Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  'Yes, my Princess,' I said and obeyed at once, and then through another hoop and another with the same compliance. I was agile and without the slightest shame, though my penis and balls moved ungracefully with my exertions. "Her blows grew harder, less regular. My moans were very loud and sudden and provoked much laughter. "And when she commanded me now to jump up and grab the bar of the trapeze in both hands, I felt the tears come purely from my stress and exhaustion. I hung from the trapeze as she paddles me, driving me back and forth, and then commanded me to twist and catch the chains above with my feet. "This was quite impossible and as I struggled to obey, the hall echoed with laughter. Felix stepped forward and at once lifted my ankles until I was swinging as she had wished and I had to bear her spanks in this position. "And as soon as she tired of this, I was ordered to drop to the ground, at which point she came forward with a long thin leather strap, and buckling the end of it around my penis, she now pulled me, on my knees towards her. I had never been so led or pulled before, by the very root of my cock, and my tears flowed copiously. My whole body was hot and trembling, and my hips were being tugged ahead of me so that no thought of grace could possibly exist even had I the presence of mind for it. She pulled me to the Queen's feet, and then turning, pulled me along, running on her clicking heels so that I struggled and groaned and cried behind my closed lips to keep up with her. "I was wretched. The circle seemed endless. The strap around my penis constricted it, and my buttocks were so painfully tender now that they ached even when she was not striking them. "But we'd soon completed the circle. I knew she had exhausted her inventiveness. She had relied upon my disobedience and reluctance, and encountering none, her show lacked any real feature save my complete obedience. "But she had now a subtle test for me for which I was unprepared. "She ordered me to stand up, spread my legs and then place my hands flat on the floor before her.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  And through the high, narrow window of the dressing room, the sky gave a moon-white light on the wall where Beauty was shackled, her ankles far apart, her wrists spread equally wide apart above her. She lay her head to the side, gazing at the long row of magnificent gowns, the mantles on their hooks, the circlets of gold and embroidery, the beautiful ornamental chains, and heaps upon heaps of lovely slippers. And here she was among these things as if she were but an adornment, a possession, kept with other valuable possessions. She sighed, and she deliberately rubbed her read against the stone wall, wanting somehow to punish it more so that after a few seconds she could feel the relief when she stopped doing this. Her sex would not stop its throbbing. It was sticky with its own wetness. Poor Princess Lizetta in the Hall of Punishments, did she suffer worse than this? At least she was not alone in the darkness, and suddenly even those who must pass her, taunting her, teasing her, stroking her swelling sex, seemed to Beauty a desirable company. She strained and twisted her hips. It was no comfort to her, and she did not understand why she felt this craving when only a little while ago her pain had been so great she had kissed Lady Juliana's slippers. She flushed to think of Lady Juliana's angry words, those reproving spanks that somehow hurt her worse than the others. And how the Pages must have laughed when a dozen Princess had probably played the little gathering game with the roses and done it better. But why, why had Beauty at the very end picked up that last rosebud, and why had she felt her breasts swollen with warmth when Lady Juliana took it from her lips? It had seemed in that moment that Beauty's nipples were cruel little caps that prevented pleasure from breaking loose in her. Strange thought. They seemed too tight for her then, her nipples, and her sex gaped and hungered and the moisture trickled down the inside of her thighs, and when she thought of Prince Alexi's smile, and Lady Juliana's brown eye, and the Prince's beautiful face, and even the Queen, yes, even the Queen's red lips, she felt herself burning in agony. Prince Alexi's sex was thick and dark, like all of him, and his nipples a dark, dark rose color. She tossed her head, rolled it against the wall. But why had she picked up the rose, offered it to pretty Lady Juliana? She stared forward in the darkness, and hearing a creaking sound very near to her, she thought she was imagining it. But in the darkness of the near wall, a seam of light appeared and widened. The door had been opened, and Prince Alexi slipped into the dressing room. Unbound, free, he was standing before her, and very gently, he pushed the door closed behind him. Beauty held her breath.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Those ribald sea monsters. “ Mais allez-y, allez-y! ” Annabel skipping on one foot to get into her shorts, I seasick with rage, trying to screen her. Same date, later, quite late. I have turned on the light to take down a dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed that since the weather bureau promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday after church. As I lay in bed, erotically musing before trying to go to sleep, I thought of a final scheme how to profit by the picnic to come. I was aware that mother Haze hated my darling for her being sweet on me. So I planned my lake day with a view to satisfying the mother. To her alone would I talk; but at some appropriate moment I would say I had left my wrist watch or my sunglasses in that glade yonder—and plunge with my nymphet into the wood. Reality at this juncture withdrew, and the Quest for the Glasses turned into a quiet little orgy with a singularly knowing, cheerful, corrupt and compliant Lolita behaving as reason knew she could not possibly behave. At 3 A.M . I swallowed a sleeping pill, and presently, a dream that was not a sequel but a parody revealed to me, with a kind of meaningful clarity, the lake I had never yet visited: it was glazed over with a sheet of emerald ice, and a pockmarked Eskimo was trying in vain to break it with a pickaxe, although imported mimosas and oleanders flowered on its gravelly banks. I am sure Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann would have paid me a sack of schillings for adding such a libidream to her files. Unfortunately, the rest of it was frankly eclectic. Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback around the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air—one of those little omissions due to the absent-mindedness of the dream agent. Saturday . My heart is still thumping. I still squirm and emit low moans of remembered embarrassment. Dorsal view. Glimpse of shiny skin between T-shirt and white gym shorts. Bending, over a window sill, in the act of tearing off leaves from a poplar outside while engrossed in torrential talk with a newspaper boy below (Kenneth Knight, I suspect) who had just propelled the Ramsdale Journal with a very precise thud onto the porch. I began creeping up to her—“crippling” up to her, as pantomimists say. My arms and legs were convex surfaces between which—rather than upon which—I slowly progressed by some neutral means of locomotion: Humbert the Wounded Spider.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She wanted suddenly to kiss it, but she didn't dare and was shocked at her impulse. He had lifted it free. It was hard. She thought of it between her legs, filling her, rough and too big for her virginal opening, and of that terrible pleasure which had suffused her and wasted her the night before, and she knew she was blushing furiously. "Now go to the stand in the corner," he said, "and bring back the basin with water in it." She almost scurried across the floor. Several times in the Inn he had told her to move fast, and though she had hated it at first, she now did it instinctively. She brought the basin in both hands and set it down. There was a cloth in the water. "Wring out the cloth tightly," he said, "and bathe me quickly." She did as she was told at once, staring in amazement at his sex, its length, its hardness, and the tip of it with its tiny opening. She had been so sore from it yesterday, yet that pleasure had paralyzed her. Never had she guessed at such a secret. "Now, do you know what I want of you?" the Prince said gently. His had lovingly stroked her cheek, lifting her hair back. She ached to look at him. She wished so much he would command her to look into his eyes. It terrified her, but after the first instant it was so wondrous to her, his expression, that handsome and almost delicate face, and those black eyes that seemed to accept no compromise. "No, my Prince, but whatever it is..." she started. "Yes, darling...you are being very good. I want you to take it in your mouth, stroke it with your tongue and your lips." She was shocked. She had never thought of this. She thought suddenly, cruelly of who she had been, a Princess, and she thought of all her young life before she had fallen asleep, and she almost gave a little whimper. But this was her Prince who was commanding her, not some dreadful person she was being given to as a wife who might have demanded this of her. She closed her eyes and took it into her mouth, feeling its huge size, its hardness. It nudged at the back of her throat, and she pushed up and down on it as the Prince guided her. The taste of it was almost delicious; and it seemed a salty liquid in tiny droplets came out into her mouth, and then she stopped because he had said it was enough. She opened her eyes. "Very good, Beauty, very good," said the Prince. And she could tell he was in pain with his need suddenly. It made her fell proud, and there was in her, even in her helplessness, a sense of power.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Prince Alexi," Beauty thought. It was a lovely name, and he too was of royal blood and high birth. Why, of course, all of them were. It was a delightful thought. What if they had not been, and she were the only Princess? She stared at his buttocks. There were obvious welts on them and little patches that seemed much redder than the rest, and as the young slave Prince kissed the Queen's feet, Beauty could see also his scrotum between his legs, dark, hairy and mysterious. It struck her how dreadfully vulnerable he seemed, being a boy, in ways she had never considered. But he had been released or forgiven. He rose to his feet, and brushed his auburn curly hair out of his eyes and back from his cheek, and she saw his face stained with tears, and reddened too; yet he had about him a marvelous dignity. He took the pitcher handed him without complaint and gracefully he moved among the standing guests, filling their goblets. He was only a few paces from Beauty, and drawing ever closer. And she could hear how the men and women teased him. "Another paddling and you are so wretchedly clumsy," said a very tall blond-haired Lady in a long green gown, with diamonds on her fingers, and she pinched his red cheek, as, with his eyes down, he smiled. His penis was hard and erect as before, rising up thick and motionless from a nest of dark curly hair between his legs. Beauty could not stop herself from looking at it. As he came nearer, she held her breath. "Come here, Prince Alexi," said the Lord with the gray eyes. He snapped his fingers. And then taking a white handkerchief, he had the boy moisten it with the wine. The boy was so near now Beauty might have touched him. And the Lord took the moistened handkerchief and pressed it to Beauty's lips. It felt good and cool and tantalizing. But she could not help but look up at the obedient boy Prince who stood waiting, and she saw him looking at her. And though his face was still slightly pink, and there were tears on his cheeks, he smiled at her. THE PRINCE'S BED CHAMBER BEAUTY AWOKE to new terror. It was getting dusk; the Feast was over. The Lords and Ladies who remained were very loud and swept up in the fever of the afternoon, but she was being unbound and she did not know what would now happen to her.