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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T... Act 18, and the note to Act 36. A flash of eagerness suffused the face of Alexey Alexandrovitch as he rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for his own benefit. Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room, he glanced again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously. After reading a little more of the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o’clock, and recollecting as he lay in bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no means such a gloomy light.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Given all that, perhaps it’s not surprising that Chagnon’s account of the “chronic warfare” of the “innately violent” Yanomami struck a public nerve. Desperate to understand human murderousness, the public lapped up his depictions of the day-to-day brutality of people he described as our “contemporary ancestors.” Now in its fifth edition, Yanomamö: The Fierce People is still the all-time bestseller in anthropology, with millions of copies sold to university students alone. Chagnon’s books and films have figured prominently in the education of several generations of anthropologists, most of whom accepted his claims to have demonstrated the inherent ferocity of our species. But Chagnon’s research should be approached with caution, as he employs a host of dubious techniques. Ferguson found, for example, that Chagnon conflates common murder with war in his statistics, as does Pinker in his discussion of the Gebusi. But more importantly, Chagnon fails to account for the effects of his own disruptive, rather Hemingway-esque presence among the people he studied. According to Patrick Tierney, author of Darkness in El Dorado, “The wars that made Chagnon and the Yanomami famous—the ones he wrote about with such relish in The Fierce People—began on November 14, 1964, the same day the anthropologist arrived with his shotguns, outboard motor, and a canoe full of steel goods to give away.”28 Tierney cites Chagnon’s own doctoral thesis, showing that in the thirteen years prior to his arrival, no Namowei (a large branch of the Yanomami) had been killed in warfare. But during his thirteen-month residence among them, ten Yanomami died in a conflict between the Namowei and the Patanowateri (another branch). Kenneth Good, an anthropologist who first went to live with the Yanomami as one of Chagnon’s graduate students and stayed on for twelve years, described Chagnon as “a hit-and-run anthropologist who comes into villages with armloads of machetes to purchase cooperation for his research. Unfortunately,” wrote Good, “he creates conflict and division wherever he goes.”29 Part of Chagnon’s disruptiveness no doubt resulted from his blustery, macho self-conception, but his research goals may have been an even bigger source of problems. He wanted to collect genealogical information from the Yanomami. This is a tricky proposition, to say the least, given that the Yanomami consider it disrespectful to speak names out loud. Naming the dead requires breaking one of the strongest taboos in their culture. Juan Finkers, who lived among them for twenty-five years, says, “To name the dead, among the Yanomami, is a grave insult, a motive of division, fights, and wars.”30 Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins described Chagnon’s research as “an absurdist anthropological project,” trying to work out ancestor-based lineages “among a people who by taboo could not know, could not trace and could not name their ancestors—or for that matter, could not bear to hear their own names.”31 Chagnon dealt with his hosts’ taboo by playing one village off against another. In his own account, he:

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, looking at him and not dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, “I’m a guilty woman, I’m a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing.” “I have asked you no question about that,” he said, all at once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; “that was as I had supposed.” Under the influence of anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his faculties. “But as I told you then, and have written to you,” he said in a thin, shrill voice, “I repeat now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their husbands.” He laid special emphasis on the word “agreeable.” “I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my honor.” “But our relations cannot be the same as always,” Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with dismay. When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to make clear her position. “I cannot be your wife while I....” she began. He laughed a cold and malignant laugh. “The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both ... I respect your past and despise your present ... that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words.” Anna sighed and bowed her head. “Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you show,” he went on, getting hot, “—announcing your infidelity to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently—you can see anything reprehensible in performing a wife’s duties in relation to your husband.” “Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?” “I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you ... not to see him. That’s not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That’s all I have to say to you. Now it’s time for me to go. I’m not dining at home.” He got up and moved towards the door. Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him. Chapter 24

