Despair

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 Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The interests which thus evade taxation have usually been enriched by public gifts, by franchises, mining rights, water rights, the unearned increment of the land, etc., and yet they allow the public burdens to settle on the backs of those classes who are already fearfully handicapped. The courts are the instrument by which the organized community exercises its supremacy over the affairs of the individual, and the control of the courts is therefore of vital concern to the privileged classes of any nation. Exemption from the jurisdiction of certain courts which would be troublesome, was a desirable privilege, and both the feudal aristocracy and the clergy had that privilege. To wide extent the feudal nobles down to our own time had the right of jurisdiction within their own domains, and when they sat as judges, they were not likely to hurt their own interests. The English landowners long made the law in Parliament and interpreted it in their courts. The terrible punishments visited, for instance, on poaching are a demonstration how they dealt with offences against their cherished class rights. In our own country all are equal before the law—in theory. In practice there is the most serious inequality. The right of appeal as handled in our country gives tremendous odds to those who have financial staying power. The police court, which is the poor man’s court, deals with him very summarily. If a rich man and a poor man were alike fined $10 for being drunk and disorderly, the equal punishment would be exceedingly unequal. If the poor man is unable to pay the fine, he gets ten days; nothing likely to be inflicted on the rich man for a similar offence would hit him equally hard. To what extent the judges are actually corrupt it is probably impossible to say. We have been trying to keep up our courage amid the general official corruption by asserting that the integrity of the judiciary at least is above reproach. But the only thing that would make them immune to the general disease is the spirit and the tradition of their profession. But class spirit and professional honor are a rather fragile barrier against the terrible temptations which can be offered by the great interests, and when that barrier is once undermined by evil example, it will wash away with increasing speed. Recent revelations have not been calculated to cheer us. The judge is frequently a successful politician before he sits on the bench. Is the sanctifying power of official responsibility so great that it will purge out the habits of mind acquired by a successful political career, as politics now goes? At any rate, it is safe to say that the study and practice of the law create an ingrained respect for things as they have been, and that the social sympathies of judges are altogether likely to be with the educated and possessing classes.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  If the Church cannot bring business under Christ’s law of solidarity and service, it will find his law not merely neglected in practice, but flouted in theory. With many the Darwinian theory has proved a welcome justification of things as they are. It is right and fitting that thousands should perish to evolve the higher type of the modern business man. Those who are manifestly surviving in the present struggle for existence can console themselves with the thought that they are the fittest, and there is no contradicting the laws of the universe. Thus an atomistic philosophy crowds out the Christian faith in solidarity. The law of the cross is superseded by the law of tooth and nail. It is not even ideal and desirable “to seek and to save the lost,” because it keeps the weak and unfit alive. The philosophy of Nietzsche, which is deeply affecting the ethical thought of the modern world, scouts the Christian virtues as the qualities of slaves. It glorifies the strong man’s self-assertion which treads under foot whatever hinders him from living out his life to the full. The philosophy regnant in any age is always the direct outgrowth of the sum total of life in that age. We view Neo-Platonism, for instance, as the necessary product of the third century. It is safe to say that students of some future century will establish an intimate causal connection between the industrial system which evolves the modern captain of industry and the philosophy of Nietzsche which justifies and glorifies him. On the other hand, among the masses who are being ground up in this evolutionary mill there will be a growing sense of the inexorable cruelty of natural law and a failing faith in the fundamental goodness of the universe. And if the universe is not at bottom good, then the God who made it and who runs it is not good. Or perhaps there is no God at all. Goodness is folly. Force rules the world. Let us use what force we have, grasp what we can, and die. The Church in the past has been able to appeal to the general faith in a good and just God and to intensify that. If that half-unconscious religion of the average man once gives way to a sullen materialism, there will be a permanent eclipse of the light of life among us. This is the stake of the Church in the social crisis. If one vast domain of life is dominated by principles antagonistic to the ethics of Christianity, it will inculcate habits and generate ideas which will undermine the law of Christ in all other domains of life and even deny the theoretical validity of it. If the Church has not faith enough in the Christian law to assert its sovereignty over all relations of society, men will deny that it is a good and practicable law at all. If the Church cannot conquer business, business will conquer the Church.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  When the people find their aspirations opposed and repudiated by their churches, they turn away chilled or angry. It is then a question whether the discipline of the Church is sufficiently strong to turn the people back from the popular movement and retain them in obedience to the Church. That is the problem which the Roman Catholic Church is now confronting in its opposition to socialism. It is trying to quarantine the Catholic workingmen in organizations of their own and to keep them immune from the bacillus of socialism. It is far fitter for such paternal repression than the Protestant churches, but its ultimate success is dubious. The mass of the people are more likely to sweep on and away from churchly religion. When the dearest ethical convictions of the people in such a crisis are brought into collision with organized religion, the result is sad for the people and disastrous for the Church. In Germany the process has worked out its conclusions quite fully. For a long time the German state Church took no sympathetic interest in the socialist