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 Heptaméron (1559)

  perfectly content to do so ; for time has had such pity on me that I have wished to return to this place to bid you, not a good day, but a last farewell. Time has shown me love just as it is, poor and naked ; and I have no sense of it except regret. But time has likewise shown me the true love, which I have known only in that solitude where for seven years I have been doomed to mourn in silence. Through time I have come to know the love that dwells on high, at sight of which the other love vanishes, and I have given myself wholly to the one, and weaned my affections from the other. To that better love I devote my heart and my body, to do suit and service to it, and not to you. When I served you, you esteemed me nothing. I now give you back entirely the love you put into my heart, having no need either of it or you. I take my leave of cruelty, pain, torment, scorn, hatred, and the burning fire with which you are filled, rio less than you are adorned with beauty. T cannot better bid farewell to all woes and pains and intolerable distresses, and to the hell of the amorous woman, than in biding farewell to you, madam, without the least prospect that wherever you or I may be, we shall ever look upon each other more." This letter was not read without tears and incredible surprise and regret. Indeed, the queen could not but feel so keenly the loss of a servant who loved her so per- fectly, that not all her treasures, nor even her crown, could hinder her from being the poorest and most misera- ble princess in the world, since she had lost that which no wealth could replace. After hearing mass, she returned to her chamber, where she gave utterance to the lamentations her cruelty had merited. There was no mountain, rock, or forest to which she did not send in quest of the hermit ; but he who had taken him out Third day.\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 245 of her hands, hindered him from falling into them again, and removed him to Paradise before she could discover his retreat in this world. This example shows that no one can tell what can do him harm only and no good. Still less, ladies, should you carry distrust and incredulity so far as to lose your lovers through desiring to put them to too severe a proof. " All my life long, Dagoucin," said Geburon, " I have heard the lady in question spoken of as the most virtuous woman in the world ; but now I regard her as the most cruel that ever lived."

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

  The third argument, which refers to the conversion of the Jews of their own free will, does not appear relevant to our subject. For the will may be confirmed in good without any violation of its liberty; otherwise neither God nor the blessed in Heaven would enjoy free will. But coercion, proceeding either from violence or fear, is repugnant to liberty. Therefore, the Canon De Judaeis expressly condemns it, saying, “The holy Synod henceforth forbids violence to be used towards anyone to make them believe.” But neither a vow nor an oath do violence to a man; they merely serve to confirm his will in good. Therefore, neither a vow nor an oath render a man unwilling, but rather cause him to will more strongly, and to begin, in so far as may lie in his power, to execute what he has bound himself to. No one in his senses will say that it is unlawful to persuade Jews to bind themselves by vow or oath to be baptized. The fourth contention of our opponents is that sometimes those who have bound themselves by oath or vow to go into religion lapse, and falling into despair, abandon themselves to all manner of iniquity; and thus they become the children of hell, twofold more than they who led them to become religious. This objection is answered by St. Paul, “Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?” (Rom 3:3). From which words we are to conclude that the fact that some men abuse grace is not detrimental to the perseverance of others in good. The Gloss says on this passage that the refusal of certain Jews to believe in no wise hinders others of their nation from accepting what God has promised to His faithful. In the same way, the fact that certain men, after taking a vow or an oath to embrace the religious life, change their minds and become worse than they were before, is no hindrance to others who, having taken a vow, persevere in its accomplishment. Therefore, they who persuade men to make a vow to become religious do not, so far as they are concerned, make them children of hell, but rather children of the Kingdom; since the number of those who persevere is greater than that of those who fall away.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  My pastor, who is one of my best friends, experienced similar emotions early in his faith. Rick became a Christian when he was nineteen. Before he became a Christian he played football at Chico State, which, at the time, was the number one party school in the nation. And Rick did his share of partying. After months of drunken binges, though, he began to wonder whether there was anything more fulfilling in life than alcohol and sex. He began to long for God. So the next Sunday morning he made a point of being sober, and in fact walked to a local church to attend services. This was Rick’s first time to step foot inside a church, and that morning the pastor happened to talk about sin, and how we are all sinners, and he talked about Jesus, and how Jesus died so that God could forgive us of our sin. At the end of the service, Rick prayed and became a Christian. After a few weeks the pastors from Rick’s new church came to visit, each in their suit and tie, and Rick entertained them and made them coffee, all of them sitting around sipping their coffee