Contempt

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 In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Reich also believed that repression, of both the negative emotions as well as the pleasurable ones, was a physical reality, manifest in chronically tight and spastic muscles. These bodily restrictions caused constrained breathing and awkward, uncoordinated or robotic movements. He named this muscular rigidity character armor and perceived it as a mechanism having two unitary functions. While enabling the emotional component of the memory to be repressed, it also stifled the capacity to feel pleasurable sensations. Reich had a further conceptual breakthrough with the realization that one did not have to dig for traumatic memories as Freud believed. (This excavation was a central part of Freud’s free association treatment.) Rather, Reich’s therapy addressed the “body/character-armoring,” which had the function of freezing the emotions while maintaining the neurotic symptoms in the present. His therapy worked aggressively on two fronts. First, he brought the patient’s characterological defenses to their awareness by confronting their behaviors such as obsequious politeness or passive-aggressive hostility. In addition, he “attacked” the muscular armoring, directly, through vigorous manipulation and massage of the tight muscles. Reich also believed that the repression (the damming up) of adult sexuality was in itself one of the main causes of the neurosis. This is not dissimilar to Freud’s very early belief that “aktuelle” neurosis was the result of certain sexual aberrations such as masturbation and “coitus interruptus.” The end of Reich’s life was truly a national disgrace. In the sulfurous cloud of the McCarthy era, his books were burned by the FBI. Because of his radical ideas about sexuality, Reich was imprisoned for the trumped-up charge of violating interstate commerce laws. He died, in 1957, in the Pennsylvania federal penitentiary, an embittered visionary. With his death and Freud’s abandonment of both “real” trauma and emotional catharsis, the therapeutic interest in emotionality waned. Meanwhile, the movement toward behaviorism and rationality came into its ascendance. By the 1950s, such therapies as Skinnerian conditioning and Albert Ellis’s rational emotive therapy (RET) were dominating psychotherapy. (Incidentally, this therapy had very little to do with emotions.) The synergism of these approaches is now generally known as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). However, by the 1960s, the pendulum had begun to swing in the opposite direction. Emotions were finding their way back into the therapeutic community. Two of Reich’s patients (who later became his students) were Alexander Lowen and Fritz Perls. The first he referred to as the “uppity uptown tailor,” while the other he contrasted as “the dirty old man from the Bowery.” 141 Both developed parallel extensions of Reich’s work, incorporating various aspects of his ideas and methods.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In moving to this new street that we called the Passage, Mother saw an old dream of hers come true. She was now living again with all her family: on the street floor, there were her old paralyzed mother, Uncle Aroun and his wife, fat Aunt Noucha, and her sister Foufa who was always pregnant and looked all the year round like a match that might have swallowed a chick-pea; her brother Filikche the Fool and his wife Menna on the first floor; her sister Maissa, the widow, on the second. All day long, whether for a pinch of pepper or a sprig of parsley, to find out what time it might be or even for no good reason at all, the whole staircase re-echoed with their various names. Actually, they derived comfort and pleasure from constantly finding each other at home, and the other tenants felt like trespassers in this hive of solidarity. After dinner every evening there was a gathering of the clan in Uncle Aroun’s flat, where a detailed post-mortem of the day’s events would take place, while everyone gossiped and munched squash seeds. Thus, each of us remained completely visible to all the others, and the whole family, by pooling its problems and its hopes, acquired a collective soul. They all looked alike, as a matter of fact: tall and thin, with their tiny heads thrust forward ahead of their bodies, they had the same general shape. As they sat round Uncle Aroun’s table in the evenings, with their heads grouped together above the oilcloth covering, they looked like a litter of animals all eating together. But these animals, so very close to each other in habitat and name, could either be very handsome or very odd in their appearance. Mother, so slim, elegant, and lithe, like a wild filly, was of the same model as Uncle Aroun, who seemed, on the contrary, awkward and disjointed, with cheekbones that jutted out too sharply. It was in the Passage that I discovered tribal life and learned to hate it. How happy had been the intimacy of our blind alley, now lost for good! As long as I had lived alone, I had lived in peace. In the Passage, I now learned to despise Uncle Aroun who, in spite of his wealth, still lived on a diet of chick-peas, to laugh at Uncle Filikche, poor and prodigal to the point of being a fool, to hate the husband of Aunt Foufa, a stupid brute, to be suspicious of Aunt Noucha’s hypocrisy, and to bear with the hysteria of Aunt Maissa. My father hated them, one and all.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  They were ready, and that was all. But they knew nothing about the ghetto and all its wretchedness. Or rather, yes, they thought about it once a year when, at Purim, they organized a lunch for all its ragged kids and then took them along to the movies. From this party, they came home later with a full load of funny stories about the voracious appetites and the filth and the brutal manners of the ghetto kids. Besides, it was true that these kids stole from their own parents and took things from the girl guide chiefs who did social work among them, and that they generally spent on that one day, on firecrackers and sweets, all the money that they had managed to collect, instead of saving it up for useful purchases; true, too, that their parents were careless and that the clothes given to the kids were in rags only a few weeks later. All this was true, but there was nothing there to laugh about. As for the rich kids, their annual couscous dinner for the poor, at Purim, followed by the movie party, allowed them to ignore the problem that was at the root of the matter. On the way home, Ginou was resolutely silent while Mina unloaded all her criticisms on me: “You acted again, all evening, like a mortician’s assistant! Can’t you be natural? Like all the rest of us?” I felt like telling her to go jump into the lagoon, but she had trained me, by now, to suffer in silence. Besides, Ginou was listening, and I would have been incapable of explaining to either of them what I really felt. So I protested lamely: yes, I had had plenty of fun, after my fashion, but I was quite incapable of showing it any more than I had. Mina, as intolerant as ever, refused to believe me and insisted that I was a liar and a clumsy one at that. Mina’s father’s house was in an outer suburb and we had to stop, on the way there, at Ginou’s home. Generally, we agreed tacitly to bring Mina home first and then come back together alone, the two of us. But Ginou now protested that it was late and that she was tired. I didn’t insist and stayed alone with Mina. The one who had originally been our go-between now explained to me that I was not following the right path to win Ginou for good. Ginou would prefer it if I were less complicated, more cheerful, in fact a bit more like the rest of our crowd. I had no desire to argue, so I let Mina chatter away. Finally, my silence seemed to be catching and, when we reached her home, we had both been speechless for some time. On her doorstep, as she shook my hand, Mina gave vent to one of her extraordinary intuitions: “Poor old Alexandre! They’re all like that, even Ginou!