• From Querelle (1953)

  178 ·I JEAN GENET propped him against a wall, in a squatting position. Finally, on an impulse, and to humiliate the dead man so as not to be hau nted by him, he took a briar pipe from his pocket and stuck it in his victim's mouth . Madame Lysiane did not grant her "boarders" the right to use black lace underwear. She approved of salmon pink, of green, certainly of beige, but she knew herself to be so beautiful in her own black outfit that she couldn't permit those young ladies to adorn themselves in a similar manner. It wasn't so much because the black enhanced the milky wh iteness of her skin: what she liked about it was that it gave her undergarments a certain formality and sup·e r-frivolity-and we shall see why. She was standing in her room, undressing, very slowly. As if nailed to the floor in front of the mirror by her high heels, undoing her dress which opened on her left side, the line of hasps stretching from her neck to her waist, the gestures of her right hand, quick and rounded, and in that quickness and roundness, in the liveliness of her fingers, perfect expressions of all that was sugar sweet, yet distinguished and catlike about her. It was a kind of dance, of Cambodian grace. Madame Lysiane loved these movements of her arms, the precise angle of her elbows, and was in every way certain of her superiority over the whores. "God, can ·they be vulgar I Do you think Regine can be brought to understand that fringe hair-dos are out of fashion? Not on your life! All of them, and there isn't one exception, all of them seem to think that the clients like them when they look like whores. But that's where they're wrong, so wrong." She stared at herself dully, while she talked on. Now and again she cast a glance at Robert's reflection in the mirror. Robert was divesting himself of his clothes. "Darling, are you listening to me?" "Can't you see that I am?"

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes, _ma chère_. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds,” Princess Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was listening; “and very nasty sauce it was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteen pence, and everybody was very much pleased with it. I can’t run to hundred-pound sauces.” “She’s unique!” said the lady of the house. “Marvelous!” said someone. The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya’s speeches was always unique, and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said simple things with some sense in them. In the society in which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had that effect, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it. As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and so the conversation around the ambassador’s wife had dropped, Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole party together, and turned to the ambassador’s wife. “Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us.” “No, we’re very happy here,” the ambassador’s wife responded with a smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been begun. It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the Karenins, husband and wife. “Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There’s something strange about her,” said her friend. “The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexey Vronsky,” said the ambassador’s wife. “Well, what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a man without a shadow, a man who’s lost his shadow. And that’s his punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow.” “Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,” said Anna’s friend. “Bad luck to your tongue!” said Princess Myakaya suddenly. “Madame Karenina’s a splendid woman. I don’t like her husband, but I like her very much.” “Why don’t you like her husband? He’s such a remarkable man,” said the ambassador’s wife. “My husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.” “And my husband tells me just the same, but I don’t believe it,” said Princess Myakaya. “If our husbands didn’t talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper ... but doesn’t it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, _he’s a fool,_ though only in a whisper, everything’s explained, isn’t it?” “How spiteful you are today!”