movement. It preached loyalty to the king, the divine necessity of social classes, submission, and godly patience. A socialist was a heathen and a publican. It was generally denied that a man could be both a socialist and a Christian. The socialists in their propaganda constantly encountered the Church as a spiritual and social force defending the existing social order, a bulwark of privilege and conservatism. They could gain a man for socialism only by undermining the authority of the Church over his mind. At the same time the leaders of the working class were drinking in eagerly the new results of natural science and philosophy, which at that time was baldly atheistic in Germany. “Science,” as popularized in socialist literature and propaganda, was atheistic materialism. The German Social Democracy professes to be indifferent to religion and declares it a private affair, but actually it is a force hostile to religion. The tide of socialism has risen until now the Social Democratic Party is almost coextensive with the working class in the cities. Gradually the Church woke up. It tried to remedy the social misery of the people by charitable work and by alleviative legislation on the basis of the existing social order. In both directions splendid work has been done, but the allegiance of the people has not been regained. The clergy are now thoroughly awake to social questions. Many of them are more or less socialistic in their thought, but the State and the governing bodies of the Church have favored the social activity of the clergy only when it seemed likely to quiet the people and establish the existing order, and have been harshly repressive as soon as individual ministers went farther.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, The principal cause of the bodies of the damned not being consumed by fire will be the Divine justice by which their bodies will be consigned to everlasting punishment. Now the Divine justice is served also by the natural disposition, whether on the part of the passive body or on the part of the active causes; for since passiveness is a kind of receptiveness, there are two kinds of passion, corresponding to two ways in which one thing is receptive of another. For a form may be received into a subject materially according to its natural being, just as the air receives heat from fire materially; and corresponding to this manner of reception there is a kind of passion which we call “passion of nature.” In another way one thing is received into another spiritually by way of an “intention,” just as the likeness of whiteness is received into the air and in the pupil: this reception is like that whereby the soul receives the likeness of things: wherefore corresponding to this mode of reception is another mode of passion which we call “passion of the soul.” Since therefore after the resurrection and the cessation of the heavenly movement it will be impossible for a body to be altered by its natural quality, as stated above [5104](A[2]), it will not be possible for any body to be passive with a passion of nature. Consequently as regards this mode of passion the bodies of the damned will be impassible even as they will be incorruptible. Yet after the heaven has ceased to move, there will still remain the passion which is after the manner of the soul, since the air will both receive light from the sun, and will convey the variety of colors to the sight. Wherefore in respect of this mode of passion the bodies of the damned will be passible. But the glorified bodies, albeit they receive something, and are in a manner patient to sensation, will nevertheless not be passive, since they will receive nothing to distress or hurt them, as will the bodies of the damned, which for this reason are said to be passible. Reply to Objection 1: The Philosopher is speaking of the passion whereby the patient is changed from its natural disposition. But this kind of passion will not be in the bodies of the damned, as stated above.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: The likeness of the agent is in the patient in two ways. First, in the same way as in the agent, and thus it is in all univocal agents, for instance a thing that is hot makes another thing hot, and fire generates fire. Secondly, otherwise than in the agent, and thus it is in all equivocal agents. In these it happens sometimes that a form which is in the agent spiritually is received into the patient materially: thus the form of the house built by the craftsman is materially in itself, but spiritually in the mind of the craftsman. On the other hand, sometimes it is in the agent materially, but is received into the patient spiritually: thus whiteness is materially on the wall wherein it is received, whereas it is spiritually in the pupil and in the transferring medium. And so it is in the case at issue, because the species which is in the fire materially is received spiritually into the bodies of the damned; thus it is that the fire will assimilate the bodies of the damned to itself, without consuming them withal. Reply to Objection 3: According to the Philosopher (De Prop. Element.), “no animal can live in fire.” Galen also (De simp. medic.) says “that there is no body which at length is not consumed by fire”; although sometimes certain bodies may remain in fire without hurt, such as ebony. The instance of the salamander is not altogether apposite, since it cannot remain in the fire without being at last consumed, as do the bodies of the damned in hell. Nor does it follow that because the bodies of the damned suffer no corruption from the fire, they therefore are not tormented by the fire, because the sensible object has a natural aptitude to please or displease the senses, not only as regards its natural action of stimulating or injuring the organ, but also as regards its spiritual action: since when the sensible object is duly proportionate to the sense, it pleases, whereas the contrary is the result when it is in excess or defect. Hence subdued colors and harmonious sounds are pleasing, whereas discordant sounds displease the hearing. Reply to Objection 4: Pain does not sever the soul from the body, in so far as it is confined to a power of the soul which feels the pain, but in so far as the passion of the soul leads to the body being changed from its natural disposition. Thus it is that we see that through anger the body becomes heated, and through fear, chilled: whereas after the resurrection it will be impossible for the body to be changed from its natural disposition, as stated above [5105](A[2]). Consequently, however great the pain will be, it will not sever the body from the soul.