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 The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The general stood there stunned, then broke into tears. He joined up with D'Annunzio. When D'Annunzio entered Fiume, he was greeted as a liberator. The next day he was declared leader of the Free State of Fiume. Soon he was giving daily speeches from a balcony overlooking the town's main square, holding tens of thousands of people spellbound without benefit of loud- speakers. He initiated all kinds of celebrations and rituals harking back to the Roman Empire. The citizens of Fiume began to imitate him, particu- larly his sexual exploits; the city became like a giant bordello. His popu- larity was so high that the Italian government feared a march on Rome, which at that point, had D'Annunzio decided to do it—and he had the support of a large part of the military—might actually have succeeded; D'Annunzio could have beaten Mussolini to the punch and changed the course of history. (He was not a Fascist, but a kind of aesthetic socialist.) He decided to stay in Fiume, however, and ruled there for sixteen months before the Italian government finally bombed him out of the city. Seduction is a psychological process that transcends gender, except in a few key areas where each gender has its own weakness. The male is traditionally vulnerable to the visual. The Siren who can concoct the right physical ap- pearance will seduce in large numbers. For women the weakness is lan- guage and words: as was written by one of D'Annunzio's victims, the French actress Simone, "How can one explain his conquests except by his extraordinary verbal power, and the musical timbre of his voice, put to the service of exceptional eloquence? For my sex is susceptible to words, be- witched by them, longing to be dominated by them." The Rake is as promiscuous with words as he is with women. He chooses words for their ability to suggest, insinuate, hypnotize, elevate, in- Among the many modes of handling Don Juan's effect on women, the motif of the irresistible hero is worth singling out, for it illustrates a curious change in our sensibility. Don Juan did not become irresistible to women until the Romantic age, and I am disposed to think that it is a trait of the female imagination to make him so. When the female voice began to assert itself and even, perhaps, to dominate in literature, Don Juan evolved to become the women's rather than the man's ideal. . . . Don Juan is now the woman's dream of the perfect lover, fugitive, passionate, daring. He gives her the one unforgettable moment, the magnificent exaltation of the flesh which is too often denied her by the real husband, who thinks that men are gross and women spiritual.

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  As we already saw in the discussion of relations between men and women, the curses in Genesis are descriptive, not prescriptive. It is simply the case that people contend with thorns and thistles and have an adversarial relationship with snakes and other animals. The relationship is not the ideal originally envisioned in creation. Rather, it is said to be the result of human sinfulness, which later tradition called fallen human nature. But the relationship is not entirely adversarial. Humanity still depends on the earth for its sustenance, and its fate is intimately bound up with it. Moreover, humanity and the earth are part of a moral continuum. Human behavior affects the earth. We meet this idea repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible. Take, for example, Isaiah 24:5: “The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants.” To be sure, the pollution is not due to oil spills or toxic chemicals, as it is in the modern world, but it is due to human behavior nonetheless: “For they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant.” After the Flood, God promises that he will never again curse the earth because of human behavior (Genesis 8:21).18 A somewhat different view of creation is implied in Psalm 104 and in the divine speeches at the end of the Book of Job.19 In both cases, it is clear that the natural world does not exist just to serve the purposes of humanity. In modern parlance, all creatures have intrinsic worth; in biblical parlance, all are objects of God’s providential care. God provides grass for the animals as well as food for human beings. The trees are for birds to build their nests, the high mountains are for the wild goats, the rocks for the rabbits (Psalm 104:15–18). Darkness allows the animals of the forest to come creeping out. God puts Job in his place by asking whether he knows when the mountain goats give birth, or can observe the calving of the deer (Job 39:1). Throughout the book, Job assumes that God should be preoccupied with the fate of human beings, even specifically with Job and his family. The speeches from the whirlwind shunt that assumption aside. God has many more, and more important, things on his mind.20 Some of the hymns in the Psalms (e.g., Psalm 148) call on the elements of nature to praise God;21 indeed, Job 38:7 says that the morning stars sang together at the foundation of the earth. It may be argued that snow and rain and mountains and hills praise God just by their existence22 or, inversely, that their existence is reason to praise God. Again, in modern parlance, these passages affirm the intrinsic worth of nature, quite apart from its utility for humanity. Neither the psalm nor the Book of Job offers a romantic view of creation. The psalm notes that young lions roar for their prey, and God gives them food. This is nice for the lions, not so nice for their prey.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The following night, de Gaulle appeared once again on television, once again wearing his old uniform. He mocked the generals, comparing them to a South American junta. He talked calmly and sternly. Then, suddenly, at the very end of the address, his voice rose and even trembled as he called out to the audience: "Françaises, Français, aidez-moi!" ("Frenchwomen, Frenchmen, help me!") It was the most stirring moment of all his television appearances. French soldiers in Algeria, listening on transistor radios, were overwhelmed. The next day they held a mass demonstration in favor of de Gaulle. Two days later the generals surrendered. On July 1, 1962, de Gaulle proclaimed Algeria's independence. In 1940, after the German invasion of France, de Gaulle escaped to England to recruit an army that would eventually return to France for the liberation. At the beginning, he was alone, and his mission seemed hopeless. But he had the support of Winston Churchill, and with Churchill's blessing he