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 Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Pure annihilation , as distinguished from lesser, muddier annihilations. Nothing to be mopped up afterwards. A wheel of light rolling up to the precipice—and over into the bottomless pit. I, Beethoven, I created it! I, Beethoven, I destroy it! From now on, ladies and gentlemen, you are entering Mexico. From now on everything will be wonderful and beautiful, marvelously beautiful, marvelously wonderful. Increasingly marvelously beautiful and wonderful. From now on no more washlines, no suspenders, no flannel underwear. Always summer and everything true to pattern. If it’s a horse it’s a horse for all time. If it’s apoplexy it’s apoplexy, and not St. Vitus’ Dance. No early morning whores, no gardenias. No dead cats in the gutter, no sweat and perspiration. If it be a lip it must be a lip that trembles eternally. For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, it’s always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and what’s dead is dead and no feather-dusters. You lie on a cement bed and you sleep like an acetylene torch. When you strike it rich it’s a bonanza. When you don’t strike it rich it’s misery, worse than misery . No arpeggios, no grace notes, no cadenzas. Either you hold the clue or you don’t hold the clue. Either you start with pure melody or you start with listerine. But no Purgatory—and no elixir. It’s Fourth Eclogue or Thirteenth Arrondissement! Peace! It’s Wonderful!—The Cosmological EyeIt was only the other night while entertaining an American writer who had come to visit France after a long absence that I realized poignantly what has happened to me since I left my native land. Like all my compatriots who come to see me he asked quite naturally what it was that had kept me here so long. (It is seven years since I am living in Paris.) I felt that it was useless to answer him in words. I suggested instead that we take a stroll through the streets. We started out from the corner of the Rue de la Gaîté and the Avenue du Maine where we had been sitting; I walked him down the Rue de l’Ouest to the Rue du Château, then over the railroad bridge back of the Gare Montparnasse down the Boulevard Pasteur to the Avenue de Breteuil and thence to a little café facing the Invalides where we sat in silence for a long while. Perhaps that silence which one finds in the streets of Paris at night, perhaps that alone was a sufficient answer to his query. It is something difficult to find in a big American city. At any rate, it was not chance which had directed my footsteps. Walking with my friend through the deserted streets I was reliving my first days in Paris, for it was in the Rue de Vanves that my new life really began. Night after night without money, without friends, without a language I had walked these streets in despair and anguish.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “I have been with so many horrible people,” Yves said, gravely, “so soon, and for so long. Really, it is a wonder that I am not completely sauvage.” He sipped his whiskey. Eric could not see his face, but he could imagine the expression it held: hard and baffled and terribly young, with the cruelty that comes from pain and fear. “First, my mother and all those soldiers, ils étaient mes oncles, tous,” and he laughed, “and then all those awful, slimy men, I no longer know how many.” He was silent again. “I lay in the bed, sometimes we never got to bed, and let them grunt and slobber. Some of them were really fantastic, no whore has ever told the truth about who comes to her, I am sure of that, they would chop off her head before they would dare to hear it. But it is happening, it is happening all the time.” He leaned up, hugging his knees, staring at the sea. “Then I would take their money; if they made difficulties I could scare them because I was mineur. Anyway, it was very easy to scare them. Most of those people are cowards.” Then he said, in a low voice, “I never thought that I would be happy to have a man touch me and hold me. I never thought that I would be able, truly, to make love with a man. Or with anyone.” “Why,” Eric asked at last, “didn’t you use women instead of men, as you despised the men so much?”

• From Another Country (1962)

  The first time he said this, she winced and said nothing. The second time she slapped him. And he slapped her. They fought all the time. They fought each other with their hands and their voices and then with their bodies: and the one storm was like the other. Many times—and now Rufus sat very still, pressing darkness against his eyes, listening to the music—he had, suddenly, without knowing that he was going to, thrown the whimpering, terrified Leona onto the bed, the floor, pinned her against a table or a wall; she beat at him, weakly, moaning, unutterably abject; he twisted his fingers in her long pale hair and used her in whatever way he felt would humiliate her most. It was not love he felt during these acts of love: drained and shaking, utterly unsatisfied, he fled from the raped white woman into the bars. In these bars no one applauded his triumph or condemned his guilt. He began to pick fights with white men. He was thrown out of bars. The eyes of his friends told him that he was falling. His own heart told him so. But the air through which he rushed was his prison and he could not even summon the breath to call for help. Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can’t fall any farther. He tried to take comfort from this thought. Yet there knocked in his heart the suspicion that the bottom did not really exist. “I don’t want to die,” he heard himself say, and he began to cry. The music went on, far from him, terribly loud. The lights were very bright and hot. He was sweating and he itched, he stank. Vivaldo was close to him, stroking his head; the stuff of Vivaldo’s sweater stifled him. He wanted to stop crying, stand up, breathe, but he could only sit there with his face in his hands. Vivaldo murmured, “Go ahead, baby, let it out, let it all out.” He wanted to stand up, breathe, and at the same time he wanted to lie flat on the floor and to be swallowed into whatever would stop this pain. Yet, he was aware, perhaps for the first time in his life, that nothing would stop it, nothing: this was himself. Rufus was aware of every inch of Rufus. He was flesh: flesh, bone, muscle, fluid, orifices, hair, and skin. His body was controlled by laws he did not understand. Nor did he understand what force within this body had driven him into such a desolate place. The most impenetrable of mysteries moved in this darkness for less than a second, hinting of reconciliation. And still the music continued, Bessie was saying that she wouldn’t mind being in jail but she had to stay there so long. “I’m sorry,” he said, and raised his head. Vivaldo gave him a handkerchief and he dried his eyes and blew his nose.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  With books even the butcher and the plumber seem to feel that they have a right to an opinion, especially if the book happens to be what is called a filthy or disgusting one. I have noticed, moreover, that the attitude of the public alters perceptibly when it is the work of primitive peoples which they must grapple with. Here for some obscure reason the element of the “obscene” is treated with more deference. People who would be revolted by the drawings in Ecce Homo will gaze unblushingly at African pottery or sculpture no matter how much their taste or morals may be offended. In the same spirit they are inclined to be more tolerant of the obscene works of ancient authors. Why? Because even the dullest are capable of admitting to themselves that other epochs might, justifiably or not, have enjoyed other customs, other morals. As for the creative spirits of their own epoch, however, freedom of expression is always interpreted as license. The artist must conform to the current, and usually hypocritical, attitude of the majority. He must be original, courageous, inspiring and all that—but never too disturbing. He must say Yes while saying No. The larger the art public, the more tyrannical, complex and perverse does this irrational pressure become. There are always exceptions, to be sure, and Picasso is one of them, one of the few artists in our time able to command the respect and attention of a bewildered and largely hostile public. It is the greatest tribute that could be made to his genius. _____ The chances are that during this transition period of global wars, lasting perhaps a century or two, art will become less and less important. A world torn by indescribable upheavals, a world preoccupied with social and political transformations, will have less time and energy to spare for the creation and appreciation of works of art. The politician, the soldier, the industrialist, the technician, all those in short who cater to immediate needs, to creature comforts, to transitory and illusory passions and prejudices, will take precedence over the artist. The most poetic inventions will be those capable of serving the most destructive ends. Poetry itself will be expressed in terms of block-busters and lethal gases. The obscene will find expression in the most unthinkable techniques of self-destruction which the inventive genius of man will be forced to adopt. The revolt and disgust which the prophetic spirits in the realm of art have inspired, through their vision of a world in the making, will find justification in the years to come as these dreams are acted out. The growing void between art and life, art becoming ever more sensational and unintelligible, life becoming more dull and hopeless, has been commented on almost ad nauseam. The war, colossal and portentous as it is, has failed to arouse a passion commensurate with its scope or significance. The fervor of the Greeks and the Spaniards was something which astounded the modern world.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain [useless, amounting to nothing], and your faith is also vain [imaginary, unfounded, devoid of value and benefit—not based on truth]. 15 We are even discovered to be false witnesses [misrepresenting] God, because we testified concerning Him that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised, either; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless and powerless [mere delusion]; you are still in your sins [and under the control and penalty of sin]. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If we who are [abiding] in Christ have hoped only in this life [and this is all there is], then we are of all people most miserable and to be pitied. The Order of Resurrection 20 But now [as things really are] Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, [and He became] the first fruits [that is, the first to be resurrected with an incorruptible, immortal body, foreshadowing the resurrection] of those who have fallen asleep [in death]. [Col 1:18 ] 21 For since [it was] by a man that death came [into the world], it is also by a Man that the resurrection of the dead has come . 22 For just as d in Adam all die, so also e in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s [own will be resurrected with incorruptible, immortal bodies] at His coming. 24 After that comes the end (completion), when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after He has made inoperative and abolished every ruler and every authority and power. 25 For Christ must reign [as King] until He has put all His enemies under His feet. [Ps 110:1 ] 26 The last enemy to be abolished and put to an end is death. 27 For HE (the Father) HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS (Christ’s) FEET . But when He says, “All things have been put in subjection [under Christ],” it is clear that He (the Father) who put all things in subjection to Him (Christ) is excepted [since the Father is not in subjection to His own Son]. [Ps 8:6 ] 28 However, when all things are subjected to Him (Christ), then the Son Himself will also be subjected to the One (the Father) who put all things under Him, so that God may be all in all [manifesting His glory without any opposition, the supreme indwelling and controlling factor of life]. 29 Otherwise, what will those do who are being f baptized for the dead?