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Put your face in her lap," he said, "and your arms about her." Beauty gasped and sat up, but Prince Alexi obeyed immediately. Beauty looked down to see his auburn hair covering her sex as she felt his lips against her thighs, and his arms enclose her. His body was hot and pulsing; she could feel the beating of his heart, and without meaning to, she reached out to clasp his hips with her hands. The Prince kicked Prince Alexi's legs wide apart and taking Beauty's head roughly in his left hand so that he might kiss her, he drove his organ into Prince Alexi's anus. Prince Alexi moaned at the roughness and swiftness of the thrusts. Beauty felt the pressure against her as Prince Alexi was driven ever more quickly by it. The Prince had let her go, and she was crying. She held tight to Prince Alexi, and then the Prince gave his final thrust with a moan, his hands pressed to Prince Alexi's back, and he stood still letting his pleasure course through him. Beauty tried to keep herself quiet. Prince Alexi let her go, but not without a secret little kiss between her legs right on the crest of her pubic hair, and just as he was being drawn away, again, his dark eyes narrowed in a secret smile for her. "Mount him in the passage," said the Prince to the Squire. "And see no one satisfies him. Keep him in torment. Every quarter of the hour remind him of his duty to his Prince, but do not satisfy him." Prince Alexi was taken away. Beauty sat staring at the open door. But it was not over. The Prince reached out and taking her by the hair, told her to follow him. "On your hands and knees, my dear. That is always the way you will move through the castle," he said, "unless told otherwise." She hurried along, following him out and to the edge of the stairway. Halfway down was a broad landing from which one might see directly into the Great Hall. And on the landing was a stone statue that frightened Beauty. It was a pagan god of some sort with an erect phallus. It was onto this phallus that Prince Alexi was now thrust, his legs bound apart on the pedestal of the statue. His head was laid back on the statue's shoulder. He gave another moan as the phallus impaled him and then he lay still as Squire Felix bound his hands behind his back.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes, especially as I can’t stay very long with you. I’m forced to go on to old Madame Vrede. I’ve been promising to go for a century,” said Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society, but a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said this, which she had not thought of a second before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the reflection that as Vronsky would not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede, whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people, she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky, she could have thought of nothing better. “No. I’m not going to let you go for anything,” answered Betsy, looking intently into Anna’s face. “Really, if I were not fond of you, I should feel offended. One would think you were afraid my society would compromise you. Tea in the little dining-room, please,” she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing the footman. Taking the note from him, she read it. “Alexey’s playing us false,” she said in French; “he writes that he can’t come,” she added in a tone as simple and natural as though it could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean anything more to Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Vronsky before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew nothing. “Ah!” said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the matter, and she went on smiling: “How can you or your friends compromise anyone?” This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her. “I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope,” she said. “Stremov and Liza Merkalova, why, they’re the cream of the cream of society. Besides, they’re received everywhere, and _I_”—she laid special stress on the I—“have never been strict and intolerant. It’s simply that I haven’t the time.” “No; you don’t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee—that’s no affair of ours. But in the world, he’s the most amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza’s lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position. He’s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don’t know? Oh, that’s a new type, quite new.”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how to do it, without impinging on a child’s chastity; after all, I had had some experience in my life of pederosis; had visually possessed dappled nymphets in parks; had wedged my wary and bestial way into the hottest, most crowded corner of a city bus full of strap-hanging school children. But for almost three weeks I had been interrupted in all my pathetic machinations. The agent of these interruptions was usually the Haze woman (who, as the reader will mark, was more afraid of Lo’s deriving some pleasure from me than of my enjoying Lo). The passion I had developed for that nymphet—for the first nymphet in my life that could be reached at last by my awkward, aching, timid claws—would have certainly landed me again in a sanatorium, had not the devil realized that I was to be granted some relief if he wanted to have me as a plaything for some time longer. The reader has also marked the curious Mirage of the Lake. It would have been logical on the part of Aubrey McFate (as I would like to dub that devil of mine) to arrange a small