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  To master myself I had to begin by mastering the world, by breaking away from it. Liberation was available, but only at that price, and how expensive! In our alley, the kerosene lamp had been replaced on Friday nights by Argand lamps which went out only when the olive oil in them was used up. Those little dancing lights, whimsically throwing vividly outlined shadows, contributed greatly to the solemn mystery of the Sabbath. We continued using Argand lamps for some time after we moved to the new Passage. Then electricity triumphed and brought a ridiculous innovation into our home; it was at once the target of my wisecracks. Before the first star appeared, my mother, the high priestess of the lights, switched on at five o’clock the electric bulb in the dining-room and then lit the Roman night lamp in the kitchen. The problem of the night lamp had already been solved by her mother and her grandmother, and my mother knew instinctively the level of oil with extraordinary exactness. The little wick crackled angrily and died a few minutes after the meal. But electricity, too new a gift from civilization, puzzled all the people in our building. How was it possible to prevent the bulb from burning all night and yet avoid committing a sin? Ritual forbade the touching of fire throughout the Sabbath, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Was turning a little switch the same as handling fire? The rabbis vehemently asserted that it was; some progressive souls claimed it wasn’t, but deferred to Rabbinical wisdom. I found the problem void of interest and the discussions absurd. Ostensibly, I shrugged my shoulders and sneered at these controversies which disturbed the tribe; but I had to exhibit my indifference passionately. The more they reflected on the problem, the more I emphasized my scorn and pretended not to understand their sacred difficulties. Finally, their combined wits allowed them to come up with an ingenious solution. There was one shop, a grocery store, in our building, and Boubaker, the grocer’s clerk, a young Negro from the South, slept in the store during the night. It was unanimously agreed to offer Boubaker the job of turning the Sabbath lights off. He accepted, for a small fee and a dish of couscous, to make a round of all the flats toward the end of the solemn feast. So everything was saved, modern comfort and the respect due to religion. For me, this was too fine an opportunity, an additional proof of their hypocrisy and duplicity. With sly jokes or open criticism, I assured them all that, as far as God was concerned, their sin remained as great, whether committed directly or through an intermediary.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  It is only fair to add that the Western world really did mean something to them. To us, the pauper Jews, it had brought the end of feudalism as well as movies and cars and doctors; but it also meant that small hucksters were chased around by cops and humiliated each time they came into contact with the authorities. Pogroms never swept so far as the residential sections where Jewish, Moslem, and Christian homes stood side by side; but our huge ghetto, neglected by the anti-Semites because of its sordid misery, was always in mortal danger. Any battered-in door might reveal Jews behind it. We had never been away from the southern shore of the Mediterranean, and we felt cut off from the rest of the world, abandoned to all the local catastrophes. I was neither as polite nor as secure as my middle-class brethren. I was impulsive and badly behaved, and allowed neither jokes nor mealy-mouthed insinuations to be made. I am willing to admit that my anxiety often increased my suspicion, and I frequently suspected people of meaning more than they said; but what they said was quite unbearable enough for any ordinary pride, and I had the greatest contempt for my Jewish classmates, for their tolerance and so-called fair play, as if fair play did not imply equality for both players. One day, and I recall it with terror, my exasperation almost made me lose my head. We were climbing the steps to the new science wing in our school. Behind me, I could hear a political discussion between Dunand, one of the few French Socialists in our class, and Papachino, a French boy of Italian origin. Those whose naturalization is recent or whose family background is vague are always more involved in race prejudice and more nationalistic than others. I detested Papachino, with his head that leaned over on one shoulder, and his yellow face full of a snarling craftiness. Although the discussion was violent, I was not paying much attention to it, until suddenly the word Jew struck my ear. I might be anywhere in the world, surrounded by respect and confidence and enjoying every honor, but the slippery sound of the word would still make me prick up my ears and listen. Papachino’s bitter, whining voice concluded: “It is they who are ruining France.” In a second, I had whipped around and grabbed him by the neck with my tense fingers. I was two steps above him, and my rigid fist forced him to look up as I strangled him in his own shirt collar: “Repeat that! Repeat it, and I’ll throw you over the railing.” He hesitated, wondering whether to take it as a joke or to be angry. “Say it again,” I repeated, furious.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Elisa being now silent, the last burden of the story-telling rested with the queen, who, with womanly grace beginning to speak, said, "Noble damsels, like as in the lucid nights the stars are the ornament of the sky and as in Spring-time the flowers of the green meadows, even so are commendable manners and pleasing discourse adorned by witty sallies, which latter, for that they are brief, are yet more beseeming to women than to men, inasmuch as much and long speech, whenas it may be dispensed with, is straitlier forbidden unto women than to men, albeit nowadays there are few or no women left who understand a sprightly saying or, if they understand it, know how to answer it, to the general shame be it said of ourselves and of all women alive. For that virtue,[69] which was erst in the minds of the women of times past, those of our day have diverted to the adornment of the body, and she on whose back are to be seen the most motley garments and the most gaudily laced and garded and garnished with the greatest plenty of fringes and purflings and broidery deemeth herself worthy to be held of far more account than her fellows and to be honoured above them, considering not that, were it a question of who should load her back and shoulders with bravery, an ass would carry much more thereof than any of them nor would therefore be honoured for more than an ass. [Footnote 69: _Virtù_, in the old Roman sense of strength, vigour, energy.]