gave a series of radio talks that the BBC broadcast to France. His strange, hypnotic voice, with its dramatic tremolos, would enter French living rooms in the evenings. Few of his listeners even knew what he looked like, but his tone was so confident, so stirring, that he recruited a silent army of believers. In person, de Gaulle was a strange, brooding man whose confident manner could just as easily irritate as win over. But over the radio that voice had intense charisma. De Gaulle was the first great master of modern media, for he easily transferred his dramatic skills to television, where his iciness, his calmness, his total self-possession, made audiences feel both comforted and inspired. The world has grown more fractured. A nation no longer conies together on the streets or in the squares; it is brought together in living rooms, where people watching television all over the country can simultaneously be alone and with others. Charisma must now be communicable over the airwaves or it has no power. But it is in some ways easier to project on television, both because television makes a direct one-on-one appeal (the Charismatic seems to address you) and because charisma is fairly easy to fake for the few moments you spend in front of the camera. As de Gaulle understood, when appearing on television it is best to radiate calmness and control, to use dramatic effects sparingly. De Gaulle's overall iciness made doubly effective the brief moments in which he raised his voice, or let loose a biting joke. By remaining calm and underplaying it, he hypnotized his audience. (Your face can express much more if your voice is less strident.) He conveyed emotion visually—the uniform, the setting—and through the use of certain charged words: the liberation, Joan of Arc. The less he strained for effect, the more sincere he appeared. 116 • The Art of Seduction

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Carved from olivewood, a little bigger than a shoe box, it had a tin lid perforated by tiny airholes and inset with the icon of an unrec- ognizable saint. The saint's face had been rubbed off, but the fingers of his right hand were raised to bless a short, purple, terrifically self- confident-looking mulberry tree. After gazing awhile at this vivid botanical presence, Chapter Eleven pulled the box from under the bed and opened it. Inside were the two wedding crowns made from rope and, coiled like snakes, the two long braids of hair, each tied with a crumbling black ribbon. He poked one of the braids with his index finger. Just then a parakeet squawked, making my brother jump, and he closed the box, tucked it under his arm, and carried it downstairs to Desdemona. She was still waiting in the doorway. Taking the silkworm box out of his hands, she turned back into the kitchen. At this point Chapter Eleven was granted a view of the room, where all the women now fell silent. They moved aside to let Desdemona pass and there, in the middle of the linoleum, was my mother. Tessie Stephanides was lean- ing back in a kitchen chair, pinned beneath the immense, drum-tight globe of her pregnant belly. She had a happy, helpless expression on her face, which was flushed and hot. Desdemona set the silkworm box on the kitchen table and opened the lid. She reached under the wedding crowns and the hair braids to come up with something Chapter Eleven hadn't seen: a silver spoon. She tied a piece of string to the spoon's handle. Then, stooping forward, she dangled the spoon over my mother's swollen belly. And, by extension, over me. Up until now Desdemona had had a perfect record: twenty- three correct guesses. She'd known that Tessie was going to be Tessie. She'd predicted the sex of my brother and of all the babies of her friends at church. The only children whose genders she hadn't di- vined were her own, because it was bad luck for a mother to plumb the mysteries of her own womb. Fearlessly, however, she plumbed my mother's. After some initial hesitation, the spoon swung north to south, which meant that I was going to be a boy.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  87 only major power in Greece. Cimon, who had helped Athens gain its empire, had supported and fostered the balanced constitution and the coalition with Sparta. The Athenians ostracized Cimon, that is, they voted to send him into exile. In Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus represents this new political situation in Athens and warns the Athenians that the majority can be just as tyrannical as one man. Aeschylus set Prometheus Bound in the mythological past, shortly after Zeus had come to power. Zeus had overthrown his father, Cronus, to become king of the gods, just as Cronus had overthrown his own father, Ouranus, to gain power. The children of Zeus—including Hera, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, and Hephaestus—assisted Zeus in this war. The Titans, a race of giants, fought against the power of Zeus. Prometheus had aided Zeus against his fellow Titans. The Titans were punished for resisting Zeus. At fi rst Zeus, the new tyrant, honored Prometheus, but then realized that if Prometheus had turned against the Titans, he might just as easily turn against Zeus. Zeus believed that Prometheus had to be watched. Zeus believed that his own ideas were worth the sacri fi ce of millions of innocents and decided to destroy the human race. Prometheus intervened and saved humanity by giving to humans the arts and sciences that enabled them to cultivate the divine and protect themselves. He gave the human race everything that made people reasoning creatures. He taught people how to grow crops, write, understand the divine, read the signs of oracles, make sacri fi ces, sail, and domesticate wild animals. The play opens with Zeus carrying out the punishment of Prometheus. The name Prometheus means “foresight .” Prometheus could see what was going to happen, making him an even more tragic fi gure. Zeus punishes Prometheus by crucifi xion. Zeus, like many tyrants, does not do the dirty work himself. The personifi cation of the god Power and the god Hephaestus, the god of fi re, nail Prometheus to the mountain. Hephaestus represents one type of character who serves a tyrant. He apologizes to the victim for his cruelty but completes The name Prometheus means “foresight.” Prometheus could see what was going to happen, making him an even more tragic fi gure.