treat for me on the promised beach, in the presumed forest. Actually, the promise Mrs. Haze had made was a fraudulent one: she had not told me that Mary Rose Hamilton (a dark little beauty in her own right) was to come too, and that the two nymphets would be whispering apart, and playing apart, and having a good time all by themselves, while Mrs. Haze and her handsome lodger conversed sedately in the seminude, far from prying eyes. Incidentally, eyes did pry and tongues did wag. How queer life is! We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo. Before my actual arrival, my landlady had planned to have an old spinster, a Miss Phalen, whose mother had been cook in Mrs. Haze’s family, come to stay in the house with Lolita and me, while Mrs. Haze, a career girl at heart, sought some suitable job in the nearest city. Mrs. Haze had seen the whole situation very clearly: the bespectacled, round-backed Herr Humbert coming with his Central-European trunks to gather dust in his corner behind a heap of old books; the unloved ugly little daughter firmly supervised by Miss Phalen who had already once had my Lo under her buzzard wing (Lo recalled that 1944 summer with an indignant shudder); and Mrs. Haze herself engaged as a receptionist in a great elegant city. But a not too complicated event interfered with that program. Miss Phalen broke her hip in Savannah, Ga., on the very day I arrived in Ramsdale .

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "She ordered me to rise, and a Page appeared, I don't remember if it was Felix, and he manacled my hands together over my head so that my toes barely touched the ground. The Queen seated herself right in front of me. She laid the phallus rod aside and lifted yet another rod that had been chained to her girdle. It was merely a long thin strip of wood covered with leather. "'Now you must talk to me,' she said. 'You must address me as your Highness, and you must answer my questions respectfully.' I felt an almost uncontrollable excitement at this. I would be allowed to speak to her. Of course I never had. In my rebelliousness I had always been gagged, and I did not know how I would feel when allowed words. I was her puppy dog, her mute slave, and now I must speak to her. She toyed with my penis; she lifted my balls on her thin leather stick and pushed them to and fro. She gave my thighs a playful smack. "'Did you enjoy serving the crude Lords and Ladies of the kitchen?' she asked me playfully, 'or would you rather serve your Queen?' "'I want to serve only you, your Highness, or as you wish.' I answered quickly. My own voice sounded strange to me. It was mine, but I had not heard it in so long, and when I voiced this subservience it was as if I had only just discovered it. Or rather I discovered it anew, and it produced an extraordinary outpouring of emotion in me. I wept, and hoped that it did not displease her. "She rose then and stood very close to me. She touched my eyes and my lips. 'All this belongs to me,' she said, 'and this,' and she touched the nipples of my chest which the kitchen boys had never spared, and she touched my belly and my navel. 'And this,' she said, 'this too, belongs to me,' and she held my penis in her hand, her long nails scratching at the tip of it gently. It gave off a little fluid then and she withdrew her hand and held my scrotum in her hands and claimed that as well. 'Spread your legs,' she said and turned me on the chain that held me. 'And this is mine,' she said, touching my anus. "I heard myself answer her, 'Yes, your Highness.' She then told me she had punishments worse, for me than the kitchen should I ever try to escape her again, or rebel or in any way displease her. But for the time being, she would be more than pleased with me, she was certain, and she would work me hard as was her pleasure. She said I had great strength for her sport which Prince Gerald had not, and she would test that strength to the limit. "Each morning, she would spank me on the Bridle Path.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  The young men had softly curly hair, cut at the shoulders and neatly combed so that it framed their lean faces. And never did they raise their eyes, though some seemed to move in obvious discomfort from the hardness of their penises. How she could tell this discomfort, she was not sure; it was their manner, a manner of bearing tension and desire, with no expression for it. And as she saw the first of the long-haired girls bending over the table with her pitcher, she wondered if she too felt this same softly agonizing pleasure. Beauty felt it now just looking at these slaves, and she felt a quiet relief that for a moment she herself was unobserved. Or so she thought. Because she could sense a restlessness in the room. Some were rising and walking about, perhaps even dancing to the music. She could not be sure. And others had gone to gather near the Queen, their goblets in hand, regaling the Prince it seemed with stories. The Prince. She caught a clear glimpse of him and he smiled at her. How regal he looked, his black hair glossy and full, his long, shining white boots stretched out on the blue carpet before him. He was nodding and smiling to those who addressed him, but now and then his eyes moved to Beauty. But there was so much to see, and now she felt someone was very near her, and touching her again, and she realized that a line of dancers was just forming to one side of her. There was a reckless air to things. Much wine was being poured. There were great eruptions of laughter. And then, quite suddenly, she saw far to her left a young naked boy drop his pitcher of wine, and the red liquid run out on the floor as the others hastened to clean it. At once the Lord at Beauty's side clapped his hands, and Beauty saw three exquisitely dressed Pages, no older than the naked boys themselves, rush forward and seize the boy and hold him up quickly by his ankles. This brought a loud round of applause from those Lords and Ladies nearest the boy, and at once a paddle was produced, a very beautiful piece of gold enameling and white tracery, and the offender was smartly spanked while all looked on with the greatest fascination. Beauty felt a fluttering in her heart. If she were to be humiliated like that, punished so immediately and ignominiously for clumsiness, she didn't know how she could bear it. To be displayed was one thing; here she had some grace.