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 Giovanni's Room (1956)

  'Oh. Tomorrow, maybe?' Xook, Sue. I hate to make dates. I'll just sur- prise you.' She finished her drink. 1 doubt that,' she said. She got up and walked away from me. Til just put on some clothes and come down with you.' GIOVANNrS ROOM 135 She disappeared and I heard the water run- ning. I sat there, still naked, but with my socks on, and poured myseK another brandy. Now I was afraid to go out into that night which had seemed to be calling me only a few mo- ments before. When she came back she was wearing a dress and some real shoes, and she had sort of fluffed up her hair. I had to admit she looked better that way, really more like a girl, like a school- girl. I rose and started putting on my clothes. *You look nice,' I said. There was a great many things she wanted to say, but she forced herself to say nothing. I could scarcely bear to watch the struggle occur- ring in her face, it made me so ashamed. "Maybe youTl be lonely again,' she said, finally. 1 guess I won't mind if you come looking for me.' She wore the strangest smile I had ever seen. It was pained and vindictive and humiliated, but she inexpertly smeared across this grimace a bright, girlish gaiety— as rigid as the skeleton beneath her flabby body. If fate ever allowed Sue to reach me, she would kill me with just that smile. TCeep a candle,' I said, *in the window'—and she opened her door and we passed out into the streets. Chapter Three. I left her at the nearest corner, mumbling some schoolboy excuse, and watched her stolid figure cross the boulevard towards the cafes. I did not know what to do or where to go. I found myself at last along the river, slowly go- ing home. And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it— it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, pos- sibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of in- forming the world how awfully it had made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do vnth that storm, that far-off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I GIOVANNI'S ROOM did not know how I would get through mine. 137

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  mitted, and told her that if she did not regard the for- tunes of the family for her husband's sake, she ought at least to consider her jjoor children. This argument struck her ; she rallied her spirits, and resolved to try by every means to regain her husband's love. Next night, perceiving that he rose from beside her, she also got up, put on her night-wrapper, had her bed made, and sat down to read for hours until his return. When he entered the room, she went up and kissed him, and presented a basin and water to him to wash his hands. Her husband, astonished at this extraordinary behaviour, told her that he had only been to the privy, and that he had no need to wash. She replied, that although it was no great matter, still it was decent to wash one's hands when one came from so nasty a place, thereby wishing to make him know and hate his wicked way of life. As this did not produce any amendment in him, she continued the same course of proceeding for a year, but still without success. This being the case, one night, when she was wait- ing for her husband, who stayed away longer than usual, she took it into her head to go after him. She did so, and looking for him in chamber after chamber, she at last found him in a back lumber-room in bed with the ugliest and dirtiest servant wench about the house. To teach him to quit so handsome and so cleanly a wife for so ugly and frousy a servant, she took some straw and set it on fire in the middle of the room. But seeing that the smoke would as soon smother her husband as awake him, she pulled him by the arm, crying out " Fire ! fire ! " If the husband was ashamed and confounded at being found by so worthy a wife with such a swinish bedfel- low, it was not without great reason. " For more than a year, sir," said his wife, " have I been endeavouring by Fourth Day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. ZZZ gentleness and patience to withdraw you from such a wicked life, and make you comprehend that, while waslv ing the outside, you ought to make the inside clean also ; but when I saw that all my efforts were useless, I be- thought me of employing the element which is to put an end to all things. If this does not correct you, sir, I know not if I shall be able another time to withdraw you from the danger as I have done now. I pray you to consider that there is no greater despair than that of slighted love, and that if I had not had God before my eyes, I could not have been patient so long."

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud caked around the edges her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation unanswered she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed “hard, but not this hard.” Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her hanging upon her coat like mirrors until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside snarling “She ain’t got nothing more to say!” and that lie hangs in his mouth like a shred of rotting meat. III I inherited Jackson, Mississippi. For my majority it gave me Emmett Till his 15 years puffed out like bruises on plump boy-cheeks his only Mississippi summer whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie as a white girl passed him in the street and he was baptized my son forever in the midnight waters of the Pearl. [image file=image_rsrc6HF.jpg] His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year when I walked through a northern summer my eyes averted from each corner’s photographies newspapers protest posters magazines Police Story, Confidential, True the avid insistence of detail pretending insight or information the length of gash across the dead boy’s loins his grieving mother’s lamentation the severed lips, how many burns his gouged out eyes sewed shut upon the screaming covers louder than life all over the veiled warning, the secret relish of a black child’s mutilated body fingered by street-corner eyes bruise upon livid bruise and wherever I looked that summer I learned to be at home with children’s blood with savored violence with pictures of black broken flesh used, crumpled, and discarded lying amid the sidewalk refuse like a raped woman’s face. A black boy from Chicago whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi testing what he’d been taught was a manly thing to do his teachers ripped his eyes out his sex his tongue and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone in the name of white womanhood they took their aroused honor back to Jackson and celebrated in a whorehouse the double ritual of white manhood confirmed. IV “If earth and air and water do not judge them who are we to refuse a crust of bread?” Emmett Till rides the crest of the Pearl, whistling 24 years his ghost lay like the shade of a raped woman and a white girl has grown older in costly honor (what did she pay to never know its price?) now the Pearl River speaks its muddy judgment and I can withhold my pity and my bread. “Hard, but not this hard.” Her face is flat with resignation and despair with ancient and familiar sorrows a woman surveying her crumpled future as the white girl besmirched by Emmett’s whistle never allowed her own tongue without power or conclusion unvoiced she stands adrift in the ruins of her honor and a man with an executioner’s face pulls her away. Within my eyes the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain a woman wrings her hands beneath the weight of agonies remembered