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The following night, de Gaulle appeared once again on television, once again wearing his old uniform. He mocked the generals, comparing them to a South American junta. He talked calmly and sternly. Then, suddenly, at the very end of the address, his voice rose and even trembled as he called out to the audience: "Françaises, Français, aidez-moi!" ("Frenchwomen, Frenchmen, help me!") It was the most stirring moment of all his television appearances. French soldiers in Algeria, listening on transistor radios, were overwhelmed. The next day they held a mass demonstration in favor of de Gaulle. Two days later the generals surrendered. On July 1, 1962, de Gaulle proclaimed Algeria's independence. In 1940, after the German invasion of France, de Gaulle escaped to England to recruit an army that would eventually return to France for the liberation. At the beginning, he was alone, and his mission seemed hopeless. But he had the support of Winston Churchill, and with Churchill's blessing he gave a series of radio talks that the BBC broadcast to France. His strange, hypnotic voice, with its dramatic tremolos, would enter French living rooms in the evenings. Few of his listeners even knew what he looked like, but his tone was so confident, so stirring, that he recruited a silent army of believers. In person, de Gaulle was a strange, brooding man whose confident manner could just as easily irritate as win over. But over the radio that voice had intense charisma. De Gaulle was the first great master of modern media, for he easily transferred his dramatic skills to television, where his iciness, his calmness, his total self-possession, made audiences feel both comforted and inspired. The world has grown more fractured. A nation no longer conies together on the streets or in the squares; it is brought together in living rooms, where people watching television all over the country can simultaneously be alone and with others. Charisma must now be communicable over the airwaves or it has no power. But it is in some ways easier to project on television, both because television makes a direct one-on-one appeal (the Charismatic seems to address you) and because charisma is fairly easy to fake for the few moments you spend in front of the camera. As de Gaulle understood, when appearing on television it is best to radiate calmness and control, to use dramatic effects sparingly. De Gaulle's overall iciness made doubly effective the brief moments in which he raised his voice, or let loose a biting joke. By remaining calm and underplaying it, he hypnotized his audience. (Your face can express much more if your voice is less strident.) He conveyed emotion visually—the uniform, the setting—and through the use of certain charged words: the liberation, Joan of Arc. The less he strained for effect, the more sincere he appeared. 116 • The Art of Seduction

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  appears before us in reality, Joseph discussed the war with Turkey. Joseph reiterated his concerns. Sud-or when a symbol takes denly Potemkin interrupted: "I have 100,000 troops waiting for me to say over the full functions of 'Go!' " At that moment the windows of the palace were flung open, and to the thing it symbolizes, and so on. It is this factor the sounds of booming cannons they saw lines of troops as far as the eye which contributes not a could see, and a fleet of ships filling the harbor. Awed by the sight, images little to the uncanny effect of Eastern European cities retaken from the Turks dancing in his mind, attaching to magical practices. The infantile Joseph II finally signed the treaty. Catherine was ecstatic, and her love for element in this, which also Potemkin reached new heights. He had made her dreams come true. dominates the minds of Catherine never suspected that almost everything she had seen was pure neurotics, is the overaccentuation of fakery, perhaps the most elaborate illusion ever conjured up by one man. psychical reality in comparison with material reality— a feature closely Interpretation. In the four years that he had been governor of the Crimea, allied to the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts. Potemkin had accomplished little, for this backwater would take decades to — S I G M U N D FREUD, improve. But in the few months before Catherine's visit he had done the " T H E U N C A N N Y , " I N following: every building that faced the road or the shore was given a fresh PSYCHOLOGICAL WRITINGS coat of paint; artificial trees were set up to hide unseemly spots in the view; AND LETTERS broken roofs were repaired with flimsy boards painted to look like tile; everyone the party would see was instructed to wear their best clothes and look happy; everyone old and infirm was to stay indoors. Floating in their palaces down the Dnieper, the imperial entourage saw brand-new villages, but most of the buildings were only facades. The herds of cattle were shipped from great distances, and were moved at night to fresh fields along the route. The dancing peasants were trained for the entertainments; after each one they were loaded into carts and hurriedly transported to a new downriver location, as were the marching soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. The gardens of the new palaces were filled with transplanted trees that died a few days later. The palaces themselves were quickly and badly built, but were so magnificently furnished that no one noticed. One fortress along the way had been built of sand, and was destroyed a little later by a thunderstorm.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  And now the station wagon is driving along a few weeks later. I'm looking out the window while Mrs. Drexel's cigarette uncoils a rope of smoke. We head into the heart of Grosse Pointe. We pass long, gated driveways, the kind that always fill my family with wonder and awe. But now Mrs. Drexel is turning up these drives. (It is my new classmates who live at the end of them.) We rumble past privet hedges and under topiary arches to arrive at secluded lakefront homes where girls wait with satchels, standing very straight. They wear the same uniform I do, but somehow it looks different on them, neater, more stylish. Occasionally there is also a well-coifed mother in the picture, clipping a rose from the garden. And next it is two months later, near the end of the fall term, and the station wagon is climbing the hill to my no-longer-brand-new school. The car is full of girls. Mrs. Drexel is lighting another ciga- rette. She's pulling up to the curb and getting ready to lay a curse on us. Shaking her head at the view— of the hilly, green campus, the lake in the distance— she says, "Youse girls better enjoy it now. Best time of life is when you're young." (At twelve, I hated her for saying that. I couldn't imagine a worse thing to tell a kid. But maybe also, due to certain other changes that began that year, I suspected