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Several other slaves had been soundly spanked during the course of the banquet, and it seemed finally that no offense was required, merely the decision of a Lord or Lady. The request was then granted by the Queen -- and the unlucky one was thrust up over the Page's knee, his head bowed, his feet dangling off the ground, and down came the golden paddle. Twice it had been young women. And one of them had broken into silent sobs. But there was in her manner something that made Beauty a little suspicious. After she was spanked, she scurried all too fast to the Queen's feet, and Beauty hoped she would be spanked again until her sobs were real, and all her scurrying was real, and she found herself vaguely delighted when the Queen ordered it. Now, as Beauty was awakened, she thought dreamily of all this, and felt sharp fear, and also some sense of drama. Would she be sent away to some place with all these slaves? Or would the Prince take her? She was stunned with confusion, when she realized the Prince had risen and given an order to the gray-eyed Lord to bring Beauty after him. She was untied; she was very stiff. But the Lord now had one of those gold paddles in his hand which he tested loudly upon his palm, and giving her no time to stretch her aching muscles, he ordered her down on her knees and forward. When she hesitated, his command came very sharp again, but he did not strike her. She rushed to catch up with the Prince who had just reached the stairway. And soon she was following him up and down a long corridor. "Beauty," he stood back. "Open the doors!" And kneeling up, she quickly opened them and forced them apart and then followed the Prince into a bed chamber. The fire was already a great blaze on the hearth and the windows were curtained, and the bed had been turned back, and Beauty was quivering with excitement. "My Prince, shall I begin her training at once?" asked the gray-eyed Lord. "No, my Lord, I shall attend to it myself the first few days, possibly longer," said the Prince, "though you may of course, whenever the occasion arises, instruct her, teach her manners, the general rules that pertain to all the slaves, and so forth. She does not drop her eyes as she should, as you can see; she is so very inquisitive." And at this he smiled, though Beauty at once looked down, much as she wanted to see it. She knelt obediently, glad her hair concealed her. And then she checked herself in this thought. She was not learning much if that was what she wanted. She wondered if Prince Alexi had been ashamed of his nakedness. He had had large brown eyes and such a beautiful mouth, but he was much to lean to be cherubic.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored, shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir. “I must write to Alexey though,” and Betsy sat down to the table, scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope. “I’m telling him to come to dinner. I’ve one lady extra to dinner with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I’ve said, will that persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?” she said from the door; “I have to give some directions.” Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy’s letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: “It’s essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o’clock.” She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the note to be taken. At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little drawing-room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova. “She’s very sweet, and I always liked her,” said Anna. “You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you’re a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as it is.” “But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,” said Anna, after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of more importance to her than it should have been; “do tell me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he’s called? I’ve met them so little. What does it mean?” Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna. “It’s a new manner,” she said. “They’ve all adopted that manner. They’ve flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and ways of flinging them.” “Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?” Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a thing which rarely happened with her. “You’re encroaching on Princess Myakaya’s special domain now. That’s the question of an _enfant terrible_,” and Betsy obviously tried to restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh often. “You’d better ask them,” she brought out, between tears of laughter.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.” It will be marked that I substitute time terms for spatial ones. In fact, I would have the reader see “nine” and “fourteen” as the boundaries—the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks—of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea. Between those age limits, are all girl-children nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who are in the know, we lone voyagers, we nympholepts, would have long gone insane. Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity, or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such coevals of hers as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where Lolita plays with her likes. Within the same age limits the number of true nymphets is strikingly inferior to that of provisionally plain, or just nice, or “cute,” or even “sweet” and “attractive,” ordinary, plumpish, formless, cold-skinned, essentially human little girls, with tummies and pigtails, who may or may not turn into adults of great beauty (look at the ugly dumplings in black stockings and white hats that are metamorphosed into stunning stars of the screen). A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs—the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate—the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power. Furthermore, since the idea of time plays such a magic part in the matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to enable the latter to come under a nymphet’s spell.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He was thinking of Anna’s promise to see him that day after the races. But he had not seen her for three days, and as her husband had just returned from abroad, he did not know whether she would be able to meet him today or not, and he did not know how to find out. He had had his last interview with her at his cousin Betsy’s summer villa. He visited the Karenins’ summer villa as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go there, and he pondered the question how to do it. “Of course I shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether she’s coming to the races. Of course, I’ll go,” he decided, lifting his head from the book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness of seeing her, his face lighted up. “Send to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and three horses as quick as they can,” he said to the servant, who handed him the steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up he began eating. From the billiard room next door came the sound of balls knocking, of talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the entrance-door: one, a young fellow, with a feeble, delicate face, who had lately joined the regiment from the Corps of Pages; the other, a plump, elderly officer, with a bracelet on his wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat. Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as though he had not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at the same time. “What? Fortifying yourself for your work?” said the plump officer, sitting down beside him. “As you see,” responded Vronsky, knitting his brows, wiping his mouth, and not looking at the officer. “So you’re not afraid of getting fat?” said the latter, turning a chair round for the young officer. “What?” said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of disgust, and showing his even teeth. “You’re not afraid of getting fat?” “Waiter, sherry!” said Vronsky, without replying, and moving the book to the other side of him, he went on reading. The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the young officer. “You choose what we’re to drink,” he said, handing him the card, and looking at him. “Rhine wine, please,” said the young officer, stealing a timid glance at Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely visible mustache. Seeing that Vronsky did not turn round, the young officer got up. “Let’s go into the billiard room,” he said. The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved towards the door. At that moment there walked into the room the tall and well-built Captain Yashvin. Nodding with an air of lofty contempt to the two officers, he went up to Vronsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What did I tell you?” said Anna’s friend. But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the direction of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only person who did not once look in that direction, and was not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered upon. Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and went up to Anna. “I’m always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband’s language,” she said. “The most transcendental ideas seem to be within my grasp when he’s speaking.” “Oh, yes!” said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to the big table and took part in the general conversation. Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not looking at him, that she was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovitch made his bows and withdrew. The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina’s coachman, was with difficulty holding one of her pair of grays, chilled with the cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman stood opening the carriage door. The hall-porter stood holding open the great door of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with her quick little hand, was unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in the hook of her fur cloak, and with bent head listening to the words Vronsky murmured as he escorted her down. “You’ve said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing,” he was saying; “but you know that friendship’s not what I want: that there’s only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so ... yes, love!...” “Love,” she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, at the very instant she unhooked the lace, she added, “Why I don’t like the word is that it means too much to me, far more than you can understand,” and she glanced into his face. “_Au revoir!_” She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she passed by the porter and vanished into the carriage. Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening than during the last two months. Chapter 8

• From Querelle (1953)

