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 A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  It can even be regarded as the admission of some sort of failure. And yet on my third birthday a professional marionette troupe performed Sleeping Beauty in our living room before an audience of my mother’s lady friends’ children, imported for the occasion. The plates from which we kids had eaten cake and vanilla ice cream were collected and the curtains drawn, creating night in day, a magic trick I associated only with afternoon naps. It was a warm, sniffling, giggling audience. A little raised stage framed in blue cloth had been erected at one end of the room. The toe of a big brown shoe protruding from beneath the hem of the proscenium draperies kept in mind real dimensions only for a few more minutes; soon the reduced scale of the stage had engulfed me, as though I’d been precipitated through a beaker and sublimated into another substance altogether. I had never heard the story before. The curse of Carabosse, the Princess’s mishap in the Rose Garden, her long sleep and the funny, frozen postures of the courtiers, the arrival of the Prince and the joyous nuptials all transported me to a world of boldly modeled faces from which character could be readily deduced, a world in which menace foreshadowed disaster, evil was defeated and love crowned. In this lighted cube my emotions coalesced because they were given a firm bounding line and because things devolved with the logic of art, not life. For if the imaginary playmates were insubstantial, the overly material people who surrounded me were opaque. Now only these miniature figures—with a hooked nose punctuated by a wart, a skein of lustrous blond hair, lace cuffs, velvet trains—only they seemed lit from within and legible as they floated up out of the bottomless floor, gestured wildly, gazed as though blind in only the general direction of an interlocutor, shook with tearless sobs, growled or piped, then flew at one another for hearty, back-slapping embraces until they were whipped up into the wings. That was the secret of the imagination—its creations were feeble only to the maker but stronger than life itself to the observer. When the curtains were opened again and the puppeteers—balding husband and bespectacled wife—emerged with shy grins and joined the party, a deep sadness sounded inside me. When I was seven my mother divorced my father. My sister and I, aroused by the declamatory tone of the grownups downstairs, sat in pajamas on the front stairs and listened to the speeches. How odd and thrilling that where we’d live and go to school could be decided in this manner.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  However, Katie is not the type of girl to give up easily. Today is the fourth class. She is prepared. Last week, they were given a worksheet with photocopies of the two pictures that would be under discussion today. Katie has spent a week staring at them, thinking deeply about them, and has made notes in her notebook. The first painting is Jacob Wrestling with the Angel , . Katie has thought about the vigorous impasto that works counter-intuitively to create that somnolent, dreamy atmosphere. She makes notes on the angel’s resemblance to Rembrandt’s pretty son, Titus; on the perspective lines that create the illusions of frozen movement; on the personal dynamic between the angel and Jacob. When she looks at this painting she sees a violent struggle that is, at the same time, a loving embrace. It reminds her, in its homoeroticism, of Caravaggio (since beginning at Wellington she finds a lot of things homoerotic). She adores the earthy colours – Jacob’s simple damask, and the angel’s off-white farm-boy smock. Caravaggio always gave his angels the darkly resplendent wings of eagles; by contrast, Rembrandt’s angel is no eagle but he’s no dove either. No bird Katie has ever seen really has these imprecise, shabby, dun-coloured wings. The wings seem almost an afterthought, as if to remind us that this painting is meant to be of matters biblical, other-worldly. But in Rembrandt’s Protestant heart, so Katie believes, the battle depicted here is really for a man’s earthly soul, for his human faith  the anatomy lesson in the world. Katie, who lost her faith slowly and painfully two years earlier, finds the relevant passage in the Bible and adds the following to her notes: And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the break of day . . . And he said, Let me go for the day breaketh. And the angel said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. This painting Katie finds impressive, beautiful, awe-inspiring – but not truly moving. She can’t find the right words, can’t put her finger on why that is. All she can say, again, is that this is not a faith battle she is looking at. At least, not of the kind she herself has experienced. Jacob looks like he wants sympathy, and the angel looks like he wants to give sympathy. That’s not how a battle goes. The struggle isn’t really there. Does that make sense? The second picture, on the other hand, makes Katie cry. It is Seated Nude , an etching from . In it a misshapen woman, naked, with tubby little breasts and a hugely distended belly, sits on a rock, eyeing Katie directly. Katie has read some famous commentaries on this etching. Everybody finds it technically good but visually disgusting. Many famous men are repulsed.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  from my lofty slope: Here, H.H. realizes that the sounds emanating from the mining town below were of one nature—children at play. “One could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clutter of a toy wagon.… And then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord,” and with these words, it is clear that H.H. has transcended his solipsism. “The rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump” pinpoints happy metamorphoses, especially H.H.’s progression as an ethical being. The pretty but two-dimensional “pregnant” landscape (reread the passage) has given birth to the concord of children, a three-dimensional conception because it includes people. Aesthetic, moral, and communal perspectives have cohered, as ideally they should. The image of the “heavenlogged system” posits a fourth–dimension, ail of which is at a considerable remove from the one–dimensional landscape represented in the conventional “ancient American estampe.” Humbert’s is indeed a lofty perch. The personal dimension of this signal passage is documented by a letter that Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson in September 1951, from Ithaca, N.Y., describing a successful quest for butterflies in Telluride, where, in July, he had caught the first identified female of Lycaeides sublivens Nabokov, though his letter isn’t taxonomically specific about his finds. He does mention “a steep slope high above Telluride—quite an enchanted slope,” and the mining town, “full of most helpful, charming people—and when you hike from there, which is 9000’, to 10000’, with the town and its tin roofs and self–conscious poplars lying toylike at the flat bottom of a cul-de-sac valley running into giant granite mountains, all you hear are the voices of children playing in the streets—delightful!” (The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940–1977 [1979], p. 265). The passage of Lolita here, which clearly echoes many of these words, may well have been composed shortly after this letter; the end of the novel was written at the outset. In any event, two kinds of wonder are conflated in Lolita’s version of the letter’s lofty vision. Otto Otto: queried about this name, Nabokov answered, “a doubled neutrality with something owlish about it.” Mesmer: after Franz or Friedrich Mesmer (1734–1815), the Austrian physician who established hypnotism. See Phineas Quimby, Lebanon, NH. Lambert: a step away from Humbert. No literary allusions intended. fifty-six days ago: in the concluding paragraphs of Lolita, H.H. reasserts the verisimilar basis that has been belied everywhere in the preceding pages, linking the last three paragraphs of his manuscript with the first three paragraphs of “editor” John Ray’s Foreword, creating an elegant pairing and extraordinary equipoise for which neither H.H. nor Ray is responsible (see “real people”).