and talking nicely while the smell of marijuana lofted above their heads. Rick’s friend was smoking pot in the next room. Rick laughs when he tells me he offered the pastors a hit, not being too offended when they turned him down. The pastors talked to Rick about his conversion, explaining that he had been forgiven of his sins, and that it was important to try to live a righteous life. And Rick agreed with them, noting how much easier it would be to listen to the sermon on Sunday morning if he didn’t have a hangover. So Rick began to choose purity over sin, and for a while he did well, but soon he found that he wanted to party with his friends, or he wanted to have sex with his girlfriend, and from time to time he would fail at his moral efforts. Rick tells me that those were the most depressing moments of his life, because he felt that he was failing the God who had saved him. My pastor was anguished by an inability to control his desires. He felt that he had been given this new life, this key to heaven, and yet couldn’t obey Jesus in return. So one evening he got on his knees and told God he was sorry. He told God how much he wished he could be good and obedient. He then sat on the edge of his bed and swallowed enough muscle relaxants and sleeping pills to kill three people. He lay down in a fetal position and waited to die.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  compelled to keep his bed, but would never let his mis- tress know of it for fear of distressing her. So entirely did he give himself up to despair, that he neither ate, drank, slept, nor rested ; and became so lean and wan that he was no longer to be recognised. Some one made his state known to the mother of the demoiselle, who was very kind-hearted, and had besides so much esteem for the gentleman, that if the relations had been of the same mind as herself and her daughter, the personal merit of the invalid would have been preferred to the alleged wealth of the other suitor : but the paternal re- lations would not hear of it. However, she went with her daughter to see the poor gentleman, whom she found more dead than alive. As he knew that his end was near, he had confessed and communicated, and never ex- pected to see any more visitors ; but on beholding again her who was his life and his resurrection, his strength returned so that he at once sat up in the bed, and said, " What brings you hither, madam } How come you to visit a man who has already one foot in the grave, and of whose death you are the cause .-* " " What ! " exclaimed the lady. " Is it possible we should cause the death of one we love so much "*. Tell me, I entreat, why you speak in this manner .-* " " Madam, I concealed my love for your daughter as long as I could ; my relations, however, who have asked her of you in marriage, have gone further than I wished, since I have thereby had the misfortune to lose hope. I say misfortune, not with reference to my individual satisfaction, but because I know that no one will ever treat her so well or love her so much as I would have done. Her loss of the best and most faithful friend and servant she has in the world touches me more sensibly than the loss of my life, which I wish to preserve for her 64 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \Xm;-I i). alone. Nevertheless, since henceforth it can be of no use to her, I gain much in losing it." The mother and daughter tried to comfort him. " Cheer up, my friend," said the mother, " I promise you that, if God restores you to health, my daughter shall never have any other husband than you. She is present, and I command her to make you the same promise."

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  She tried to hold him, but for a long while he would not be held. His body was like iron; she could find no softness in it. She sat curled like a frightened child on the edge of the bed, her hand on his back, waiting for the storm to pass over. It was then that she decided not to tell him yet about the child. By and by he called her name. And then he turned, and she held him against her breast, while he sighed and shook. He fell asleep at last, clinging to her as though he were going down into the water for the last time. And it was the last time. That night he cut his wrists with his razor and he was found in the morning by his landlady, his eyes staring upward with no light, dead among the scarlet sheets. And now they were singing: ‘Somebody needs you, Lord, Come by here. ’ At her back, above her, she heard Gabriel’s voice. He had risen and was helping the others to pray through. She wondered if John were still on his knees, or had risen, with a child’s impatience, and was staring around the church. There was a stiffness in him that would be hard to break, but that, nevertheless, would one day surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard’s—there was no escape for anyone. God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you couldn’t get over Him; so low you couldn’t get under Him; so wide you couldn’t get around Him; but must come in at the door. And she, she knew to-day that door: a living, wrathful gate. She knew through what fires the soul must crawl, and with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which s ammered to reply; life, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessed with the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried, heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along. And, therefore, there was war in Heaven, and weeping before the throne: the heart chained to the soul, and the soul imprisoned within the flesh—a weeping, a confusion, and a weight unendurable filled all the earth. Only the love of God could establish order in this chaos; to Him the soul must turn to be delivered. But what a turning!