  78 I JEAN GENET ownership on board the Vengeur. Querelle had picked up that lighter on the eve of the crime, pocketed it, almost automati cally, from among the bottles and glasses on the table o n which Gil Turko, its owner, had been singing. Theo had given it to Gil. As the crime had been committed in those woods by the ramparts, the police had a notion that the man they were looking for might well be a pederast. Knowing with what horror society recoils from anything even remotely connected with the idea of homosexuality, it seems surprising that the police should � find it so easy to consider that idea. Once a murder has been committed, the police habitually put forward the two motives of robbery or jealousy; but as soon as someone who is or has been a sailor is involved, they simply say to themselves: sexual perversion. They cling to that conclusion with almost painful in tensity. To society-at-large, the police are what the dream is to the quotidian round of events; what it excludes from its own preoccupations, at least as far as possible, polite society author izes its police force to deal with. This may account for the combined repulsion and attraction with which that force is regarded. Charged with the drainage of dreams, the police catch them in their filters. And that explains why policemen bear such resemblance to those they pursue. It would be a mistake to believe that it is merely the better to trick, track down, and vanquish it more effectively, that those inspectors blend so well with their quarry. Looking closely at Mario's personal life, we notice first of all his habitual visits to the brothel and his friend ship with its proprietor. No doubt he finds Nono ·an informer who is in some ways a useful kind of link between law-abiding society and shady doings, but in talking to him he is also able to acquire (if he did not know them already) the manners and idioms of the underworld-tending to overdo them, later, in moments of danger. Finally, his desire to love Dede in for bidden ways is an indication: this love alienates him from the

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She had me cornered between the front porch and her car. “Hurry up,” she said as I laboriously doubled up my large body in order to crawl in (still desperately devising a means of escape). She had started the engine, and was genteelly swearing at a backing and turning truck in front that had just brought old invalid Miss Opposite a brand new wheel chair, when my Lolita’s sharp voice came from the parlor window: “You! Where are you going? I’m coming too! Wait!” “Ignore her,” yelped Haze (killing the motor); alas for my fair driver; Lo was already pulling at the door on my side. “This is intolerable,” began Haze; but Lo had scrambled in, shivering with glee. “Move your bottom, you,” said Lo. “Lo!” cried Haze (sideglancing at me, hoping I would throw rude Lo out). “And behold,” said Lo (not for the first time), as she jerked back, as I jerked back, as the car leapt forward. “It is intolerable,” said Haze, violently getting into second, “that a child should be so ill-mannered. And so very persevering. When she knows she is unwanted. And needs a bath.” My knuckles lay against the child’s blue jeans. She was barefooted; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polish and there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe; and, God, what would I not have given to kiss then and there those delicate-boned, long-toed, monkeyish feet! Suddenly her hand slipped into mine and without our chaperon’s seeing, I held, and stroked, and squeezed that little hot paw, all the way to the store. The wings of the driver’s Marlenesque nose shone, having shed or burned up their ration of powder, and she kept up an elegant monologue anent the local traffic, and smiled in profile, and pouted in profile, and beat her painted lashes in profile, while I prayed we would never get to that store, but we did. I have nothing else to report, save, primo : that big Haze had little Haze sit behind on our way home, and secundo : that the lady decided to keep Humbert’s Choice for the backs of her own shapely ears. Thursday . We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People’s Encyclopedia , I found a map of the States that a child’s pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  The latter, chewing rapidly, used her free hand to undo the straps and with them the entire weighty mass of the steel soles and solid wheels. Then, returning to earth among the rest of us, she stood up with an instantaneous sensation of heavenly barefootedness, not immediately recognizable as the feel of skateless shoes, and went off, now hesitantly, now with easy strides, until finally (probably because she had done with the bread) she took off at full tilt, swinging her liberated arms, flashing in and out of sight, mingling with a kindred play of light beneath the violet-and-green trees. (pp. 26–28) The “enchanter” makes no sexual advances until the final pages, soon after the girl’s mother has died: “Is this where I’m going to sleep?” the girl asked indifferently, and when, struggling with the shutters, squeezing tight their eyelike chinks, he replied affirmatively, she took a look at the cap she was holding and limply tossed it on the wide bed. “There we are,” said he after the old man had dragged in their suitcases and left, and there remained in the room only the pounding of his heart and the distant throbbing of the night. “There, now it’s time for bed.” Reeling with sleepiness, she bumped into the corner of an armchair, at which point he, simultaneously sitting down in it, took her by the hip and drew her close. She straightened, stretching up like an angel, for a split second tensed every muscle, took another half step, and softly descended onto his lap. “My sweetheart, my poor little girl,” he spoke in a kind of general mist of pity, tenderness, and desire, as he observed her drowsiness, her wooziness, her diminishing smile, palpating her through the dark dress, feeling, through the thin wool, the band of the orphan’s garter on her bare skin, thinking how defenseless, abandoned, warm she was, reveling in the animate weight of her legs as they slithered apart and then, with the faintest corporeal rustle, recrossed at a slightly higher level. She slowly entwined a somnolent arm, in its snug little sleeve, around his nape, engulfing him with the chestnut fragrance of her soft hair.