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

  “Come upstairs”, I coaxed and she came, and we went to bed: I found her mad with desire; but after I had brought her in an hour to hysteria and she lay in my arms crying, she suddenly said: “he promised to come home early this afternoon and I said I’d have a surprise for him. When he finds us together like this, it’ll be a surprise, won’t it?” “But you’re mad!” I cried, getting out of bed in a flash, “I shall never be able to visit you in Denver if we have a row here!” “That’s true”, she said as if in a dream, “that’s true: it’s a pity: I’d love to have seen his foolish face stretched to wonder; but you’re right. Hurry!” she cried and was out of the room in a twinkling. When she returned, I was dressed. “Go downstairs and wait for me”, she commanded, “on our sofa. If he knocks, open the door to him; that’ll be a surprise, though not so great a one as I had planned”, she added, laughing shrilly. “Are you going without kissing me?” she cried when I was at the door, “Well, go, it’s all right, go! for if I felt your lips again, I might keep you.” I went downstairs and in a few moments she followed me. “I can’t bear you to go!” she cried, “how partings hurt!” she whispered. “Why should we part again, love mine?” and she looked at me with rapt eyes. “This life holds nothing worth having but love; let us make love deathless, you and I, going together to death. What do we lose? Nothing! This world is an empty shell! Come with me, love, and we’ll meet Death together!” “Oh, I want to do such a lot of things first”, I exclaimed, “Death’s empire is eternal; but this brief taste of life, the adventure of it, the change of it, the huge possibilities of it beckon me—I can’t leave it.” “The change!” she cried with dilating nostrils while her eyes darkened, “the change!” “You are determined to misunderstand me,” I cried, “is not every day a change?” “I am weary”, she cried, “and beaten: I can only beg you not to forget your promise to come—ah!” and she caught and kissed me on the mouth: “I shall die with your name on my lips”, she said, and turned to bury her face in the sofa cushion. I went: what else was there to do? I saw them off at the station: Lorna had made me promise to write often, and swore she would write every day and she did send me short notes daily for a fortnight: then came gaps ever lengthening: “Denver society was pleasant and a Mr. Wilson, a student, was assiduous: he comes every day”, she wrote. Excuses finally, little hasty notes, and in two months her letters were formal, cold; in three months they had ceased altogether.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  205 GIOVANNI'S ROOM But his friends tell him how rich Guillaume is, how he is a silly old queen, how much he can get out of Guillaume if he will only be smart. No one appears on the boulevards to speak to him, to save him. He feels that he is dying. Then the hour comes when he must go back to Guillaume's bar. He walks there alone. He stands outside awhile. He wants to turn away, to run away. But there is no place to run. He looks up the long, dark, curving street as though he were looking for someone. But there is no one there. He goes into the bar. Guillaume sees him at once and discreetly motions him up- stairs. He climbs the stairs. His legs are weak. He finds himself in Guillaume's rooms, sur- rounded by Guillaimie's silks, colors, perfumes, staring at Guillaume's bed. Then Guillaume enters and Giovanni tries to smile. They have a drink. Guillaume is pre- cipitate, flabby, and moist, and, with each touch of his hand, Giovanni shrinks further and more furiously away. Guillaume disappears to change his clothes and comes back in his theatrical dressing gown. He wants Giovanni to undress Perhaps at this moment Giovanni realizes that he cannot go through with it, that his will cannot carry him through. He remembers the job. He tries to talk, to be practical, to be rea- sonable, but, of course, it is too late. Guillaume seems to surround him Uke the sea itself. And I think that Giovanni, tortured into a state Uke madness, feels himself going under, is over- — James Baldwin 206 come, and Guillaume has his will. I think if this had not happened, Giovanni would not have killed htm.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  James Baldwin 152 work, it was insane work, but I did not have the energy or the heart to stop him. In a way he was doing it for me, to prove his love for me. He wanted me to stay in the room with him. Perhaps he was trying, with his own strength, to push back the encroaching walls, without, how- ever, having the walls fall down. Now—now, of course, I see something very beautiful in those days, which were such tor- ture then. I felt, then, that Giovanni was drag- ging me with him to the bottom of the sea. He could not find a job. I knew that he was not really looking for one, that he could not. He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt. He could not endure being very far from me for very long. I was the only person on God's cold, green earth who cared about him, who knew his speech and silence, knew his arms, and did not carry a knife. The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it. And the money dwindled—it went, it did not dwindle, very fast. Giovanni tried to keep panic out of his voice when he asked me each morn- ing, 'Are you going to American Express today?* 'Certainly,* I would answer. T)o you think your money will be there to- day?' 1 don't know.' What are they doing with your money in New York?' Still, still I could not act. I went to Jacques GIOVANNI'S ROOM 153 and borrowed ten thousand francs from him again. I told him that Giovanni and I were going through a difficult time but that it would be over soon. 'He was very nice about it/ said Giovanni. Tie can, sometimes, be a very nice man/ We were sitting on a terrace near Odeon. I looked at Giovanni and thought for a moment how nice it would be if Jacques would take him off my hands. *What are you thinking?* asked Giovanni. For a moment I was frightened and I was also ashamed. 1 was thinking/ I said, 'that I'd like to get out of Paris.' *Where would you like to go?' he asked. *0h, I don't know. Anywhere. Fm sick of this city/ I said suddenly, with a violence that sur- prised us both. Tm tired of this ancient pile of stone and all these goddam smug people. Every- thing you put your hands on here comes to pieces in your hands.' That/ said Giovanni gravely, 'is true.' He was watching me with a terrible intensity. I forced myself to look at him and smile. 'Wouldn't you like to get out of here for awhile?' I asked.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window pane. My reflec- tion is tall, perhaps rather like an arrow, my blond hair gleams. My face is like a face you have seen many times. My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past. I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris any- way. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. We will ride through the same changing countryside northward, leaving behind the olive trees and James Baldwin 8 the sea and all of the glory of the stormy south- em sky, into the mist and rain of Paris. Some- one will offer to share a sandwich with me, some- one will offer me a sip of wine, someone will ask me for a match. People will be roaming the corridors outside, looking out of windows, look- ing in at us. At each stop, recrxiits in their baggy brown uniforms and colored hats will open the compartment door to ask Complet? We will all nod Yes, like conspirators, smiling faintly at each other as they continue through the train. Two or three of them will end up before our compartment door, shouting at each other in their heavy, ribald voices, smoking their dread- ful army cigarettes. There will be a girl sitting opposite me who will wonder why I have not been flirting with her, who will be set on edge by the presence of the recruits. It will all be the same, only I will be stiller. And the countryside is still tonight, this coun- tryside reflected through my image in the pane. This house is just outside a small summer resort —which is still empty, the season has not yet begun. It is on a small hill, one can look down on the lights of the town and hear the thud of the sea. My girl, Hella, and I rented it in Paris, from photographs, some months ago. Now she has been gone a week. She is on the high seas now, on her way back to America. I can see her, very elegant, tense, and glit- tering, surrounded by the light which fills the salon of the ocean liner, drinking rather too