that the happy period of my childhood was coming to an end.) What else came back to me, as the hockey ball zeroed in? Just about everything a field hockey ball could symbolize. Field hockey, that New England game, handed down from old England, just like everything else in our school. The building with its long echoing 292 hallways and churchy smell, its leaded windows, its Gothic gloom. The Latin primers die color of gruel. The afternoon teas. The curtsy- ing of our tennis team. The tweediness of our faculty, and the cur- riculum itself, which began, Hellenically, Byronically, with Homer, and then skipped straight to Chaucer, moving on to Shakespeare, Donne, Swift, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson, and E. M. Forster. Only connect. Miss Baker and Miss Inglis had founded the school back in 1911, in the words of the charter, "to educate girls in the humanities and sciences and to cultivate in them a love of learning, a modest com- portment, an amiable grace, and an interest in civic duty above all." The two women had lived together on the far side of the campus in "The Cottage," a shingled bower that occupied a place in school mythology akin to Lincoln's log cabin in national legend. Fifth graders were given a tour every spring. They filed by the two single bedrooms (which fooled them maybe), the founders' writing desks still laid with fountain pens and licorice drops, and the gramophone on which they'd listened to Sousa marches. Miss Baker's and Miss In-

• From Middlesex (2002)

  And so we come to May 1933. And to Desdemona, saying good- bye to the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class. Head scarves frame faces streaked with tears. The girls file by, kissing Desdemona on both cheeks. (My grandmother will miss the girls. She has grown very fond of them.) "My mother used to tell me in bad times silkworms no can spin," she says. "Make bad silk. Make bad cocoons." The girls accept this truth and examine the newly hatched worms for signs of despair. In the Silk Room, all the shelves are empty. Fard Muhammad has transferred power to a new leader. Brother Karriem, the former Eli- jah Poole, is now Elijah Muhammad, Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad has a different vision for the Na- tion's economic future. From now on, it will be real estate, not cloth- ing. And now Desdemona is descending the stairs on her way out. She reaches the first floor and turns to look back at the lobby. For the first time ever, the Fruit of Islam do not guard the lobby entrance. The drapes hang open. Desdemona knows she should keep going out the back door, but she has nothing to lose now, and so ventures toward the front. She approaches the double doors and pushes her way into the sanctum sanctorum. For the first fifteen seconds, she stands still, as her idea of the room switches places with reality. She had imagined a soaring dome, a richly colored Ezine carpet, but the room is just a simple audito- rium. A small stage at one end, folding chairs stacked along the walls. She absorbs all this quietly. And then, once more, there is a voice: "Hello, Desdemona." On the empty stage, the Prophet, the Mahdi, Fard Muhammad, stands behind the podium. He is barely more than a silhouette, slen- der and elegant, wearing a fedora that shadows his face. 162 "You're not supposed to be in here," he says. "But I guess today it's all right." Desdemona, her heart in her throat, manages to ask, "How you know my name?" "Haven't you heard? I know everything." Coming through the heating vent, Fard Muhammad's deep voice had made her solar plexus vibrate. Now, closer up, it penetrates her entire body. The rumble spreads down her arms until her fingers are tingling. "How's Lefty?" This question rocks Desdemona back on her heels. She is speech- less. She is thinking many things at once, first of all, how can Fard know her husband's name, did she tell Sister Wanda? . . and, sec- ond, if it's true he knows everything, then the rest must be true, too, about the blue-eyed devils and the evil scientist and the Mother Plane from Japan that will come to destroy the world and take the Muslims away. Dread seizes her, while at the same time she is remembering . something, asking where she has heard that voice before . . .

• From Middlesex (2002)

  That's all that remains of the famous Woodward Plan. Drawn up in 1807 by the hard-drinking, eponymous judge. (Two years earlier, in 1805, the city had burned to the ground, the timber houses and ribbon farms of the settlement founded by Cadillac in 1701 going up in the span of three hours. And, in 1969, with my sharp vision, I can read the traces of that fire on the city's flag a half mile away in Grand Circus Park: Speramus meliom; resurget cineribus. "We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.") Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united, in accordance with the young nation's federalism, as well as classically symmetrical, in accordance with Jeffersonian aesthetics. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to cul- ture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency. Since 1818, the city had spread out along the river, warehouse by warehouse, factory by factory. Judge Woodward's wheels had been squashed, bisected, pressed into the usual rectangles. 80 s Or seen another way (from a rooftop restaurant): the wheels hadn't vanished at all, they'd only changed form. By 1900 Detroit was the leading manufacturer of carriages and wagons. By 1922, when my grandparents arrived, Detroit made other spinning things, too: marine engines, bicycles, hand-rolled cigars. And yes, finally: cars. All this was visible from the train. Approaching along the shore of the Detroit River, Lefty and Desdemona watched their new home take shape. They saw farmland give way to fenced lots and cobble- stone streets. The sky darkened with smoke. Buildings flew by, brick warehouses painted in pragmatic Bookman white: WRIGHT AND KAY CO. . . DE- TROIT STOVE WORKS. Out on the water, squat, tar-colored barges dragged along, and people popped up on the streets, work- men in grimy overalls, clerks thumbing suspenders, the signs of eateries and boardinghouses appearing next: We Serve Stroll' . Make This Your Home Meals Temperance Beer . 15 cents . J. H. BLACK & SONS . . . . . . . ... As these new sights flooded my grandparents' brains, they jos- ded with images from the day before. Ellis Island, rising like a Doge's Palace on the water. The Baggage Room stacked to the ceiling with luggage. They'd been herded up a stairway to the Registry Room. Pinned with numbers from the Giulia's manifest, they'd filed past a line of health inspectors who'd looked in their eyes and ears, rubbed

