Confusion

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 Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Granted, it is no easy matter to airdrop questionnaires and #2 pencils to foragers in the Upper Amazon (The Grad Students Must Be Crazy). Still, the difficulty or impossibility of including their perspective does nothing to lessen its vital importance to the integrity of this sort of research. This broad yet shallow research paradigm is like claiming to have uncovered “universal fish truths” after conducting studies in rivers around the world. What about the fish in lakes? Ponds? Oceans? Psychologist Christine Harris has noted that Buss’s conclusions could easily be nothing more than confirmation of old news: that “men are more reactive to any form of sexual stimuli than they are to emotional stimuli [and] are more interested in, or better able to imagine, such stimuli.”10 The men get more agitated by the sex, in other words, simply because they imagine it more clearly than the women do. When Harris measured the bodily responses of people being asked Buss’s questions, she found that “women as a group showed little difference in physiological reactivity,” but they still predicted, almost unanimously, that the emotional infidelity would be more disturbing for them. This finding suggests a fascinating disconnect between what these women actually feel and what they think they should feel about their partner’s fidelity (more on this later). Psychologists David A. DeSteno and Peter Salovey found even more fundamental flaws in Buss’s research, pointing out that the subjects’ belief system comes into play when answering questions about hypothetical infidelity. They note that “the belief that emotional infidelity implies sexual infidelity was held to a greater degree by women than men,” and that therefore, “the choice between sexual infidelity and emotional infidelity [at the heart of Buss’s studies] is a false dichotomy….”11 David A. Lishner and his colleagues honed in on another weak point: the fact that subjects are given only two options: either thoughts of sexual infidelity hurt more or thoughts of emotional infidelity do. Lishner asked, what if both scenarios made subjects feel equally uncomfortable? When Lishner included this third option, he found that the majority of respondents indicated that both forms of infidelity were equally upsetting, throwing further doubt on Buss’s conclusions.12 Buss and other evolutionary psychologists who argue that some degree of jealousy is part of human nature may have a point, but they’re overplaying their hand when they universalize their findings to everyone, everywhere, always. Human nature is made of highly reflective material. It is a mirror—admittedly marked by unalterable genetic scratches and cracks—but a mirror nonetheless. For most human beings, reality is pretty much what we’re told it is. Like practically everything else, jealousy reflects social modification and can clearly be reduced to little more than a minor irritant if consensus deems it so.*

• From Querelle (1953)

  around it, after he had stopped laughing. She knew for certain that this was a happy young man, and it gave her an almost imperceptible shock-caused a little crack to open, through which the incredible me?ange of her sentiments now flowed freely. Unbeknownst to the women who only saw her calm face, her beautiful eyes, who were always impressed by the melancholy majesty of her bearing, supported as it was by her heavy, ample, in the best sense of the word, hospitable haunches ( initially destined for motherhood ) -in her, whose bosom appeared so deep and calm, there was a constant swirling, hvisting and untangling, for some mysterious reason, of these long and wide black veils, consisting of a soft and opaque material, mourning silks with shadowy folds : there was nothing else going on inside her but this at times rapid, at times languorous to-and-fro motion of those sheets of black, and she could neither pull them out through her mouth to expose them to the sunlight, nor could she blow them out her asshole, like a solitary worm. "It's ridiculous to arrive at such a state, at my age, and I can't afford to make any mistakes. Not me. Nobody's going to fool Josephine. Just to think of it, in five years I'll turn fifty. Above all, I mustn't throw myself at the mercy of some notion. And it is a crazy notion, of my own making. When I say that they resemble one another, to the point where they are j ust one, in reality 'they' are two. There's Robert, on one side, and Jo on the other." These tranquilizing daydreams which she indulged in in the daytime and during the moments of respite she granted herself while watching over the transactions in the parlor, were continuously interrupted by everyday concerns. Thus, slowly, Madame Lysiane began to regard her own life, with its thousands of incidents, as something completely stupid and trivial compared to the dimensions of the phenomenon whose witness and stage she had become. 216 I JEAN GENET "Two dirty pillow covers? And so what about them? Get them washed. What on earth do they want me to do, do it myself?" Quickly she abandoned that degrading idea, to return to observing the spellbinding choreography of her black veils.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if you do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to infidelity?” he said, with gentle reproachfulness. “If you love your child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make him when the innocent babe asks you: ‘Papa! who made all that enchants me in this world—the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the grass?’ Can you say to him: ‘I don’t know’? You cannot but know, since the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child will ask you: ‘What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?’ What will you say to him when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to the allurements of the world and the devil? That’s not right,” he said, and he stopped, putting his head on one side and looking at Levin with his kindly, gentle eyes. Levin made no answer this time, not because he did not want to enter upon a discussion with the priest, but because, so far, no one had ever asked him such questions, and when his babes did ask him those questions, it would be time enough to think about answering them. “You are entering upon a time of life,” pursued the priest, “when you must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His mercy aid you and have mercy on you!” he concluded. “Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His loving-kindness, forgives this child....” and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the priest blessed him and dismissed him. On getting home that day, Levin had a delightful sense of relief at the awkward position being over and having been got through without his having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained a vague memory that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had not been at all so stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was something in it that must be cleared up. “Of course, not now,” thought Levin, “but some day later on.” Levin felt more than ever now that there was something not clear and not clean in his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he was in the same position which he perceived so clearly and disliked in others, and for which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky.