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  It rips us open, dislodging a backlog of old grief in the process. Together, the old aches and fresh despair feel like a tsunami of emotions that will drain our very life force if we don’t protect ourselves. But there’s no real protection from painful feelings, and as we’ve been exploring, the act of holding them back is equally painful and draining. It also takes an enormous amount of work—energy that’s far better spent healing rather than resisting. Plus, as the Star Trek wisdom goes, “resistance is futile.” One way or another, the waves of pain will eventually hit you. Managing those waves one at a time is far easier. Grief isn’t just about death, either. The litany of losses we each face in a lifetime is too numerous to count. We endure abuse. Friendships end. We get divorced, lose our jobs and identities. We’ll lose our connection to self and wonder why we’re even here in the first place. We become chronically or gravely ill—even when we do our best not to. We mess up in unimaginable ways because unimaginable things happen to us. The shades of loss are many, and we need to mourn it all—big and small. The point is, no one gets out of life scratch-free or stain resistant. If we’re lucky enough to be alive, good times and bad times are inevitable. Expecting only the good times makes us emotionally unprepared for the ever-changing, uncertain nature of life. And as Carole, my therapist, would say, “It is what it is, and you don’t have to like it.” Fantastic! I don’t. But in our perfection-driven and grief-phobic society, few of us are taught how to respond to loss. Instead, we’re taught how to avoid pain. The thing that makes it such a big, unwieldy emotion is that, similar to anger, grief encapsulates so many other emotions, too (anxiety, guilt, rage, shame—basically a bunch of the “unbecoming” stuff). We don’t avoid grief just because it’s grief; we avoid it because of everything associated with it—the hysterical, the historical, and the downright horrifying. Believe it or not, this avoidance is as natural as the sun rising. We’re biologically wired to behave this way. From an evolutionary perspective, part of our development was to learn which situations to avoid in order to survive—stuff like poisonous berries and venomous snakes, but also emotional pain (danger) and isolation (exile from the community we needed to stay alive). So there’s a part of this behavior that comes from an essential place: survival. Avoidance has another jagged silver lining, beyond primal instincts: burying the source of our suffering in chaos often creates dramatic fires that feel easier to extinguish. That way, we can channel our pain into situational soap operas that, weirdly, also serve us.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I hate you! Stop it, Kris. Don’t ruin his birthday with your hysterics. Pull yourself together. I ran the sink and submerged my hands in ice-cold water to shock my system back into submission. Still no composure. I prayed to the God who had clearly forgotten me, but that only made me wail more. I tried deep breathing. The air refused to fill my lungs. With each sob, I felt like I was being ripped apart from seam to seam. Something had to save me before total annihilation. That’s when rage kicked in. Before I knew what hit me, my hand was slapping my face. What the hell are you doing? Finally, the pain from my stinging cheeks overtook the anguish in my heart. At last, relief. Field note from grief: always carry a good tube of concealer and some powder. You’ll need it. I fixed my makeup and returned to the table. Shocked, stunned, but pulled together. I acted like nothing happened. I made light conversation. How good is this lightly floured zucchini blossom? I laughed when appropriate and drank wine (but not too much, fearing I might lose it again). Despite the disturbing interlude of self-abuse, I even enjoyed much of the remaining evening. Grandma wouldn’t have approved of my methods, but at least she’d give me points for carrying cover-up and getting on with a grand old time. A COCKTAIL OF SHAME The next morning I woke up with a big AR (agonizing reappraisal) hangover. Even though I was the only one who witnessed my unhinged spectacle, I was sick with shame. Why couldn’t I be the type of person who didn’t do insane things like that? Instead, I felt like Annette Bening’s character in the film American Beauty. A positive-thinking, obsessed Realtor who breaks down in a self-slapping fit when she fails to sell a house. “You big baby! Stop it!” she screams, before collecting herself and silently walking out. But like Annette’s character, this house was my everything, too. At least no one saw me, I thought. I can keep this pathetic meltdown to myself. Lock it up. Throw away the key. Smile. Yeah, right. Who was I kidding? A few weeks later, our Bucket List Tour brought us all to Newport, to celebrate my birthday. By this time, I really thought I could keep a lid on any outbursts. I’d talked about it in therapy. Did a bunch of energy work, yada yada. In my mind, I was all set. After a lovely dinner (with no interludes), I was standing outside the restaurant waiting for the valet to bring the car around. My parents were using the restroom; Brian was searching through his pockets for a tip. I’m so grateful we’re here together, I thought. And bonus points for not losing my shit. Clearly, I believed I was growing. Not so fast, Speed Racer. As the car pulled up, three drunk dudes tumbled out of the lobby.