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  21 In the same way that the Romans were the cultural heirs of the Greeks, the United States of today is the cultural heir of Europe. Mohandas Gandhi called the Bhagavad Gita the “religious book par excellence,” and it is regarded as the supreme creation of Sanskrit literature. Composed in the same period as the Iliad, this poem, “ The Song of God ,” is also an epic statement of polytheism, of the belief that god has fashioned many roads to the truth. As in the Iliad, a story of war and battle provides the vehicle to explore deeper questions of the nature of god. The Bhagavad Gita proclaims that beyond the multitude of deities, there is an all- encompassing, single divine power. This god is truth, and the search for wisdom is the pathway to god and to the freedom that is eternal. Wisdom lies in understanding that material goods and success are false idols. Freedom comes by overcoming our desires for what is false and devoting ourselves and our work to what is true and eternal. The culmination of an image of god as a vision of truth can be found perhaps as early as 500 B.C. in the Bhagavad Gita . This work was a product of classical Indian civilization. Around 1800 B.C., the fl ourishing civilizations around the Indus River were overrun by invaders from the west. The language of these invaders was Sanskrit, also the language of the Bhagavad Gita. Sanskrit was related to Persian and more distantly to Greek, Latin, and the Germanic languages. These invaders, who called themselves Aryans, meaning “nobles,” imposed their rule by conquest. From warfare and destruction came a new civilization that produced rich poetry, including the Bhagavad Gita, in an epic form. The religion of this people was Hinduism, a polytheistic religion that rejects the notion that the world of the gods is fi nite, but is willing to recognize any new divine power capable of rendering supernatural benefi ts to the community of worshipers. All nature was seen Sanskrit verse from Bhagavad Gita. © Hemera/Thinkstock.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  One night Caesar was meeting with his generals in the Egyptian palace, discussing strategy, when a guard entered to report that a Greek merchant was at the door bearing a large and valuable gift for the Roman leader. Caesar, in the mood for a little fun, gave the merchant permission to enter. The man came in, carrying on his shoulders a large rolled-up carpet. He undid the rope around the bundle and with a snap of his wrists unfurled it—revealing the young Cleopatra, who had been hidden inside, and who rose up half clothed before Caesar and his guests, like Venus emerging from the waves. Everyone was dazzled at the sight of the beautiful young queen (only twenty-one at the time) appearing before them suddenly as if in a dream. They were astounded at her daring and theatricality—smuggled into the harbor at night with only one man to protect her, risking everything on a bold move. No one was more enchanted than Caesar. According to the Roman writer Dio Cassius, "Cleopatra was in the prime of life. She had a delightful voice which could not fail to cast a spell over all who heard it. Such was the charm of her person and her speech that they drew the cold- est and most determined misogynist into her toils. Caesar was spellbound as soon as he set eyes on her and she opened her mouth to speak." That same evening Cleopatra became Caesar s lover. Caesar had had numerous mistresses before, to divert him from the rig- ors of his campaigns. But he had always disposed of them quickly to return to what really thrilled him—political intrigue, the challenges of warfare, the Roman theater. Caesar had seen women try anything to keep him un- der their spell. Yet nothing prepared him for Cleopatra. One night she would tell him how together they could revive the glory of Alexander the Great, and rule the world like gods. The next she would entertain him dressed as the goddess Isis, surrounded by the opulence of her court. Cleopatra initiated Caesar in the most decadent revelries, presenting herself as the incarnation of the Egyptian exotic. His life with her was a constant game, as challenging as warfare, for the moment he felt secure with her she In the mean time our good ship, with that perfect wind to drive her, fast approached the Sirens' Isle. But now the breeze dropped, some power lulled the waves, and a breathless calm set in. Rising from their seats my men drew in the sail and threw it into the hold, then sat down at the oars and churned the water white with their blades of polished pine. Meanwhile I took a large round of wax, cut it up small with my sword, and kneaded the pieces with all the strength of my fingers. The wax soon yielded to my vigorous treatment and grew warm, for I had the rays of my Lord the Sun to help me.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Today, anyone who has presence, who attracts attention when he or she tables of the testimony in enters a room, is said to possess charisma. But even these less-exalted types his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses reveal a trace of the quality suggested by the word's original meaning. did not know that the skin Their charisma is mysterious and inexplicable, never obvious. They have an of his face shone because he unusual confidence. They have a gift—often a smoothness with language— had been talking with God. And when Aaron that makes them stand out from the crowd. They express a vision. We may and all the people of Israel not realize it, but in their presence we have a kind of religious experience: saw Moses, behold, the we believe in these people, without having any rational evidence for doing skin of his face shone, and so. When trying to concoct an effect of charisma, never forget the religious they were afraid to come near him. But Moses source of its power. You must radiate an inward quality that has a saintly or called to them; and Aaron spiritual edge to it. Your eyes must glow with the fire of a prophet. Your and all the leaders of the charisma must seem natural, as if it came from something mysteriously be-congregation returned to him, and Moses talked yond your control, a gift of the gods. In our rational, disenchanted world, with them. And afterward people crave a religious experience, particularly on a group level. Any sign all the people of Israel came of charisma plays to this desire to believe in something. And there is noth-near, and he gave them in commandment all that the ing more seductive than giving people something to believe in and follow. Lord had spoken with him Charisma must seem mystical, but that does not mean you cannot learn in Mount Sinai. And certain tricks that will enhance the charisma you already possess, or will when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put give you the outward appearance of it. The following are basic qualities a veil on his face; but that will help create the illusion of charisma: whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and Purpose. If people believe you have a plan, that you know where you are when he came out, and going, they will follow you instinctively. The direction does not matter: told the people of Israel pick a cause, an ideal, a vision and show that you will not sway from your what he was commanded, the people of Israel saw the goal. People will imagine that your confidence comes from something face of Moses, that the skin real—just as the ancient Hebrews believed Moses was in communion with of Moses's face shone; and God, simply because he showed the outward signs. Moses would put the veil upon his face again, until