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Comp. Keim: Celsus, 143–151; Ed. D. Zeller: Alexander und Peregrinus , in the "Deutsche Rundschau," for Jan. 1877; Henry Cotterill: Peregrinus Proteus (Edinb. 1879); Ad. Harnack in Herzog (ed. II.), VIII. 772–779; and the Lit. quoted in § 28. In the same period the rhetorician Lucian (born at Samosata in Syria about 120, died in Egypt or Greece before 200), the Voltaire of Grecian literature, attacked the Christian religion with the same light weapons of wit and ridicule, with which, in his numerous elegantly written works, he assailed the old popular faith and worship, the mystic fanaticism imported from the East, the vulgar life of the Stoics and Cynics of that day, and most of the existing manners and customs of the distracted period of the empire. An Epicurean, worldling, and infidel, as he was, could see in Christianity only one of the many vagaries and follies of mankind; in the miracles, only jugglery; in the belief of immortality, an empty dream; and in the contempt of death and the brotherly love of the Christians, to which he was constrained to testify, a silly enthusiasm. Thus he represents the matter in an historical romance on the life and death of Peregrinus Proteus, a contemporary Cynic philosopher, whom he make the basis of a satire upon Christianity, and especially upon Cynicism. Peregrinus is here presented as a perfectly contemptible man, who, after the meanest and grossest crimes, adultery, sodomy, and parricide, joins the credulous Christians in Palestine, cunningly imposes on them, soon rises to the highest repute among them, and, becoming one of the confessors in prison, is loaded with presents by them, in fact almost worshipped as a god, but is afterwards excommunicated for eating some forbidden food (probably meat of the idolatrous sacrifices); then casts himself into the arms of the Cynics, travels about everywhere, in the filthiest style of that sect; and at last about the year 165, in frantic thirst for fame, plunges into the flames of a funeral pile before the assembled populace of the town of Olympia, for the triumph of philosophy. This fiction of the self-burning was no doubt meant for a parody on the Christian martyrdom, perhaps with special reference to Polycarp, who a few years before had suffered death by fire at Smyrna (155).81 Lucian treated the Christians rather with a compassionate smile, than with hatred. He nowhere urges persecution. He never calls Christ an impostor, as Celsus does, but a "crucified sophist;" a term which he uses as often in a good sense as in the bad. But then, in the end, both the Christian and the heathen religions amount, in his view, to imposture; only, in his Epicurean indifferentism, he considers it not worth the trouble to trace such phenomena to their ultimate ground, and attempt a philosophical explanation.82

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The silence of the other instruments, subjected to the strenuous authority of the drum, seemed to crush the crowded women, who were silent now and gathered together in a single moody mass. I could distinguish them more clearly. There were women everywhere, clustered together, seated, standing, on the floor, literally lining the whole room. Their anxious motionlessness, repeated everywhere, disarmed me, in spite of my ironical nature, and prevented me from flying into a rage. Suddenly, as the cymbals clashed again, together with all the other instruments now released in a frenzy of revolt, the confusion became general. The tom-tom seemed to go insane, beating ever faster, struggling against time; the flock of women was seized by nervous spasms, and the dancer was again overcome by her seizures that seemed to tear her apart. Her arms and legs and head, each one moving in a different direction, appeared to respond to contradictory impulses, going off madly at cross purposes, as if trying to tear themselves away from the body. I could almost hear and feel the flesh torn in its dreadful struggle against rhythm, against the demons, when suddenly the crazy dancer turned toward me — my mother, she was my own mother! My contempt and disgust and shame now became clearer, more concentrated. Instead of running away, I stayed there, crushed by the crowd of women pressing against my back. Was this really my mother’s face, this primitive mask, glazed with sweat, with its disheveled hair, eyes tightly closed, lips all bloodless? I recognized the tawdry finery that she had unpacked from her wooden boxes, the orange-colored djebbah gown strewn with red and green sequins, the artificial silk fouta veil, brilliantly colored and gaudy, orange, yellow, green, and red, and the green and yellow scarf decorated with Fatma’s hand and a fish. To myself, I kept on saying: “She’s my mother, my mother,” as if these mere words could re-establish the lost contact and express all the affection that they should contain. But the words refused to adapt themselves to the barbaric apparition in its strange costume. And this woman who was dancing before me, with her breasts barely covered, abandoning herself unconsciously to magical contortions, suggested to me nothing that was familiar or that I could understand. In the books that I had read, the mother was always somebody more soft and human than all others, a symbol of devotion and of intuitive intelligence. How her children must be grateful and happy, proud of having such a mother! As for my own mother, here she was: this wretched moron, with a spell cast on her by the dreadful music, by these savage musicians, themselves under the spell of their dark and obscure beliefs. My mother? Well, here she was...