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  There would now be no way to pretend to myself that the spirit of the AIG founders would pull this one out. She would die. She would not necessarily die that night, she would not necessarily die the next day, but we were now on track to the day she would die. August 26 was the day she would die. August 26 was the day Gerry and I would leave the ICU overlooking the river and walk into Central Park. I see as I write this that there is no uniformity in the way I refer to Gerry. Sometimes I call him “Gerry,” sometimes I call him “her husband.” She liked the sound of that. Her husband. My husband . She would say it again and again. When she could still speak. Which, as the days continued to shorten and the track to narrow, was by no means every day. You notice we’re doing hand compression . Because the patient could no longer get enough oxygen through the vent . For at least an hour now . In an underpass beneath one of the bridges in Central Park that day someone was playing a saxophone. I do not remember what song he was playing but I remember that it was torchy and I remember stopping under the bridge, turning aside, eyes on the fading leaves, unable to hold back tears. “The power of cheap music,” Gerry said, or maybe I only thought it. Gerry. Her husband . The day she cut the peach-colored cake from Payard . The day she wore the shoes with the bright-red soles . The day the plumeria tattoo showed through her veil . In fact I was not even crying for the saxophone. I was crying for the tiles, the Minton tiles in the arcade south of Bethesda Fountain, Sara Mankiewicz’s pattern, Quintana’s christening. I was crying for Connie Wald walking her dog through Boulder City and across Hoover Dam. I was crying for Diana holding the champagne flute and smoking the cigarette in Sara Mankiewicz’s living room. I was crying for Diana who had talked to Blake Watson so that I could bring the beautiful baby girl he had delivered home from the nursery at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. Diana who would die in the ICU at Cedars in Los Angeles. Dominique who would die in the ICU at Cedars in Los Angeles. The beautiful baby girl who would die in the ICU in the Greenberg Pavilion at New York Cornell. You notice we’re doing hand compression. Because the patient can no longer get enough oxygen through the vent. For at least an hour now. Like when someone dies, don’t dwell on it . 30 S ix weeks after she died we had a service for her, at the Dominican Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue. Gregorian chant was sung. A movement from Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat was played.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  He pushed the divan closer to the illustrated wall and there lay down. And as he lay there, all the Leas, with their downward gazing eyes, seemed to be showing concern for him: “But they only seem to be looking down at me, I know perfectly well. When you sent me away, my Nounoune, what did you think there was left for me after you? Your noble action cost you little — you knew the worth of a Cheri — your risk was negligible. But we’ve been well punished, you and I: you, because you were bom so long before me, and I, because I loved you above all other women. You’re finished now, you have found your consolation - and what a disgrace that is! ~ whereas I... As long as people say, ‘There was the War,’ I can say ‘There was Lia.’ Lea, the War ... I never imagined I’d dream of either of them again, yet the two together have driven me outside the times I live in. Henceforth, there is nowhere in the world where I can occupy more than half a place. ...” He pulled the table nearer to consult his watch. “Half-past five. The old creature won’t be back here for another week. And this is the first day. Supposing she were to die on the way?” He fidgeted on his divan, smoked, poured himself out a cup of lukewarm coffee. “A week. All the same, I mustn’t ask too much of myself. In a week’s time... which story will she be telling me? I know them off by heart - the one about the Four-in-Hand Meet, the one about the slanging-match at Longchamp, the one about the final rupture — and when I’ve heard every one, every twist and turn of them, what will there be left? Nothing, absolutely nothing. In a week’s time, this old woman — and I’m already so impatient for her, she might be going to give me an injection - this old woman will be here, and ... and she’ll bring me nothing at all.” He lifted, beseeching eyes to his favourite photograph. Already this speaking likeness filled him with less resentment, less ecstasy, less heartbreak. He turned from side to side on the hard mattress, unable to prevent his muscles from contracting, like a man who aches to jump from a height, but lacks the courage.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  65 9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic Margaret’s Early Life Margaret’s extraordinary journey began in Laviano, a small Tuscan village. She was born there to a comfortable peasant family in 1247. They lived enmeshed in what Judith Bennett has called the “economy of makeshifts,” in which residents of small communities bartered necessities with each other and developed what today we’d call side gigs to supplement the harvest. Around the age of 8 or 10, Margaret would have begun training with her mother in preparation to run her own household. But her mother died when Margaret was about 7. We don’t know what caused her mother’s death, but we do know her death would have disrupted Margaret’s life and education at a critical point. Her father soon remarried, as was common in the Middle Ages. This made stepparents and blended families fairly common in Margaret’s world, but it wouldn’t have made growing up any easier. Not surprisingly, Margaret rebelled. We know few of the details, but in her late teens, Margaret f led her father’s house, traveled some 9 miles westward to Montepulciano, and took up residence with a nobleman there. Custom has named him Arsenio, though we have no evidence of his actual name or family. We do know that Margaret lived with him in a fortified family holding, often termed a castle. Fra Giunta went to some effort to portray her way of life during that time as sinful and full of material comforts. She and Arsenio seem to have enjoyed a stable, loving relationship. They had one son and raised him together for nearly a decade. Their story may seem romantic, but they were ultimately unable to overcome the class barrier to marry. Arsenio’s family would have forbidden marriage with a penniless peasant (now of bad reputation, as she was living with him unwed). This left Margaret without any financial stability and labeled her son illegitimate. So, when Arsenio died suddenly from injuries sustained while hunting (or possibly from a roadside attack, not unusual between feuding noble families), Margaret and her son were left with nothing. Soon after Arsenio’s death, his family expelled them from their home. She was then, by Thomas Renna’s accounting, 25 years old.