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

  It was easy to see that the boom and inflation period had been based at first on the extraordinary growth of the country through the immigration and trade that had followed the Civil War. But the Franco-German war had wasted wealth prodigiously, deranged trade too, and diverted commerce into new channels. France and then England first felt the shock: London had to call in monies lent to American railways and other enterprises. Bit by bit even American optimism was overcome for immigration in 1871 and 1872 fell off greatly and the foreign calls for cash exhausted our banks. The crash came in 1873; nothing like it was seen again in these States till the slump of 1907 which led to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Willie’s fortune melted almost in a moment: this mortgage and that, had to be met and could only be met by forced sales with no buyers except at minimum values. When I talked to him, he was almost in despair; no money: no property: all lost; the product of three years’ hard work and successful speculation all swept away. Could I help him? If not, he was ruined. He told me then he had drawn all he could from my father: naturally I promised to help him; but first I had to pay the Gregorys and to my astonishment he begged me to let him have the money instead. “Mrs. Gregory and all of ’em like you”, he pleaded, “they can wait, I cannot; I know of a purchase that could be made that would make me rich again!” I realised then that he was selfish through and through, conscienceless in egotistic greed. I gave up my faint hope that he would ever repay me: henceforth he was a stranger to me and one that I did not even respect, though he had some fine, ingratiating qualities. I left him to walk across the river and in a few blocks met Rose. She looked prettier than ever and I turned and walked with her, praising her beauty to the skies and indeed she deserved it; short green sleeves, I remember, set off her exquisite, plump, white arms. I promised her some books and made her say she would read them; indeed I was astonished by the warmth of her gratitude: she told me it was sweet of me, gave me her eyes and we parted the best of friends, with just a hint of warmer relationship in the future. That evening I paid the Gregorys, Willie’s debt and my own and—did not send him the balance of what I possessed as I had promised; but instead, a letter telling him I had preferred to cancel his debt to the Gregorys.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  James Baldwin 208 this. Jacques, who was in constant touch with Giovanni's lawyer and in constant touch with me, had seen Giovanni once. He told me what I knew already, that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do for Giovanni anymore. Perhaps he wanted to die. He pleaded guilty, with robbery as the motive. The circumstances under which Guillaume had fired him received great play in the press. And from the press one received the impression that Guillaume had been a good-hearted, a perhaps somewhat er- ratic philanthropist who had had the bad judg- ment to befriend the hardened and ungrateful adventurer, Giovanni. Then the case drifted downward from the headlines. Giovanni was taken to prison to await trial. And Hella and I came here. I may have thought— I am sure I thought in the begin- ning— that, though I could do nothing for Gio- vanni, I might, perhaps, be able to do some- thing for Hella. I must have hoped that there would be something Hella could do for me. And this might have been possible if the days had not dragged by, for me, like days in prison. I could not get Giovanni out of my mind, I was at the mercy of the bulletins which sporadically arrived from Jacques. All that I remember of the autumn is waiting for Giovanni to come to trial. Then, at last, he came to trial, was found guilty, and placed under sentence of death. All winter long I counted the days. And the night- mare of this house began. GIOVANNI'S ROOM 209 Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