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Caesar, in the mood for a little fun, gave the merchant permission to enter. But now the breeze The man came in, carrying on his shoulders a large rolled-up carpet. He dropped, some power lulled undid the rope around the bundle and with a snap of his wrists unfurled the waves, and a breathless calm set in. Rising from it—revealing the young Cleopatra, who had been hidden inside, and who their seats my men drew rose up half clothed before Caesar and his guests, like Venus emerging from in the sail and threw it into the waves. the hold, then sat down at the oars and churned the Everyone was dazzled at the sight of the beautiful young queen (only water white with their twenty-one at the time) appearing before them suddenly as if in a dream. blades of polished pine. They were astounded at her daring and theatricality—smuggled into the Meanwhile I took a large harbor at night with only one man to protect her, risking everything on a round of wax, cut it up small with my sword, and bold move. No one was more enchanted than Caesar. According to the kneaded the pieces with all Roman writer Dio Cassius, "Cleopatra was in the prime of life. She had a the strength of my fingers. delightful voice which could not fail to cast a spell over all who heard it. The wax soon yielded to my vigorous treatment and Such was the charm of her person and her speech that they drew the cold- grew warm, for I had the est and most determined misogynist into her toils. Caesar was spellbound as rays of my Lord the Sun to soon as he set eyes on her and she opened her mouth to speak." That same help me. I took each of my men in turn and plugged evening Cleopatra became Caesar s lover. their ears with it. They Caesar had had numerous mistresses before, to divert him from the rig- then made me a prisoner ors of his campaigns. But he had always disposed of them quickly to return on my ship by binding me hand and foot, standing to what really thrilled him—political intrigue, the challenges of warfare, me up by the step of the the Roman theater. Caesar had seen women try anything to keep him un- mast and tying the rope's der their spell. Yet nothing prepared him for Cleopatra. One night she ends to the mast itself. would tell him how together they could revive the glory of Alexander the This done, they sat down once more and struck the Great, and rule the world like gods. The next she would entertain him grey water with their oars. dressed as the goddess Isis, surrounded by the opulence of her court. • We made good progress Cleopatra initiated Caesar in the most decadent revelries, presenting herself and had just come within call of the shore when the

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  54 Lecture 10: Book of Job Book of Job Lecture 10 The Book of Job goes beyond anything that the rest of ancient Near Eastern literature except for the poetry of the Gilgamesh in its exploration of this question of good and evil. B eowulf, as we have seen, was an exploration of fate. In the world of Beowulf and in the epic of Gilgamesh, poets asked why people must die and whether there is a way to avoid death. After accepting that all people must die, the poets explore how people should live. The heroic image of Beowulf lives and dies, leaving behind the greatest of reputations. The divine plays little role in Gilgamesh and Beowulf. The heroes must work out their own destiny in a world in which humans are alone. But another great tradition makes the question of fate central to the question of the nature of God. If God is good, why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? The Book of Job is the most enduring attempt to answer that question. The author of Job took a widespread Middle Eastern folklore motif and transformed it into a dramatic and touching story of human suffering. In the hands of this unknown literary genius, that story became the means for a profound disquisition on the ultimate mystery of God and the frailty of any human attempt to understand the divine. The Book of Job raises questions of fate, as well as questions of good and evil. It is one of the most beautiful works ever composed. It is also a profound exploration of why bad things happen to good people. It explores the questions of absolute good and absolute evil. In addition, it asks what we deserve if we live our lives as well as we can and evil still happens to us. The Book of Job is classi fi ed as wisdom literature. Wisdom literature had its roots in the ancient Near East and includes such works as Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, as well as Egyptian works that give practical wisdom. Job is the story of a righteous man. Job is a wealthy man with 10 children. He is respected in his community. He does good works and has avoided evil his entire life. The God in the Book of Job is puzzling and almost non-Hebraic. God is in heaven meeting with the sons of heaven. Satan, the personifi cation

• From Middlesex (2002)

