look and love on the triune God. Oh! that he would look down on the storm-tossed earth; from the most evil quarter of which Dante coming to that region is smitten dumb by the contrast. Mutely gazing, as the pilgrim at the shrine of his pilgrimage, thinking to tell again what he has seen, Dante after a time turns to question Beatrice, but finds her gone. Bernard, the type of contemplation, or immediate vision, has come at Beatrice’s request, to bring Dante to the goal of his desire, by directing his eyes to that actual vision of divine things in their true forms for which her patient instructions have prepared him. And he first directs his sight to Beatrice herself in her place of glory. To her he pours out his gratitude, while imploring her further protection and praying that he may live and die worthy of her love; whereon she smiles upon him and then turns to God in whom alone is true and abiding union of human souls. Dante now learns who his guide is and gazes with awe-struck wonder on the features of the saint who had seen God while yet on earth; then, at his prompting, he looks above and sees the glory of Mary like the glory of the dawn, faming amongst countless angels—each one having his own specific beauty of light and gesture—and gladdening all the saints. IN FORM, then, of a white rose displayed itself to me that sacred soldiery which in his blood Christ made his spouse; but the other, which as it flieth seeth and doth sing his glory who enamoureth it, and the excellence which hath made it what it is, like to a swarm of bees which doth one while plunge into the flowers and another while wend back to where its toil is turned to sweetness, ever descended into the great flower adorned with so many leaves, and reascended thence to where its love doth ceaseless make sojourn. They had their faces all of living flame, and wings of gold, and the rest so white that never snow reacheth such limit.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  4 All were saying: “Benedictus qui venis”; 5 and, strewing flowers above and around, “Manibus o date lilia plenis.” 6 Ere now have I seen, at dawn of day, the eastern part all rosy red, and the rest of heaven adorned with fair clear sky, and the face of the sun rise shadowed, so that by the tempering of the mists the eye long time endured him: so within a cloud of flowers, which rose from the angelic hands and fell down again within and without, olive-crowned over a white veil, a lady appeared to me, clad, under a green mantle, with hue of living flame. 7 And my spirit, that now so long a time had passed, since, trembling in her presence, it had been broken down with awe, without having further knowledge by mine eyes through hidden virtue which went out from her, felt the mighty power of ancient love. Soon as on my sight the lofty virtue smote, which already had pierced me ere I was out of my boyhood, I turned me to the left with the trust with which the little child runs to his mother when he is frightened or when he is afflicted, to say to Virgil: “Less than a drachm of blood is left in me that trembleth not; I recognize the tokens of the ancient flame.” 8 But Virgil had left us bereft of himself, Virgil sweetest Father, Virgil to whom for my weal I gave me up; nor did all that our ancient mother lost, 9 avail to keep my dew-washed cheeks 10 from turning dark again with tears. “Dante, 11 for that Virgil goeth away, weep not yet, weep not yet, for thou must weep for other sword.” Even as an admiral, who at stern and at bow, comes to see the folk that man the other ships, and heartens them to brave deeds, so on the left side of the car, when I turned me at sound of my name, which of necessity here is recorded, 11 I saw the lady, who first appeared to me veiled beneath the angelic festival, directing her eyes to me on this side the stream. Albeit the veil which fell from her head, crowned with Minerva’s leaves, did not let her appear manifest, queenlike, in bearing yet stern, she continued, like one who speaks and holdeth back the hottest words till the last: “Look at me well; verily am I, verily am I Beatrice. How didst thou deign to draw nigh the mount? knewest thou not that here man is happy?” Mine eyes drooped down to the clear fount; but beholding me therein, I drew them back to the grass, so great a shame weighed down my brow. So doth the mother seem stern to her child, as she seemed to me; for the savour of harsh pity tasteth of bitterness. She was silent, and straightway the angels sang: In te, Domine, speravi”; but beyond “pedes meos” they passed not.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  As in the calm full moons Trivia smileth amongst the eternal nymphs who paint the heaven in each recess, I saw, thousands of lamps surmounting, one sun which all and each enkindled, as doth our own the things we see above; 2 and through the living light outglowed the shining substance so bright upon my vision that it endured it not. O Beatrice, sweet guide and dear! She said to me: “That which o’ercometh thee is power against which nought hath defence. Therein is the wisdom and the might 3 which oped the pathways betwixt heaven and earth, for which there erst had been so long desire.” Even as fire is unbarred from the cloud, because it so dilateth that it hath not space within, and counter to its nature dasheth down to earth, so my mind, grown greater ’mid these feasts, forth issued from itself, and what it then became knoweth not to recall.... “Open thine eyes and look on what I am; thou hast seen things by which thou art made mighty to sustain my smile.” I was as one who cometh to himself from a forgotten vision, and doth strive in vain to bring it back unto his mind, when I heard this proffer, worthy of so great gratitude, as never to be blotted from the book that doth record the past. If now there were to sound all of those tongues which Polyhymnia with her sisters made richest with their sweetest milk, it would not mount, in aiding me, unto the thousandth of the truth, hymning the sacred smile, and how deep-clear it made the sacred aspect. 