• From What We Lost in the Swamp: Poems (2023)

  called me back & I am nothing, ​really, just a single flake of snow making my way through the blizzard in your brain, delicately drifting in the whipping wind of pain like all the others: the cold, hopeless souls that will never know ​the real you, only grow to love the falling. LETTER TO MY PAST-LIFE LOVERYou deserved my words, a conversation, even if the explanation crumbled from my mouth like loose-leaf teeth, the kind you see in nightmares. At least then, you could have sorted through the piles at your feet, flipped & rearranged my Scrabble squares into something you could read, a glimpse into sincerity, my puzzle-piece apology. But no, I let fear zip my lips, leaving you to view my silence as I guess he never cared. But I swear that isn’t true, that our time was not some lie. I didn’t fake my feelings. I was just confused, lost in the fog between who I thought I had to be & the man I really am. I’m sorry. For hurting you, confusing you, leaving you to question every second ever spent, every word I ever said; that I used three thousand miles to excuse myself from the table talk we both know you deserved. THE WEAK BEAK BRINGS FEATHERSThe birds are circling again & I hate it— their flocking, their squawking, their watching me watch them. The thought is unnerving: how we, the lucky, living things, always swirl & surround something dying. I know for most a flapping wing is just goodbye, a quiet celebration, but I have seen (up close) how death can devolve even the best of us into a vulture-blooded breed. Those who do not view the glide as grief but a twirl before the taking. I STILL HEAR YOU IN THE RAINMy grandmother always gave such strange advice. Her words—a cryptic, mystic Rubik’s Cube for a child’s mind. I remember once, her telling me I should live my life like a light rain, the kind you never notice looking out from inside. Now at the time (I will admit), I didn’t get it. But years have passed & she is gone & I am here, squinting out an old bay window, finally seeing through all of my missing, the droplets of rain: there all along, quietly constant, growing the ground for all those around it, never needing to be seen, only hoping to be felt. PORTRAIT OF A PLANT ON FIREM came back from the hardware store today with a big bag of soil. & when I asked what he was up to, he gestured to the dying fern in the corner, how its long & fan-like leaves had turned pale yellow, spotted & droopy. I watched with fascination—his caring hands as they cupped the spidered roots, lifted up that hopeless little fern from its hollow crimson home. Right then, I could see it: the slightest smile spreading on his face as he replaced that dry,

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  He felt that he had lost colour, and that the skin round his mouth was growing tighter, as during a severe frost. He fought back an overwhelming impulse to burst out in rancour mingled with entreaties. He longed to cry out loud: “Stop! Show me your real self! Throw off your disguise! You must be somewhere behind it, since it’s your voice I hear. Appear in your true colours! Arise as a creature reborn, with your hair newly hennaed this morning, your face freshly powdered: put on your long stays again, the blue dress with its delicate jabot, the scent like a meadow that was so much a part of you. In these new surroundings I search for it in vain! Leave all this behind, and come away to Passy — never mind the showers — Passy with its dogs and its birds, and in the Avenue Bugeaud we’ll be sure to find Ernest polishing the brass bars on your front door.” He shut his eyes, utterly worn out. ‘And now, my child, I’m going to tell you something for your own good. What you need is to have your urine tested. Your colour’s shocking and-you’ve got that pinched look round your lips — sure signs, both of them: you’re not taking proper care of your kidneys.’ Cheri opened his eyes again, and they took their fill of this placid epitome of disaster seated in front of him. Heroically he said: ‘ D’you really think so? It’s quite possible.’ * You mean, it’s certain. And then, you’ve not got enough flesh on you. ... It’s no use telling me that the best fighting cocks are scraggy. You could do with a good ten pounds more on you.’ 4 Give them to me,’ he said with a smile. But he found his cheeks singularly recalcitrant and opposed to smiling, almost as though his skin had stiffened with age. Lea burst into a peal of happy laughter, and Cheri tasted a pleasure which he could not have borne for long; he listened again to its full and rounded tones, the very laugh which in the old days used to greet some outrageous impertinence on the part of the * naughty little boy ‘That I could well afford! I’ve certainly been putting on weight, haven’t I? Eh? Look ... here ... would you believe it? ... and again here!* She lit a cigarette, exhaled a double jet of smoke through her nostrils, and shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s age!’ The word flew out of her mouth so lightly that it gave Cheri a sort of extravagant hope. “Yes: she’s only joking. In a flash she’ll reappear as her real self.” For an instant she seemed to take in the meaning of the look he gave her. ‘I’ve changed a lot, haven’t I, child? Fortunately, it doesn’t much matter. As for you, I don’t like the look of you at all You’ve been