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  No one was in a rush to pay me, and it sometimes happened that I wasn’t paid at all. The richer my pupils were, the worse they paid, and the longer I had to wait, and I never dared press them for fear of seeming to be mercenary or dependent on their money. Middle-class people, who spent so much money on their own amusements and vanity, often felt that what they paid me was excessive and that I was obligated to them. Still, if I managed, however barely, to cover my expenses, I was always left with what I “might have earned.” How stupid it is to take seriously this “might have earned,” I mean the money one might earn had one preferred to work rather than study or travel or live, had one remained behind a counter or at a desk. A boy of my age ought to be earning a certain sum of money. Agreed. Admitted by all. This sum glittered in my father’s eyes, a stopgap, in his imagination, for the holes in his budget; and it grew more important as I grew older. His voice was full of regret if he told us how much money the sons of his colleagues were already earning for their families. Makil’s son was in charge of his father’s shop; the son of Sebah, the forger, was doing twice the work of an average workman; Bouirou, Aunt Menna’s oldest boy, had been taken on by Uncle Simon and was now earning three hundred francs; everyone marveled at the courage of Georges, the youngest of the Abbous, who was now able to assume all the responsibility of tailoring a jacket. He and his mother, a buttonhole-and-lining specialist, formed an indefatigable team and were bringing prosperity into the Abbou home. A good, good boy! But I felt only contempt for the zeal of Georges Abbou whose whole ambition consisted in tailoring jackets. “He’s exactly your age,” insisted my father. “Ex-act-ly.” “More-or-less,” my mother corrected and began reckoning aloud. “You were born on the third day of the feast of the Maccabees and Georges was born the eighth.” My father threw her a wary, provoked look and continued. What luck it was for my aunt and my poor blind uncle to have such a son! And their other children seemed to be choosing the same path. My father swore that none of my brothers or sisters would stay in school a day longer than was necessary for the school certificate. In the name of justice, they must help him. Besides, modern education didn’t lead anywhere; a good artisan is worth more than a scribbler, and business is more certain than a diploma.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Miraculous though it might seem, he smiled and complied, and Monsieur Bismuth immediately sent back a reply to the effect that he would see me at once. So I sat down beside some waiting customers. I pitied these anxious, resigned, and suffering people from the bottom of my heart, for it was brimful with the noble and generous feelings that characterize men who are happy. There was much coming and going, there was a screeching sound whenever the glass panel of a display case was slid open, and the reflections of the neon lights varied constantly as the mirrors and glass panes and shining metal fixtures moved. Customers whispered and the cash register noisily made us aware of its presence; it was indeed an essential fixture, enthroned there regally and constantly working beneath the self-satisfied fingers of the owner’s niece. One touch, two touches, three, then a bell rang and the cash drawer opened. A veritable shower of money seemed to pour. The drugstore owner was really making a lot of money, and that was why the general consensus considered him a success. I smiled as I thought of my own secret ambition: no, I was too noble in my own eyes, too disinterested for a profession like this. I was made to live and to promote ideas (which was a slogan I had learned in my philosophy class), to experience the true and the beautiful. Official recognition of this had only just been granted to me. No, I would never allow myself to become a mere cash register. How vulgar! Monsieur Bismuth, former President of the Chamber of Commerce. How odd that some people take pride in having devoted their whole life to money-making! But time was going by, the appointed hour for the ceremony was approaching, and I had still not been summoned to the office of my benefactor. I asked the pharmacist whether Monsieur Bismuth might not have forgotten that I was waiting. And I suggested that he might make the trip along the corridor to the office again, but he pretended not to understand me and made a vague effort to reassure me. A minute later, he went back through the little door, apparently in order to fetch something from the storeroom. I hoped my benefactor would be too busy and would now ask me to come back another day.