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  For a certain kind of journalist (or evolutionary psychologist), nothing is more satisfying than exposing hippie hypocrisy. A recent headline from Reuters reads, “Hippie Apes Make War as Well as Love, Study Finds.”35 The article states, “Despite their reputation as lovers, not fighters, of the primate world, bonobos actually hunt and kill monkeys….” Another assures us that “Despite ‘Peacenik’ Reputation, Bonobos Hunt and Eat Other Primates Too.” A third, under the headline “Sex Crazed Apes Feast on Killing, Too,” opens with an audible sneer: “As hippies had Altamont [where Hell’s Angels killed a concertgoer], so bonobos have Salonga National Park, where scientists have witnessed the supposedly peace-loving primate hunting and eating monkey children.” “Sex crazed”? “Supposedly peace-loving”? “Eating monkey children”? Do monkeys have “children”? If both chimps and bonobos make war, maybe we are “dazed survivors” of a “5-million-year habit of lethal aggression” after all. But a closer look reveals that it’s the journalists who are a bit dazed. Researchers witnessed ten attempts to hunt monkeys over five years of observing the bonobos in question. The bonobos were successful three times, sharing the monkey meat among the hunters—mixed groups of males and females. A brief reality check for science journalists: Researchers have long known and reported that bonobos regularly hunt and eat meat, generally small jungle antelopes known as duikers—as well as squirrels, insects, and grubs. The evolutionary line leading to humans, chimps, and bonobos split from that leading to monkeys about thirty million years ago. Chimps and bonobos, in other words, are as closely related to monkeys as we are. Young monkeys are not “children.” Monkey meat is on the menu at fancy Chinese restaurants and jungle barbecues in many parts of the world. Tens of thousands of monkeys, young and old, are sacrificed in research laboratories throughout the world annually. So, are humans also “at war” with monkeys? Nothing sells newspapers like headlines of “WAR!,” and no doubt “CANNIBALISTIC HIPPIE ORGY WAR!” sells even more, but one species hunting and eating another species is hardly “war”; it’s lunch. That bonobos and monkeys may look similar to untrained eyes is irrelevant. When a pack of wolves or coyotes attacks a stray dog, is that “war”? We’ve seen hawks pluck pigeons out of the sky. War? Asking whether our species is naturally peaceful or warlike, generous or possessive, free-loving or jealous, is like asking whether H2O is naturally a solid, liquid, or gas. The only meaningful answer to such a question is: It depends. On a nearly empty planet, with food and shelter distributed widely, avoiding conflict would have been an easy, attractive option. Under the conditions typical of ancestral environments, human beings would have had much more to lose than to gain from warring against one another. The evidence—both physical and circumstantial—points to a human prehistory in which our ancestors made far more love than war. CHAPTER FOURTEENThe Longevity Lie (Short?)The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  With a cold literary perversity, Nabokov has demonstrated the falseness of their “truth”; the implications are considerable. Even the exe-getic act of searching for the “meaning” of Lolita by trying to unfold the butterfly pattern becomes a parody of the expectations of the most sophisticated reader, who finds he is chasing a mocking inversion of the “normal” Freudian direction of symbols which, once identified, may still remain mysterious, explain very little, or, like the game of Word Golf in Pale Fire , reveal nothing. Until almost the end of Lolita , Humbert’s fullest expressions of “guilt” and “grief” are qualified, if not undercut completely, and these passages represent another series of traps in which Nabokov again parodies the reader’s expectations by having Humbert the penitent say what the reader wants to hear: “ I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything. ” Eagerly absorbing Humbert’s “confession,” the reader suddenly stumbles over the rare word “turpid,” and then is taken unawares by the silly catchall “and everything,” which renders absurd the whole cluster, if not the reader. It is easy to confess, but the moral vocabulary we employ so readily may go no deeper than Humbert’s parody of it. Humbert’s own moral vocabulary would seem to find an ideally expressive vehicle in the person of Clare Quilty. Throughout the narrative Humbert is literally and figuratively pursued by Quilty, who is by turns ludicrous and absurd, sinister and grotesque. For a while Humbert is certain that his “shadow” and nemesis is his Swiss cousin, Detective Trapp, and when Lolita agrees and says, “ Perhaps he is Trapp, ” she is summarizing Quilty’s role in the novel.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn’s nich gelungen Hatt’ ich auch recht hübsch Plaisir!” As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could not help smiling. “Yes, but joking apart,” resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you must understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing’s done, don’t you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts from her, so as not to break up one’s family life, still, can one help feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?” “Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into two classes ... at least no ... truer to say: there are women and there are ... I’ve never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.” “But the Magdalen?” “Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered. However, I’m not saying so much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You’re afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you’ve not made a study of spiders and don’t know their character; and so it is with me.” “It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much like that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer. What’s to be done—you tell me that, what’s to be done? Your wife gets older, while you’re full of life. Before you’ve time to look round, you feel that you can’t love your wife with love, however much you may esteem her. And then all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done for,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair. Levin half smiled. “Yes, you’re done for,” resumed Oblonsky. “But what’s to be done?” “Don’t steal rolls.” Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright. “Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can’t give her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act? There’s a fearful tragedy in it.”