• From Querelle (1953)

  216 I JEAN GENET "Two dirty pillow covers? And so what about them? Get them washed. What on earth do they want me to do, do it myself?" Quickly she abandoned that degrading idea, to return to observing the spellbinding choreography of her black veils. "Two brothers who love each other so much that they look alike ... there's one of those veils. There it is. It's moving, gently, unfurled by two naked arms with closed fists, clenched tight inside me. And now it is like a coil. It is sliding. Another one comes to meet it, and it is black too, but of a different texture. And this new veil means: two brothers who look so alike that they love each other ... And it, too, slides down into the vat, covers the other one ... No, it is the same one, only turned over ... Another pjece of material, of another shade of black. And it means: I love one of the brothers, only one . . . Another veil: If I love one of the brothers, I love the other one, too· ... I have to go into all this, I have to put my finger on it. But it's impossible to get them out. Do I love Robert? I certainly do, or we wouldn't have stayed together these six months. But that, evidently, doesn't mean a thing. I love Robert. I don't love Jo. Why not? Perhaps I do. They adore each other. Nothing I can do about that. Th ey adore each other: does that mean they make love, as well? But where? Where? They're never together. But that's just it, they take care not to be seen. Where then? In other regions ... And they've both had that boy ... That kid, he' s their love-boy ... I'm an idiot, what does one of those dresses matter compared to my veils-but I better give Germaine a piece of my mind for sweeping the floor with her dress. It is a matter of principle. How is it that a woman like me never gets to experience a little peace and quiet?" · Madame Lysiane had waited for love a long time. Males had never excited her a great deal. Only after she had turned fortv

• From Querelle (1953)

  142 I JEAN GENET certain by the police authorities-that Gil had committed both murders; for fear of betraying himself, he could not contradict it openly. Then he proceeded to establish his own conclusions, by methodical guesswork, and finally decided to give in to the lovely dance of hypotheses. He thought of Querelle in love with Vic, then killing him in a fit of jealous rage; or vice versa, Vic, overwhel med by similar emotion, trying to kill Querelle and becoming his victim. Mario spent an entire day juggling these ideas, none of wh ich were verifiable, but slowly becoming more and more certain of Querelle's guilt. Mario conjured up Querelle's face, pale despite its sailor's tan, pale and so similar to his brother's. That resemblan c e provoked a kind of charming confusion in �1ario's mind, a witches' cauldron of thoughts that were not to Querelle' s advantage. One evening, down by the old moat, the appearance of the two brothers made him feel ill � t ease in a way not dissimilar to Madame Lysiane's experience. Mario found he could take every one of Querelle's traits and effortlessly recombine them into a mental image of Robert's face. Slowly this image filled out and took the place of the face Mario was looking at. In the dark of the night, under the trees, Mario remained motionless for a few seconds. He was tom between the actual face he saw and the superimposed image. He frowned, \Vrinkled his brow. Quereiie's face, present and impassive, interfered with Robert's image; The two mugs fused, became muddled, fought, became identical again. That evening there was nothing to differentiate them, not even the smile that turne d Quereiie into his brother's shadow ( Quereiie's smile spread rippling over his whole body, like a veil in motion, trem bling, very thin with shadowy folds, and thus enhancing the charm of his devil-may-care, supple and fuiiy alive body, while Robert's glumness consisted of a passion for himself: instead of darkening him, this self-love became a hearth without warmth, a light that seemed stifling because his body was so rigid, moved so heavily and deliberately). Then the speii of enchantment

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Kitty, haven’t you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?” said the princess, when they were left alone. “Why has she given up sending the children and coming to see us?” Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her. Kitty answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not put into words to herself. It was one of those things which one knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself, so terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken. Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations with the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on the round, good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings; she remembered their secret confabulations about the invalid, their plots to draw him away from the work which was forbidden him, and to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest boy, who used to call her “my Kitty,” and would not go to bed without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to think of things to say to him. She recalled the timid, softened look with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of her own goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all was! But all that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was suddenly spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty with affected cordiality, and had kept continual watch on her and on her husband. Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the cause of Anna Pavlovna’s coolness? “Yes,” she mused, “there was something unnatural about Anna Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said angrily the day before yesterday: ‘There, he will keep waiting for you; he wouldn’t drink his coffee without you, though he’s grown so dreadfully weak.’”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I have doubted, I doubt everything,” said Levin in a voice that jarred on himself, and he ceased speaking. The priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more, and closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky accent: “Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special sins?” he added, without the slightest interval, as though anxious not to waste time. “My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most part I am in doubt.” “Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind,” the priest repeated the same words. “What do you doubt about principally?” “I doubt of everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence of God,” Levin could not help saying, and he was horrified at the impropriety of what he was saying. But Levin’s words did not, it seemed, make much impression on the priest. “What sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?” he said hurriedly, with a just perceptible smile. Levin did not speak. “What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?” the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. “Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the Creator?” he said, looking inquiringly at Levin. Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a direct answer to the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t know! Then how can you doubt that God created all?” the priest said, with good-humored perplexity. “I don’t understand it at all,” said Levin, blushing, and feeling that his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything but stupid in such a position. “Pray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great power, and we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Him. Pray to God,” he repeated hurriedly. The priest paused for some time, as though meditating. “You’re about, I hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son in the spirit, Prince Shtcherbatsky?” he resumed, with a smile. “An excellent young lady.” “Yes,” answered Levin, blushing for the priest. “What does he want to ask me about this at confession for?” he thought. And, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Getting that way,’ said Levi, rounding out his shoulders. He didn’t smile. He knew about Claire Malcolm, Jerome had told him, and, with his usual judicious ability to see both sides of a thing, he had felt quite reasonable about it. He felt bad for his mom, obviously, but he also understood his father’s position. Levi too had loved girls dearly in the past and then played away with other girls for less than honourable reasons and saw nothing heinously wrong with the separation of sex and love into two different categories. But, looking at Claire Malcolm now, he found himself confused. It was yet another example of his father’s bizarre tastes. Where was the booty on that? Where was the rack? He felt the unfairness  On Beauty and illogic of this substitution. He made a decision to cut the conversation short as a sign of solidarity with his mother’s more generous proportions. ‘Well, you look great,’ chimed Claire. ‘Are you performing tonight?’ ‘Not definitely. Depends. My boys probably will,’ said Levi, flicking his head back in the direction of his companions. ‘Anyway, I guess I better be getting down there. Eleven thirty,’ he repeated to Zora and walked on. Claire, who had not missed Levi’s silent chastisement, poured herself another large glass of wine and put her knife and fork together over her half-eaten salad. ‘We should probably go down too,’ she said quietly.  The ethnography of the basement was not as it had been on previous visits. From where Claire sat she could see only a few other white people, and no one at all of her own age. This state of affairs need not change things particularly, but it was not quite as she’d expected and it would take a little while to feel comfortable. She was thankful for yoga; yoga allowed her to sit cross-legged on a floor cushion like a much younger woman, camouflaged among her students. On stage, a black girl in a tall headwrap rhymed brashly over the bluesy swing of the small live band behind her. My womb , she said, is the TOMB , she said, of your precious misconceptions / I KNOW the identity of your serenity / When YOU claim my hero was blond / Cleopatra? Brother, that’s plain wrong / I HEAR the Nubian spirit behind the whitewash / Oh, gosh / My redemption has its OWN intention . And so on. This was not good. Claire listened to her students’ lively discussion about why this was not good. In the spirit of pedagogy she tried to encourage them to be less abusive, more specific. She was only partly successful in this. ‘At least she’s conscious ,’ said Chantelle, a little guardedly. She  the anatomy lesson was shy of the weight of opinion on the other side. ‘I mean, at least it’s not ‘‘bitch’’ this and ‘‘nigger’’ that. You know?’