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Once everyone had been introduced, we formed a circle round the old Commissioner who gave us a speech about the uniform. He insisted on the necessity of keeping one’s unit always smartly dressed: it was a matter of principle and of efficiency, a means of influencing the children as well as their parents. This was greeted with another cheer of applause, the one that they call, if I remember right, “the swallow’s cheer,” with imitations of that bird’s song. After that, there was some discussion, but rather vague as they had all been in agreement with these principles ever since the beginning. Still, Pinhas objected timidly, as I had expected, by making some reference to the difficulties encountered by him in his working-class units, which were certainly a mere matter of money. Gray Wolf then returned to his argument: a smart appearance was even more necessary in the working-class units in order to resist the temptation of sloppiness; something had to be done to combat the influence of the homes there. Yes, one must actually make even greater demands. Of course, the problem of funds existed too, but there again he proposed a very simple solution: the wealthier units would help the poorer ones. At this point, Pinhas mumbled something or other and no longer made any comment. To me, the whole idea seemed quite hateful. I wondered what the attitude of the poorer scouts would be in a common gathering of rich and poor. How odd that these middle-class people failed to understand these matters! Gray Wolf then ended his speech by formulating a twofold wish: that we should all be, for life, perfect scouts, and that the whole universe should, in the long run, be like the scout society, loyal and cheerful. This was followed by a final cheer: “the swallow’s cheer,” imitating the cries of these birds as well as the rustling of their wings, the sure and swift movement in flight. After that, the more profane part of the party, if I may say so, began.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He was so grateful, it seemed, that he would even go so far as to hint at the subject of our next composition, without compromising himself, of course, but with much winking and subtle smiling: “You would do well to work on Louis XIV. Most important, Louis XIV, most important!” But all this was superfluous, for in Murat’s class, we copied our compositions quite shamelessly out of books. Still, it made a good story for us to tell the rest of the school. I was incapable of such tricks and, though I despised Murat, I hated those who bowed and scraped and bought him off, even if they hit at him afterwards behind his back. I could never speak to an enemy without showing my teeth. I was indeed a wild man, and my comrades who bribed Murat certainly had the cleverer and the better vengeance, whereas I could only talk of my disgust and thus make more enemies. Murat used the same tactics against the Moslems, and my year in his class really brought me together with Ben Smaan. Murat maintained that Moslems have a particular smell of their own, and he explained it by saying that it came from the sweat caused by eating too much rancid mutton fat. Then he would direct the discussion toward the second stat ement which, he hoped, would make us forget the first. He was so clever! And the same pupils laughed, and the same ones were angry, all behaving like good sports. Every dog had his day, fair and fair enough. The day Ben Smaan asked if it was true that the Chinese think that Europeans stink, I seconded him. Politically, Murat was naturally a legitimist Royalist. It is odd how many history teachers are Royalists, as though their studies commit them to a past world. Being a Royalist seemed to me to be the height of anachronistic absurdity. Ben Smaan was the son of a merchant who had been accidentally killed by a bullet in one of the periodic riots which upset our country, yet he was one of the few Moslems to attend Socialist youth meetings. In his composition on the consequences of the Revolution of 1789, he had dared to approve the Revolution itself. Murat gave him D, and in his report on it later in front of a silent class, told him his essay had been full of as much nonsense as its author.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Would my own success adopt the features of Monsieur Bismuth? A stout man, bald, with a shifty look in his eye, in an oak-paneled office with all the shelves full of leather-bound books? The school principal had been somewhat simple in his approval and admiration of the druggist’s successes, and had overlooked the spasms of his hands, his limping, his difficult inner struggle, his accent that he had only just managed to repress, his rejection of his whole identity. The day that I was at last daring enough to denounce the values of the middle class, the violence with which my sponsor defended them revealed to me how incapable he was of ever being a mere representative of this class, one who is undisturbed in his beliefs, through lack of any other awareness. “Let him be an example for you.” Never, I felt it that day, as I slowly walked back to our street, would I be able to be a druggist, to look at all like Monsieur Bismuth. To my pity for his infirmity, for his dreadful limping, there was now added, in spite of myself, some pride and contempt. Both my parents were tall and lithe, both of them of a strong and lively breed; I too, as a mere animal, gave promise of being well proportioned. Men who were small and fat made me laugh. But why were these unjust demands being made on me? Why was I expected, in exchange for a scholarship that covered the expenses of my studies, to abandon my dream that seemed to me still, at that time, to be so profound, so definitive? I understood nevertheless the terms of our agreement: if I wanted to become anything worthwhile, I would often have to walk along that silent passage. If I chose that path, I would have to accept... or cheat. Because I was being allowed to enter high school, I already thought I had won the battle. But I was beginning to find out, too, that the struggle had only just begun. PART TWO Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouche ~ 1. THE CITY ~ My name is Benillouche, Alexandre Mordekhai. How galling the smiles of my classmates! In our alley, and at the Alliance School, I hadn’t known how ridiculous, how