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  “elevate” their portfolios and inspire jealousy and, delusional as they all were, respect. I was perfectly happy to wipe out all that garbage from my mind. I’d never been to the kind of party in the Polaroid photos, but I’d seen it from afar: young and beautiful and fascinating people hailing cabs and flicking cigarettes, cocaine, mascara, the diamond grit of a night out on the town, random sex a simple gesture in a bathroom stall, wading once onto the dance floor then back out again, screaming drink orders at the bar, everyone pushing toward the ecstasy of the dream of tomorrow, where they’d have more fun, feel more beautiful, be surrounded by more interesting people. I’d always preferred a septic hotel bar, maybe because that’s where Trevor liked to take me. He and I agreed that people looked stupid when they were “having a good time.” The interns at the gallery had told me about their weekends out at Tunnel and Life and Sound Factory and Spa and Lotus and Centro-Fly and Luke + Leroy. So I had some sense of what went on in the city at night. And as Natasha’s assistant, I’d been responsible for keeping a list of some of the most socially valuable people at an art party—specifically the young impresarios and their attendants. She invited them to openings and told me to study their bios. Maggie Kahpour’s father had owned the largest private collection of Picasso doodles in the world, and when he died, she donated them to an abbey in the south of France. The monks named a cheese after her. Gwen Elbaz-Burke was the grandniece of Ken Burke, the performance artist who was eaten by the shark he kept in his swimming pool, and the daughter of Zara Ali Elbaz, a Syrian princess who was exiled for making a pornographic art film with her German boyfriend, a descendant of Heinrich Himmler. Stacey Bloom had started a magazine called Kun(s)t about

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I presume there exist readers who find titillating the display of mural words in those hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called “powerful” and “stark” by the reviewing hack. There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann. Another charge which some readers have made is that Lolita is anti-American. This is something that pains me considerably more than the idiotic accusation of immorality. Considerations of depth and perspective (a suburban lawn, a mountain meadow) led me to build a number of North American sets. I needed a certain exhilarating milieu. Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. But in regard to philistine vulgarity there is no intrinsic difference between Palearctic manners and Nearctic manners. Any proletarian from Chicago can be as bourgeois (in the Flaubertian sense) as a duke. I chose American motels instead of Swiss hotels or English inns only because I am trying to be an American writer and claim only the same rights that other American writers enjoy. On the other hand, my creature Humbert is a foreigner and an anarchist, and there are many things, besides nymphets, in which I disagree with him. And all my Russian readers know that my old worlds—Russian, British, German, French—are just as fantastic and personal as my new one is.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, these farmers!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully. “Your tone of contempt for us poor townsfolk!... But when it comes to business, we do it better than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all out,” he said, “and the forest is fetching a very good price—so much so that I’m afraid of this fellow’s crying off, in fact. You know it’s not ‘timber,’” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts. “And it won’t run to more than twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he’s giving me at the rate of seventy roubles the acre.” Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “that fashion not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. ‘_Timber, run to so many yards the acre._’ He says those words without understanding them himself.” “I wouldn’t attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,” said he, “and if need arose, I should come to you to ask about it. But you’re so positive you know all the lore of the forest. It’s difficult. Have you counted the trees?” “How count the trees?