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Well, come here, you perfect children,” Lvov said to the two handsome boys who came in, and after bowing to Levin, went up to their father, obviously wishing to ask him about something. Levin would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would say to their father, but Natalia began talking to him, and then Lvov’s colleague in the service, Mahotin, walked in, wearing his court uniform, to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept up without a break upon Herzegovina, Princess Korzinskaya, the town council, and the sudden death of Madame Apraksina. Levin even forgot the commission intrusted to him. He recollected it as he was going into the hall. “Oh, Kitty told me to talk to you about Oblonsky,” he said, as Lvov was standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin off. “Yes, yes, maman wants us, _les beaux-frères,_ to attack him,” he said, blushing. “But why should I?” “Well, then, I will attack him,” said Madame Lvova, with a smile, standing in her white sheepskin cape, waiting till they had finished speaking. “Come, let us go.” Chapter 5 At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were performed. One was a fantasia, _King Lear;_ the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before him, listening. But the more he listened to the fantasia of _King Lear_ the further he felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything. Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a madman’s, sprang up quite unexpectedly.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Rising instantly erect, he cried: “How saidst thou: he had? lives he not still? does not the sweet light strike his eyes?” When he perceived that I made some delay in answering, supine he fell again, and showed himself no more. But that other, magnanimous, at whose desire I had stopped, changed not his aspect, nor moved his neck, nor bent his side. “And if,” continuing his former words, he said, “they have learnt that art badly, it more torments me than this bed. But the face of the Queen, who reigns here, shall not be fifty times10 rekindled ere thou shalt know the hardness of that art. And so mayest thou once return to the sweet world, tell me why that people is so fierce against my kindred in all its laws?” Whereat I to him: “The havoc, and the great slaughter, which dyed the Arbia red, causes such orations in our temple.”11 And sighing, he shook his head; then said: “In that I was not single; nor without cause, assuredly, should I have stirred with the others; but I was single there, where all consented to extirpate Florence,12 I alone with open face defended her.” “Ah! so may thy seed sometime have rest,” I prayed him, “solve the knot which has here involved my judgment. It seems that you see beforehand what time brings with it, if I rightly hear; and have a different manner with the present.” “Like one who has imperfect vision, we see the things,” he said, “which are remote from us; so much light the Supreme Ruler still gives to us; when they draw nigh, or are, our intellect is altogether void; and except what others bring us, we know nothing of your human state. Therefore thou mayest understand that all our knowledge shall be dead, from that moment when the portal of the Future shall be closed.”13 Then, as compunctious for my fault, I said: “Now will you therefore tell that fallen one, that his child is still joined to the living. And if I was mute before, at the response, let him know, it was because my thoughts already were in that error which you have resolved for me.” And now my Master was recalling me: wherefore I, in more haste, besought the spirit to tell me who was with him. He said to me: “With more than a thousand lie I here; the second Frederick14 is here within, and the Cardinal;15 and of the rest I speak not.” Therewith he hid himself; and I towards the ancient Poet turned my steps, revolving that saying which seemed hostile to me. He moved on; and then, as we were going, he said to me: “Why art thou so bewildered?” And I satisfied him in his question. “Let thy memory retain what thou hast heard against thee,” that Sage exhorted me; “and now mark here”; and he raised his finger.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family.” “No, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is it you don’t act accordingly?...” “Well, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to increase the difference of position existing between him and me.” “No, excuse me, that’s a paradox.” “Yes, there’s something of a sophistry about that,” Veslovsky agreed. “Ah! our host; so you’re not asleep yet?” he said to the peasant who came into the barn, opening the creaking door. “How is it you’re not asleep?” “No, how’s one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep, but I heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She won’t bite?” he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet. “And where are you going to sleep?” “We are going out for the night with the beasts.” “Ah, what a night!” said Veslovsky, looking out at the edge of the hut and the unharnessed wagonette that could be seen in the faint light of the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. “But listen, there are women’s voices singing, and, on my word, not badly too. Who’s that singing, my friend?” “That’s the maids from hard by here.” “Let’s go, let’s have a walk! We shan’t go to sleep, you know. Oblonsky, come along!” “If one could only do both, lie here and go,” answered Oblonsky, stretching. “It’s capital lying here.” “Well, I shall go by myself,” said Veslovsky, getting up eagerly, and putting on his shoes and stockings. “Good-bye, gentlemen. If it’s fun, I’ll fetch you. You’ve treated me to some good sport, and I won’t forget you.” “He really is a capital fellow, isn’t he?