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  In his unheated, shabby little church he officiated at several services a day. He was famous, at least to the Scotts, for his short, lucid sermons—“Worthy of Boussuet,” DeQuincey assured me, “little miracles of theology and common sense.” In his letters to Rachel, Father Burke argued in page after page of his effortlessly flowing script against her longing to leave DeQuincey. Once she even showed me an excerpt from Burke’s latest: “Nor, my daughter, can you leave your husband any more than Our Lord can abandon the sinner or God the prodigal. In a very special, very private sense DeQuincey is your Cross and your marriage is your Calvary. Don’t imagine for a moment, my child, that I am insensitive to your plight. I know what sort of man DeQuincey is, and I know how little he is suited to you in the way the world thinks. What, then, could have been God’s plan in linking you to such a man with an eternal vow except to purify you through pain? Rather than despising and fleeing our sufferings, we should treasure them and thank the Lord for them, since we are each given the exact sort of suffering we require to break our will and to increase our spirit, as though the will were the seed’s hull and the spirit its germinating embryo.” Something in me thrilled to this talk. Certainly such a religion raised our flat, squirming little lives into the high static relief of allegory. The Church had set aside its legal and political ambitions in order to ensure its continued colonization of dailiness. This invasion advanced into every last corner of consciousness by virtue of a flair for drama. Reality isn’t dramatic but the mind is; the Church accommodates itself accordingly to mental physiology rather than to the anatomy of the real. For the Scotts the medieval ring to Father Burke’s style made it all the more seductive. Far from impressing them as a drawback, the farfetched nature of his language and his insistence on its literal truth had for them all the appeal of the antique. They belonged to that generation of humanists who found the advances of science alarming and who imagined the atelier and the chapel must defend themselves against the laboratory. To me this view of things seemed quaint; I was content to accept every truth science might establish, though at the same time I recognized that what most interested me science couldn’t address: subjectivity. The Scotts weren’t willing to reduce the claims of the spirit. They wanted to vaunt the “higher” truth of religion and art over the somehow mechanical or merely factual truth of science.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  How I deplored now the exercises in sensual simulation that I had so often seen her go through in our Beardsley parlor when I would observe her from some strategic point while she, like a hypnotic subject or a performer in a mystic rite, produced sophisticated versions of infantile make-believe by going through the mimetic actions of hearing a moan in the dark, seeing for the first time a brand new young stepmother, tasting something she hated, such as buttermilk, smelling crushed grass in a lush orchard, or touching mirages of objects with her sly, slender, girl- child hands. Among my papers I still have a mimeographed sheet suggesting: Tactile drill. Imagine yourself picking up and holding: a pingpong ball, an apple, a sticky date, a new flannel-fluffed tennis ball, a hot potato, an ice cube, a kitten, a puppy, a horseshoe, a feather, a flashlight. Knead with your fingers the following imaginary things: a piece of bread, india rubber, a friend’s aching temple, a sample of velvet, a rose petal. You are a blind girl. Palpate the face of: a Greek youth, Cyrano, Santa Claus, a baby, a laughing faun, a sleeping stranger, your father. But she had been so pretty in the weaving of those delicate spells, in the dreamy performance of her enchantments and duties! On certain adventurous evenings, in Beardsley, I also had her dance for me with the promise of some treat or gift, and although these routine leg-parted leaps of hers were more like those of a football cheerleader than like the languorous and jerky motions of a Parisian petit rat, the rhythms of her not quite nubile limbs had given me pleasure. But all that was nothing, absolutely nothing, to the indescribable itch of rapture that her tennis game produced in me—the teasing delirious feeling of teetering on the very brink of unearthly order and splendor. Despite her advanced age, she was more of a nymphet than ever, with her apricot-colored limbs, in her sub-teen tennis togs! Winged gentlemen! No hereafter is acceptable if it does not produce her as she was then, in that Colorado resort between Snow and Elphinstone, with everything right: the white wide little-boy shorts, the slender waist, the apricot midriff, the white breast-kerchief whose ribbons went up and encircled her neck to end behind in a dangling knot leaving bare her gaspingly young and adorable apricot shoulder blades with that pubescence and those lovely gentle bones, and the smooth, downward-tapering back. Her cap had a white peak. Her racket had cost me a small fortune. Idiot, triple idiot! I could have filmed her!