revealing, my name could be. But at the French lycée I became aware of this at once. From then on, the mere sound of my own name humiliated me and made my pulse beat faster. Alexandre: brassy, glorious, a name given to me by my parents in recognition of the wonderful West and because it seemed to them to express their idea of Europe. My schoolmates sneered and blared “Alexandre” like a trumpet blast: Alexan-ndre! With all my strength, I then hated them and my name. I hated them, but I believed they were right, and I was furious with my parents for having chosen this stupid name for me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Whenever we passed a Jewish shop in the streets, the doors would be slammed hurriedly so that the image of death should not be cast upon its inside walls. Women looked out of windows all along the way. So we took the deceased across the town, passing all the principal thoroughfares before reaching the gates of the city. There the procession broke up and we continued the journey in carriages. Since I was by myself, I was luckily separated from my uncles and cousins. Our coachman set off at once at a trot behind the hearse which was now moving at a lively pace. This fast driving and the late hour brought a freshness which pleased my companions on this trip. First, they talked about the deceased a bit, then they asked each other for news of themselves and their families; they discussed the hardness of the times, the difficulties of making a living, and finally their business. When they’d told a few amusing stories and had teased each other a bit, they became even more cheerful and were soon joking openly in the well-shut carriage. I was the only one who didn’t share their amusement; I, who hadn’t shared their grief before. Our arrival at the cemetery brought all their sad dignity back to my companions. We formed a procession once again and I went back to my place beside my cousin and was not far from my father who stood three rows behind the hearse. The gravediggers were already busy at the grave which was situated between the low monuments of the Jewish graves. This was the first time I had been to the new cemetery. The old one did not impress me; it was in the middle of the city, which had overtaken and surrounded it. Its shattered and abandoned tombs had been invaded by grass and weeds and surely contained by now only scattered and dry bones, disjointed or even turned to dust. But here, we were among fresh corpses and brand-new, well-kept monuments which testified to the increased wealth of the deceased and to the vitality of their heirs: marble sculptured into crowns, birds, and broken columns, wrought-iron gates, golden chains. My God, I said to myself, how ghastly can all this so-called funeral art be! Art, these infamous sandstone vases and odious purple flowers made of celluloid or cloth that became bloated in the rain or shriveled up in the sunlight! But probably it all managed still to arouse some half-religious respect. I was pitiless because I was adolescent and because I was contemptuous of death which seemed too impossible, too inadequate for me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He handed me the card and, without arising from his chair, held out his hand for me to shake. I returned along the passage, upset and dissatisfied. All the noises of the drugstore surged toward me as in a dream, but even these and the excitement of the many customers failed to rouse me from my painful thoughts. To the lights and the luxury of the store, I paid less attention now than earlier. I might have lacked the material means to continue my studies. But now, as soon as the means were assured me, I felt it would be an injustice if I were not granted freedom to pursue them as best I wished. I was perhaps irresponsible, but I assumed that my rebelliousness was a virtue. As soon as I had left the store, I stared with curiosity at the business card that I carried. It didn’t say much: “Please hand to the bearer all schoolbooks required for the sixth-year class.” The name of the card’s owner was followed by a whole string of titles and honors: Doctorate, master’s degree, certificates, but the last line had been crossed out. Still, I was able to decipher it: Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce. Would my own success adopt the features of Monsieur Bismuth? A stout man, bald, with a shifty look in his eye, in an oak-paneled office with all the shelves full of leather-bound books? The school principal had been somewhat simple in his approval and admiration of the druggist’s successes, and had overlooked the spasms of his hands, his limping, his difficult inner struggle, his accent that he had only just managed to repress, his rejection of his whole identity. The day that I was at last daring enough to denounce the values of the middle class, the violence with which my sponsor defended them revealed to me how incapable he was of ever being a mere representative of this class, one who is undisturbed in his beliefs, through lack of any other awareness. “Let him be an example for you.” Never, I felt it that day, as I slowly walked back to our street, would I be able to be a druggist, to look at all like Monsieur Bismuth. To my pity for his infirmity, for his dreadful limping, there was now added, in spite of myself, some pride and contempt. Both my parents were tall and lithe, both of them of a strong and lively breed; I too, as a mere animal, gave promise of being well proportioned. Men who were small and fat made me laugh. But why were these unjust demands being made on me?