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

  GREGORY. (Hom. 39. in Ev.) Or else; The evil spirits lay siege to the soul, as it goes forth from the body, for being seized with the love of the flesh, they caress it with delusive pleasures. They surround it with a trench, because bringing all its wickedness which it has committed before the eyes of its mind, they close confine it to the company of its own damnation, that being caught in the very extremity of life, it may see by what enemies it is blockaded, yet be unable to find any way of escape, because it can no longer do good works, since those which it might once have done it despised. On every side also they inclose the soul when its iniquities rise up before it, not only in deed but also in word and thought, that she who before in many ways greatly enlarged herself in wickedness, should now at the end be straitened every way in judgment. Then indeed the soul by the very condition of its guilt is laid prostrate on the ground, while its flesh which it believed to be its life is bid to return to dust. Then its children fall in death, when all unlawful thoughts which only proceed from it, are in the last punishment of life scattered abroad. These may also be signified by the stones. For the corrupt mind when to a corrupt thought it adds one more corrupt, places one stone upon another. But when the soul is led to its doom, the whole structure of its thoughts is rent asunder. But the wicked soul God ceases not to visit with His teaching, sometimes with the scourge and sometimes with a miracle; that the truth which it knew not it may hear, and though still despising it, may return pricked to the heart in sorrow, or overcome with mercies may be ashamed at the evil which it has done. But because it knows not the time of its visitation, at the end of life it is given over to its enemies, that with them it may be joined together in the bond of everlasting damnation. 19:45–4845. And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; 46. Saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves. 47. And he taught daily in the temple. But the Chief Priests and the Scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, 48. And could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him. GREGORY. (ut sup.) When He had related the evils that were to come upon the city, He straightway entered the temple, that He might cast out them that bought and sold in it. Shewing that the destruction of the people arose chiefly from the guilt of the priests.

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

  I answer: it is rightly said that God predestines men. We have shown that all things are ruled by divine providence (Q. 22, Art. 4), and that providence ordains things to their end (Q. 22, Arts. 1 and 2). Now the end to which God ordains creatures is twofold. There is, first, the end which exceeds the proportion and the capacity of created nature. This is eternal life, which consists in the vision of the divine essence, which is beyond the nature of any creature, as we said in Q. 12, Art. 4. There is, secondly, the end which is proportionate to created nature, which a created thing may attain by means of its own natural power. Now when a thing cannot attain something by its own natural power, it must be directed to it by another, as an arrow is directed to its mark by an archer. Properly speaking, then, although a rational creature is capable of eternal life, he is brought to this life by God. The reason why he is brought to eternal life must therefore pre-exist in God, since the reason why anything is ordained to its end lies in God, and we have said that this is providence. The reason which exists in the mind of an agent is, as it were, a pre-existence in him of the the thing which he intends to do. We give the name of “ predestination ” to the reason why a rational creature is brought to eternal life, because to destine means to bring. It is plain, then, that predestination is a part of providence, if we consider it in relation to its objects. On the first point: by predetermination the Damascene means the imposition of a necessity such as occurs in natural things predetermined to a single end. His next words make this clear —“ God does not will malice, nor compel virtue. ” This does not make predestination impossible. On the second point: irrational creatures are not capable of the end which exceeds the capacity of human nature. Hence they are not properly said to be predestined, although we do speak loosely of predestination in relation to other ends. On the third point: predestination applies to angels as well as to men, even though they have never known misery. A movement is defined by its terminus ad quem, not by its terminus a quo. To be made white means the same thing whether one who is made white was formerly black, pale, or red. Predestination also means the same thing whether or not one is predestined to eternal life from a state of misery. On the fourth point: their predestination is revealed to some by special privilege. But to reveal it in every case would be improvident. Those who are not predestined would despair, and security would engender negligence in those who are. ARTICLE TWO