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘You know what it is?’ he suggested. ‘It’s just we’re all looking at you, and you did this thing so young, and so successfully – and that’s awe -inspiring.’ Here he touched her hand, as his old-fashioned camp somehow freed him to, and she threw her shawl once more over her shoulder, allowing herself to be cast in the diva role. ‘And so it’s a big deal – it would be weird if it wasn’t this total bull-in-a-china-shop situation in the room.’ ‘Elephant in the room,’ corrected Claire gently. ‘ Right . God! I’m such an idiot. Bull? Aaaargh.’ ‘But what was it like ?’ asked Daisy, as Ron flushed maroon. ‘I mean – you were so young. I’m nineteen and it feels like it’s too late for me or something. Right? Doesn’t it feel like that? We were just saying about how awe-inspiring Claire is and what it must have been like for her to be so successful so young and stuff,’ said Daisy, for the sake of Lena, who now knelt awkwardly by the low table, having made a weak pretence of coming over to pick up the condiment tray. Daisy looked over at Claire, waiting for her to continue the thread. They all looked at her. ‘You’re asking me what it was like when I started.’ ‘Yeah – was it amazing ?’ Claire sighed. She could tell these stories all night long – she often did when people asked. But they had nothing to do with her any more.  On Beauty ‘God . . . it was ’, and it was a very strange time to be a woman poet . . . I was meeting all these amazing people – Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti, and then finding myself in these insane situations . . . meeting, I don’t know, Mick Jagger or whoever, and I felt just very examined , very picked over, not just mentally but also personally and physically . . . and I suppose I felt somewhat . . . disembodied from myself. You could put it that way. But the next summer I was already gone, I went up to Montana for three years, so . . . things normalize quicker than you’d think. And I was in this beautiful country, in this exceptional landscape , and the truth is land like that is what fills you up, it’s what nourishes you as an artist . . . I’d get involved with a cornflower, for days . . . I mean with its actual, essential blueness . . .’

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] ONE AND THE SAME tongue first wounded me so that it tinged with blushes both my cheeks, and then held forth the medicine to me. Thus I have heard that the lance of Achilles, and of his father, used to be occasion first of sad and then of healing gift. We turned our back to the wretched valley, up by the bank that girds it round, crossing without any speech. Here was less than night and less than day, so that my sight went little way before me; but I heard a high horn sound so loudly, that it would have made any thunder weak; which directed my eyes, that followed its course against itself, all to one place: after the dolorous rout, when Charlemain had lost the holy emprise, Roland did not sound with his so terribly.1 Short while had I kept my head turned in that direction, when I seemed to see many lofty towers; whereat I: “Master! say, what town is this?” And he to me: “Because thou traversest the darkness too far off, it follows that thou errest in thy imagining. Thou shalt see right well, if thou arrivest there, how much the sense at distance is deceived: therefore spur thee somewhat more.” Then lovingly he took me by the hand, and said: “Ere we go farther, that the reality may seem less strange to thee, know, they are not towers, but Giants; and are in the well, around its bank, from the navel downwards all of them.” As when a mist is vanishing, the eye by little and little reshapes that which the air-crowding vapour hides; so whilst piercing through that gross and darksome air, more and more approaching towards the brink, error fled from me, and my fear increased. For as on its round wall Montereggione2 crowns itself with towers: so with half their bodies, the horrible giants, whom Jove from heaven still threatens when he thunders, turreted the bank which compasses the pit. And already I discerned the face of one,3 the shoulders and the breast, and great part of the belly, and down along his sides both arms. Nature certainly, when she left off the art of making animals like these, did very well, in taking away such executioners from Mars; and if she repents her not of Elephants and Whales,4 whoso subtly looks, therein regards her as more just and prudent: for where the instrument of the mind is joined to evil will and potency, men can make no defence against it. His face seemed to me as long and large as the pine of St. Peter’s at Rome,5 and his other bones were in proportion to it; so that the bank, which was an apron from his middle downwards, showed us certainly so much of him above, that three Frieslanders had vainly boasted to have reached his hair: for downwards from the place where a man buckles on his mantle, I saw thirty large spans of him.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  fecundum simulacrum, quod residens humeris suis proferebat unus e ministerio beato gressu gestuosus. Ferebatur ab alio cista secretorum capax penitus celans operta magnificae religionis. Gerebat alius felici suo gremio summi numinis venerandam effi- giem, non pecoris, non avis, non ferae, ac ne hominis quidem ipsius consimilem, sed sollerti repertu etiam ipsa novitate reverendam altioris utcumque et magno silentio tegendae religionis argumentum ineffabile, sed ad istum plane modum fulgente auro figuratam : urnula faberrime cavata, fundo quam rotundo, miris extrinsecus simulacris Aegyptiorum effigiata; eius orificium non altiuscule levatum in canalem por- rectum longo rivulo prominebat; ex alia vero parte multum recedens spatiosa dilatione adhaerebat ansa, quam contorto nodulo supersedebat aspis squameae cervicis striato tumore sublimis. 