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, when Veslovsky had gone out and the peasant had closed the door after him. “Yes, capital,” answered Levin, still thinking of the subject of their conversation just before. It seemed to him that he had clearly expressed his thoughts and feelings to the best of his capacity, and yet both of them, straightforward men and not fools, had said with one voice that he was comforting himself with sophistries. This disconcerted him. “It’s just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one’s rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.” “No, if it were unjust, you could not enjoy these advantages and be satisfied—at least I could not. The great thing for me is to feel that I’m not to blame.” “What do you say, why not go after all?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, evidently weary of the strain of thought. “We shan’t go to sleep, you know. Come, let’s go!”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I want to read him ‘Safe and Happy,’ or ‘Under the Wing,’” she said, looking inquiringly at Karenin. And finding the book, and sitting down again in her place, she opened it. “It’s very short. In it is described the way by which faith can be reached, and the happiness, above all earthly bliss, with which it fills the soul. The believer cannot be unhappy because he is not alone. But you will see.” She was just settling herself to read when the footman came in again. “Madame Borozdina? Tell her, tomorrow at two o’clock. Yes,” she said, putting her finger in the place in the book, and gazing before her with her fine pensive eyes, “that is how true faith acts. You know Marie Sanina? You know about her trouble? She lost her only child. She was in despair. And what happened? She found this comforter, and she thanks God now for the death of her child. Such is the happiness faith brings!” “Oh, yes, that is most....” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, glad they were going to read, and let him have a chance to collect his faculties. “No, I see I’d better not ask her about anything today,” he thought. “If only I can get out of this without putting my foot in it!” “It will be dull for you,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, addressing Landau; “you don’t know English, but it’s short.” “Oh, I shall understand,” said Landau, with the same smile, and he closed his eyes. Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna exchanged meaningful glances, and the reading began. Chapter 22 Stepan Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange talk which he was hearing for the first time. The complexity of Petersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousing him out of his Moscow stagnation. But he liked these complications, and understood them only in the circles he knew and was at home in. In these unfamiliar surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted, and could not get his bearings. As he listened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful, artless—or perhaps artful, he could not decide which—eyes of Landau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious of a peculiar heaviness in his head.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to expound his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against the generally accepted theory of political economy, but to what extent he could reckon on his sympathy with his own new views he did not know and could not guess from the clever and serene face of the learned man. “But in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian laborer?” said Metrov; “in his biological characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he is placed?” Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that the Russian laborer has a quite special view of the land, different from that of other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant was due to the consciousness of his vocation to people vast unoccupied expanses in the East. “One may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the general vocation of a people,” said Metrov, interrupting Levin. “The condition of the laborer will always depend on his relation to the land and to capital.” And without letting Levin finish explaining his idea, Metrov began expounding to him the special point of his own theory. In what the point of his theory lay, Levin did not understand, because he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov, like other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had attacked the current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it was only from that point of view that he considered every laborer, though in many points he differed from the economists and had his own theory of the wage-fund, which he expounded to Levin.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X X I Turning direct to Dante, Beatrice receives his broken confession of how he fell away so soon as her countenance was hidden from him. Whereon she shows him how that very loss of her bodily presence, which he urges as the cause of his defection, should have taught him the empriness of all earthly and mortal beauty, weaned his heart from earth and given it to her in heaven. Like a chidden child, dumb with shame, confessing and repenting, Dante stands; but Beatrice will not suffer him to take refuge in childish pleas or excuses, and in the very terms whereby she summons him to look on her, reminds him that he has reached man’s estate, and should long have put away childish things. Whereon, in yet deeper shame, he wrenches up his downcast face to look on her, and sees her surpassing her former self more now that erst she surpassed all others. The passion of his penitence and his hatred of all those things which had enticed him away from her so vanquish him that he falls senseless to the ground. Dante comes to himself neck-deep in the stream, into which he plunges his head, of which he drinks, and which he crosses, by