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still trying to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. “Count the sands of the sea, number the stars. Some higher power might do it.” “Oh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single merchant ever buys a forest without counting the trees, unless they get it given them for nothing, as you’re doing now. I know your forest. I go there every year shooting, and your forest’s worth a hundred and fifty roubles an acre paid down, while he’s giving you sixty by installments. So that in fact you’re making him a present of thirty thousand.” “Come, don’t let your imagination run away with you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch piteously. “Why was it none would give it, then?” “Why, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he’s bought them off. I’ve had to do with all of them; I know them. They’re not merchants, you know: they’re speculators. He wouldn’t look at a bargain that gave him ten, fifteen per cent. profit, but holds back to buy a rouble’s worth for twenty kopecks.” “Well, enough of it! You’re out of temper.” “Not the least,” said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the house.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Once when I stayed awake long enough to admire the olive twill pants of a flight attendant’s uniform, she let me order a pair at her discount, thus combining shopping with travel. It was the beginning of a lifetime of finding girlfriends in the sky. I noticed that stewardesses were all young—and all female—but I assumed they wanted a few years of travel before doing something else, or this was an entry-level job and a pipeline for airline executives. I only began to pay attention when I was shuttling constantly between the start-up of Ms. magazine in New York and the organizing of the National Women’s Political Caucus in Washington. Once when exhaustion caused me to fall asleep with my credit card in my hand, a kindhearted stewardess removed the card, ran it through the onboard ticket machine—the way one paid for the shuttle in those days—and put it back in my hand without waking me. Neither she nor others knew who I was or why I was such a frequent-flying oddity among the mostly male passengers going to our nation’s capital, but we seemed to share a sense of being outsiders. On longer trips with various airlines, I began to hang out in the galley, where I could ask questions and listen. I learned that the first stewardesses had been registered nurses hired to make passengers feel safe at a time when flying was new, airsickness was frequent, and passengers were fearful. Some pilots resented this female invasion of their macho air space so much that they quit. Like the first American astronauts who compared sending a Soviet woman into space with sending up a monkey, the presence of any woman devalued a masculine domain. Once male business travelers became the airlines’ bread and butter, everything changed. Stewardesses were hired as decorative waitresses with geishalike instructions. There were even “executive flights” for men only, complete with steaks, brandy, and cigars lit by stewardesses. Though they still had to know first aid, evacuation procedures for as many as seventy-five kinds of planes, underwater rescue, emergency signaling, hijacking precautions, and other skills that took six weeks of schooling—not to mention how to handle passengers and fend off some—their appearance was prescribed down to age, height, weight (which was governed by regular weigh-ins), hairstyle, makeup (including a single shade of lipstick), skirt length, and other physical requirements that excluded such things as “a broad nose”—only one of many racist reasons why stewardesses were overwhelmingly white. They had to be single as well as young, and were fired if they married or aged out at over thirty or so. Altogether the goal of airline executives seemed to be to hire smart and ornamental young women, to use them as advertising come-ons, to work them hard, and to age them out soon. Flight schedules were so merciless that on some airlines, the average stewardess lasted only eighteen months.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She was nothing to this woman who was dressed and a Lady and free to do all that she pleased, while Beauty was an abject naked slave who could do nothing but kneel before her. "Ah, but there she is, that wicked Lizetta," said the Lady, and the cheerfulness when out of her face as her lips quivered slightly. There were two little dots of color in her cheeks as she drew near the doubled Princess. "And she has been so spoilt and bad today." "Well, she is being severely punished for it, my Lady," said Lord Gregory. "Thirty-six hours here should greatly improve her disposition." The Lady took several delicate steps forward and peered at Princess Lizetta's exposed sex. And to Beauty's amazement, Princess Lizetta did not try to hide her face but stared into the Lady's eyes imploringly. She gave several imploring groans as clearly supplicating as the earlier moans of the Prince beside her. And as she writhed on her hook, her body rocked slightly forward. "You're a bad girl, you are," whispered the Lady as though reproving a small child. "And you disappointed me. I had prepared the Hunt for the amusement of the Queen and chosen you specially." Princess Lizetta's groans grew more insistent. She seemed now without hope or pride or anger. Her face was knotted and pink, and her gag looked most painful, her huge eyes flashing as they implored