12 Et ecce praesentissimi numinis promissa nobis acce- dunt beneficia, et fata salutemque ipsam meam gerens sacerdos appropinquat, ad ipsum praescriptum divinae promissionis ornatum dextera proferens sistrum deae, mihi coronam et Hercule coronam consequen- ter, quod tot ac tantis exanclatis laboribus,tot emensis periculis deae maximae providentia alluctantem mihi saevissime Fortunam superarem. Nec tamen gaudio subitario commotus inclementi me cursu proripui, verens scilicet. ne repentino quadripedis impetu religionis quietus turbaretur ordo, sed placido aec prorsus humano gradu cunctabundus, paulatim; obli- 558 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI that guided her supported her as she leaned upon his shoulder, and marched on with much gravity in happy steps. Another carried after the secrets of their glorious religion, closed in a coffer. Another was there that bare in his bosom (thrice happy he !) the venerable figure of the godhead, not formed like any beast, bird, savage thing, or human shape, but made by a new invention, and therefore much to be admired, an emblem ineffable, whereby was signified that such a religion was at once very high and should not be discovered or revealed to any person ; thus was it fashioned of shining gold: it was a vessel wrought with a round bottom, and hollowed with wondrous cunning, having on the outside pictures figured like unto the manner of the Egyptians, and the mouth thereof was not very high, but made to jut out like unto a long funnel ; on the other side was an ear or handle which came far out from the vessel, whereupon stood an asp holding out his swelling and scaly neck, which entwined the whole as in a knot.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  LUCIUS APULEIUS cumcirca remeans et sub dexterum latus ad humerum laevum recurrens umbonis vicem deiecta parte laciniae multiplici contabulatione dependula ad ultimas oras nodulis fimbriarum decoriter confluctua- 4 bat. Per intextam extremitatem et in ipsa eius planitie stellae dispersae coruscabant, earumque media semenstris luna flammeos spirabat ignes: quaqua tamen insignis illius pallae perfluebat ambitus, individuo nexu corona totis floribus totisque constructa pomis adhaerebat. lam gestamina longe diversa: nam dextra quidem ferebat aereum crepitaculum, cuius per angustam laminam in modum baltei recur- vatam traiectae mediae paucae virgulae, crispante brachio trigeminos iactus, reddebant argutum sono- rem; laevae vero cymbium dependebat aureum, cuius ansulae, qua parte conspicua est, insurgebat aspis caput extollens arduum, cervicibus late tumescenti- bus. Pedes ambroseos tegebant soleae palmae victricis foliis intextae. Talis ac tanta, spirans Arabiae felicia germina, divina me voce dignata est : * En adsum tuis commota, Luci, precibus, rerum naturae parens, elementorum omnium domina, sae- culorum progenies initialis, summa numinum, regina manium, prima caelitum, deorum dearumque facies uniformis, quae caeli luminosa culmina, maris salubria 1 A description of the sistrwm. Its exact form may be seen represented on the Egyptian monuments, and Plutarch gives 544 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI wrapped round her from under her left arm to her right shoulder in manner of a shield, part of it fell down, pleated in most subtle fashion, to the skirts of her garment so that the welts appeared comely. Here and there upon the edge thereof and through- out its surface the stars glimpsed, and in the middle of them was placed the moon in mid-month, which shone like a flame of fire ; and round about the whole length of the border of that goodly robe was a crown or garland wreathing unbroken, made with all flowers and all fruits. Things quite diverse did she bear: for in her right hand she had a timbrel of brass, a flat piece of metal curved in manner of a girdle, wherein passed not many rods through the peri- phery of it; and when with her arm she moved these triple chords, they gave forth a shrill and clear sound.t In her left hand she bare a cup of gold like unto a boat, upon the handle whereof, in the upper part which is best seen, an asp lifted up his head with a wide-swelling throat. Her odori- ferous feet were covered with shoes interlaced and wrought with victorious palm. Thus the divine shape, breathing out the pleasant spice of fertile Arabia, disdained not with her holy voice to utter these words unto me:

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  It was built in 1934 or ‘35 by the Youth Labor Corps (I could just imagine them: blond, shirtless, singing Deutschland über Alles, lifting the pink sandstone rocks of the Neckar Valley while blowsy Rhine maidens brought steins of piss-dark beer), and it was nestled in the crotch of the Heiligenberg, or Holy Mountain, where a shrine to Odin had reputedly once stood. I would reach the amphitheater by driving across the river from the old town, down a wide street which led to the suburbs, then up the Holy Mountain, following the signs to the ruins of St. Michael’s Basilica. The amphitheater itself was not, sinisterly enough, marked. The road wound upward through the woods, the light filtered down between the black-green pines, and I was Gretel in a huffing, puffing Volkswagen, but no one was dropping bread crumbs behind me. As I wound my way up the hill, thinking of all those cruel German fairy tales featuring frightened little girls and dark woods, the car would stall in third gear. Afraid of rolling backward down the hill, I’d shift into second and stall again. Finally, I would have to climb in first gear. At the top of the Heiligenberg was a smallish tower built of red sandstone, with mossy, worn-down steps winding to a lookout on top. I’d climb the slippery steps for a view of the city—and there it would be: the gleaming river, the dappled woods, the pinkish hulk of the castle. Why did chroniclers of the Third Reich say everything about Germany except that it was beautiful? Was that too morally ambiguous? The beauty of the countryside and the ugliness of the people. Couldn’t we cope with such irony? Descending from the tower, I’d walk deeper into the woods past a small restaurant called Waldschenke (or, forest tavern) which featured fat-bottomed burghers drinking beer outside in summer, mulled wine inside in winter. There I had to leave the car and continue up through the forest (leaves crunching underfoot, pines drooping overhead, sun obliterated by foliage). Since the tiers of seats were cut into the hillside, the entrance to the amphitheater was from above. Suddenly the theater gaped beneath you—row after row of weedy seats, littered with bottle glass, condoms, candy wrappers. At the base was an apron stage flanked by flagpoles for the swastika or the German Eagle. And on either side were entrances for speakers to appear surrounded by brown-shirted bodyguards. But the most astonishing part was the setting: a gigantic pine-rimmed bowl nestled in the unearthly quiet of those fairy-tale woods. The ground was sacred. Odin had been worshipped, then Christ, then Hitler. I would dash down the hill over the tiers of seats and stand in the dead center of the stage reciting my own poetry to an audience of echoes. One day I told Horst that I wanted to write about the amphitheater. “Why?” he asked. “Because everyone pretends it isn’t there.” “Do you think that’s enough of a reason?” “Yes.