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  He loses to a wrestler who, everyone can agree, deserves his place in the tournament. The same cannot be said for Shannon Hocken, the senior from the family with deep roots in Walker and North-Linn High School. Shannon’s consolation match at 171 pounds, against Matt Stiefel from East Buchanan, is a brutal struggle to stay alive. The boys trade reversals in the second period, neither able to contain the other. Shannon knows what he wants to do, but he can’t seem to stay on course. He’s erratic on the mat, showing flashes of strength and speed but then, just as quickly, losing his concentration and allowing Stiefel to take the upper hand. Shannon takes a 6–4 lead into the third period, but Matt scores an escape to make it 6–5, and then he seizes the lead with a 2-point takedown. Now trailing 7–6, Shannon needs an escape of his own to tie the score and force overtime—and, for that matter, he could win right here, on the spot, with a late 2-point reversal. But with the clock counting down on the period, Shannon appears to yield to the moment. He gets stuck on bottom, pressed against the mat, and cannot seem find a way back up. “Get active, Shannon!” Bridgewater screams from the corner. Up in the stands, the North-Linn parents become increasingly animated, their voices rising and rising. But at some point, they seem to sense that Shannon just isn’t going to fight his way out. Slowly, their cheers begin to recede. It’s a weird shift of emotion, and as the final half-minute ticks away on his wrestling career, Shannon appears almost incapable of movement altogether. The seconds crawl by, and then it’s over. It takes a moment after he shakes the hand of the winner for the reality of this exchange to settle in on Shannon, but when it does, it comes in a fury. Sitting propped against one of the metal exit doors, slumped in his defeat, Shannon suddenly raises his right arm above his head and slams his hand, knuckles-first, against the door, a pounding that resonates even inside the packed gym. A few seconds later, another slam. And then again, as the frustration begins pouring out of him, as the truth about his situation sinks in. He was maybe one great burst of effort away from keeping his career going. He didn’t have it. Now it’s too late. As Shannon begins to crank up, pounding his hand again and again into the metal door, I am reminded of that conversation with the mother at the little kids’ tournament at North-Linn, who had watched a boy put his hand through the glass after losing and thus ruin his own season. Now Shannon has no season left to wreck, and so he’s basically just taking it out on himself.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This power had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and, in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish that he could never in his life have imagined, that he surely could not endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as wood beneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and felled him in a moment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but only the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness. He wanted to rise—a malicious, ironic voice insisted that he rise—and, at once, to leave this temple and go out into the world. He wanted to obey the voice, which was the only voice that spoke to him; he tried to assure the voice that he would do his best to rise; he would only lie here a moment, after his dreadful fall, and catch his breath. It was at this moment, precisely, that he found he could not rise; something had happened to his arms, his legs, his feet—ah, something had happened to John! And he began to scream again in his great, bewildered terror, and felt himself, indeed, begin to move—not upward, toward the light, but down again, a sickness in his bowels, a tightening in his loin-strings; he felt himself turning, again and again, across the dusty floor, as though God’s toe had touched him lightly. And the dust made him cough and retch; in his turning the centre of the whole earth shifted, making of space a sheer void and a mockery of order, and balance, and time. Nothing remained: all was swallowed up in chaos. And: Is this it? John’s terrified soul inquired— What is it? —to no purpose, receiving no answer. Only the ironic voice insisted yet once more that he rise from that filthy floor if he did not want to become like all the other niggers. Then the anguish subsided for a moment, as water withdraws briefly to dash itself once more against the rocks: he knew that it subsided only to return. And he coughed and sobbed in the dusty space before the altar, lying on his face. And still he was going down, farther and farther from the joy, the singing, and the light above him. He tried, but in such despair!—the utter darkness does not present any point of departure, contains no beginning, and no end—to rediscover, and, as it were, to trap and hold tightly in the palm of his hand, the moment preceding his fall, his change. But that moment was also locked in darkness, was wordless, and would not come forth.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  This time, it is Zach who finds deep inside him the one move that he needs, and Zach who astonishes the Vets audience by pulling that move on Mitch as those finals seconds trickle down. Now it is Zach, not Mitch, who bursts into tears of joy, stumbling around the mat, looking for somebody to hug. There is no shortage of takers. Down the flights of stairs, away from the screams and the pandemonium around McKray, all is quiet shock. How could Mitch, of all people, lose this one at such a critical time? Kyle has already won his semifinal at 125 pounds, and Joey follows right behind him at 130. It had been a given that Mitch would be joining them any second, ready to go give Jay a quick thumbs-up before Jay’s match gets ready to go. Now Joey Slaton looks across the basement, under the harsh light, and he spies his friend doubled over against a tile wall. Mitch has retreated to the loneliest corner he can find, but there is just no place even inside this massive old structure to really be alone. He will suffer in public, or at least in the public company of those who have always known him, and it is such a deeply personal moment that, as the reality of what has happened sinks in, the other wrestlers begin moving away, giving Mitch a wide berth in his misery as they walk past in an exaggerated curve. Dan LeClere once said he didn’t think it would be the end of the world to him if he experienced that kind of defeat, then thought for a moment and added, “But ask me again if it ever happens.” It isn’t so much that losing is beyond the realm of possibility; everyone understands that. But it is simply beyond the scope of what any elite athlete is really willing to process. Now, Joey, already weighed in for his Saturday championship match, finds his way quietly to Mitch’s side and leans in close, and the two of them share that moment of common disbelief. It is pure silence. Old friends. Across the way, Jay absorbs the news. There are no great lessons to be learned at this stage, and he doesn’t waste a minute in trying. Jay can’t believe that Mitch’s coach would have him wrestling so defensively for so long when it goes against Mitch’s natural character on the mat—but, on the other hand, it isn’t as though anyone needs to remind Jay that anything can happen. He has felt ready to cough up a lung now for the better part of a week. Of course anything can happen. Now, as Jay moves upstairs in the Barn, he soaks up that collective crowd energy and the leftover buzz from the Mueller-McKray match, and he takes it inside of him, and he will wear it like a black hat.