4 And therefore, figuring Paradise, needs must the sacred poem make a leap, as who should find his pathway intercepted. But whoso thinketh of the weighty theme and of the mortal shoulder which hath charged itself therewith, will think no blame if under it it trembleth. It is no voyage for a little bark, that which my daring keel cleaveth as it goeth, nor for a helmsman who doth spare himselt. “Wherefore doth my face so enamour thee that thou turnest thee not to the fair garden which flowereth beneath the rays of Christ? There is the Rose wherein the Word Divine made itself flesh; there are the Lilies at whose odour the good path was taken.” So Beatrice: and I, who to her counsels was all eager, again surrendered me to the conflict of the feeble brows. As under the sun’s ray, which issueth pure through a broken cloud, ere now mine eyes have seen a meadow full of flowers, when themselves covered by the shade; so beheld I many a throng of splendours, glowed on from above by ardent rays, beholding not the source whence came the glowings. O benign power which dost so imprint them! thou hadst thyself uplifted to yield place there for mine eyes that lacked in power.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  The den was Miri’s favorite room in Natalie’s house, not least because of the seventeen-inch Zenith, inside a pale wood cabinet, the biggest television Miri had ever seen. Her grandmother had a set but it was small with rabbit ears and sometimes the picture was snowy. The furniture in the Osners’ den all matched, the beige sofas and club chairs arranged around a Danish modern coffee table, with its neat stacks of magazines—Life, Look, Scientific American, National Geographic. A cloth bag with a wood handle, holding Mrs. Osner’s latest needlepoint project, sat on one of the chairs. A complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica took up three shelves of the bookcase, along with family photos, including one of Natalie at summer camp, in jodhpurs, atop a sleek black horse, holding her ribbons, and another of her little sister, Fern, perched on a pony. In one corner of the room was a game table with a chess set standing ready, not that she and Natalie knew how to play, but Natalie’s older brother, Steve, did and sometimes he and Dr. Osner would play for hours. She and Natalie sang “White Christmas” along with Kate Smith, then oohed and aahed with the crowd, with the whole country, when the tree was lit, signaling the start of the holiday season. Later, Miri found out her mother had been there to see it live, one of the two thousand spectators. Rusty told Miri she’d been pushed and shoved as the crowd pressed forward until she’d decided it wasn’t worth the effort and left to catch her train to Elizabeth. She could see the tree any old day on her way home from work. —FOR MIRI the real start of the holiday season was her mother’s birthday. Miri was sure Rusty had felt robbed as a kid, having a birthday so close to Hanukkah, but Rusty assured her that no, she’d never minded having a holiday birthday. It made it more special. This year Hanukkah fell at the same time as Christmas, something Miri thought should be the rule, not the exception. She vowed she wouldn’t wait until the last minute to do her shopping, but here she was on Saturday, the day before her mother’s birthday, on a mission that took her downtown to Nia’s Lingerie, a shop on Broad Street. Neither she nor her second best friend, Suzanne Dietz, who smelled of Noxzema year-round and had the best skin of any girl in their crowd, had ever set foot in Nia’s. Just the word lingerie was enough to send them into fits of laughter. It sounded like something Mrs. Osner would say in her southern drawl instead of underwear. Underwear was what Miri and Suzanne bought at Levy Brothers, one of two department stores on Broad Street. Underwear was white cotton. But lingerie —lingerie was something else. Not that there was anything suggestive in Nia’s windows. Not a bra or girdle in sight. And nothing black.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I looked around the room from which I was usually barred. Everything was silent except for his breathing and the tick of his gold pocket watch on the night table beside him. Within my father’s half-closed closet I could see his shoes. I intuited one shoe from no more than a single burning vertical line of light that followed me by traveling glassily across the black leather rondure above the heel. Floating up there, high above the shoes, hung a smoky cashmere Olympus of all his discarded but potential selves: his suits. Now to the bed. I sat beside him and lightly patted his back. He murmured encouragingly and I worked my way up the thickly padded torso to the shoulders. The pores looked huge, some of them specked with black. A film of sweat seemed to be methodically seeping out of him; I sniffed my right hand; it smelled funny. My job seemed to be to creep over him as a lone climber, with nothing but rope and crampons, might assault a glacier. If he was fully awake he didn’t let on, as though a state of torpor were all a father owed a very little son—or at least all the son would accept from such a massive father. He was entirely naked but shrouded up to the waist in sheets. Whereas my sheets were small, sufficient for my cot where I slept in the governing shade and disturbingly intimate smell of my black nurse, these sheets were sculpturally white, vast and twisted, testimony to adult nights of passion or strife. Later, an hour later, he’d descend to his squire’s breakfast, shaved and dressed in a white shirt, silk tie and double-breasted suit, his eyes young, sharp and intelligent in a head I’d seen earlier from an odd, wounded angle. He was now polite to the cook, deferential to my mother and lighthearted and cutting with my sister and me—he who’d been nothing but a felled deity exuding a cold sweat an hour before. This transformation of the mystery man in the tangle of sheets into the bantering gentleman I attributed to the rites of the bathroom mirror and the bracing smell of carbolic soap and witch hazel. How he’d study himself in that mirror, both taps running full blast, as though out of the haze on the glass his true identity might emerge under a swipe of the towel—a cutting of the self if not the full blossoming branch. Dad had a friend of sorts—to him possibly a very minor business associate—whom my sister and I worshipped because he gave us money. “Dollar Bill,” we called him, since he was William and always gave us a dollar each. Though we wanted for nothing and we dimly sensed that our way of living cost many, many dollars, this unseen cash meant nothing to us compared to the actual loot Dollar Bill handed over.