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  7. The words of Cain, after he had slain his brother Abel (Gen. iv. 14).8. Aglauros, the daughter of Cecrops, King of Athens, being jealous of Mercury’s love for her sister, Hersë, was changed by the God into stone (see Ovid, Metam. xiv).C A N T O X VIt is three o’clock in the afternoon, and the Poets, (having circled nigh a fourth part of the mountain and reached its northern slope) are facing the westering sun, when the dazzling light of the angel guardian of the circle warns them that they have approached the next ascent. They are welcomed to a stair far less steep than those they have already surmounted, and hear the blessing of the merciful, together with songs of lofty encouragement, chanted behind them as they mount. Dante’s mind goes back to words in which Guido del Duca, while confessing his own envious disposition on earth, had reproached mankind for fixing their hearts on the things which exclude partnership; and now he questions Virgil as to the meaning of this saying. Virgil answers first briefly, and then in full detail, that the more of any material thing one man has, the less of it there is for others; whereas the more peace or knowledge or love one man has, the more there is for all the others. Hence envy disturbs men’s hearts only because they are fixed on material instead of spiritual things. If this exposition does not satisfy him, let him await further light from Beatrice, and meanwhile let him make all speed upon his journey. On this they reach the third terrace—that of the wrathful–whereon Dante in ecstatic vision beholds examples of meekness and patience. Waking, half-bewildered, from his trance, he is called to himself by Virgil, and the two walk toward the evening sun, till a dark cloud of smoke rolling towards them, plunges them into the blackness of more than night. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] AS MUCH as between the end of the third hour and the beginning of the day appears of the sphere which ever sports after the fashion of a child, so much appeared now to be left of the sun’s course towards evening; it was vespers there, and here midnight.1 And the rays were smiting on the middle of our noses, for the mount was so far circled by us, that we now were going straight to the west,2 when I felt my brow weighed down by the splendour far more than before, and amazement to me were the unknown things; wherefore I raised my hands towards the tup of my eyes, and made me the shade which dulls the excess of light. As when a ray of light leaps from the water or from the mirror to the opposite direction, ascending at an angle similar to that at which it descends, and departs as far from the line of the falling stone in an equal space, even as experiment and science shows,

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I showed her my letter from Voyeur Magazine, but she wouldn’t let me register. “Why?” “Because we are not authorized to admit Press,” she sneered. “I am so sorry.” “I’ll bet.” I could feel the anger gather inside my head like steam in a pressure cooker. The Nazi bitch, I thought, the goddamned Kraut. Bennett shot me a look which said: calm down. He hates it when I get angry at people in public. But his trying to hold me back only made me more furious. “Look—if you don’t let me in I’ll write about that, too.” I knew that once the meetings got started I could probably walk right in without a badge—so it really didn’t matter. Besides, I scarcely cared all that much about writing the article. I was a spy from the outside world. A spy in the house of analysis. “I’m sure you don’t want me to write about how the analysts are scared of admitting writers to their meetings, do you?” “I’m zo sorry,” the Austrian bitch kept repeating. “But I really haff not got za ausority to admit you….” “Just following orders, I suppose.” “I haff instructions to obey,” she said. “You and Eichmann.” “Pardon?” She hadn’t heard me. Somebody else had. I turned around and saw this blond, shaggy-haired Englishman with a pipe hanging out of his face. “If you’d stop being paranoid for a minute and use charm instead of main force, I’m sure nobody could resist you,” he said. He was smiling at me the way a man smiles when he’s lying on top of you after a particularly good lay. “You’ve got to be an analyst,” I said, “nobody else would throw the word paranoid around so freely.” He grinned. He was wearing a very thin white cotton Indian kurtah and I could see his reddish-blond chest hair curling underneath it. “Cheeky cunt,” he said. Then he grabbed a fistful of my ass and gave it a long playful squeeze. “You’ve a lovely ass,” he said. “Come, I’ll see to it that you get into the conference.” Of course he turned out to have no authority whatsoever in the matter, but I didn’t know that till later. He was bustling around so officiously that you’d have thought he was the head of the whole Congress. He was chairman of one of the preconferences—but he had absolutely nothing to say about Press. Who cared about Press, anyway? All I wanted was for him to press my ass again. I would have followed him anywhere. Dachau, Auschwitz, anywhere. I looked across the registration desk and saw Bennett talking seriously with another analyst from New York. The Englishman had made his way into the crowd and was grilling the registration girl in my behalf. Then he walked back to me.