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

  REWARD AND MISERY POSTPONED TO THE NEXT WORLDIn this matter we should note that contrary causes beget contrary effects. Thus action that proceeds from malice is contrary to action that proceeds from virtue. Accordingly wretchedness, in which evil action issues, is the opposite of happiness, which virtuous action merits. Furthermore, contraries pertain to the same genus. Therefore, since final happiness, which is reached by virtuous action, is a good that belongs not to this life but to the next life, as is clear from an earlier discussion, final wretchedness, also, to which vice leads, must be an evil belonging to the next world. Besides, all goods and ills of this life are found to serve some purpose. External goods, and also bodily goods, are organically connected with virtue, which is the way leading directly to beatitude, for those who use such goods well. But for those who use these goods ill, they are instruments of vice, which ends up in misery. Similarly the ills opposed to such goods, as sickness, poverty, and the like, are an occasion of progress in virtue for some but aggravate the viciousness of others, according as men react differently to such conditions. But what is ordained to something else cannot be the final end, because it is not the ultimate in reward or punishment. Therefore neither ultimate happiness nor ultimate misery consists in the goods or ills of this life. CHAPTER 174 WRETCHEDNESS FLOWING FROM THE PUNISHMENT OF LOSSSince the wretchedness to which vice leads is opposed to the happiness to which virtue leads, whatever pertains to wretchedness must be understood as being the opposite of all we have said about happiness. We pointed out above that man’s ultimate happiness, as regards his intellect, consists in the unobstructed vision of God. And as regards man’s affective life, happiness consists in the immovable repose of his will in the first Good. Therefore man’s extreme unhappiness will consist in the fact that his intellect is completely shut off from the divine light, and that his affections are stubbornly turned against God’s goodness. And this is the chief suffering of the damned. It is known as the punishment of loss.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Tom and Tony down there, not liking fish and having been listening attentively to the talk of the tall people, called up almost in unison, "Oh yes, tell it, Grandmamma!" But the pastor, knowing she didn't love it, To report this incident, which was a bit embarrassing for them, began again with the old little story instead of them, which the children would have liked to have listened to for the hundredth time and which perhaps one or the other was still unaware of... "In a nutshell, figure yourself out: It's a November afternoon, cold and not raining, God have mercy, I'm coming up Alfstrasse from an official business and I'm thinking of the bad times. Prince Blucher was gone, the French were in town, but there was little sign of the prevailing excitement. The streets were quiet, people sat in their houses and took care. Butcher Prahl, who was standing in front of his door with his hands in his trouser pockets and had said in his booming voice: "That's really too bad, is that really wanted -!" been ... Well, I think you want to look into Buddenbrooks, a word of encouragement might be welcome; the man is lying with the head rose, and Madame will have to deal with the billeting.” “There, at the same moment, who do I see coming towards me? Our dear Madame Buddenbrook. In what condition? She rushes through the rain without a hat, she has scarcely thrown a shawl over her shoulders, she falls more than she walks, and her coiffure is a complete mess... No, that's true, Madame! there was hardly any talk of a coiffure .” »'What a pleasant surprise !' I say and take the liberty of holding her sleeve, who doesn't see me at all, because I don't have anything good in mind... 'Where are you going so quickly, my dear?' She notices me, she looks at me , she blurts out: 'It's you ... farewell! Everything is over! I'm going down to the Trave!‹« “'Beware!' I say, and feel myself turning white. 'This is not the place for you, my dear! But what happened?' And I hold her as tight as respect will allow. ›What happened?‹ she cries, shaking. ›You are above the silverware, Wonderful! That happened! And Jean is lying with the head rose and can't help me! And he couldn't help either if he were on his feet! They steal my spoons, my silver spoons, that's what happened, Wunderlich, and I'm going to the Trave!'" "Well, I'm holding our friend, I say what is said in such cases, 'Courage,' I say, 'Darling!' and 'Everything will be fine!' conjure her, and let's go!'