Matilda’s ministration. After which he is drawn into the dance of the four star-nymphs who promise to lead him to the light of Beatrice’s eyes; into which their three sisters, Faith, Hope and Charity will strengthen him to gaze. They keep their word; but Dante’s passionate reminiscences and longings are awed by the august impersonation of Revelation, whom he has found where he looked only for the Florentine maiden he had lost on earth. The divine and human nature of Christ are flashed alternately from the reflection in her eyes though ever combined in the mysterious Being himself, while the three nymphs implore Beatrice to turn their light upon her faithful pilgrim and unveil to him the beauty of her smile. Never was poet who could utter in words that spendour that now bursts upon him. “O THOU THAT art yon side the sacred stream,” her speech directing with the point towards me, which even with the edge had seemed sharp to me, she began again, continuing without delay, “say, say, it this is true; to such accusation thy confession must be joined.” My virtue was so confounded that the voice stirred and was spent ere it was free from its organs. Short time she forbore, then said: “What thinkest thou? Answer me, for the sad memories in thee are not yet destroyed by the water.” 1 Confusion and fear, together mingled, drove forth from my mouth a “Yea” such that to understand it the eyes were needed.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "He was wrong, so wrong!" Beauty said, but she sat up and put her hands to the sides of her head in consternation. She loved them both, that was the misery of it, the Crown Prince whom even now she could envision with his lean white face and those immaculate hands and those dark eyes so full of turbulence and dissatisfaction. It had been an agony to her that he had not taken her to his bed after the Bridle Path. "I want to help you because I love you," Alexi said. "I want to guide you. You are in rebellion." "Yes, but not always," she admitted in a vague whisper, looking off, as if she were suddenly ashamed to admit it. "I have...so many feelings." "Tell me," he said with authority. "Well, tonight...the rose, the last little pink but...whey did I pick it up in my teeth and offer it to Lady Juliana? Why? She had been so cruel to me." "You wanted to please her. She is your mistress. You are a slave. The highest thing that you can do is please, so you sought to do it, and not only in response to her paddling and her commands, but in that moment of your own will." "Ah, yes," said Beauty, that was it. "And...on the Bridle Path, how can I confess it, I felt some release in myself as if I were no longer locked in struggle, I was just a slave, a poor, desperate slave who must strive, strive purely." "You are eloquent," he said with feeling. "You know much already." "But I don't want to feel this. I want to rebel in my heart, I want to steel myself against them. They torment me endlessly. My Prince, were he the only one..." "But even if he were, he would find new ways to torment you, and he is not the only one. But tell me why you don't wish to give in to them." "Well, surely you know. Didn't you rebel? Don't you? Why, Leon said of you there is a core in you which no one touches." "Nonsense. I merely know and accept everything. There is no resistance." "But how can it be?" "Beauty, you must learn it. You must accept and yield, and then you shall see everything is simple." "I would not be here with you if I yielded because the Prince..." "Yes, you could be here with me. I adore my Queen and I am here with you. I love you both. I yield to that entirely as well as everything else and even the knowledge I may be punished. And when I am punished, I shall dread it, and suffer it and understand it and accept it. Beauty, when you accept it you will flower in the pain, you will flower in your suffering."

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

  Sex was a sure ticket to being noticed and sought after. Screwing boys provided the illusion of being held and loved. Drugs and alcohol numbed troubled, empty feelings, inflated shaky self-esteem, and made her feel confident and powerful. As a young teenager Paula was intoxicated with feeling important and powerful for the first time, and she resentfully pushed away any doubts about her behavior. At the end of that ten-year interview, she responded to my genuine concern about what she would do if she got expelled (as she was sure to be). “I’m just confused most of the time,” she admitted. “I don’t know why. I don’t like to think about things unless they happen. If I get into trouble again, I guess the police will solve it for me. Most of my trouble is during the day when Mom’s away. Coming home to an empty house got me into drugs and alcohol. I couldn’t stand the emptiness.” I continue to be struck by the poignancy of this statement. She was indeed confused. She had absolutely no sense that she had any control over herself. She assumed that control had to come from the outside, from the police if necessary. She did connect her trouble to years of having no parent really being there for her, but her attachment to her parents wasn’t rich enough or strong enough to keep her safe—and she remained angry at both. Very early Paula crossed the boundary from childhood into pseudoadulthood. She became attached to and increasingly dependent on sex and drugs as ways to feel better, to express her anger, and to feed her loneliness. Their power over her was irresistible, and she was on a dangerous and potentially fatal path into her future. RebellionONE IN FOUR of the children in this study started using drugs and alcohol before their fourteenth birthdays. By the time they were seventeen years old, over half of the teenagers were drinking or taking drugs. This number compares with almost 40 percent of all teenagers nationwide. Of those who used drugs, four in five admitted that their schoolwork suffered badly as a result. A majority used these substances for more than five years and several were seriously addicted by the time they reached their twenties. As I pointed out in Larry’s story, teenagers in the comparison group were no angels and also used drugs and alcohol as part of their rites of passage. But only a few started this behavior before age fourteen and only a quarter ended up as heavy users by their senior year in high school.1