  There was no roadblock, no fence. The streetcar didn't so much as pause as it crossed the invisible barrier, but at the same time in the length of a block the world was different. The light seemed to change, growing gray as it filtered through laundry lines. The gloom of front porches and apartments without electricity seeped out into the streets, and the thundercloud of poverty that hung over the neighborhood directed attention downward toward the clarity of for- lorn, shadowless objects: red bricks crumbling off a stoop, piles of trash and ham bones, used tires, crushed pinwheels from last year's fair, someone's old lost shoe. The derelict quiet lasted only a moment before Black Bottom erupted from all its alleys and doorways. Look at all the children! So many! Suddenly children were running alongside the streetcar, waving and shouting. They played chicken with it, jumping in front of the tracks. Others climbed onto the back. Desde- mona put a hand to her throat. Why do they have so many children? What's the matter with these people? The mavro women should nurse their babies longer. Somebody should tell them. Now in the alleys she saw men washing themselves at open faucets. Half- dressed women jutted out hips on second-story porches. Desdemona looked in awe and terror at all the faces filling the windows, all the bodies filling the streets, nearly a half million people squeezed into twenty-five square blocks. Ever since World War I when E. I. Weiss, manager of the Packard Motor Company, had brought, by his own report, die first "load of 141 niggers" to the city, here in Black Bottom was where the establish- ment had thought to keep them. All kinds of professions now crowded in together, foundry workers and lawyers, maids and car- penters, doctors and hoodlums, but most people, this being 1932, were unemployed. Still, more and more were coming every year, every month, seeking jobs in the North. They slept on every couch in every house. They built shacks in the yards. They camped on roofs. (This state of affairs couldn't last, of course. Over the years, Black Bottom, for all the whites' attempts to contain it— and because of the inexorable laws of poverty and racism— would slowly spread, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, until the so-called ghetto would become the entire city itself, and by the 1970s, in the no-tax-base, white-flight, murder-capital Detroit of the Coleman Young administration, black people could finally live wherever they wanted to . . .) But now, back in 1932, something odd was happening. The streetcar was slowing down. In the middle of Black Bottom, it was stopping and— unheard of .'—opening its doors. Passengers fidgeted. The conductor tapped Desdemona on the shoulder. "Lady, this is it. Hastings." "Hastings Street?" She didn't believe him. She showed him the address again. He pointed out the door.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Then there were the visions: He foretold his uncle’s and then his grandmother’s death; and the voices: when he played alone he often heard God calling his name.My mother, too, grew up on a first-name basis with God. She was only eight when she heard the voice calling her name in the woods next to the Assemblies of God church where her daddy was pastor. There were no burning bushes, no glowing figures, only an ordinary and somewhat familiar voice calling, Carolyn. She wandered through the trees and looked behind the largest trunk. Carolyn . No one there. Carolyn.That night as she told her family the story, a feeling of awe swept over her. That voice, the voice that called her name in the trees, the voice that sounded so familiar yet belonged to no one, that voice was the eternal I Am, the same voice that spoke the world into existence. She knew it. When her parents asked how she knew, she shrugged and asked, “Well, who else could it have been?” In her family, no one would have suggested it was her imagination. My Pentecostal grandparents and their children existed in a reality that was an extension of biblical times. They believed the temporal world lay like a fine curtain over the realm of the eternal. At any moment the archangel Michael might reach through the veil and tap them on the shoulder with a heavenly message. Or the devil might slip through and tempt with some cheap bit of finery. It could be hard to tell one from the other at times, especially given Satan’s love of deception, but no one questioned the veracity of the experiences.Being singled out by God brought the kind of attention that was hard to come by for kids in large, poor families. Born in 1932 to Alabama sharecroppers, Brother Terrell was the youngest of seven kids. The family lived in a shack without running water or electricity. A broken-down horse provided the only transportation. The Great Depression and the death of Brother Terrell’s father turned the family’s subsistent poverty into a struggle for survival. His mother left him in the care of one of his sisters and went to work in the fields with her other five children. She left at sunrise and came home at sundown. On Sundays, she hitched the horse to a rickety wagon and drove her brood to the nearest holiness church, a backwoods term for a nondenominational Pentecostal offshoot. Her faith was her only source of hope.Mama’s childhood was slightly less desperate. She was one of the middle kids in a family of nine children. Her daddy was the pastor of a string of Assemblies of God churches throughout Alabama and Florida. He farmed to put food on the table. My mother and her siblings picked cotton to pay for their shoes and other necessities. Mama and Brother Terrell were thought to be sensitive children by their mothers and downright peculiar by their siblings.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  He was the healer and prophet plucked by the hand of God from the Alabama countryside and given a worldwide ministry of faith and deliverance. He was a son of God, a voice crying out in the wilderness. Oh, hallelujah, he knew who he was, and the devil couldn’t take that away from him. His shoulders straightened and his voice grew stronger. The eulogy turned into preaching and the preaching wandered across a broad expanse of subjects. The 9/11 attack had come to him in a vision where he saw the towers fall. When he prophesied, you better believe it came to pass. The intermittent response of the crowd lengthened into a steady buzz of “amen, uh-huh, hallelujah, that’s right” running underneath and alongside every sound that issued from his mouth until his words and theirs formed one single affirmation.He began to pace and then to dance up and down the platform. His words came faster until he was shouting into the microphone. “There’s comin’ a revival, a dead-raising revival!”Family members, tense and silent, shifted in their seats.