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Since I was by myself, I was luckily separated from my uncles and cousins. Our coachman set off at once at a trot behind the hearse which was now moving at a lively pace. This fast driving and the late hour brought a freshness which pleased my companions on this trip. First, they talked about the deceased a bit, then they asked each other for news of themselves and their families; they discussed the hardness of the times, the difficulties of making a living, and finally their business. When they’d told a few amusing stories and had teased each other a bit, they became even more cheerful and were soon joking openly in the well-shut carriage. I was the only one who didn’t share their amusement; I, who hadn’t shared their grief before. Our arrival at the cemetery brought all their sad dignity back to my companions. We formed a procession once again and I went back to my place beside my cousin and was not far from my father who stood three rows behind the hearse. The gravediggers were already busy at the grave which was situated between the low monuments of the Jewish graves. This was the first time I had been to the new cemetery. The old one did not impress me; it was in the middle of the city, which had overtaken and surrounded it. Its shattered and abandoned tombs had been invaded by grass and weeds and surely contained by now only scattered and dry bones, disjointed or even turned to dust. But here, we were among fresh corpses and brand-new, well-kept monuments which testified to the increased wealth of the deceased and to the vitality of their heirs: marble sculptured into crowns, birds, and broken columns, wrought-iron gates, golden chains. My God, I said to myself, how ghastly can all this so-called funeral art be! Art, these infamous sandstone vases and odious purple flowers made of celluloid or cloth that became bloated in the rain or shriveled up in the sunlight! But probably it all managed still to arouse some half-religious respect. I was pitiless because I was adolescent and because I was contemptuous of death which seemed too impossible, too inadequate for me. The rabbi, with his big hairy head doddering above a shapeless and dirty Oriental costume, raced for time against the gravediggers, swallowed half his words, and abridged the formula of the funeral prayers. At a distance, the undertakers talked among themselves. Employed by the community, these businessmen of death, rabbis, gravediggers, undertakers, all betrayed, by their naive indifference, the general hypocrisy. But the rabbi did well to hurry: the heat continued, despite the late hour, and I felt the perspiration drip from my forehead. Fortunately, we had to keep our hats on. At last, the grave was ready and the diggers emerged from the hole and went to fetch the body. They held it a while above the open grave and then slowly lowered it.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But these animals, so very close to each other in habitat and name, could either be very handsome or very odd in their appearance. Mother, so slim, elegant, and lithe, like a wild filly, was of the same model as Uncle Aroun, who seemed, on the contrary, awkward and disjointed, with cheekbones that jutted out too sharply. It was in the Passage that I discovered tribal life and learned to hate it. How happy had been the intimacy of our blind alley, now lost for good! As long as I had lived alone, I had lived in peace. In the Passage, I now learned to despise Uncle Aroun who, in spite of his wealth, still lived on a diet of chick-peas, to laugh at Uncle Filikche, poor and prodigal to the point of being a fool, to hate the husband of Aunt Foufa, a stupid brute, to be suspicious of Aunt Noucha’s hypocrisy, and to bear with the hysteria of Aunt Maissa. My father hated them, one and all. He used to mimic, with cruel insights, the tics of each one of them, the terrifying sneezes of Uncle Aroun, the “D’yer get me?” that Chmyane, the half-wit, kept on repeating, or Aunt Abbou’s lisp. Not even the children escaped his sarcasm, including Georges whom he so often quoted to us as an example, and whose small head seemed to be melting away as a consequence of his constant work. My mother never accepted my father’s jokes about her family, and he never forgave her her constant defense of her family, even when it was in the wrong. This atmosphere of wrangling at home, the pettiness of our tribal community, its futile arguments and treacherous or even friendly gossip, this talk that never ceased but was always untimely, with everybody watched by everyone else, this petty business of petty souls, all of it certainly contributed a lot to the feeling of being stifled that soon overcame me at home and that I later experienced throughout my native city. To the horror of my mother and the delight of my father, I rejected with anger the sickly-sweet advice dispensed to me at our evening sessions around Uncle Aroun’s table. It upset me that they should talk about me, as if it were a violation of my privacy. My reaction was one of revolt and exasperation, and I earned the reputation of being heartless and insubordinate. During those years that we lived in the Passage, I continued to withdraw into myself, ever more and more, and was finally so tense that I became a creature of sheer nerves, as unbearable to myself as to others. But my studies and the profound modification of my stock-in-trade of ideas then established, once and for all time, a distance between myself and the tribe, the members of which, on the contrary, had already found fulfillment in themselves as they were destined eternally to remain.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Often a rhetorical affirmation aided me in the heat of an argument and increased my convictions. Then I took one step further: how could I say that God didn’t exist, but still go to the synagogue? What horrible hypocrisy! Gradually, I stopped accompanying my father to temple, even for the High Holidays. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me there. Our local dogma was unbelievably primitive: an incoherent mixture of Berber superstitions, old wives’ beliefs, and formal rites that could not satisfy the smallest spiritual need. The rabbis were silly, ignorant, and unprepossessing. Their filthy Oriental robes and faded fezzes were part of the life of sordid neighborhoods that I wanted to forget; their complicity and their resignation, in so many blatant stupidities that stifled me, roused my scorn. Soon, in my indignation, I began to confuse the synagogue with the ghetto. My overt break, however, was not the most difficult. To save myself internally, I contrived tests. I fought the uneasiness I felt on entering the deeply moving gloom of our old temples, and I walked deliberately up to their damp walls so as to face the mystery of the tabernacle, making wisecracks about the magic of oil lamps and the green light of ancient windows, the oppressive odor of old leather, of parchment and incense. There, I began to reason and to wrestle with myself. The little flames jutting out of the oil lamps are not souls: a ridiculous superstition! Souls are not immortal, heaven and hell do not exist! I could tell nobody of my difficult struggle with myself for fear of his making a fool of me. So I hesitated between an awareness of ridicule and a heroic satisfaction, between the temptation to deceive myself at small cost and the impossibility of not condemning my failures. You can fool the whole world, but not yourself. To drop the sacred phylacteries that we bind around our foreheads was a horrible sin, to be punished by death. The Law said it, it seems; the rabbis gravely affirmed it; the faithful repeated it with terror. I decided I could; I must cast them aside calmly, I would certainly not die because of it. Still, I didn’t do it. And I rationalized beautifully: I had no need of childish demonstrations, it was enough to affirm my own freedom. A free man doesn’t have to spend his time being blasphemous to deny God. But I felt my attitude was the least costly; I was ashamed to risk so little. At other times, I went to the point of blasphemy in committing less serious offenses. Bread must not be thrown away or left where it can be stepped on by passers-by; all crumbs must therefore be carefully gathered and left on the windowsill or stuffed into cracks in the wall. So I took whatever bread I didn’t eat and made a show of throwing it where it could be stepped on.