• From Another Country (1962)

  He put his lips to Yves’ shoulder and tasted the Mediterranean salt. He thought of his friends—what friends? He was not sure that he had ever really been friends with Vivaldo or Richard or Cass; and Rufus was dead. He was not certain who, long, long after the event, had sent him the news—he had the feeling that it had to be Cass. It could scarcely have been Vivaldo, who was made too uneasy by what he knew of Eric’s relation to Rufus—knew without being willing to admit that he knew; and it would certainly not have been Richard. No one, in any case, had written very often; he had not really wanted to know what was happening among the people he had fled; and he felt that they had always protected themselves against any knowledge of what was happening in him. No, Rufus had been his only friend among them. Rufus had made him suffer, but Rufus had dared to know him. And when Eric’s pain had faded, and Rufus was far away, Eric remembered only the joy that they had sometimes shared, and the timbre of Rufus’ voice, his half-beat, loping, cocky walk, his smile, the way he held a cigarette, the way he threw back his head when he laughed. And there was something in Yves which reminded him of Rufus—something in his trusting smile and his brave, tough vulnerability. It was a Thursday when the news came. It was pouring down rain, all of Paris was wavering and gray. He had no money at all that day, was waiting for a check which was mysteriously entangled in one of the bureaucratic webs of the French cinema industry. He and Yves had just divided the last of their cigarettes and Yves had gone off to try and borrow money from an Egyptian banker who had once been fond of him. Eric had then lived on the Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève, and he labored up this hill, in the flood, bareheaded, with water dripping down his nose and eyelashes and behind his ears and down his back and soaking through his trench-coat pocket, where he had unwisely placed the cigarettes. He could practically feel them disintegrating in the moist, unclean darkness of his pocket, not at all protected by his slippery hand. He was in a kind of numb despair and intended simply to get home and take off his clothes and stay in bed until help came; help would probably be Yves, with the money for sandwiches; it would be just enough help to enable them to get through yet another ghastly day. He traversed the great courtyard and started up the steps of his building; and behind him, near the porte-cochère, the bell of the concierge’s loge sounded, and she called his name. He went back, hoping that she was not going to ask him about his rent. She stood in her door, with a letter in her hand.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Yves was silent. Then, “I don’t know. D’abord, I took what there was—or allowed what there was to take me,” and he looked at Eric and grinned. He sipped his whiskey and stood up. “It is simpler with men, it is usually shorter, the money is easier. Women are much more cunning than men, especially those women who would go after a boy like me, and even more unattractive, really.” He laughed. “It is much harder work, and it is not so sure.” His face dropped again into its incongruous, austere melancholy. “You do not meet many women in the places I have been; you do not meet many human persons at all. They are all dead. Dead.” He stopped, his lips pursed, his eyes glittering in the light that fell though the window. “There were many whores in my mother’s place, but—well, yes, there have been a few women, but I couldn’t stand them, either.” He moved to the window and stood there with his back to Eric. “I do not like l’elégance des femmes. Every time I see a woman wearing her fur coats and her jewels and her gowns, I want to tear all that off her and drag her someplace, to a pissoir, and make her smell the smell of many men, the piss of many men, and make her know that that is what she is for, she is no better than that, she does not fool me with all those shining rags, which, anyway, she only got by blackmailing some stupid man.” Eric laughed, but he was frightened. “Comme tu es feroce!” He watched Yves turn from the window and slowly pace the room—long and lean, like a stalking cat, and in the heavy shadows. And he saw that Yves’ body was changing, was losing the adolescent, poverty-stricken harshness. He was becoming a man. And he watched that sullen, wiry body. He watched his face. The dome of his forehead seemed more remarkable than ever, and more pure, and his mouth seemed, at once, more cruel and more defenseless. This nakedness was the proof of Yves’ love and trust, and it was also the proof of Yves’ force. Yves, one day, would no longer need Eric as he needed Eric now. Now, Yves tilted back his head and finished his drink and turned to Eric with a smile. “You are drinking very slowly tonight. What is the matter?” “I’m getting old.” But he laughed and finished his drink and handed his glass to Yves. And, as Yves walked away from him, as he heard him in the kitchen, as he looked out over the yellow, winking lights along the shore, something opened in him, an unspeakable despair swept over him. Madame Belet had arrived and he heard Yves and the old peasant woman in the kitchen. Their voices were muted.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Re-arrangement, nothing more. The problems of life remain. A face may be lifted, but one’s age is indelible. Books have no effect. Authors have no effect. The effect was given in the first Cause. Where wert thou when I created the world? Answer that and you have solved the riddle of creation! We write, knowing we are licked before we start. Every day we beg for fresh torment. The more we itch and scratch the better we feel. And when our readers also begin to itch and scratch we feel sublime. Let no one die of inanition! The airs must ever swarm with arrows of thought delivered by les hommes de lettres . Letters, mind you. How well put! Letters strung together with invisible wires charged with imponderable magnetic currents. All this travail forced upon a brain that was intended to work like a charm, to work without working. Is it a person coming towards you or a mind? A mind divided into books, pages, sentences replete with commas, periods, semicolons, dashes and asterisks. One author receives a prize or a seat in the Academy for his efforts, another a worm-eaten bone. The names of some are lent to streets and boulevards, of others to gallows and almshouses. And when all these “creations” have been finally read and digested men will still be buggering one another. No author, not even the greatest, has been able to get round that hard, cold fact. A grand life just the same. The literary life, I mean. Who wants to alter the world? (Let it rot, let it die, let it fade away!) Tetrazzini practising her trills, Caruso shattering the chandeliers, Cortot waltzing like a blind mouse, the great Vladimir horrorizing the keyboard—was it of creation or salvation they were thinking? Perhaps not even of constipation…. The road smokes under your horses’ hooves, the bridges rumble, the heavens fall backwards. What is the meaning of it all? The air, torn to shreds, rushes by. Everything is flying by, bells, collar buttons, moustachios, pomegranates, hand grenades. We draw aside to make way for you, you fiery steeds. And for you, dear Jascha Heifetz, dear Joseph Szigeti, dear Yehudi Menuhin. We draw aside, humbly—do you hear?