the Lady. "Lord Gregory," the Lady said, "you must think of something special." Then to Beauty's horror, the lady reached out delicately and fastidiously and pinched Princess Lizetta's pubic lips hard so that they exuded moisture. Then she pinched the right lip and the left, and the girl winced with pain and misery. Lord Gregory had meantime snapped his fingers for the Lord with the iron clawlike hand, and whispered something Beauty could not hear. "It will strengthen her punishment." And now the Lord appeared with a little pot and a brush and as the Lady stepped back, he took brush and bathed Princess Lizetta's naked organ in a heavy syrup. A few droplets fell to the floor, and the Princess again made known her misery. She sobbed softly and shook her head. "It will attract any flies we have about," Lord Gregory said, "and if we have none it shall produce its inevitable itching as it dries. It is quite uncomfortable." The Lady did not seem satisfied. Her pretty and innocent face was smooth however and she sighed. "I suppose it will do for now, but I wish she were bound with her legs apart to a stake in the garden. Then let the flies and the little insects of the air find her honeyed mouth. She deserves it." She turned to express her thanks to Lord Gregory, and again Beauty was struck by her bright ruddy face.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Here saw I too many more than elsewhere, both on the one side and on the other, with loud howlings, rolling weights by force of chests; they smote against each other, and then each wheeled round just there, rolling aback, shouting “Why holdest thou?” and “Why throwest thou away?” Thus they returned along the gloomy circle, on either hand, to the opposite point, again shouting at each other their reproachful measure. Then every one, when he had reached it, turned through his half-circle towards the other joust. And I, who felt my heart as it were stung, said: “My Master, now show me what people these are, and whether all those tonsured on our left were of the clergy.” 4 And he to me: “In their first life, all were so squint-eyed in mind, that they made no expenditure in it with moderation. Most clearly do their voices bark out this, when they come to the two points of the circle, where contrary guilt divides them. These were Priests, that have not hairy covering on their heads, and Popes and Cardinals, in whom avarice does its utmost.” And I: “Master, among this set, I surely ought to recognize some that were defiled by these evils.” And he to me: “Vain thoughts combinest thou: their undiscerning life, which made them sordid, now makes them too obscure for any recognition. To all eternity they shall continue butting one another; these shall arise from their graves with closed fists; and these with hair shorn off. Ill-giving, and ill-keeping, has deprived them of the bright world, and put them to this conflict; what a conflict it is, I adorn no words to tell. But thou, my Son, mayest now see the brief mockery of the goods that are committed unto Fortune, for which the human kind contend with one another. For all the gold that is beneath the moon, or ever was, could not give rest to a single one of these weary souls.” “Master,” I said to him, “now tell me also: this Fortune, 5 of which thou hintest to me; what is she, that has the good things of the world thus within her clutches?” And he to me: O foolish creatures, how great is this ignorance that falls upon ye! Now I wish thee to receive my judgment of her. He whose wisdom is transcendent over all, made the heavens and gave them guides, so that every part shines to every part, equally distributing the light; in like manner, for worldly splendours, he ordained a general minister and guide, 6 to change betimes the vain possession, from people to people, and from one kindred to another, beyond the hindrance of human wisdom: hence one people commands, another languishes; obeying her sentence, which is hidden like the serpent in the grass. Your knowledge cannot understand her: she provides, judges, and maintains her kingdom, as the other Gods do theirs.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  We came to know—nous connûmes, to use a Flaubertian intonation—the stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, the adobe unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Book of the Automobile Association describes as “shaded” or “spacious” or “landscaped” grounds. The log kind, finished in knotty pine, reminded Lo, by its golden-brown glaze, of fried-chicken bones. We held in contempt the plain whitewashed clapboard Kabins, with their faint sewerish smell or some other gloomy self-conscious stench and nothing to boast of (except “good beds”), and an unsmiling landlady always prepared to have her gift (“… well, I could give you …”) turned down. Nous connûmes (this is royal fun) the would-be enticements of their repetitious names—all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac’s Courts. There was sometimes a special line in the write-up, such as “Children welcome, pets allowed” (You are welcome, you are allowed). The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbor turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended. Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet (on whose tank the towels were unhygienically heaped) asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies; others had special notices under glass, such as Things to Do (Riding: You will often see riders coming down Main Street on their way back from a romantic moonlight ride. “Often at 3 A.M.,” sneered unromantic Lo). Nous connûmes the various types of motor court operators, the reformed criminal, the retired teacher and the business flop, among the males; and the motherly, pseudo-ladylike and madamic variants among the females. And sometimes trains would cry in the monstrously hot and humid night with heartrending and ominous plangency, mingling power and hysteria in one desperate scream.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “That will come,” was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what was most important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev’s faith in Vronsky’s talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky’s sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual. In another man’s house, and especially in Vronsky’s palazzo, Mihailov was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect. He called Vronsky “your excellency,” and notwithstanding Anna’s and Vronsky’s invitations, he would never stay to dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait. Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to know the artist’s opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into Mihailov. But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them. Anna was aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided conversation with her. Vronsky’s talk about his painting he met with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky’s picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev’s conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him. Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were, hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up coming. Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous of Vronsky. “Not envious, let us say, since he has _talent_; but it annoys him that a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you know they all detest a title), can, without any particular trouble, do as well, if not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And more than all, it’s a question of culture, which he is without.” Vronsky defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed it, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure to be envious.

• From Querelle (1953)

  It had been his intention to demonstrate his contempt for the fellow who kept on staring at him, but he did not care to define that contempt too pointedly. He did not even dare so much as indicate Mario to the boss with his $!yes. "Dealing with me you don't have to worry. You'll get your dough. All you've got to do is bring those five kilos here, and you'll receive your pennies. OK? So get cracking.'' With a very slow, almost imperceptible movement of the head the boss nodded toward the counter against which Mario was leaning. "That's Mario, over there. Don't worry about him, he belongs to the family." Without one twitch of his face muscles, Mario held out his hand. It was hard, solid, armored rather than ornamented with three gold rings. Querelle's waist was trimmer than Mario's, by an inch or so. He knew that the very moment he set eyes on the 29 I QUERELLE splendid rings: they seemed to be signs of great masculine strength. He had no doubt ·that the realm over which this character lorded it was a terrestrial one. Suddenly, and with a twinge of melancholy, Querelle was reminded that he possessed, hidden forr'ard in the soaking despatch-boat out in the Roads, all it needed to be this man's equal. The thought calmed him down a little. But was it really possible for a policeman to be so handsome, so wealthy? And was it possible that he would join forces with, no, join his beauty to the power of an outlaw (because that is what Querelle liked to think the brothelkeeper was) ? But that thought, slowly unfolding in Querelle's mind, did not set it at rest, and his disdain yielded to his admiration. "Hello." Mario's voice was large and thick like his hands-except that it carried no sparkle. It struck Querelle slap in the face. It was a brutal, callous voice, like a big shovel. Speaking of it, a few days later, Querelle said to the detective : "Your pound of flesh, every time you hit me in the face with it ... " Querelle gave him a broad smile and held out his hand, but without saying anything. To the proprietor he said : "My brother isn't coming, is he? " "Haven't seen him. Dunno where he is."