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

  Reply to Objection 2: Gregory fittingly assigns the daughters of sloth. For since, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. viii, 5,6) “no man can be a long time in company with what is painful and unpleasant,” it follows that something arises from sorrow in two ways: first, that man shuns whatever causes sorrow; secondly, that he passes to other things that give him pleasure: thus those who find no joy in spiritual pleasures, have recourse to pleasures of the body, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. x, 6). Now in the avoidance of sorrow the order observed is that man at first flies from unpleasant objects, and secondly he even struggles against such things as cause sorrow. Now spiritual goods which are the object of the sorrow of sloth, are both end and means. Avoidance of the end is the result of “despair,” while avoidance of those goods which are the means to the end, in matters of difficulty which come under the counsels, is the effect of “faint-heartedness,” and in matters of common righteousness, is the effect of “sluggishness about the commandments.” The struggle against spiritual goods that cause sorrow is sometimes with men who lead others to spiritual goods, and this is called “spite”; and sometimes it extends to the spiritual goods themselves, when a man goes so far as to detest them, and this is properly called “malice.” In so far as a man has recourse to eternal objects of pleasure, the daughter of sloth is called “wandering after unlawful things.” From this it is clear how to reply to the objections against each of the daughters: for “malice” does not denote here that which is generic to all vices, but must be understood as explained. Nor is “spite” taken as synonymous with hatred, but for a kind of indignation, as stated above: and the same applies to the others.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  or rather on loathsome mud ; and though a great part of the house was already built, in which I hoped perpetually to abide, you have knocked it all down at a blow. So never more expect anything of me ; and never think of speak- ing to me, wherever I may be, either with your tongue or your eyes ; and be assured that my sentiments will never change. I say this to you with extreme regret. If I had plighted you a perfect friendship, I am sure my heart could not have borne this rupture and lived; though, indeed, the amazement into which I am cast at having been deceived is so intense and poignant, that, if it does not cut short my life, it will at least render it very unhappy, I have no more to say but to bid you an eternal farewelL" I will not attempt to describe the anguish of Ama- dour at hearing these words. It would be impossible not only to depict it but even to imagine it, except for those who have been in a similar position. As Florida turned to depart, he caught her by the arm, well know- ing that he should lose her forever unless he removed the bad opinion his conduct had caused her to entertain of him. " It has been the longing of my whole life, madam," he said, with the most sanctimonious counte- nance he could assume, " to love a woman of virtue ; and as I have found few such, I wished to know if you were as estimable in that respect as you are for beauty ; whereof I am now, thanks be to God, fully convinced. I congratulate myself on having given my heart to such an assemblage of perfections ; and I entreat you, madam, to pardon my caprice and my audacity, since the de- nouement is so glorious for you, and yields me such pleasure." Florida was beginning to have her eyes opened to the wiles of men ; and as she had been slow to believe evil where it existed, she was still slower to believe good rtrstday.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 93

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

  ORIGEN. As He had said to the righteous, Come ye, so He says to the wicked, Depart ye, for they who keep God’s commandment are near to the Word, and are called that they may be made more near; but they are far from it, though they may seem to stand hard by, who do not His commands; therefore it is said to them, Depart ye, that those who seemed to be living before Him, might be no more seen. It should be remarked, that though He had said to the Saints, Ye blessed of my Father, He says not now, Ye cursed of my Father, because of all blessing the Father is the author, but each man is the origin of his own curse when he does the things that deserve the curse. They who depart from Jesus fall into eternal fire, which is of a very different kind from that fire which we use. For no fire which we have is eternal, nor even of any long continuance. And note, that He does not say, ‘the kingdom prepared for the Angels,’ as He does say everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels; because He did not, as far as in Him lay, create men to perdition, but sinners yoke themselves to the Devil, so that as they that are saved are made equal to the holy Angels, they that perish are made equal with the Devil’s Angels. AUGUSTINE. (de Civ. Dei, xxi. 10.) It is hence clear, that the same fire will be appropriated to the punishment of men and of dæmons. If then it inflicts pain by corporeal touch, so as to produce bodily torment, how will there be in it any punishment for the evil spirits, unless the dæmons have, as some have thought, bodies composed of gross and fluid air. But if any man asserts that the dæmons have no bodies, we would not pugnaciously contend the point. For why may we not say, that truly, though wonderfully, even incorporeal spirit can feel pain of corporeal fire? If the spirits of men, though themselves incorporeal, can be now inclosed in bodily limbs, they can then be inseparably attached to the bonds of body. The dæmons then will be united to a body of material fire, though themselves immaterial, drawing punishment from their body, not giving life to it. And that fire being material will torture such bodies as ours with their spirits; but the dæmons are spirits without bodies.