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Saint Nilus: “[Philosophia gar estin] êthôn katorthôsis meta doxês tês peri tou ontos gnôseôs alêthous.” [Logos askêtikos, III, P.G., vol. 79, col. 721.]28.[Saint Basil, Constitutions monastiques, P.G., vol. 31, col. 1321a.]29.[“Di’ergônphilosophia,” Gregory of Nazianzus, Discours VI (P.G., vol. 35, col. 721), cited by I. Hausherr, Direction spirituelle en Orient autrefois, Rome, 1955, p. 57.]30.[Empty note.]31.[Gregory of Nazianzus, Discours II, 16, cited by I. Hausherr, Direction spirituelle en Orient autrefois, p. 57.]32.Thus, as examples: [note incomplete].33.J. Cassian, Institutes, “Preface,” 7–8.34.J. Cassian, Conferences, I, 2. Cf. also in Conferences, II, 11 and II, 26, the characterization of the monastic life as ars and disciplina. Similarly: Conferences, XIV, 1; XVIII, 2; X, 8.35.[Proverbs 11:14 (Septuagint).]36.The conference distinguishes among three kinds of monk: cenobites, anchorites, and sarabaites; but a fourth is added at section 8.37.[John Cassian, Conferences], XVIII, 7.38.Ibid., 8.39.“The least one can say is that their faults aren’t corrected; they worsen, due to the fact that no one excites them (a nemine provocata),” ibid.40.This was the case with Pafnutius, whose life and lesson are evoked in the third Conference.41.J. Cassian, Institutes, V, 4, 2. A bit further up, however, Cassian says, according to the abbot Pinufius, that the cenobites should attach themselves to one teacher in the community, instead of drawing support from several (IV, 40).42.On this point cf. O. Chadwick, John Cassian. A Study in Primitive Monasticism, Cambridge, 1950.43.Pachomius, dying, declares that he has accepted even the reproaches of little children (Fragments captés de la vie de Pacôme, translated by R. Draguet, in Les pères du désert, Paris, 1949, pp. 116–117).44.“J’ai connu des moines qui après de grands travaux sont tombés et arrivés à la folie, pour avoir compté sur leurs œuvres et avoir éludé par de faux raisonnements le commandement de Celui qui a dit: Interroge ton père et il te renseignera,” Saint Anthony, P.G., vol. 65, col. 88b [trans. in I. Hausherr, Direction spirituelle…, p. 16] [“I have known monks who, after great deeds, have lapsed and fallen into madness, for having counted on their works and evaded through false reasoning the commandment of the One who said: Question your father and he will teach you.”] The second Conference, devoted to discretio, cites a series of examples of monks whose insistence on self-direction led to a lapse. The most meaningful of these is that of the monk who, believing he is beyond temptation, directs a disciple too sharply and as punishment falls into a temptation that only the abbey Apollo can rescue him from (section 13).45.Institutes, IV, 30–31; Conferences, XX, 1.46.Conferences, II, 3.47.In the Rule of Saint Benedict, it’s said of the monks: “ambulant alieno judicio et imperio” (chap. 5).48.J. Cassian, Institutes, IV, 8.49.Ibid., IV, 9.50.[J. Cassian, Institutes, IV, 30.]51.[“Nec de majorum sententia judices, cujus officium est obedire,” Saint Jerome, letter 125 to the monk Rusticus (P.L., vol. 22, col. 1081).]52.[Saint Basil, De renuntiatione saeculi, 4 (P.G., vol. 31, col. 363b), quoted by I. Hausherr, Direction spirituelle…, pp. 190–191.]53.J.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Similarly, Conference VII, 3: “For when we feel the aim of our heart directed towards what we purposed, insensibly the mind returns to its previous wandering thoughts and slips back with a more violent rush, and is taken up with daily distractions.”86.[Ibid., VII, 4.]87.Ibid., I, 16–17.88.Aeikinêtos kai polukinêtos. By using these Greek words (ibid., VII, 4), Cassian shows that he is borrowing the idea from Eastern Christian spirituality. One finds in Evagrius the characterization of the mind as planômenos and eukinêtos (chap. 15 and chap. 48 of The Praktikos).89.[J. Cassian, Conferences, IX, 4.]90.Ibid., I, 18.91.Ibid., VII, 5.92.Ibid., I, 20.93.Ibid.94.Thus Seneca asked himself if he was right to believe that everyone could be educated; or whether every truth was good for anyone without exception (De ira, III, 36).95.The expression is found in John Cassian, Institutes, VI, 11, among other places.96.Ibid., IV, 9.97.Ibid.98.Cf. the anecdote about the old man who through excessive reproaches drives a novice to despair. He finds his punishment in the fact that he becomes in turn a victim of the temptation that had beset the young man. (J. Cassian, Conferences, II, 13).99.Interesting in this regard is the advice that Saint Anthony is said to have given to loners: to note down on a tablet, as if they were going to show it to someone, their actions and the movements of their soul (Saint Athanasius, Vita Antonii, 55, 9).100.J. Cassian, Institutes, IV, 9.101.J. Cassian, Conferences, II, 10.102.There is an indirect effect, however, which Theonas himself underscores: the disciple had been convinced by the old man’s sermon on gluttony and secret thoughts [(ibid., II, 2)].103.[J. Cassian, Conferences, II, 11.]104.J. Cassian, Institutes, V, 2.Part II. Being Virgin1.[Dom David Amand and M.-Ch. Moons, “Une curieuse homélie grecque inédite sur la Virginité,” Revue bénédictine, 63, 1953, pp. 18–69.]2.Athenagoras, Legatio, chap. 33.3.Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, LXI.4.Saint [Ambrose], letter 18 (ad Valentianum).5.Saint Cyprian, De habitu virginum, 3.6.[Galen, Liber de sententiis politiae platonicae], cited by Adolf Von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Leipzig, 1906, [book 2, chap. 5].7.Thus in the Didache: “You will not kill, you will not commit adultery, you will not corrupt any children, you will not commit any fornication, you will not steal” (II, 2). Epistle of Barnabas: “Do not commit either fornication or adultery; do not corrupt children” (XIX, 4).8.[Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 23, 7.]1. Virginity and Continence1.Further on, we’ll come back to this idea that the virginity of children has a sacrificial value for the atonement of their parents’ sins.2.On the first theme cf. Tertullian, De virginibus velandis, XVI. On the second, Exhortatio ad castitatem, X.3.Tertullian, De virginibus velandis, XI.4.Ibid., XIV–XV.5.Tertullian, Exhortatio ad castitatem, X.6.Tertullian, De virginibus velandis, X. Same idea in Ad uxorem, I, 8: “not to crave after that which you know not […] nothing is easier.