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

  It was easy to see that the boom and inflation period had been based at first on the extraordinary growth of the country through the immigration and trade that had followed the Civil War. But the Franco-German war had wasted wealth prodigiously, deranged trade too, and diverted commerce into new channels. France and then England first felt the shock: London had to call in monies lent to American railways and other enterprises. Bit by bit even American optimism was overcome for immigration in 1871 and 1872 fell off greatly and the foreign calls for cash exhausted our banks. The crash came in 1873; nothing like it was seen again in these States till the slump of 1907 which led to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Willie’s fortune melted almost in a moment: this mortgage and that, had to be met and could only be met by forced sales with no buyers except at minimum values. When I talked to him, he was almost in despair; no money: no property: all lost; the product of three years’ hard work and successful speculation all swept away. Could I help him? If not, he was ruined. He told me then he had drawn all he could from my father: naturally I promised to help him; but first I had to pay the Gregorys and to my astonishment he begged me to let him have the money instead. “Mrs. Gregory and all of ’em like you”, he pleaded, “they can wait, I cannot; I know of a purchase that could be made that would make me rich again!” I realised then that he was selfish through and through, conscienceless in egotistic greed. I gave up my faint hope that he would ever repay me: henceforth he was a stranger to me and one that I did not even respect, though he had some fine, ingratiating qualities. I left him to walk across the river and in a few blocks met Rose. She looked prettier than ever and I turned and walked with her, praising her beauty to the skies and indeed she deserved it; short green sleeves, I remember, set off her exquisite, plump, white arms. I promised her some books and made her say she would read them; indeed I was astonished by the warmth of her gratitude: she told me it was sweet of me, gave me her eyes and we parted the best of friends, with just a hint of warmer relationship in the future. That evening I paid the Gregorys, Willie’s debt and my own and—did not send him the balance of what I possessed as I had promised; but instead, a letter telling him I had preferred to cancel his debt to the Gregorys.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  When he arrived for a week’s visit in June 1914 (now sixteen and a half to my fifteen, and the interval was beginning to tell), the first thing he did, as soon as we found ourselves alone in the garden, was to take out casually an “ambered” cigarette from a smart silver case on the gilt inside of which he bade me observe the formula 3 × 4 = 12 engraved in memory of the three nights he had spent, at last, with Countess G. He was now in love with an old general’s young wife in Helsingfors and a captain’s daughter in Gatchina. I witnessed with a kind of despair every new revelation of his man-of-the-world style. “Where can I make some rather private calls?” he asked. So I led him past the five poplars and the old dry well (out of which we had been rope-hauled by three frightened gardeners only a couple of years before) to a passage in the servants’ wing where the cooing of pigeons came from an inviting windowsill and where there hung on the sun-stamped wall the remotest and oldest of our country-house telephones, a bulky boxlike contraption which had to be clangorously cranked up to educe a small-voiced operator. Yuri was now even more relaxed and sociable than the mustanger of former years. Sitting on a deal table against the wall and dangling his long legs, he chatted with the servants (something I was not supposed to do, and did not know how to do)—with an aged footman with sideburns whom I had never seen grin before or with a kitchen flirt, of whose bare neck and bold eyes I became aware only then. After Yuri had concluded his third long-distance conversation (I noticed with a blend of relief and dismay how awful his French was), we walked down to the village grocery which otherwise I never dreamed of visiting, let alone buying there a pound of black-and-white sunflower seeds. Throughout our return stroll, among the late afternoon butterflies that were preparing to roost, we munched and spat, he showing me how to perform it conveyer-wise: split the seed open between the right-side back teeth, ease out the kernel with the tongue, spit out the husk halves, move the smooth kernel to the left-side molars, and munch there, while the next seed which in the meantime has already been cracked on the right, is being processed in its turn. Speaking of right, he admitted he was a staunch “monarchist” (of a romantic rather than political nature) and went on to deplore my alleged (and perfectly abstract) “democratism.” He recited samples of his fluent album poetry and proudly remarked that he had been complimented by Dilanov-Tomski, a fashionable poet (who favored Italian epigraphs and sectional titles, such as “Songs of Lost Love,” “Nocturnal Urns,” and so on), for the striking “long” rhyme “vnemlyu múze ya” (“I hearken to the Muse”) and “lyubvi kontúziya” (“love’s contusion”), which I countered with my best (and still unused) find: “zápoved’ ” (commandment) and “posápïvat’ ” (to sniffle). He was boiling with anger over Tolstoy’s dismissal of the art of war and burning with admiration for Prince Andrey Bolkonski—for he had just discovered War and Peace which I had read for the first time when I was eleven (in Berlin, on a Turkish sofa, in our somberly rococo Privatstrasse flat giving on a dark, damp back garden with larches and gnomes that have remained in that book, like an old postcard, forever).