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  They were the despised and rejected, the wretched and the spat upon, the earth’s offscouring; and he was in their company, and they would swallow up his soul. The stripes they had endured would scar his back, their punishment would be his, their portion his, his their humiliation, anguish, chains, their dungeon his, their death his. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep. And their dread testimony would be his! In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. And their desolation, his: In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. And he began to shout for help, seeing before him the lash, the fire, and the depthless water, seeing his head bowed down for ever, he, John, the lowest among these lowly. And he looked for his mother, but her eyes were fixed on this dark army—she was claimed by this army. And his father would not help him, his father did not see him, and Roy lay dead. Then he whispered, not knowing that he whispered: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.’ And a voice, for the first time in all his terrible journey, spoke to John, through the rage and weeping, and fire, and darkness, and flood: ‘Yes,’ said the voice, ‘go through. Go through.’ ‘Lift me up,’ whispered John, ‘lift me up. I can’t go through.’ ‘Go through,’ said the voice, ‘go through.’ Then there was silence. The murmuring ceased. There was only this trembling beneath him. And he knew there was a light somewhere. ‘Go through.’ ‘Ask Him to take you through.’ But he could never go through this darkness, through this fire and this wrath. He never could go through. His strength was finished, and he could not move. He belonged to the darkness—the darkness from which he had thought to flee had claimed him. And he moaned again, weeping, and lifted up his hands. ‘Call on Him. Call on Him.’ ‘Ask Him to take you through.’ Dust rose again in his nostrils, sharp as the fumes of Hell. And he turned again in the darkness, trying to remember something he had heard, something he had read. Jesus saves. And he saw before him the fire, red and gold, and waiting for him—yellow, and red, and gold, and burning in a night eternal, and waiting for him. He must go through this fire, and into this night. Jesus saves. Call on Him. Ask Him to take you through.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He remembered only the cross: he had turned again to kneel at the altar, and had faced the golden cross. And the Holy Ghost was speaking—seeming to say, as John spelled out the so abruptly present and gigantic legend adorning the cross: Jesus Saves. He had stared at this, an awful bitterness in his heart, wanting to curse—and the Spirit spoke, and spoke in him. Yes: there was Elisha, speaking from the floor, and his father, silent, at his back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha, and lie where Elisha lay; to speak in tongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father. Yet this had not been the moment; it was as far back as he could go, but the secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was farther back, in darkness. As he cursed his father, as he loved Elisha, he had, even then, been weeping; he had already passed his moment, was already under the power, had been struck, and was going down. Ah, down!—and to what purpose, where? To the bottom of the sea, the bowels of the earth, to the heart of the fiery furnace? Into a dungeon deeper than Hell, into a madness louder than the grave? What trumpet sound would awaken him, what hand would lift him up? For he knew, as he was struck again, and screamed again, his throat like burning ashes, and as he turned again, his body hanging from him like a useless weight, a heavy, rotting carcass, that if he were not lifted he would never rise. His father, his mother, his aunt, Elisha—all were far above him, waiting, watching his torment in the pit. They hung over the golden barrier, singing behind them, light around their heads, weeping, perhaps, for John, struck down so early. And, no, they could not help him any more—nothing could help him any more. He struggled, struggled to rise up, and meet them—he wanted wings to fly upward and meet them in that morning, that morning where they were. But his struggles only thrust him downward, his cries did not go upward, but rang in his own skull. Yet, though he scarcely saw their faces, he knew that they were there. He felt them move, every movement causing a trembling, an astonishment, a horror in the heart of darkness where he lay. He could not know if they wished him to come to them as passionately as he wished to rise.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘I got in a fight.’ He looked at me crossly but sorrily. ‘I wouldn’t have come back here, only I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t see why you should get mixed up with all this.’ ‘Who did you get in a fight with?’ ‘My brother—Harold. My big brother. He got this knife, he cut me with it—the fucking bastard cut me with it.’ He looked at me with a kind of tired outrage. ‘I can’t go back there no more, my brother’ll murder me. Only he don’t know where I am, ’ere. I’ll have to stay ’ere—for a bit, Will.’ He splashed his hands down in the water. Blood was seeping out again through the lint of his dressing. He looked lop-sided and comical, and intensely distressed. Tears ran freely down his face and over the waterproof pink of the Band-Aids. I dabbed at them with the sponge, and he shook his head, and winced, and winced again at the twisting of his wound that wincing caused. In my other hand, under the water, in spite of himself and his misery, his cock was hard. I wanked him slowly, the ripples slapping rhythmically against the side of the tub. ‘Will,’ he said, as if he must get it out before succumbing, ‘I killed my brother’s mate.’ 2I finished my fifty lengths and sat for a while at the shallow end with my feet in the water, my goggles pushed back on my head like a smoky second pair of eyes. Phil had come down from the gym and put on a brief and laborious display of butterfly: giving up towards the end of his last length he made some perfunctory strokes, then stood up and waded to the edge. I nodded and smiled at him. ‘All right?’ he said, as if he did not want to talk to me, or did not know how. I watched him in profile: a strong pleasant face which might barely change between leaving school and middle age, an incurious, dependable look. But he was coming on well. His tits now bulged out impressively; and as he raised his hands to his temples and pushed back his wet hair, his biceps doubled smoothly, sleek as coupling animals. He was the sort of boy who might be in the army, except that his weight-training suggested a labour towards some private image of himself, a solitary perfection. As often happens when I know someone else fancies a person I might otherwise have ignored, I realised that Bill’s taste for him had made me want the boy too, and I looked at him lustfully and competitively.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  In a moment there was silence, and his father was gone. Again, he felt the saints above him—and dust was in his mouth. There was singing somewhere; far away, above him; singing slow and mournful. He lay silent, racked beyond endurance, salt drying on his face, with nothing in him any more, no lust, no fear, no shame, no hope. And yet he knew that it would come again—the darkness was full of demons crouching, waiting to worry him with their teeth again. Then I looked in the grave and I wondered. Ah, down!—what was he searching here, all alone in darkness? But now he knew, for irony had left him, that he was searching something, hidden in the darkness, that must be found. He would die if it was not found; or, he was dead already, and would never again be joined to the living, if it was not found. And the grave looked so sad and lonesome. In the grave where he now wandered—he knew it was the grave, it was so cold and silent, and he moved in icy mist—he found his mother and his father, his mother dressed in scarlet, his father dressed in white. They did not see him: they looked backward, over their shoulders, at a cloud of witnesses. And there was his Aunt Florence, gold and silver flashing on her fingers, brazen ear-rings dangling from her ears; and there was another woman, whom he took to be that wife of his father’s, called Deborah—who had, as he had once believed, so much to tell him. But she, alone, of all that company, looked at him and signified that there was no speech in the. grave. He was a stranger there—they did not see him pass, they did not know what he was looking for, they could not help him search. He wanted to find Elisha, who knew, perhaps, who would help him—but Elisha was not there. There was Roy: Roy also might have helped him, but he had been stabbed with a knife, and lay now, brown and silent, at his father’s feet. Then there began to flood John’s soul the waters of despair. Love is as strong as death, as deep as the grave. But love, which had, perhaps, like a benevolent monarch, swelled the population of his neighbouring kingdom, Death, had not himself descended: they owed him no allegiance here. Here there was no speech or language, and there was no love; no one to say: You are beautiful, John; no one to forgive him, no matter what his sin; no one to heal him, and lift him up. No one: father and mother looked backward, Roy was bloody, Elisha was not here. Then the darkness began to murmur—a terrible sound—and John’s ears trembled. In this murmur that filled the grave, like a thousand wings beating on the air, he recognized a sound that he had always heard.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Firttday\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 15 To clear up his doubts, he secreted himself in a neigh bojring house, where he remained on sentry till three o'clock in the morning, when he saw the bishop come out, and recognized him perfectly in spite of his dis- guise. The young man returned in despair to Alen9on, where his wicked mistress arrived soon after. Nevet doubting but that she should dupe him as usual, she lost no time in coming to see him, but he told her that since she had touched sacred things she was too holy to talk to a sinner like him, but a sinner so repentant that he hoped his sin would soon be forgiven. When she found she was discovered, and that excuses and promises never to offend in that way again were of no avail, she went off and complained to her bishop. After long pon- dering over the matter, she told her husband that she could no longer reside in Alengon because the lieuten- ant's son, whom he thought so much his friend, was incessantly importuning her, and she begged that in order to prevent all suspicion he would take a house at Arg-entan. The husband, who allowed himself to be led by her, easily consented. They had been but a few days settled in Argentan, when this wretched woman sent word to the lieutenant's son that he was the most wicked of men, and that she was not ignorant that he publicly maligned her and the prelate, but that she would yet find means to make him repent of this. The young man, who had never spoken to any one but herself, and who was afraid of involving himself in a quarrel with the prelate, mounted his horse and rode to Argentan, attended only by two of his ser- vants. He found the lady at the Jacobins, where she was hearing vespers, and having placed himself on his knees beside her, " I am come, Madam," he said, " to iC THE HEPTAMERON OF THE iNavet 1 protest to you before God that I have never complained of you to any but yourself. You have behaved so vilely to me that what I have said to you is not half what you deserve. But if any man or woman says that I have publicly spoken ill of you, I am here to contradict them in your presence."