• From Another Country (1962)

  So he walked over to the bar, and ordered the round, making a special trip to carry the brimming, viscous Alexander. He knew that Lorenzo liked rye and so he bought him a straight one and a bottle of beer, and a beer for Harold, and a double bourbon for himself. Let’s go for broke, he thought, the hell with it. Let’s see what happens. And he really could not tell, because he did not want to know, whether he was acting out of panic or recklessness or pain. There was certainly something he did not want to think about: he did not want to think about where Ida was, or what she was doing now. Not now, later for you, baby. He did not want to go home and lie awake, waiting, or walk up and down, staring at his typewriter and staring at the walls. Later for all that, later. And beneath all this was the void where anguish lived and questions crouched, which referred only to Vivaldo and to no one else on earth. Down there, down there, lived the raw, unformed substance for the creation of Vivaldo, and only he, Vivaldo, alone, could master it. “Here’s how,” he said, and, unsteadily, they raised their glasses, and drank. “Thanks, Vivaldo,” said Lorenzo, and downed his whiskey in a single swallow. Vivaldo looked at the young face, which was damp and a little gray and would soon be damper and grayer. The veins in the nose were thickening and darkening; and, sometimes, as now, when Lorenzo looked straight before him, the eyes were more baffled and infinitely lonelier than those of a child. And at such moments Belle watched him, too, sympathy struggling to overcome the relentless vacuity in her face. And Harold seemed hooded then, like a great bird watching from a tree. “I’d love to go back to Spain,” said Lorenzo. “Do you know Spain?” asked Vivaldo. “He used to live there,” Belle said. “He always talks about Spain when we get high. We were supposed to go this summer.” She bent her head over her cocktail glass, disappearing for a moment, like some unprecedented turtle, behind the citadel of her hair. “Are we going to go, baby?” Lorenzo spread his hands, helplessly. “If we can get enough bread, we’ll go.” “It shouldn’t cost much to get to Spain,” Harold said. “And you can live there for almost nothing.” “It’s a wonderful place,” said Lorenzo. “I lived in Barcelona, on a fellowship, for over a year. And I traveled all over Spain. You know, I think they’re the grooviest people in the world, the sweetest cats I ever met, I met in Spain. That’s right. They’ll do anything for you, baby, lend you their shirts, tell you the time, show you the ropes—” “Lend you their sisters,” Harold laughed. “No, man, they love their sisters—” “But hate their mothers?”

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  We may best quote at length again from chapter 15 : But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler, and He will preserve them and require them at the hand of His angels and His spirits, and at the hand of all His powers in order that He may preserve them and bless them, and that they may be His and He may be theirs from henceforth for ever. And now I announce unto thee that the children of Israel will not keep true to this ordinance, and they will not circumcise their sons according to all this law; for in the flesh of their circumcision they will omit this circumcision of their sons, and all of them, sons of Beliar, will leave their sons uncircumcised as they were born. And there will be great wrath from the Lord against the children of Israel, because they have forsaken His covenant and turned aside from His word, and provoked and blasphemed, inasmuch as they do not observe the ordinance of this law; for they have treated their members like the Gentiles; so that they may be removed and rooted out of the land. And there will no more be pardon or forgive- ness unto them ... for all the sin of this eternal error. (15.32-4) Here we see that 'Israel', which will be preserved and blessed by God for ever, is distinguished from (some of) the 'children of Israel', who become apostate and are damned without hope of pardon. One who does not observe the commandment to circumcise has not just disobeyed, he has 'broken the covenant' (15.26) or 'forsaken His covenant' (15.34). Thus we come to one of the most interesting features of Jubilees-the list of commandments which are 'eternal', transgression of which is a 'sin unto death' without atonement. Rejection of any one of these commandments, like transgression of the commandment to circumcise, was regarded by the author as forsaking the covenant and thus forfeiting one's status as a member of Israel and one destined for eternal salvation. Of the commandments singled out by the author (listed above, pp. 364-6), several are called 'eternal' or ones which are written 'on the heavenly tablets', but atonement for transgression is not explicitly excluded. These are the provision for a period of uncleanness after childbirth (3.8-11), the prohibition of nakedness 11 In ch. 23 the sequence of thought is difficult, and the chapter has figured largely in source hypo- theses. See, for example, Davenport, The Eschatology of Jubilees, p. 45. The conclusion of the chapter as it now stands, however, is unquestionably intended to predict ultimate salvation for Israel after a time of trouble and destruction. 3] Jubilees (3.31), the Feast of Weeks (6.