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  He couldn’t remember when he’d last lost control, but he felt himself falling apart. With some struggle he became silent. Thoughts of the trial flew back into his mind. It had been short, methodical, and clinical. Jury selection lasted just a few hours. Pearson used his peremptory strikes to exclude all but one of the handful of African Americans who had been summoned to serve on the jury. His lawyers objected, but the judge summarily dismissed their complaints. The State put Myers on the stand to tell his absurd story about Walter forcing him to drive to Jackson Cleaners because his arm hurt. This version had Myers going into the cleaners where he saw Walter standing over the dead body of Ronda Morrison. Bizarrely, he also claimed that a third person was present and involved in the murder, a mysterious white man with salt and pepper hair who was clearly in charge of the crime and who directed Walter to kill Myers too, but Walter couldn’t because he was out of bullets. Walter thought the testimony was so nonsensical he couldn’t believe that people were taking it seriously. Why wasn’t everyone laughing? Chestnut’s cross-examination of Myers made it clear that the witness was lying. When Chestnut finished, Walter was sure that the State would simply announce that they had made a mistake. Instead, the prosecutor brought Myers back up to repeat his accusations as if the logic and contradictions in the testimony were completely irrelevant, as if repeating his lies enough times in this quiet room would make them true. Bill Hooks testified that he’d seen Walter’s truck pull out of the cleaners at the time of the murder and that he recognized the truck because it had been modified as a “low-rider.” Walter instantly whispered to his lawyers that he hadn’t turned his truck into a “low-rider” until several months after Morrison was murdered. His lawyers didn’t do much with that information, which frustrated Walter. Then another white man Walter had never heard of, Joe Hightower, took the stand and said that he had seen the truck at the cleaners, too. There were a dozen people who could talk about the fish fry and insist that Walter was at home when Ronda Morrison was killed. His lawyers called only three of them. Everybody seemed to be rushing to get the trial over with, and Walter couldn’t understand it. The State then called a white man, Ernest Welch, who said he was the “furniture man” who collected money at the McMillian house on the day they were having a fish fry—but it wasn’t the same day that Ronda Morrison was murdered. He said he remembered better than anyone when she was murdered because he was her uncle. He said that he had been so devastated that he went to the McMillian residence to collect money on a different day.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. “Marie Sanina is glad her child’s dead.... How good a smoke would be now!... To be saved, one need only believe, and the monks don’t know how the thing’s to be done, but Countess Lidia Ivanovna does know.... And why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I’ve done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won’t do to ask her now. They say they make one say one’s prayers. I only hope they won’t make me! That’ll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she’s reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—Bezzubov—what’s he Bezzubov for?” All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himself together. But soon after he became aware that he was dropping asleep and on the very point of snoring. He recovered himself at the very moment when the voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna was saying “he’s asleep.” Stepan Arkadyevitch started with dismay, feeling guilty and caught. But he was reassured at once by seeing that the words “he’s asleep” referred not to him, but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as well as Stepan Arkadyevitch. But Stepan Arkadyevitch’s being asleep would have offended them, as he thought (though even this, he thought, might not be so, as everything seemed so queer), while Landau’s being asleep delighted them extremely, especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna. _“Mon ami,”_ said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the folds of her silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Karenin not Alexey Alexandrovitch, but _“mon ami,” “donnez-lui la main. Vous voyez?_ Sh!” she hissed at the footman as he came in again. “Not at home.” The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his head on the back of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee, made faint movements, as though trying to catch something. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move carefully, but stumbled against the table, went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman’s hand. Stepan Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide, trying to wake himself up if he were asleep, he looked first at one and then at the other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting worse and worse. “_Que la personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui demande, qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle sorte!_” articulated the Frenchman, without opening his eyes. “_Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain._” “_Qu’elle sorte!_” repeated the Frenchman impatiently.