“It’s a revival that will restore everything the devil has stolen, a revival that will return everything that’s been lost . . . everything that’s been corrupted, everything you’ve lived without.”They jumped to their feet, waved their hands, and danced and danced. They understood that life takes it all, your last dime, your last hope, your last breath. They understood, and they laughed and shouted and careened about the church, drunk on faith. My husband, one of the most reserved and cerebral men I have known, had his hands in the air. My sister’s husband shouted “amen” until his face turned red. The funeral had turned into a revival meeting for everyone except Brother Terrell’s children, who sat red-eyed and rigid in the middle of the church facing the coffin.With the congregation in his thrall, Brother Terrell abruptly stopped preaching and handed the microphone to one of his associates. As the amens and hallelujahs softened, the associate minister waved forward a group of preachers. One of them carried a bottle of olive oil. They walked down the ramp to the casket. The church went silent. My sisters glanced over their shoulders, eyes wide. One of Pam’s younger sisters buried her face in her hands. The minister who had been Randall’s friend took the bottle of oil and tilted it onto a white handkerchief. He put the cloth on Randall’s forehead and spoke while the others laid hands on the corpse.“Brother Randall, in the name of Jesus, if you want to come back, then go ahead and come on. In the name of Jesus. We’d be glad to have you.”After what must have been one of the shortest prayers in Holy Roller history, the preachers stepped away from the body. Shoulders relaxed in the family section. Randall would remain dead and his body would stay in the coffin. The organ music swelled and Brother Terrell moved to the side of the coffin.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill play- ers, permanendy on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh. Milton lying on his bed, dreaming about my mother in the same way I would later dream about the Ob- scure Object. Milton writing love letters and even, after reading Mar- veil's "To His Coy Mistress" at night school, \o\t poems. Milton mixing Elizabethan metaphysics with the rhyming styles of Edgar Bergen: You're just as amazing, Tessie Zizmo as some new mechanicalgizmo a GE exec mightgive a pal you're a World's Fair kind ofgal . . . 173 Even looking back through a daughter's forgiving eye, I have to admit: my father was never good-looking. At eighteen, he was alarm- ingly, consumptively skinny. Blemishes dotted his face. Beneath his doleful eyes the skin was already darkening in pouches. His chin was weak, his nose overdeveloped, his Brylcreemed hair as massive and gleaming as a Jell-O mold. Milton, however, was aware of none of these physical deficits. He possessed a flinty self-confidence that pro- tected him like a shell from the world's assaults. Theodora's physical appeal was more obvious. She had inherited Sourmelina's beauty on a smaller scale. She was only five foot one, thin-waisted and small-busted, with a long, swanlike neck supporting her pretty, heart-shaped face. If Sourmelina had always been a Euro- pean kind of American, a sort of Marlene Dietrich, then Tessie was the fully Americanized daughter Dietrich might have had. Her main- stream, even countrified, looks extended to the slight gap between her teeth and her turned-up nose. Traits often skip a generation. I look much more typically Greek than my mother does. Somehow Tessie had become a partial product of the South. She said things like "shucks" and "golly." Working every day at the florist's shop, Lina had left Tessie in the care of an assortment of older women, many of them Scotch Irish ladies from Kentucky, and in this way a twang had got- ten into Tessie's speech. Compared with Zoe's strong, mannish fea- tures, Tessie had so-called ail-American looks, and this was certainly part of what attracted my father. Sourmelina's salary at the florist's shop was not high. Mother and daughter were forced to economize. At secondhand shops, Sourme- lina gravitated to Vegas showgirl outfits. Tessie picked out sensible clothes. Back at O'Toole's, she mended wool skirts and hand-washed blouses; she de-pilled sweaters and polished used saddle shoes. But the faint thrift-store smell never quite left her clothes. (It would at- tach to me years later when I went on the road.) The smell went along with her fatherlessness, and with growing up poor.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  This is the revival Jesus was talking about when he said in the scripture, ‘These things ye shall do and greater.’“Jesus showed me a vision of this revival spreading like wildfire across the whole earth. Then before the devil and the churches could get into it and destroy it, it was over. And then a time of great tribulation came upon us.” He buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook. His voice wheezed out a cry.“I saw Christians persecuted in this country for refusing to renounce Christ, just like I saw in my vision back in fifty-nine.“Then it was over and I saw the Son of Man, Jesus, coming in the clouds. We don’t have much time, people. We got to lift up Jesus. We’re entering into a new dispensation. It’s got to be Jesus, Jesus, Jesus from now on out. I don’t understand everything that this means, but I believe as we seek the Lord, he’ll tell us.”He stretched out his hand toward the congregation. “And one more thing. Jesus told me if I would obey him, he’d supply all my needs. He said, ‘You’ll never have to beg for an offering again.’ That’s thus saith the Lord, people.”Brother Cotton brought the four offering buckets and handed them to Brother Terrell. My mother began to play softly on the organ. Brother Terrell set the buckets up on the ground in front of him. “Whatever y’all give tonight will be given back to you multiplied. The Lord will bless those that bless this ministry. That’s what he said.”The audience filled the buckets, then began to press money into Brother Terrell’s hands and pockets, telling him it was for his personal use. He shook hands and thanked people for their support. He inclined his head to listen to prayer requests. He hugged the older men and women and blessed the children of the younger ones. When people grabbed him and refused to let go, he waved Brother Cotton aside and patted their hands and nodded while they told him how much he meant to them. In him they saw a more powerful, dazzling image of themselves. He came from the same grim poverty that had shaped them, but it did not cling to him. His smile held out a promise; what it was they couldn’t have told you, but the memory of it lingered for days after they saw him. He was one of them, but his face lacked the hopeless, haunted expression they glimpsed as they walked past streaky storefront windows. When he spoke he sounded like them, and people listened. He stood on that platform in those fine store-bought suits and told stories of huntin’ coons and eatin’ stewed squirrel, and when the newspaper men came to take his picture and write about him, he laughed and didn’t try to talk in a prettified way. He was them without the shame. He was them without the hopelessness.