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “What kind of sandwich would you like?” “Corned beef,” Rufus whispered, “on rye.” They watched while the meat was hacked off, slammed on bread, and placed on the counter. The man paid and Rufus took his sandwich over to the bar. He felt that everyone in the place knew what was going on, knew that Rufus was peddling his ass. But nobody seemed to care. Nobody looked at them. The noise at the bar continued, the radio continued to blare. The bartender served up a beer for Rufus and a whiskey for the man and rang up the money on the cash register. Rufus tried to turn his mind away from what was happening to him. He wolfed down his sandwich. But the heavy bread, the tepid meat, made him begin to feel nauseous; everything wavered before his eyes for a moment; he sipped his beer, trying to hold the sandwich down. “You were hungry.” Rufus, he thought, you can’t make this scene. There’s no way in the world you can make it. Don’t come on with the man. Just get out of here. “Would you like another sandwich?” The first sandwich was still threatening to come up. The bar stank of stale beer and piss and stale meat and unwashed bodies. Suddenly he felt that he was going to cry. “No, thank you,” he said, “I’m all right now.” The man watched him for a moment. “Then have another beer.” “No, thank you.” But he leaned his head on the bar, trembling. “Hey!” Lights roared around his head, the whole bar lurched, righted itself, faces weaved around him, the music from the radio pounded in his skull. The man’s face was very close to his: hard eyes and a cruel nose and flabby, brutal lips. He smelled the man’s odor. He pulled away. “I’m all right.” “You almost blacked out there for a minute.” The bartender watched them. “You better have a drink. Hey, Mac, give the kid a drink.” “You sure he’s all right?” “Yeah, he’s all right, I know him. Give him a drink.” The bartender filled a shot glass and placed it in front of Rufus. And Rufus stared into the gleaming cup, praying, Lord, don’t let it happen. Don’t let me go home with this man. I’ve got so little left, Lord, don’t let me lose it all. “Drink. It’ll do you good. Then you can come on over to my place and get some sleep.” He drank the whiskey, which first made him feel even sicker, then warmed him. He straightened up. “You live around here?” he asked the man. If you touch me, he thought, still with these strange tears threatening to boil over at any moment, I’ll beat the living shit out of you. I don’t want no more hands on me, no more, no more, no more. “Not very far. Forty-sixth Street.” They walked out of the bar, into the streets again.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Don’t kill me, Rufus,” he heard himself say. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m only trying to help.” The bathroom door was still open and the light still burned. The bald kitchen light burned mercilessly down on the two orange crates and the board which formed the kitchen table, and on the uncovered wash and bathtub. Dirty clothes lay flung in a corner. Beyond them, in the dim bedroom, two suitcases, Rufus’ and Leona’s, lay open in the middle of the floor. On the bed was a twisted gray sheet and a thin blanket. Rufus stared at him. He seemed not to believe Vivaldo; he seemed to long to believe him. His face twisted, he dropped the knife, and fell against Vivaldo, throwing his arms around him, trembling. Vivaldo led him into the bedroom and they sat down on the bed. “Somebody’s got to help me,” said Rufus at last, “somebody’s got to help me. This shit has got to stop.” “Can’t you tell me about it? You’re screwing up your life. And I don’t know why.” Rufus sighed and fell back, his arms beneath his head, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know, either. I don’t know up from down. I don’t know what I’m doing no more.” The entire building was silent. The room in which they sat seemed very far from the life breathing all around them, all over the island. Vivaldo said, gently, “You know, what you’re doing to Leona—that’s not right. Even if she were doing what you say she’s doing—it’s not right. If all you can do is beat her, well, then, you ought to leave her.” Rufus seemed to smile. “I guess there is something the matter with my head.” Then he was silent again; he twisted his body on the bed; he looked over at Vivaldo. “You put her in a cab?” “Yes,” Vivaldo said. “She’s gone to your place?” “Yes.” “You going back there?” “I thought, maybe, I’d stay here with you for awhile—if you don’t mind.” “What’re you trying to do—be a warden or something?” He said it with a smile, but there was no smile in his voice. “I just thought maybe you wanted company,” said Vivaldo. Rufus rose from the bed and walked restlessly up and down the two rooms.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Then the doors slammed, a loud sound, and it made him jump. The train, as though protesting its heavier burden, as though protesting the proximity of white buttock to black knee, groaned, lurched, the wheels seemed to scrape the track, making a tearing sound. Then it began to move uptown, where the masses would divide and the load become lighter. Lights flared and teetered by, they passed other platforms where people waited for other trains. Then they had the tunnel to themselves. The train rushed into the blackness with a phallic abandon, into the blackness which opened to receive it, opened, opened, the whole world shook with their coupling. Then, when it seemed that the roar and the movement would never cease, they came into the bright lights of 125th Street. The train gasped and moaned to a halt. He had thought that he would get off here, but he watched the people move toward the doors, watched the doors open, watched them leave. It was mainly black people who left. He had thought that he would get off here and go home; but he watched the girl who reminded him of his sister as she moved sullenly past white people and stood for a moment on the platform before walking toward the steps. Suddenly he knew that he was never going home any more. The train began to move, half-empty now; and with each stop it became lighter; soon the white people who were left looked at him oddly. He felt their stares but he felt far away from them. You took the best. So why not take the rest? He got off at the station named for the bridge