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  In the dream I see the cathedral darkening, the doors locking. You can imagine the dream from there. When I left the cathedral after placing her ashes in the marble wall I avoided thinking about the dream. I promised myself that I would maintain momentum. “Maintain momentum” was the imperative that echoed all the way downtown. In fact I had no idea what would happen if I lost it. In fact I had no idea what it was. I assumed, incorrectly, that it had something to do with movement, traveling, checking in and out of hotels, going to and from the airport. I tried this. A week after placing the ashes in the wall at St. John the Divine, I flew to Boston and back to New York and then to Dallas and back to New York and then to Minneapolis and back to New York, doing promotion for The Year of Magical Thinking. The following week, again doing promotion and still under the misapprehension that momentum was about traveling, I flew to Washington and back and then to San Francisco and Los Angeles and Denver and Seattle and Chicago and Toronto and finally to Palm Springs, where I was to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. From various points on this itinerary, over the course of which I began to grasp that just going to and from the airport might be insufficient, that some further effort might be required, I spoke by telephone to Scott Rudin, and agreed that I should write and he should produce and David Hare should direct a one-character play, intended for Broadway, based on The Year of Magical Thinking. The three of us, Scott, David, and I, met for the first time on this project a month after Christmas. A week before Easter, in a tiny theater on West Forty-second Street, we watched the first readings of the play. A year later it opened, starring Vanessa Redgrave in its single role, at the Booth Theater on West Forty-fifth Street.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  So he eked out his peaceful and carefully regimented despair until the last days of October. Then, one afternoon, he was seized by a fit of hilarity, because he caught a glimpse of his wife’s unsuspected terror. His whole face lit up with the merriment of a man impervious to all feeling. “She thinks I’m mad. What luck!” His merriment was short-lived: for, on thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that, where the brute and the madman are concerned, the brute wins every time. She was frightened of the madman; otherwise would she not have stood her ground, biting her lips and forcing back her tears, in order to worst the brute? ‘*1 am no longer even considered wicked,” he thought bitterly. “And that’s because X am no longer wicked. Oh! the harm the woman I left has done to me! Yet others left her, and she left others. ... How, I wonder, does Bacciocchi exist at the present time? or Septfons, Spelei'eff, and all the rest of them? But what have we got in common, X and the rest of them? She called me ‘little bourgeois’ because I counted the bottles in the cellar. ‘ Little bourgeois ‘ faithful heart * great lover’ — those were her names for me — those were my real names: and, though she watched my departure with tears glistening in her eyes, she is still herself. Lea, who prefers old age to me, who sits in the comer by the fire counting over on her fingers: ‘I’ve had What’s-his-name, and Thingummy-bob, and Cheri, and So-and-so ...* I thought she belonged to me alone, and never perceived that I was only one among her lovers. Is there anyone left, now, that I am not ashamed of?” Hardened by now to the exercise of impassivity, he sought to endure the capricious hauntings of such thoughts with resignation, and to be worthy of the devil by which he was possessed. Proud and dry-eyed, with a lighted match held between steady fingers, he looked sideways at his mother, well aware of her watchful eye. Once his cigarette was alight, with a little encouragement he would have strutted like a peacock in front of an invisible public, and taunted his tormentors with a ‘ Good, isn’t it? ’ In a confused way, the strength bom of his dissimulation and resistance was gathering in his inmost self. He was beginning now to enjoy his extreme state of detachment, and dimly perceived that an emotional storm could be just as valuable and refreshing as a lull, and that in it he might discover the wisdom which never came to him in calmer moods. As a child, Chiri frequently had taken advantage of a genuine fit of temper, by changing it into a peevishness that would bring him what he wanted. To-day he was fast approaching the point at which, having attained to a definite state of unhappiness, he could rely on it to settle everything.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  *fAline Mesmacker has a restaurant bar and is simply coining money. ... Obviously, it gives her something to do, as well as being a good investment. ... But I can’t see myself sitting at a cash-desk; and if one employs a manageress, it’s no longer worth while. Dora and that fat Fifi run a night-club together, Mother La Berche told me. Everybody’s doing it now. And they wear stiff collars and dinner jackets, to attract a special clientele. Fat Fifi has three children to bring up — they’re her excuse.... Then there’s Kuhn, who’s simply kicking his heels, and would gladly take some of my capital to start a new dressmaker’s.” Naked, and brick-pink from the reflection of her Pompeian bathroom, she sprayed herself with her favourite sandalwood, and, without thinking about it, enjoyed unfolding a long silk nightgown. “All that’s so much poppycockl I know perfectly well that I dislike working. To bed with you, Madame! You’ll never have any other place of business, and all your customers are gone!” The coloured lining of the white gandotira she put on was suffused with a vague pink. She went back to her dressing-table, and combed and tugged at the hairs stiffened by dye, lifting both her arms, and thus framing her tired face. Her arms were still so beautiful, from the full deep hollow of the armpit up to the rounded wrists, that she sat gazing at them in the looking-glass. ‘What lovely handles for so old a vase I * With a careless gesture she thrust a pale tortoiseshell comb into the back of her hair, and, without much hope, picked a detective story from the shelf of a dark closet. She had no taste for fine bindings and had never lost the habit of relegating books to the bottom of a cupboard, along with cardboard boxes and empty medicine bottles. As she stood smoothing the cool linen sheets on her huge uncovered bed, the big bell in the courtyard rang out. The full, solemn, unwonted peal jarred on the midnight hour. ‘What in the world ...?’ she said out loud. She held her breath while listening, her lips parted. A second peal sounded even louder than the first, and Lea, with an instinctive movement of self-preservation and modesty, ran to powder her face. She was about to ring for Rose when she heard the front door slam, followed by footsteps in the hall and on the stairs, and the sound of two voices mingling - her maid’s and someone else’s. She had no time to make up her mind: the door of her room was flung open by a ruthless hand. Cheri stood before her - his top-coat unbuttoned over evening clothes, his hat on his head - pale and angry-looking.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  O remnant of their valley, How long will you gash yourselves [as a sign of mourning]? 6 “O you sword of the LORD , How long will it be before you are quiet? Put yourself into your sheath; Rest and be still. 7 “How can His sword be quiet When the LORD has given it an order? Against Ashkelon and against the [whole Philistine] seashore There He has assigned it.” Jeremiah 48 Prophecy against Moab 1 C oncerning a Moab. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Woe (judgment is coming) to [the city of] b Nebo, for it has been destroyed! Kiriathaim has been shamed, it has been captured; Misgab [the high fortress] has been shamed, broken down and crushed. [Is 15–16 ; 25:10–12 ; Ezek 25:8–11 ; Amos 2:1–3 ; Zeph 2:8–11 ] 2 “The glory of Moab is no more; In c Heshbon they planned evil against her, Saying, ‘Come, let us cut her off from being a nation!’ You also, O [city of] Madmen, shall be silenced; The sword will pursue you. 3 “The sound of an outcry from Horonaim, ‘Desolation and great destruction!’ 4 “Moab is destroyed; Her little ones have called out a cry of distress [to be heard as far as Zoar]. 5 “For the Ascent of Luhith Will be climbed by [successive groups of] fugitives with continual weeping; For on the descent of Horonaim They have heard the distress of the cry of destruction. 6 “Run! Save your lives, That you may be like a juniper in the wilderness. 7 “For because you have trusted in your works [your hand-made idols] and in your treasures [instead of in God], Even you yourself will be captured; And d Chemosh [your disgusting god cannot rescue you, but] will go away into exile [along with the fugitives] Together with his priests and his princes. 8 “And the destroyer will come upon every city; No city will escape. The [Jordan] valley also will be ruined And the plain will be devastated, As the LORD has said. 9 “Give a gravestone to Moab, For she will fall into ruins; Her cities (pastures, farms) will be desolate, Without anyone to live in them. 10 “Cursed is the one who does the work of the LORD negligently, And cursed is the one who restrains his sword from blood [in executing the judgment of the LORD ]. 11 “Moab has been at ease from his youth; He has also been undisturbed, and settled like wine on his dregs, And he has not been emptied from one vessel to another, Nor has he gone into exile. Therefore his flavor remains in him, And his scent has not changed. 12 “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD , “when I will send to Moab those who will tip him over and who will empty his vessels and break his [earthenware] jars in pieces.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The creed we professed and the creed we practised were poles apart. Never I believe in the world’s history was there such confusion in man’s thought about conduct, never were there so many different ideals put forward for his guidance. It is imperatively necessary for us to bring clearness into this muddle and see why we have gone wrong and where. For the world-war is only the last of a series of diabolical acts which have shocked the conscience of humanity. The greatest crimes in recorded time have been committed during the last half century almost without protest by the most civilised nations, nations that still call themselves Christian. Whoever has watched human affairs in the last half century must acknowledge that our progress has been steadily hell-ward. The hideous massacres and mutilations of tens of thousands of women and children in the Congo Free State without protest on the part of Great Britain who could have stopped it all with one word, is surely due to the same spirit that directed the abominable blockade (continued by both England and America long after the Armistice) which condemned hundreds and thousands of women and children of our own kith and kin to death by starvation. The unspeakable meanness and confessed fraud of the Peace of Versailles with its tragic consequences from Vladivostock to London and finally the shameless, dastardly war waged by all the Allies and by America on Russia, for money, show us that we have been assisting at the overthrow of morality itself and returning to the ethics of the wolf and the polity of the Thieves’ Kitchen. And our public acts as nations are paralleled by our treatment of our fellows within the community. For the small minority the pleasures of living have been increased in the most extraordinary way while the pains and sorrows of existence have been greatly mitigated, but the vast majority even of civilised peoples have hardly been admitted to any share in the benefits of our astounding material progress. The slums of our cities show the same spirit we have displayed in our treatment of the weaker races. It is no secret that over fifty per cent of English volunteers in the war were below the pigmy physical standard required and about one half of our American soldiers were morons with the intelligence of children under twelve years of age: “vae victis” has been our motto with the most appalling results. Clearly we have come to the end of a period and must take thought about the future.