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what those _infamous people_, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended doing, and she endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend during those days that he could not come across them. The young adjutant, an acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her information, and who hoped through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told her that they had finished their business and were going away next day. Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm down, when the next morning a note was brought her, the handwriting of which she recognized with horror. It was the handwriting of Anna Karenina. The envelope was of paper as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a huge monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent. “Who brought it?” “A commissionaire from the hotel.” It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to read the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to which she was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she read the following letter in French: “Madame la Comtesse, “The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat permission to see him once before my departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to cause that generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you send Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or will you let me know when and where I could see him away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him, and so cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me. “Anna.” Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia Ivanovna: its contents and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its free and easy—as she considered—tone. “Say that there is no answer,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and immediately opening her blotting-book, she wrote to Alexey Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see him at one o’clock at the levee. “I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we will arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will order tea _as you like it_. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives the strength to bear it,” she added, so as to give him some slight preparation. Countess Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a day to Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of communication, which gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not afforded by their personal interviews. Chapter 24

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Landau looked round hurriedly, came up, and smiling, laid his moist, lifeless hand in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s outstretched hand and immediately walked away and fell to gazing at the portraits again. The countess and Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at each other significantly. “I am very glad to see you, particularly today,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, pointing Stepan Arkadyevitch to a seat beside Karenin. “I introduced you to him as Landau,” she said in a soft voice, glancing at the Frenchman and again immediately after at Alexey Alexandrovitch, “but he is really Count Bezzubov, as you’re probably aware. Only he does not like the title.” “Yes, I heard so,” answered Stepan Arkadyevitch; “they say he completely cured Countess Bezzubova.” “She was here today, poor thing!” the countess said, turning to Alexey Alexandrovitch. “This separation is awful for her. It’s such a blow to her!” “And he positively is going?” queried Alexey Alexandrovitch. “Yes, he’s going to Paris. He heard a voice yesterday,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, looking at Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Ah, a voice!” repeated Oblonsky, feeling that he must be as circumspect as he possibly could in this society, where something peculiar was going on, or was to go on, to which he had not the key. A moment’s silence followed, after which Countess Lidia Ivanovna, as though approaching the main topic of conversation, said with a fine smile to Oblonsky: “I’ve known you for a long while, and am very glad to make a closer acquaintance with you. _Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis._ But to be a true friend, one must enter into the spiritual state of one’s friend, and I fear that you are not doing so in the case of Alexey Alexandrovitch. You understand what I mean?” she said, lifting her fine pensive eyes. “In part, countess, I understand the position of Alexey Alexandrovitch....” said Oblonsky. Having no clear idea what they were talking about, he wanted to confine himself to generalities. “The change is not in his external position,” Countess Lidia Ivanovna said sternly, following with eyes of love the figure of Alexey Alexandrovitch as he got up and crossed over to Landau; “his heart is changed, a new heart has been vouchsafed him, and I fear you don’t fully apprehend the change that has taken place in him.” “Oh, well, in general outlines I can conceive the change. We have always been friendly, and now....” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, responding with a sympathetic glance to the expression of the countess, and mentally balancing the question with which of the two ministers she was most intimate, so as to know about which to ask her to speak for him. “The change that has taken place in him cannot lessen his love for his neighbors; on the contrary, that change can only intensify love in his heart. But I am afraid you do not understand me. Won’t you have some tea?” she said, with her eyes indicating the footman, who was handing round tea on a tray.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “And how strong they all are, how sound physically,” thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the bedchamber with his well-combed, perfumed whiskers, and at the red neck of the prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass them on his way. “Truly is it said that all the world is evil,” he thought, with another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the bedchamber. Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with his customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had been talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes sought Countess Lidia Ivanovna. “Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!” said the little old man, with a malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin was on a level with them, and was nodding with a frigid gesture, “I haven’t congratulated you yet,” said the old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon. “Thank you,” answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. “What an _exquisite_ day today,” he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the word _exquisite_. That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now. Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting out above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to her, Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went towards her. Lidia Ivanovna’s dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse of that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her desire had been to adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better. Now, on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so inconsistent with her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between these adornments and her own exterior should not be too appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the one island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst of the sea of hostility and jeering that surrounded him. Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to her loving glance as a plant to the sun. “I congratulate you,” she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon. Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders, closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware that it was one of his chief sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it. “How is our angel?” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning Seryozha.