built to honor the father of his country. And walked up the steps, into the streets, which were empty. Tall apartment buildings, lightless, loomed against the dark sky and seemed to be watching him, seemed to be pressing down on him. The bridge was nearly over his head, intolerably high; but he did not yet see the water. He felt it, he smelled it. He thought how he had never before understood how an animal could smell water. But it was over there, past the highway, where he could see the speeding cars. Then he stood on the bridge, looking over, looking down. Now the lights of the cars on the highway seemed to be writing an endless message, writing with awful speed in a fine, unreadable script. There were muted lights on the Jersey shore and here and there a neon flame advertising something somebody had for sale. He began to walk slowly to the center of the bridge, observing that, from this height, the city which had been so dark as he walked through it seemed to be on fire.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In Friuli, a country, though cold, glad with goodly mountains and store of rivers and clear springs, is a city called Udine, wherein was aforetime a fair and noble lady called Madam Dianora, the wife of a wealthy gentleman named Gilberto, who was very debonair and easy of composition. The lady's charm procured her to be passionately loved of a noble and great baron by name Messer Ansaldo Gradense, a man of high condition and everywhere renowned for prowess and courtesy. He loved her fervently and did all that lay in his power to be beloved of her, to which end he frequently solicited her with messages, but wearied himself in vain. At last, his importunities being irksome to the lady and she seeing that, for all she denied him everything he sought of her, he stinted not therefor to love and solicit her, she determined to seek to rid herself of him by means of an extraordinary and in her judgment an impossible demand; wherefore she said one day to a woman, who came often to her on his part, 'Good woman, thou hast many times avouched to me that Messer Ansaldo loveth me over all things and hast proffered me marvellous great gifts on his part, which I would have him keep to himself, seeing that never thereby might I be prevailed upon to love him or comply with his wishes; but, an I could be certified that he loveth me in very deed as much as thou sayest, I might doubtless bring myself to love him and do that which he willeth; wherefore, an he choose to certify me of this with that which I shall require of him, I shall be ready to do his commandments.' Quoth the good woman, 'And what is that, madam, which you would have him do?' 'That which I desire,' replied the lady, 'is this; I will have, for this coming month of January, a garden, near this city, full of green grass and flowers and trees in full leaf, no otherwise than as it were May; the which if he contrive not, let him never more send me thee nor any other, for that, an he importune me more, so surely as I have hitherto kept his pursuit hidden from my husband and my kinsfolk, I will study to rid myself of him by complaining to them.'

• From Real Life (2020)

  Moisissure et poussière, comme dans l’une de ces affreuses reconstitutions d’un événement volcanique – des civilisations entières figées dans la cendre, la suie et le calcaire rêche. Une enveloppe souple de spores vertes recouvrait la gélose et lui cacha d’abord une pellicule bactérienne suintante. La gélatine avait l’air d’avoir été frottée par le bout d’un pinceau rugueux. Wallace vérifia toutes ses plaques, toutes ses bassines de plastique, et trouva dans toutes le même spectacle d’horreur. La contamination bactérienne était si avancée qu’elle débordait des couvercles et coulait sur ses mains comme du pus d’une plaie. Ce n’était pas la première fois que ses plaques étaient contaminées ou moisies. Ça lui arrivait souvent au cours de sa première année, avant qu’il améliore sa technique et sa propreté. Avant qu’il apprenne à être vigilant, méticuleux. Il avait changé, désormais. Il savait parfaitement préserver ses souches. Non, un carnage de cette ampleur semblait dépasser le cadre de la pure négligence. Il paraissait tout sauf accidentel. On aurait dit la vengeance d’un dieu mesquin. Wallace, debout dans le labo, secoua la tête en riant à part lui. Il rit, car il trouvait ça drôle, même s’il aurait eu peine à expliquer pourquoi. Comme une plaisanterie jaillissant sans crier gare d’un concours de circonstances absolument fortuit. Ces derniers mois, pour la première fois en quatre ans de troisième cycle, il commençait à avoir l’impression d’être au seuil d’une découverte. Il était arrivé au périmètre d’une idée, il sentait les limites de ses questionnements, la profondeur et l’amplitude de ses préoccupations. Il se réveillait avec la forme de cette idée en train de se préciser peu à peu dans son esprit, et cette idée l’avait aidé à tenir pendant toutes les heures mornes, les corvées sans éclat, la douleur sourde de se lever à neuf heures pour retourner travailler quand il s’était couché à cinq. Ce qui avait tournoyé dans la clarté lumineuse des hautes fenêtres du labo, comme un grain ou une particule de poussière, c’était l’espoir, la perspective d’un bref instant de lucidité. Que lui restait-il de tout ça ? Un tas de nématodes agonisants. Il avait vérifié comment ils allaient trois jours auparavant seulement, et ils étaient magnifiques, parfaits. Il les avait placés dans l’obscurité fraîche de l’incubateur afin de les laisser s’épanouir sans intervention extérieure pendant trois jours. Peut-être que s’il avait jeté un œil la veille. Mais non, il aurait déjà été trop tard. Il y avait cru, cet été. Il avait pensé, enfin, qu’il accomplissait quelque chose. Puis, dans sa boîte de réception, comme tous les vendredis : Rendez-vous à la jetée, on squattera une table .