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  The city, Paris, which I loved so much, was absolutely silent. There seemed to be almost no one on the streets, although it was still very early in the evening. Nevertheless, beneath me— along the river bank, beneath the bridges, in the shadow of the walls, I could almost hear the collective, shivering sigh—were lovers and ruins, sleeping, embracing, coupling, drinking, staring out at the descending night. Behind the walls of the houses I passed, the French nation was clearing away the dishes, putting little Jean Pierre and Marie to bed, scowUng over the eternal problems of the sou, the shop, the church, the unsteady State. Those walls, those shuttered windows held them in and protected them against the darkness and the long moan of this long night. Ten years hence, little Jean Pierre or Marie might find themselves out here beside the river and wonder, like me, how they had fallen out of the web of safety. What a long way, I thought, I've come— to be de- stroyed! Yet it was true, I recalled, turning away from the river down the long street home, I wanted children. I wanted to be inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unques- tioned, watching my woman put my children to bed. I wanted the same bed at night and the same arms and I wanted to rise in the morning, knowing where I was. I wanted a women to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, James Baldwin 138 where I could always be renewed. It had been so once; it had almost been so once. I could make it so again, I could make it real. It only demanded a short, hard strength for me to be- come myself again. I saw a light burning beneath our door as I walked down the corridor. Before I put my key in the lock the door was opened from within. Giovanni stood there, his hair in his eyes, laugh- ing. He held a glass of cognac in his hand. I was struck at first by what seemed to be the merri- ment on his face. Then I saw that it was not merriment but hysteria and despair. I started to ask him what he was doing home, but he pulled me into the room, holding me around the neck tightly, with one hand. He was shaking. 'Where have you been?' I looked into his face, pulling slightly away from him. 1 have looked for you everywhere.' Didn't you go to work?' I asked him. TS[o,' he said. 'Have a drink. I have bought a bottle of cognac to celebrate my freedom.' He poured me a cognac. I did not seem to be able to move. He came toward me again, thrusting the glass into my hand.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  How was I to get free? Where should I go? What should I do? One day in an illustrated paper in ’68, I read of the discovery of the diamonds in the Cape, and then of the opening of the Diamond fields. That prospect tempted me and I read all I could about South Africa, but one day I found that the cheapest passage to the Cape cost fifteen pounds and I despaired. Shortly afterwards I read that a steerage passage to New York could be had for five pounds; that amount seemed to me possible to get; for there was a prize of ten pounds for books to be given to the second in the Mathematical scholarship exam that would take place in the summer: I thought I could win that, and I set myself to study Mathematics harder than ever. The result was—but I shall tell the result in its proper place. Meanwhile I began reading about America and soon learned of the buffalo and Indians on the Great Plains and a myriad entrancing romantic pictures opened to my boyish imagining. I wanted to see the world and I had grown to dislike England; its snobbery, though I had caught the disease, was loathsome and worse still, its spirit of sordid self-interest. The rich boys were favored by all the Masters, even by Stackpole; I was disgusted with English life as I saw it. Yet there were good elements in it which I could not but see, which I shall try to indicate later. Towards the middle of this winter term it was announced that at Midsummer, besides a scene from a play of Plautus to be given in Latin, the trial scene of “The Merchant of Venice” would also be played—of course, by boys of the Fifth and Sixth form only, and rehearsals immediately began. Naturally I took out “The Merchant of Venice” from the school library and in one day knew it by heart. I could learn good poetry by a single careful reading: bad poetry or prose was much harder. Nothing in the play appealed to me except Shylock and the first time I heard Fawcett of the Sixth recite the part, I couldn’t help grinning: he repeated the most passionate speeches like a lesson in a singsong, monotonous voice. For days I went about spouting Shylock’s defiance and one day, as luck would have it, Stackpole heard me. We had become great friends: I had done all Algebra with him and was now devouring trigonometry, resolved to do Conic Sections afterwards, and then the Calculus. Already there was only one boy who was my superior and he was Captain of the Sixth, Gordon, a big fellow of over seventeen, who intended to go to Cambridge with the eighty Pound Mathematical Scholarship that summer.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I’m all broken up with visions of what it might have been here, with you, for instance. How satisfied I have been, Henry.” “And now, only with me,” says Henry, “you would blossom so quickly that you would soon exhaust all I can give and pass on to another. There are no limits to what your life could be. I have seen how you can swim in a passion, in a large life. Listen, if anybody else did the things you have done, I would call them foolish, but somehow or other you make them seem so terribly right. This journal, for instance, is so rich, so terribly rich. You say my life is rich but it is only full of events, incidents, experiences, people. What is really rich are these pages on so little material.” “But think what I would make of more material,” I say. “Think of what you said about my novel, that the theme [faithfulness] was an anachronism. That stung me. It was like a criticism of my own life. Yet I cannot commit a crime, and to hurt Hugo would be a crime. Besides, he loves me as nobody has ever loved me.” “You haven’t given anybody else a real chance.” I am remembering this while Hugo is gardening. And to be with him now seems as if I were living in the state of being I was in at twenty. Is it his fault, this youthfulness of our life together? My God, can I ask about Hugo what Henry asks about June? He has filled