• From Bluets (2009)

  He called painters “mixers and grinders of multi-colored drugs,” and color itself a form of pharmakon . The religious zealots of the Reformation felt similarly: they smashed the stained-glass windows of churches, thinking them idolatrous, degenerate. For distinct reasons, which had to do with the fight to keep the cheap, slave-labor crop of indigo out of a Western market long dominated by woad, the blue-dye-producing plant native to Europe, indigo blue was called “the devil’s dye.” And before blue became a “holy” color—which had to do with the advent of ultramarine in the twelfth century, and its subsequent use in stained glass and religious paintings—it often symbolized the Antichrist. 151. Ultramarine is not, of course, holy in and of itself. (What is?) It had to be made holy, by the wicked logic that renders the expensive sacred. So first it had to be made expensive. From the start, however, its preciousness stemmed from a sort of misunderstanding: ancient peoples thought the shining veins in lapis lazuli were gold, when really they are iron pyrite: “fool’s gold.” 152. Holiness and evilness aside, no one could rightly call blue a festive color. You don’t go looking for a party in a color that hospitals have used to calm crying infants or sedate the emotionally disturbed. Ancient Egyptians wrapped their mummies in blue cloth; ancient Celtic warriors dyed their bodies with woad before heading off to battle; the Aztecs smeared the chests of their sacrificial victims with blue paint before scooping their hearts out on the altar; the story of indigo is, at least in part, the story of slavery, riots, and misery. Blue does, however, always have a place at the carnival . 153. I’ve read that children pretty much prefer red hands-down over all other colors; the shift into liking cooler tones—such as blue—happens as they grow older. Nowadays half the adults in the Western world say that blue is their favorite color. In their international survey of the “Most Wanted Painting,” the Russian émigré team Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid discovered that country after country—from China to Finland to Germany to the United States to Russia to Kenya to Turkey—most wanted a blue landscape, with slight variances (a ballerina here, a moose there, and so on). The only exception was Holland, which, for inscrutable reasons, wanted a murky, rainbow-hued abstraction. 154. It is tempting to derive some kind of maturity narrative here: eventually we sober up and grow out of our rash love of intensity (i.e. red); eventually we learn to love more subtle things with more subtlety, etc. etc. But my love for blue has never felt to me like a maturing, or a refinement, or a settling . For the fact is that one can maintain a chromophilic recklessness well into adulthood. Joan Mitchell, for one, customarily chose her pigments for their intensity rather than their durability—a choice that, as many painters know, can in time bring one’s paintings into a sorry state of decay.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  In the new social order, which was expressed in his own life, each must seek to give the maximum of service, and he would be greatest who would serve utterly. In that connection he sketched with a few strokes the pseudo-greatness of the present aristocracy: “Ye know that they which are supposed to rule over the nations lord it over them, and their great ones tyrannize over them. Thus shall it not be among you.” The monarchies and aristocracies have always lived on the fiction that they exist for the good of the people, and yet it is an appalling fact how few kings have loved their people and have lived to serve. Usually the great ones have regarded the people as their oyster. In a similar saying reported by Luke, Jesus wittily adds that these selfish exploiters of the people graciously allow themselves to be called “Benefactors.” His eyes were open to the unintentional irony of the titles in which the “majesties,” “excellencies,” and “holinesses” of the world have always decked themselves. Every time the inbred instinct to seek precedence cropped up among his disciples he sternly suppressed it. They must not allow themselves to be called Rabbi or Father or Master, “for all ye are brothers.” Christ’s ideal of society involved the abolition of rank and the extinction of those badges of rank in which former inequality was incrusted. The only title to greatness was to be distinguished service at cost to self. All this shows the keenest insight into the masked selfishness of those who hold power, and involves a revolutionary consciousness, emancipated from reverence for things as they are. The text, “Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s” seems to mark off a definite sphere of power for the emperor, coordinate with God’s sphere. It implies passive obedience to constituted authority and above all guarantees Cæsar’s right to levy taxes. Consequently it has been very dear to all who were anxious to secure the sanctions of religion for the existing political order. During the Middle Ages that text was one of the spiritual pillars that supported the Holy Roman Empire. But in fact we misread it if we take it as a solemn decision, fixing two coordinate spheres of life, the religious and the political. His opponents were trying to corner Jesus. If he said “pay the Roman tax,” he disgusted the people. If he said “do not pay,” Rome would seize him, for its patience was short when its taxes were touched. Jesus wittily cut the Gordian knot by calling for one of the coins. It bore the hated Roman face and stamp on it—clear evidence whence it issued and to whom it belonged. If they filled their pockets with Cæsar’s money, let them pay Cæsar’s tax. The significant fact to us is that Jesus spoke from an inward plane which rose superior to the entire question. It was a vital question for Jewish religion; it did not even touch the religion of Jesus.