• From Another Country (1962)

  At his touch, she seemed to spring. Her eyes came alive at once, and her pale lips tensed. And her smile was pale. She said, “Oh. I thought you’d never get here.” He had surmounted a desperate temptation not to come at all, and had half-hoped that he would not find her there. She was so pale and seemed, in this cold, dazzling place, so helpless, that his heart turned over. He was half an hour late. He said, “Dear Cass, please forgive me, it’s hard to get anywhere in weather like this. How are you?” “Dead.” She did not move, merely stared at the tip of her cigarette as though she were hypnotized by it. “I’ve had no sleep.” Her voice was very light and calm. “You picked a strange place for us to meet.” “Did I?” She looked unseeingly around; then looked at him. The blank despair in her face seemed to take notice, in the far distance, of him, and her face softened into sorrow. “I guess I did. I just thought—well, nobody’s likely to overhear us, and I—I just couldn’t think of any other place.” He had been about to suggest that they leave, but her white face and the fact of the rain checked him. “It’s all right,” he said. He took her arm, they started aimlessly up the steps. He realized that he was terribly hungry. “I can’t stay with you very long, because I left the kids alone. But I told Richard that I was coming out—that I was going to try to see you today.” They reached the first of a labyrinthine series of rooms, shifting and crackling with groups of people, with bright paintings above and around them, and stretching into the far distance, like tombstones with unreadable inscriptions. The people moved in waves, like tourists in a foreign graveyard. Occasionally, a single mourner, dreaming of some vanished relationship, stood alone in adoration or revery before a massive memorial—but they mainly evinced, moving restlessly here and there, the democratic gaiety. Cass and Eric moved in some panic through this crowd, trying to find a quieter place; through fields of French impressionists and cubists and cacophonous modern masters, into a smaller room dominated by an enormous painting, executed, principally, in red, before which two students, a girl and a boy, stood holding hands. “Was it very bad, Cass? last night?” He asked this in a low voice as they stood before a painting in cool yellow, of a girl with a long neck, in a yellow dress, with yellow hair.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Now, bowed down with the memory of all that had happened since that day, he wandered helplessly back to Forty-second Street and stopped before the large bar and grill on the corner. Near him, just beyond the plate glass, stood the sandwich man behind his counter, the meat arrayed on the steam table beneath him. Bread and rolls, mustard, relish, salt and pepper, stood at the level of his chest. He was a big man, wearing white, with a blank, red, brutal face. From time to time he expertly knifed off a sandwich for one of the derelicts within. The old seemed reconciled to being there, to having no teeth, no hair, having no life. Some laughed together, the young, with dead eyes set in yellow faces, the slackness of their bodies making vivid the history of their degradation. They were the prey that was no longer hunted, though they were scarcely aware of this new condition and could not bear to leave the place where they had first been spoiled. And the hunters were there, far more assured and patient than the prey. In any of the world’s cities, on a winter night, a boy can be bought for the price of a beer and the promise of warm blankets. Rufus shivered, his hands in his pockets, looking through the window and wondering what to do. He thought of walking to Harlem but he was afraid of the police he would encounter in his passage through the city; and he did not see how he could face his parents or his sister. When he had last seen Ida, he had told her that he and Leona were about to make it to Mexico, where, he said, people would leave them alone. But no one had heard from him since then. Now a big, rough-looking man, well dressed, white, with black-and-gray hair, came out of the bar. He paused next to Rufus, looking up and down the street. Rufus did not move, though he wanted to; his mind began to race, painfully, and his empty stomach turned over. Once again, sweat broke out on his forehead. Something in him knew what was about to happen; something in him died in the freezing second before the man walked over to him and said: “It’s cold out here. Wouldn’t you like to come in and have a drink with me?” “I’d rather have a sandwich,” Rufus muttered, and thought You’ve really hit the bottom now. “Well, you can have a sandwich, too. There’s no law that says you can’t.” Rufus looked up and down the street, then looked into the man’s ice-cold, ice-white face. He reminded himself that he knew the score, he’d been around; neither was this the first time during his wanderings that he had consented to the bleakly physical exchange; and yet he felt that he would never be able to endure the touch of this man. They entered the bar and grill.

• From Another Country (1962)

  There was some pot on the scene and he was a little high. He was feeling great. And, during the last set, he came doubly alive because the saxophone player, who had been way out all night, took off on a terrific solo. He was a kid of about the same age as Rufus, from some insane place like Jersey City or Syracuse, but somewhere along the line he had discovered that he could say it with a saxophone. He had a lot to say. He stood there, wide-legged, humping the air, filling his barrel chest, shivering in the rags of his twenty-odd years, and screaming through the horn Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And, again, Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? This, anyway, was the question Rufus heard, the same phrase, unbearably, endlessly, and variously repeated, with all of the force the boy had. The silence of the listeners became strict with abruptly focused attention, cigarettes were unlit, and drinks stayed on the tables; and in all of the faces, even the most ruined and most dull, a curious, wary light appeared. They were being assaulted by the saxophonist who perhaps no longer wanted their love and merely hurled his outrage at them with the same contemptuous, pagan pride with which he humped the air. And yet the question was terrible and real; the boy was blowing with his lungs and guts out of his own short past; somewhere in that past, in the gutters or gang fights or gang shags; in the acrid room, on the sperm-stiffened blanket, behind marijuana or the needle, under the smell of piss in the precinct basement, he had received the blow from which he never would recover and this no one wanted to believe. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? The men on the stand stayed with him, cool and at a little distance, adding and questioning and corroborating, holding it down as well as they could with an ironical self-mockery; but each man knew that the boy was blowing for every one of them. When the set ended they were all soaking. Rufus smelled his odor and the odor of the men around him and “Well, that’s it,” said the bass man. The crowd was yelling for more but they did their theme song and the lights came on. And he had played the last set of his last gig. He was going to leave his traps there until Monday afternoon. When he stepped down from the stand there was this blonde girl, very plainly dressed, standing looking at him. “What’s on your mind, baby?” he asked her. Everybody was busy all around them, preparing to make it to the party. It was spring and the air was charged. “What’s on your mind?” she countered, but it was clear that she simply had not known what else to say.