her. Have I filled Hugo? People have said there is nothing in him but me. His great capacity for losing himself, for love. That touches me. Even last night he talked about his inability to mix with other people, saying that I was the only one he was close to, happy with. This morning in the garden he was in bliss. He wanted me there, near him. He has given me love. And what else? I love the past in him. But all the rest has seeped away. After what I revealed to Henry about my life, I was in despair. It was as if I were a criminal, had been in jail, and were at last free and willing to work honestly and hard. But as soon as people discover your past they will not give you work and expect you to act like a criminal again. I am finished with myself, with my sacrifices and my pity, with what chains me. I am going to make a new beginning. I want passion and pleasure and noise and drunkenness and all evil. But my past reveals itself inexorably, like a tattoo mark. I must build a new shell, wear new costumes.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  will drown out the screams of our bloody and releasing testament to a last chance or hope of change. But hope is counter-revolutionary. Pressure cooks but we have not exploded flowing in and out instead each day like a half-digested mass for a final stake impales our dreams and watering down each trip’s fury is the someday foolish hope that at the next stop some door will open for us to fresh air and light and home. When we realize how much of us is spent in rush hour subways underground no real exit it will matter less what token we pay for change. The Workers Rose On May Day Or Postscript To Karl Marx Down Wall Street the students marched for peace Above, construction workers looking on remembered how it was for them in the old days before their closed shop white security and daddy pays the bills so they climbed down the girders and taught their sons a lesson called Marx is a victim of the generation gap called I grew up the hard way so will you called the limits of a sentimental vision. When the passion play was over and the dust had cleared on Wall Street 500 Union workers together with police had mopped up Foley Square with 2000 of their striking sons who broke and ran before their fathers chains. Look here Karl Marx the apocalyptic vision of amerika! Workers rise and win and have not lost their chains but swing them side by side with the billyclubs in blue securing Wall Street against the striking students. Cables to Rage or I’ve Been Talking on This Street Corner a Hell of a Long Time This is how I came to be loved by loving myself loveless. One day I slipped in the snowy gutter of Brighton Beach and the booted feet passing me by on the curb squished my laundry ticket into the slush and I thought oh fuck it now I’ll never get my clean sheet and I cried bitter tears into the snow under my cheek in that gutter in Brighton Beach Brooklyn where I was living because it was cheap In a furnished room with cooking privileges and there was an old thrown-away mama who lived down the hall a yente who sat all day long in our common kitchen weeping because her children made her live with a schwartze and while she wept she drank up all my Cream Soda every day before I came home. Then she sat and watched me watching my chicken feet stewing on the Fridays when I got paid and she taught me to boil old corn in the husk to make it taste green and fresh. There were not many pleasures in that winter and I loved Cream Soda there were not many people in that winter and I came to hate that old woman. The winter I got fat on stale corn on the cob

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I also know that if June comes back, she would not choose me in preference to Henry. So I can only lose both ways. And I am risking this. Everything pushes me into it. (Allendy tells me it is masochism.) I again seek pain. If I should give up Henry now, of my own free will, it would only be to suffer less. I feel two impulses: one masochistic-and resigned, the other seeking escape. I yearn to find a man who will save me from Henry and this situation. Allendy listens and broods on this. One evening in Henry’s kitchen—he and I alone—we talk ourselves empty. He takes up the subject of my red journal, tells me what faults I have to beware of, and then says, “Do you know what baffles me? When you write about Hugo, you write wonderful things, but at the same time they are unconvincing. You do not tell anything that would cause your admiration or love. It sounds strained.” I immediately become distressed, as if it were Allendy questioning me. “It isn’t for me to be asking questions, Anaïs,” Henry continues, “but listen, I am not being personal now. I myself like Hugo. I think he is fine. But I am just trying to understand your life. I imagine that you married him when your character was not yet formed, or for the sake of your mother and brother.” “No, no, not for that. I loved him. For my mother and brother I should have married in Havana, in society, richly, and I couldn’t do that.” “That day Hugo and I went out for a walk, I tried to grasp him. The truth is, if I had seen only him in Louveciennes, I would have come once, said here’s a nice man, and forgotten all about it.” “Hugo is inarticulate,” I said. “It takes time to know him.” And all the while my old, secret, immense dissatisfaction wells up like a poison, and I keep saying foolish things about the bank subduing him, and how different he is on vacations. Henry curses. “But it’s so obvious that you are superior to him.” Always that hateful phrase—from John, too. “Only in intelligence,” I say. “In everything,” says Henry. “And listen, Anaïs, answer me. You are not just making a sacrifice. You’re not really happy, are you? You want to run away from Hugo at times?” I cannot answer. I bow my head and cry. Henry comes and stands over me. “My life is a mess,” I say. “You’re trying to make me admit something I will not even admit to myself, as you could see by the journal. You sensed how much I want to love Hugo and in just what way I do.