• From Querelle (1953)

  brought up new details in order to make his mistress suffer while at the same time he strengthened his own position and cut himself off from the world to be with Querelle, whom he became profoundly aware of within himself, for the second time in his life. Madame Lysiane both refused to hear and provoked those further revelations. She waited for them. She wanted them to become ever more monstrous. Together (without being fully aware of it) , the two lovers knew that a return to health would only be possible once they had managed to ex_tract all the venom, all the pus. Then Robert came up with a terrifying phrase that contained the notion of his and his brother's being merely one: ". . . yeah, even when we were little kids, they always mistook us, one for the other. We used to wear the same duds, same pants, same shirts. Had the same little mugs. No way of getting around that." He detested his brother-or thought he did-but now he put a great deal of effort into identifying with him, strengthening their relationship-a relationship stretching so far back in time that the mental image was of a blob of molasses, as it were, containing and confusing their two bodies. At the same time Robert was afraid of having Madame Lysiane discover what he, Robert, regarded as his brother's vice : this made him exaggerate the nature of their relationship-make it appear, while retaining the straightest of faces, like a rather demoniacal affair. "I have it up to here, Roberti I don't want to hear any- more about your filthy doings!" "What filthy doings? There weren't any. We're brothers , Madame Lysiane was surprised, herself, at having brougJ-tt up the notion of "filth." Obviously, there was nothing wrong (the way one says "wrong" when meaning "that's not right" ) in the mere fact that two brothers looked alike; the true evil consisted of that quicker-than-the-eye trick by which two beings were turned into one (a trick th_at is called love, when it involves two disparate beings) , or which, by the magic of a single love, tss I QUERELLE divided a single being into two. Her love-and Madame Lysiane's feelings balked at the word "for" : her love for Robert -or for Querelle? For_ a second, she became confused : "Yes, your filth. Exactly that, I'm telling you : your filth. You think I was born yesterday? I haven't been running a maison all these years for nothing. I'm fed up, that's all." She directed her final remark to God and even beyond, to life itself, so cruel1y hurting the warmth and whiteness of her flesh and soul that had been reared on the milk of human kindness.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  and she began: “Thou thyself makest thyself dense with false imagining, and so thou seest not what thou wouldst see, if thou hadst cast it18 off. Thou art not upon earth, as thou believest; but lightning, fleeing its proper site,19 ne’er darted as dost thou who are returning thither.” If I was stripped of my first perplexity by the brief smile-enwrapped discourse, I was the more enmeshed within another; and I said: “Content already and at rest from a great marvelling, now am I in amaze how I transcend these lightsome bodies.”20 Whereon she, after a sigh of pity, turned her eyes toward me with that look a mother casts on her delirious child; and began: “All things whatsoever observe a mutual order; and this is the form that maketh the universe like unto God. Herein the exalted creatures21 trace the impress of the Eternal Worth, which is the goal whereto was made the norm now spoken of. In the order of which I speak all things incline, by diverse lots, more near and less unto their principle; wherefore they move to diverse ports o’er the great sea of being, and each one with instinct given it to bear it on.22 This beareth the fire toward the moon; this is the mover in the hearts of things that die; this doth draw the earth together and unite it. Nor only the creatures that lack intelligence doth this bow shoot,23 but those that have both intellect and love. The Providence that doth assort all this, doth with its light make ever still the heaven wherein whirleth that one that hath the greatest speed;24 and thither now, as to the appointed site, the power of that bowstring beareth us which directeth to a joyful mark whatso it doth discharge. True is it, that as the form often accordeth not with the intention of the art, because that the material is dull to answer; so from this course sometimes departeth the creature that hath power, thus thrust, to swerve to-ward some other part, (even as fire may be seen to dart down from the cloud) if its first rush be wrenched aside to earth by false seeming pleasure.25 Thou shouldst no more wonder, if I deem aright, at thine uprising, than at a river dropping down from a lofty mountain to the base. Marvel were it in thee if, bereft of all impediment, thou hadst settled down below; even as were stillness on the earth in a living flame.” Thereon toward Heaven she turned back her gaze. 1. God, as the unmoved source of movement, is the central conception of the Aristotelian theology. Wallace, 39, 46. God penetrates into the essential nature of a thing, and is reflected (“regloweth”), more or less, in its concrete being. Epist. ad Can. Grand., § 23; Conv. iii. 14.