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I immediately became a voracious student of integrative health. The more I learned about the regenerative power of an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle, the more I shared my findings with anyone who would listen. My mind was blown. I was awestruck by how our bodies work and their enormous capacity for resilience. (We’ll nerd out on this more in Chapter 11.) To my amazement, my passion for wellness eventually led me to make an award-winning film about my journey, which featured stories of other young women who were also living with cancer. After the film I wound up writing a series of New York Times best-selling books and launching a global online wellness community that has provided education and support to thousands of people around the world. I was also featured on Oprah several times and became a member of her Super Soul 100, “a group of 100 trailblazers whose vision and life’s work are bringing a higher level of consciousness to the world.” In so many ways, the rupture of my diagnosis led me to build a more meaningful life. (And bonus: this is where I first connected with my husband, Brian, who was the editor of my film. So in the end, the love story that was meant for me was born of my darkest moment.) Now, close to two decades later, I still live with stage IV cancer. Knock on wood, it continues to be slow growing, which has allowed me to continue figuring out how to best take care of myself and help others do the same. Change is a constant, though. Just because we have one rupture in life doesn’t mean that life will never get turned upside down again. A few years before my dad’s diagnosis, I started to realize that as amazing as my accomplishments were, and as strong as my physical health had become, deep down I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. I’d gone from the frying pan of a cancer diagnosis to the fire of nonstop achievement. For me, prolonged “busy” looked like very long hours at work, while attempting to also manage my health and try to squeeze in time with my family and close friends. This go-go pace had become like breathing to me, autonomic—reflexive, involuntary—which isn’t such a surprise. In times of rupture, staying busy can be useful—even therapeutic—because it helps us keep up or return to some sense of “normal life.” Sounds about right to me—unless “busy” becomes a knee-jerk way to avoid our own feelings or allows us to find agoraphobia just this side of glamorous. No matter how necessary, noble, or lifesaving it may seem, when busyness becomes a permanent state of being, it undoubtedly leads to burnout, health issues, and even worse—loss of joy.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Wax material to feed the flame (light) of God’s grave; the enamelled summit being either the summit of the Mount of Purgatory or the Empyrean. With the guilty head sets the world awry compare xvi; though some refer the words specifically to Boniface VIII. 6. It must be steadily borne in mind that only half the heavens are visible to Dante at this point of the journey. The steep wall of Purgatory cuts off the whole portion of them west of the meridian. The four bright stars are near the south pole; but in the latitude of Purgatory the pole itself is only about 32° above the horizon, and the stars are now behind the mountain and beneath the pole. [image file=image_rsrcA61.jpg] Showing the portions of the Mountain under light and shade at 6 o’clock p.m. Cf. “Purgatorio,” viii, xvii, xxvii. C A N T O I XIt is now about two and a half hours since sunset. The Scorpion has begun to pass the horizon, and the lunar aurora is already whitening in the cast, when Dante, reclining in the bosom of the valley, resting from his four-night watch and the toil and anguish of his journey, drops into a deep sleep. In the morning hour when dreams are true, he seems to be clasped in the talons of an eagle—the symbol at once of justice and of baptismal regeneration—and to be borne up into the sphere of fire, the burning of which awakens him; and he starts to find himself alone with Virgil, higher on the mount, nigh to the gate of Purgatory proper. He learns from his guide that, as he slept, Lucia bore him away from Sordello and the other denizens of the valley, and placed him here. His dismay is thus turned into delight as he follows his guide to the narrow portal with its three steps and its angel guard, who first challenges the pilgrims, but on learning their divine authority gives them courteous welcome. On the steps of sincerity, contrition and love, the Poet mounts to the gate and throws himself at the feet of its guardian to implore admission. The angel carves on Dante’s brow seven P’s, the symbol of the seven deadly sins (peccata), which are purged on the terraces above, and then turning the golden and the silver key which he bolds in charge from Peter, he admits Dante; with the solemn warning that he is not to look behind him, when once past the gate. The seldom-turned hinges grate as the portal swings, and a half-heard song of praise to God is the first sound that falls on the Poet’s ear within the gate, drawing his heart upward. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] NOW WAS THE concubine of ancient Tithonus at eastern terrace growing white, forth from her sweet lover’s arms; with gems her forehead was glittering, set in the form of the cold animal that strikes folk with its tail;

• From On Beauty (2005)

  This painting Katie finds impressive, beautiful, awe-inspiring – but not truly moving. She can’t find the right words, can’t put her finger on why that is. All she can say, again, is that this is not a faith battle she is looking at. At least, not of the kind she herself has experienced. Jacob looks like he wants sympathy, and the angel looks like he wants to give sympathy. That’s not how a battle goes. The struggle isn’t really there. Does that make sense? The second picture, on the other hand, makes Katie cry. It is Seated Nude , an etching from . In it a misshapen woman, naked, with tubby little breasts and a hugely distended belly, sits on a rock, eyeing Katie directly. Katie has read some famous commentaries on this etching. Everybody finds it technically good but visually disgusting. Many famous men are repulsed. A simple naked woman is apparently much more nauseating than Samson having his eye put out or Ganymede pissing everywhere. Is she really so grotesque? She was a shock, to Katie, at first – like a starkly lit, unforgiving photograph of oneself. But then Katie began to notice all the exterior, human information, not explicitly in the frame but implied by what we see there. Katie is moved by the crenulated marks of absent stockings on her legs, the muscles in her arms suggestive of manual labour. That loose belly that has known many babies, that still fresh face that has lured men in the past and may yet lure more. Katie – a stringbean, physically – can even see her own body contained in this body, as if Rembrandt were saying to her, and to all women: ‘For you are of the earth, as my nude is, and you will come to this point too, and be blessed if you feel as little shame, as much joy, as she!’ This is what a woman is : unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience – these are the marks of  On Beauty living . So Katie feels. And all this from cross-hatching (Katie makes her own comics and knows something of cross-hatching); all these intimations of mortality from an inkpot! Katie comes to class very excited. She sits down excited. She keeps her notebook open before her, determined this time, determined to be one of the three or four people who dare to speak in Dr Belsey’s class. The class, all fourteen of them, are arranged in a square, the desks fitted together so that everyone can see everyone. They have their names written on pieces of paper that are folded in half and stood atop their desks. They look like so many bank managers. Dr Belsey is speaking.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I began to rise. I drew back for an instant, startled, but then I gave in: I was determined to be adequate to the miraculous. I rose and rose, not pneumatically as a swami might but imaginatively, that is, really. I was being enisled, the lotus rising out of the mud, and now I was being drawn, molten and blossoming, up through the void until we (for I was no longer alone)—until we entered a ring of the eager faces of infants called away from their games to this curved window from which they peered with mild pleasure, meaty hands pressed to the glass, moist lips open, eyes filmy with wonder. Their whispering was being dialed in, now amplified, and I was losing my whiteness and taking on a gold color, warm as a new tan. Shortly before Easter I managed to become friendly with my gym teacher, Mr. Pouchet. He was French Canadian and a recent Olympics competitor in track who’d come to our school as a coach and math teacher for the lower formers. He was very good with those kids. He lived in their dorm. They could be seen hanging onto him wherever he went, which he seemed to like in his shy, melancholy way though he pretended to find them tiresome (“What a pain,” he’d mutter as yet another giggler leaped onto his back). At twelve and thirteen the boys alternated between being babies and being brutes, sometimes clinging sulkily to his waist, sometimes socking him and screaming. He couldn’t keep them out of his room. They were always finding an excuse to sidle in and to look once again at his sports photographs and medals. I avoided talking to him about his medals, for his success had been neither major nor minor—in fact his was exactly the sort of ambiguous success calculated to invite regret.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  If I could portray how the pitiless eyes did slumber hearing of Syrinx, the eyes whose longer vigil cost so dear,12 as a painter who paints from a model, I would depict how I feel asleep; be he who he may that can rightly image drowsiness. Wherefore I pass on to when I awoke, and I say that a bright light rent the veil of my sleep, and a call: “Arise, what doest thou?” As to behold some flowerets of the apple tree, which makes the angels greedy for its fruit, and makes perpetual marriage feast in heaven, Peter and John and James were brought, and, being overcome, came to themselves at the word by which greater slumbers had been broken, and saw their band diminished by Moses, as well as by Elias, and their Master’s raiment changed,13 even so I came to myself, and saw that pitying one bending o’er me, who before was guide to my steps along the stream. And all perplexed I said: “Where is Beatrice!” and she: “Behold her sitting beneath the new foliage upon its root.14 Behold the company that encircleth her; the others are mounting up after the griffin with sweeter and profounder song.” And if her words extended farther I know not, because now before mine eyes was she, who had shut me off from heeding aught else. Alone sat she upon the bare earth, left there as guardian of the chariot, which I had seen the beast of two forms make fast.14 The seven nymphs in a ring made of them a fence about her, with those lights in their hands which are secure from north winds and from south. “Here15 shalt thou be short time a forester, and with me everlastingly shalt be a citizen of that Rome whereof Christ is a Roman. Therefore to profit the world that liveth ill, fix now thine eyes upon the car, and look that thou write what thou seest, when returned yonder.” Thus Beatrice; and I, who was all obedient at the feet of her commands, gave mind and eyes whither she willed. Ne’er did fire from dense cloud descend, with motion so swift, when it falls from that confine which is most remote, as I saw Jove’s bird swoop down through the tree, rending its bark, likewise its flowers and its new leaves; and he smote the car with all his might; whereat it reeled like a vessel in a storm, beaten by the waves, now to starboard, now to larboard.16 Then saw I a she-fox, that seemed fasting from all good food, leap into the body of the triumphal vehicle. But, rebuking her for foul sins, my lady put her to flight, as swift as the fleshless bones did bear.17 Then, from thence whence he first had come, I saw the eagle descend down into the body of the car, and leave it feathered with his plumage.