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

  I answer: as we said in Q. 17, Art. 1, and in 12ae, Q. 40, Art. 1, the object of hope is a good which is arduous, and also possible to obtain. There are accordingly two ways in which one may fail in the hope of obtaining blessedness. One may fail to look upon it as an arduous good, and one may fail to look upon it as a good which it is possible to obtain, whether by oneself or through the help of another. It is especially through corruption of our affection by love of bodily pleasures, particularly those of sexuality, that we are brought to the point where spiritual goods do not savour of good, or do not seem to be very good. For it is due to love of such things that a man loses his taste for spiritual goods, and does not hope for them as arduous goods. In this way, despair arises from lust. But it is owing to excessive dejection that one fails to look upon an arduous good as possible to obtain, whether by oneself or through the help of another. For when dejection dominates a man ’ s affection, it seems to him that he can never rise to anything good. In this way, despair arises from listlessness, since listlessness is the kind of sadness which casts down the spirit. Now the proper object of hope is this — that a thing is possible to obtain. For to be good, or to be arduous, pertains to the object of other passions also. It is therefore from listlessness that despair arises the more especially, although it can also arise from lust, for the reason which we have stated. From this the reply to the first point is plain. On the second point: as the philosopher says in 1 Rhetoric 11, just as hope creates joy, so do men have greater hope when they live joyously. So likewise do they fall the more readily into despair when they live in sadness, according to II Cor. 2:7: “ lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. ” The object of hope is a good to which the appetite tends naturally, and from which it will not turn aside naturally, but only if some obstacle intervenes. Hence joy is more directly the result of hope, and despair more directly the result of sadness. On the third point: neglect to think of the divine blessings is itself the result of listlessness. For a man who is affected by a passion thinks especially of the things which pertain to it. Hence it is not easy for a man who lives in sadness to contemplate any great and joyful things. He thinks only of things that are sad, unless he turns away from them by a great effort. QUESTION TWENTY-ONE OF PRESUMPTIONWe must now consider presumption, concerning which there are four questions. 1 . What is the object of presumption, on which it relies.

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

  132 18 Joan of Arc: Peasant-General J oan of Arc was a peasant, a general, a visionary, a politician, and a heretic. In the modern age, she has become a national hero of France, a saint, and a feminist icon. It’s difficult to peel back all of those layers and get at the historical person at their core. Fortunately, the profusion of chronicles that came out of late medieval France can be accessed, as well as Joan’s own words through her letters, her extensive testimony at her heresy trial, and the testimony of those who knew her from a later trial. They reveal a young woman who defied categorization: neither peasant nor noble, feminine and masculine by turn, and simple yet expert in ways that defied her humble origins. 133 18. Joan of Arc: Peasant-General Contest for the French Throne Joan was born in 1412, during the final stages of the Hundred Years’ War. It began in 1337 with a dispute between the new king of France and the king of England over English-held lands in France, and it eventually became a contest for the French throne. The pendulum of victory swung slowly. At first, the English had the advantage, but in the second half of the 14th century, the war stalled. France suffered a series of tragedies that drove it to despair by 1429: the deaths of two princes, two assassinations, a major military defeat, and a ruinous treaty. In the spring of 1420, King Charles VI of France signed the Treaty of Troyes, along with King Henry V of England and the new duke of Burgundy. This incredible document disinherited the dauphin—the French king’s son, also named Charles—and acknowledged Henry V as Charles’s heir. Henry married Charles’s daughter, Princess Catherine. The dauphin f led to the lands still under his control, south of the Loire. Henry V died in 1422, leaving an infant son behind. The duke of Bedford became the English regent and the leader of their force in France. He pressed young Henry VI’s claim to the French throne. A stalemate ensued as the dauphin dug into his position in the south while the Burgundians held the traditional coronation site, the city of Reims, which the dauphin needed to bolster the legitimacy of his claim to the throne. It became clear that Orléans, gateway between the north and south, was the fulcrum upon which the war would turn. But by early 1429, the fall of Orléans and the dauphin’s ultimate defeat seemed imminent. This was the desperate situation in which Joan of Arc arrived in the early spring of 1429. Her family had suffered for many generations under the prolonged war, and aided by God, she was on a mission to bring the suffering of the French people to an end.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  It’s the nights after Frances goes back to the hotel that are the hardest. I spend my day racing around between those dreadful public meals and the eurhythmics and painting and baths and tests and running over to Frances’ hotel for a quick cuddle then back here for a liver compress or to take my temperature or something else equally vital in this half-seen scheme of things that feels like a pact I’ve made with myself to do as they believe is best for a stated period of time—three weeks. In other words, to give the Lukas Klinik my best shot because it is the only thing I have going for me right now, and tomorrow the results from all my liver tests and other diagnostic analyses will be back. I haven’t really thought about what they will be because I just can’t spend any more energy in being scared. What I have to fight the hardest against here is feeling that it is just not worth it—too much fight for too little return, and I hurt all the damn time. Something is going on inside me, and it’s interfering with my life. There is a persistent and pernicious despair hovering over me constantly that feels physiological, even when my basic mood is quite happy. I don’t understand it, but I do not want to slip or fall into any kind of resignation. I am not going to go gently into anybody’s damn good night! December 23, 1985, 10:30 a.m. Arlesheim I have cancer of the liver. Dr. Lorenz just came in and told me. The crystallization test and the liver sonogram are all positive. The two masses in my liver are malignant. He says I should begin an increased Iscador program and antihormone therapy right away, if I decide that is the way I want to go. Well. The last possibility of doubt based on belief is gone. I said I’d come to Lukas because I trusted the anthroposophic doctors, and if they said it was malignant then I would accept their diagnosis. So here it is, and all the yelling and head-banging isn’t going to change it. I guess it helps to finally know. I wish Frances were here. I cannot afford to waste any more time in doubting, or in fury. The question is, what do I do now? Listen to my body, of course, but the messages get dimmer and dimmer. In two weeks I go back home. Iscador or chemotherapy or both? How did I ever come to be in this place? What can I use it for? December 24, 1985 Arlesheim