… (pp. 81–82) But the narrator fails as both enchanter and lover, and soon afterwards dies in a manner which Nabokov will transfer to Charlotte Haze. While the scene clearly foreshadows the first night at The Enchanted Hunters hotel, its straightforward action and solemn tone are quite different, and it compresses into a few paragraphs what will later occupy almost two chapters (pp. 119–133). The narrator’s enjoyment of the girl’s “animate weight” suggests the considerably more combustible lap scene in Lolita , perhaps the most erotic interlude in the novel—but it only suggests it. Aside from such echoes, little beyond the basic idea of the tale subsists in Lolita ; and the telling is quite literally a world apart.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Beauty asked, but before he could answer, she added quickly, though trying to sound indifferent, "Is Prince Alexi one of those who is rebellious?" She could feel Leon's hand moving towards her buttocks, and now suddenly all those welts and sore places were brought to life as his fingers touched them. The oil burned slightly as Leon added droplets of it generously, and then those strong fingers commenced to work the flesh, with no regard for its redness. Beauty winced, but even this pain had its pleasure. She felt her buttocks shaped by his hands, lifted, separated, and then smoothed again. She blushed to think that it was Leon doing this who had been talking to her in such a civilized manner, and when his voice went on, she felt a new variant of agitation. "There is no end to it," she thought, "the ways of being humiliated." "Prince Alexi is the Queen's favorite," said Leon. "The Queen cannot bear to be separated from him for very long, and though he is a model of good behavior and devotion, he is, in his own way, relentlessly rebellious." "But how can that be?" Beauty asked. "Ah, you must put your mind on the pleasing of your Lords and Ladies," Leon said, "but I shall say this: Prince Alexi appears to have surrendered his will as a fine slave must, but there is a core in Prince Alexi that no one touches." Beauty was enthralled by this answer. She thought of Prince Alexi on his hands and knees, his strong back and the curve of his buttocks as he had been driven back and forth across the Prince's bedroom; she thought of the beauty of his face. "A core in him no one touches," she mused. But Leon had turned her over now, and when she saw him bending down, so close to her, she felt bashful and closed her eyes. He was rubbing the oil into her belly and into her legs, and she pressed her legs together and tried to turn to the side. "You'll become very accustomed to my ministrations, Princess," he said. "You will think nothing of being groomed in time." And firmly he pressed her shoulders to the pallet. His swift fingers smoothed the oil into her throat and into her arms. Beauty opened her eyes cautiously to see him intent on his work. His pale eyes moved over her without passion but with an obvious absorption. "Do you...derive pleasure from it?" she whispered, and was shocked to hear herself speak these words. He emptied some oil into the palm of his left hand, and putting the bottle down beside him, he rubbed the oil into her breasts, lifting them and squeezing them as he had done her buttocks. She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. She felt him roughly massaging her nipples. She almost let out a little cry.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But he seemed at wits ends to punish her. And stopping her suddenly by lifting her around the middle, he brought her up over the stool which he had just left, so that dangling from the hook which she held for dear life, she was now thrust over it, the wooden seat of the stool pressing into her naked sex, her legs out helplessly behind her. And then he sent his worst rain of blows on her, hard snapping spanks that made her calves quiver and sting as her thighs had done before. But no matter how he busied himself with her legs, he always returned to her buttocks, punishing them the hardest so that Beauty was choking with sobs, and felt this as endless. Quite suddenly, he stopped. "Let go the hook," he commanded, and then he scooped her up over his shoulder and taking her across the room, he flung her down on the bed. She fell back on the pillow, and immediately beneath her sore and swollen buttocks and thighs felt a prickling and a roughness. She had only to cast her head slightly to the side to see the jewels glittering on the coverlet. And she knew how they would torture her as soon as he had mounted her. But she wanted him so badly. And when she saw him rise up over her, she felt not the hot throbbing pain in her body but a flood of juices between her legs and a new moan coming out of her as she opened herself to him. She couldn't keep from lifting her hips, praying it didn't displease him. He knelt over her, removing his erect cock from his breeches, and then he brought her up on her knees and impaled her upon it. She cried out. Her head fell back. It was a great hard driving thing inside her sore and quivering orifice. But she felt it bathed with her juices, and as the Prince forced it in deeper and brought her down upon it, it seemed a spit that rubbed against some mysterious core in her, sending the ecstasy washing through her so she was giving great guttural moans in spite of herself. The Prince's thrusts came faster and faster and then he too gave a soft cry, and held her close to him, her breasts aching and pressed to his chest, his lips on the back of her neck, his body softening slowly. "Beauty, Beauty," he whispered. "You have conquered me as surely as I have conquered you. Don't ever arouse my jealousy again. I don't know what I would do if you did it!" "My Prince," she moaned and kissed him on the mouth, and when she saw the distress in his face, she covered it with kisses. "I'm your slave, my Prince," she said.