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Who would believe, down in the erring world, the Trojan Ripheus8 in this circle to be the fifth of the holy lights? now knoweth he right much of the divine grace that the world hath no power to see, albeit his sight discerneth not the bottom.” Like to the lark who soareth in the air, first singing and then silent, content with the last sweetness that doth sate her, so seemed to me the image of the imprint of the eternal pleasure, by longing for whom each thing becometh what it is.9 And albeit there I was to my questioning like glass unto the colour which it clothes, yet would it not endure to bide its time in silence;10 but from my mouth: “What things11 are these?” it thrust by force of its own weight, whereat I saw great glee of coruscation. Then straightway, with its eye more kindled, the blessed ensign answered me, that it might not hold me in suspense of wonder: “I see that thou believest these things because I tell them thee, but the how thou seest not; so that, although believed, yet are they hidden. Thou art as he who doth apprehend the thing by name, but may not see its quidity unless another bring it forth to light. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence from warm love and living hope which conquereth the divine will; not in fashion wherein man subdueth man, but conquereth it because it willeth to be conquered, and, conquered, with its own benignity doth conquer. The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth set thee a-marvelling, because thou seest the region of the angels painted with them. From their bodies they issued not, as thou supposest, Gentiles, but Christians in established faith, in the feet that—to the one—should suffer, and—to the other—had already suffered.12 For the one from hell,—where none returneth ever to right will, came back unto its bones, and this was the reward of living hope;13 the living hope which put might into the prayers made unto God to raise him up, that his will might have power to be moved.14 The glorious soul, whereof is the discourse, returning to the flesh where it abode short space, believed in him who had the power to aid it; and believing kindled into so great flame of very love, that at the second death it was worthy to come unto this mirth. The other, by that grace which welleth from so deep a fountain that never creature thrust eye down to its first wave, set all his love below on righteousness, wherefore from grace to grace God opened his eye to our redemption yet to come;15 whereat he believed therein, and thenceforth endured not the mire of paganism, and reproved the folk perverse concerning it. Those three dames16 stood as baptism for him, whom thou didst see at the right wheel, more than a thousand years before baptizing.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] SO FIXED and intent were my eyes on satisfying their ten years’ thirst,1 that all my other senses were quenched; and they on either side had a wall of unconcern, so the holy smile drew them to itself in the toils of old; when perforce my face was turned toward my left by those goddesses, because I heard from them a: “Too fixedly.”2 And that condition of the sight, which is in eyes but just smitten by the sun, made me remain a while without vision; but after my sight re-formed itself to the lesser (I mean the lesser in respect to the greater object of sense wherefrom perforce I turned me away) I saw the glorious host had wheeled upon the right flank, and was returning with the sun and with the seven flames in its face. As under its shields a troop turns about to retreat, and wheels round with the standard ere it can wholly change front, that soldierly of the heavenly realm, which was in the van, passed all by us ere the car turned its pole. Then to the wheels the ladies returned, and the griffin moved the hallowed burden, so that thereby no plume of it was ruffled.3 The fair lady who drew me across the ford, and Statius, and I, were following the wheel which made its orbit with the lesser arc.4 So pacing the lofty forest, empty through the fault of her who gave credence to the serpent, a melody of angels gave measure to our steps. Haply in three flights so much space an arrow shot forth had covered, as we had advanced when Beatrice descended. I heard all murmur5 “Adam!” Then did they surround a tree despoiled of flowers,6 and of other foliage, in every bough. Its crown of foliage, which more expands the loftier it is would be marvelled at for its height by Indians in their woods.7 “Blessed art thou, griffin, that with thy beak dost rend naught from this tree sweet to taste, since ill writhes the belly therefrom.” Thus round about the sturdy tree the others cried: and the beast of two natures: “Thus8 is preserved the seed of all righteousness.” And having turned to the pole which he had drawn, he dragged it to the foot of the widowed bough; and to it left bound that which came from it.9 As trees of our land when the great light falls down mingled with that which beams behind the celestial carp,10 burgeon forth, and each then is decked anew with its colour ere the sun yokes his steeds beneath another constellation, opening out into a hue, less than of roses and more than of violets,11 the tree renewed itself, which before had its boughs so naked. I understood it not, nor here is sung, the hymn which then that people sang, nor did I endure its melody outright.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And as, at the first rise of evening, new things-to-see begin to show in heaven, so that the sight doth, yet doth not, seem real; I there began to perceive new-come existences making a circle out beyond the other two circumferences. Oh very sparkling of the Holy Breath! how sudden and how glowing it became before my eyes, which, vanquished, might not bear it!5 But Beatrice showed herself to me so beauteous and smiling, it must be left amongst those sights that followed not my memory. Therefrom my eyes regained their power to uplift them, and I saw me transported, only with my Lady, to more exalted weal. Surely did I perceive that I was more uplifted by the enkindled smile of the star which seemed to me more ruddy than his wont. With all the heart, and in that tongue which is one unto all, to God I made burnt sacrifice such as befitted this new-given grace; and not yet from my bosom was drawn out the ardour of the sacrifice before I knew the prayer had been accepted and propitious; for with such shining, and so ruddy, within two rays, splendours appeared to me, that I exclaimed: “O God! who thus dost glorify them!” As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning,6 so did those rays, star-decked, make in the depth of Mars the venerable sign which crossing quadrant lines make in a circle. 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.