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  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 and chicken foot stew and the day before Christmas having no presents to wrap I poured two ounces of Nux Vomica into a bottle of Cream Soda and listened to the old lady puke all night long. When spring came I crossed the river again moving up in the world six and half stories and one day on the corner of eighth street across from Wanamakers which had burned down while I was away in Brooklyn— where I caught the bus for work every day a bus driver slowed down at the bus stop one morning— I was late it was raining and my jacket was soaked— and then speeded past without stopping when he saw my face. I have been given other doses of truth— that particular form of annihilation— shot through by the cold eye of the way things are baby and left for dead on a hundred streets of this city but oh that captain marvel glance brushing up against my skull like a steel bar in passing and my heart withered sheets in the gutter passing passing booted feet and bus drivers and old yentes in Brighton Beach kitchens SHIT! said the king and the whole court strained passing me out as an ill-tempered wind lashing around the corner of 125th Street and Lenox. Keyfood In the Keyfood Market on Broadway a woman waits by the window daily and patient the comings and goings of buyers neatly labeled old like yesterday’s bread her restless experienced eyes weigh fears like grapefruit testing for ripeness. Once in the market she was more comfortable than wealthy more black than white more proper than friendly more rushed than alone all her powers defined her like a carefully kneaded loaf rising and restrained working and making loving behind secret eyes.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Here is your granddaughter mother give us your blessing before I sleep what other secrets do you have to tell me how do I learn to love her as you have loved me? Sequelae Because a burning sword notches both of my doorposts because I am standing between my burned hands in the ashprint of two different houses midnight finds weave a filigree of disorder I figure in the dreams of people who do not even know me the night is a blister of stars pierced by nightmares of a telephone ringing my hand is the receiver threatening as an uncaged motor seductive as the pain of voiceless mornings voiceless kitchens I remember cornflakes shrieking like banshees in my throat while I battle the shapes of you wearing old ghosts of me hating you for being black and not woman hating you for being white and not me in this carnival of memories I name you both the laying down of power the separation I cannot yet make after all these years of blood my eyes are glued like fury to the keyholes of yesterday rooms where I wander solitary as a hunting cheetah at play with legends call disaster due all women who refuse to wait in vain; In a new room I enter old places bearing your shape trapped behind the sharp smell of your anger in my voice behind tempting invitations to believe your face tipped like a pudding under glass and I hear the high pitch of your voice crawling out from my hearts deepest culverts compromise is a coffin nail rusty as seaweed tiding through an august house where nobody lives beyond choice my pathways are strewn with old discontents outgrown defenses still sturdy as firebrick unlovely and dangerous as measles they wither into uselessness but do not decay. Because I do not wish to remember but love to caress the deepest bone of me begging shes that wax and wane like moonfire to absolve me at any price I battle old ghosts of you wearing the shapes of me surrounded by black and white faces saying no over and over becoming my mother draped in my fathers bastard ambition growing dark secrets out from between her thighs and night comes into me like a fever my hands grip a flaming sword that screams while an arrogant woman masquerading as a fish plunges it deeper and deeper into the heart we both share like beggars on this moment of time where the space ships land I have died too many deaths that were not mine. A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours; For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.