• From Another Country (1962)

  In this haven, they opened up their newspapers and caught up on the day’s bad news. Or they were to be found, as five o’clock fell, in discreetly dim, anonymously appointed bars, uneasy, in brittle, uneasy, female company, pouring down joyless martinis. This note of despair, of buried despair, was insistently, constantly struck. It stalked all the New York avenues, roamed all the New York streets; was as present in Sutton Place, where the director of Eric’s play lived and the great often gathered, as it was in Greenwich Village, where he had rented an apartment and been appalled to see what time had done to people he had once known well. He could not escape the feeling that a kind of plague was raging, though it was officially and publicly and privately denied. Even the young seemed blighted— seemed most blighted of all. The boys in their blue jeans ran together, scarcely daring to trust one another, but united, like their elders, in a boyish distrust of the girls. Their very walk, a kind of anti-erotic, knee-action lope, was a parody of locomotion and of manhood. They seemed to be shrinking away from any contact with their flamboyantly and paradoxically outlined private parts. They seemed—but could it be true? and how had it happened?—to be at home with, accustomed to, brutality and indifference, and to be terrified of human affection. In some strange way they did not seem to feel that they were worthy of it. Now, late on a Sunday afternoon, having been in New York four days, and not yet having written his parents in the South, Eric moved through the tropical streets on his way to visit Cass and Richard. He was having a drink with them to celebrate his return. “I’m glad you think it’s something to celebrate,” he had told Cass over the phone. She laughed. “That’s not very nice. You sound as though you haven’t missed us at all.” “Oh, I certainly want to see all of you. But I don’t know if I ever really missed the city very much. Did you ever notice how ugly it is?” “It’s getting uglier all the time,” Cass said. “A perfect example of free enterprise gone mad.” “I wanted to thank you,” he said, after a moment, “for writing me about Rufus.” And he thought, with a rather surprising and painful venom, Nobody else thought to do it. “Well, I knew,” she said, “that you’d want to know.” Then there was a silence. “You never knew his sister, did you?” “Well, I knew he had one. I never met her; she was just a kid in those days.” “She’s not a kid now,” Cass said. “She’s going to be singing Sunday, down in the Village, with some friends of Rufus’s. For the first time. We promised to bring you along. Vivaldo will be there.” He thought of Rufus.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Consider, ladies, I beseech you, what disorders a wicked woman occasions, and how many evils ensue from the sin of the one you have just heard of. Since Eve made Adam sin, it has been the business of women to torment, kill, and damn men. For my part, I have had so much experience of their cruelty, that I shall lay my death to nothing but the despair into which one of * The events related in this novel, and the names of the per- sons, are all real. The last editors of the Heptameron (la Socidt^ des Bibliophiles Frangais, 1853) have published the writ of pardon granted by Francis I. to St. Aignan, the original of which is pre- served in the Archives Nationales. The writ, as usual, recites the statement of the case made by the petitioner for pardon, and this agrees closely with the Queen of Navarre's narrative, allowance, of course, being made for the peculiar colouring which it was the murderer's interest to give to the facts. 22 THE HRPrAMERON OF THE • INavel z them has plunged me. And yet I am crazed enough to confess this hell is more agreeable to me, coming from her hand, than the paradise which another might be- stow upon me. Parlamente, affecting not to understand that it was of herself he spoke, replied, " If hell is as agreeable as you say, you can't be afraid of the devil who put you into it." " If my devil," replied Simontault in a pet, " were to become as black as it has been cruel to me, it would cause this company as much fright as I feel pleasure in looking upon it. But the fire of love makes me forget the fire of that hell. So I will say no more about it, but call upon Madame Oisille, being assured that if she would speak of women as she knows them, she would corroborate my opinion." The whole company turned to the old lady and begged her to begin, which she did with a smile, and with this little preamble : " It seems to me, ladies, that the last speaker has cast such a slur upon our sex by the true story he has narrated of a wretched woman, that I must run back through all the past years of my life in order to call to my mind one woman whose virtue was such as to belie the bad opinion he has of our sex. Happily I recollect one such woman, who deserves not to be forgotten, and will now relate her story to you." NOVEL II. Chaste and lamentable death of the wife of one of the Queen oj Navarre's muleteers. At Amboise there once lived a muleteer, who was in the service of the Queen of Navarre, sister of Francis Ftrst dny.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 23