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.

Page 196 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Oh, merciful heavens, do go away Girolamo. We are no longer children, and the time has passed for proclaiming our love from the house-tops. As you can see, I am married, and therefore it is no longer proper for me to care for any other man but my husband. Hence I beseech you in God’s name to get out of here. If my husband were to hear you, even supposing nothing more serious came of it, it would certainly follow that I could never live in peace with him again, whereas up to now he has loved me and we live calmly and contentedly together.’ To hear her talking like this, the young man was driven to the brink of despair. He reminded her of the times they had spent in each other’s company and of the fact that his love for her had never diminished despite their separation. He poured out a stream of entreaties and promised her the moon. But he was unable to make the slightest impression. All he wanted to do now was to die, and so finally, invoking the great love he bore her, he pleaded with her to let him lie down at her side so that he could get warm, pointing out that his limbs had turned numb with cold whilst he was waiting for her. He assured her that he would neither talk to her nor touch her, and promised to go away as soon as he had warmed himself up a little. Feeling rather sorry for him, Salvestra agreed to let him do it, but only if he kept his promises. So the young man lay down at her side without attempting to touch her, and, concentrating his thoughts on his long love for her, on her present coldness towards him, and on the dashing of his hopes, he resolved not to go on living. Without uttering a word, he clenched his fists and held his breath until finally he expired at her side. After a while, wondering what he was doing and fearing lest her husband should wake up, the girl made a move. ‘Girolamo,’ she whispered, ‘it’s time for you to be going.’ On receiving no answer, she assumed that he had fallen asleep. So she stretched out her hand to wake him up and began to prod him, but found to her great astonishment that he was as cold as ice to the touch. She then prodded him more vigorously but it had no effect, and after trying once more she realized that he was dead. The discovery filled her with dismay and for some time she lay there without the slightest notion what to do.

• From Trash (1988)

  By the end of the month, I’d taken to sitting on the motel roof—no longer stoned, but still writing. By then I was also writing letters to all the women I really didn’t expect to see again, explaining the things that writing my stories had made real to me. I did not intend to mail those letters, and never did. The letters themselves were stories—mostly lies—self-justifying, awkward, and desperate. I finished that month, got assigned to a distant city, put away my yellow papers, and moved—making sure no one who knew me from before could find me. I threw myself into the women’s community, fell in love every third day, and started trying to be serious about writing—poems and essays and the beginnings of stories. I even helped edit a feminist magazine. Throughout that time I told stories—mostly true stories about myself and my family and my lovers in a drawl that made them all funnier than they were. Though that was mostly a good time for me, I wrote nothing that struck me as worth the trouble of actually keeping. I did not tuck those new stories away with the yellow pads I had sealed up in a blanket box of my mother’s. I told myself the yellow pages were as raw and unworked as I felt myself to be, and the funny stories I was telling people were better, were the work of someone who was going to be a “real” writer. It was three years before I pulled out those old yellow sheets and read them, and saw how thin and self-serving my funny stories had become. The stuff on those yellow pads was bitter. I could not recognize myself in that bitter whiny hateful voice telling over all those horrible violent memories. They were, oddly, the same stories I’d been telling for years, but somehow drastically different. Telling them out loud, I’d made them ironic and playful. The characters became eccentric, fascinating—not the cold-eyed, mean, and nasty bastards they were on the yellow pages, the frightened dangerous women and the more dangerous and just as frightened men. I could not stand it, neither the words on the page nor what they told me about myself. My neck and teeth began to ache, and I was not at all sure I really wanted to live with this stuff inside me. But holding on to them, reading them over again, became a part of the process of survival, of deciding once more to live—and clinging to that decision. For me those stories were not distraction or entertainment; they were the stuff of my life, and they were necessary in ways I could barely understand. Still I took those stories and wrote them again. I made some of them funny. I made some of them poems.

• From Trash (1988)

  “It’s just the pain,” the midwife told Tucker, but neither of them really believed that. Tucker believed this was the time when Shirley told him the whole truth. The midwife did squeeze Tucker’s arm once and say, “Do you notice how she don’t really scream?” The baby finally came in two pieces covered in a stinking bloody scum. Tucker borrowed a car and wrapped Shirley in three blankets to take her to the county hospital. The midwife wrapped up the baby in flour sacks to carry in with her, but Shirley became hysterical when they tried to put it in the car. They had to put it in the trunk before she would calm down. “Don’t you think I knew it was dead?” Shirley curled her fists around Tucker’s wrists so tight he thought the little bones would crack. “I told you. You put death in me.” “No telling what causes this kind of thing,” the doctor told Tucker. “But she’s had her last child, that’s for sure.” “You’ve had your last poke at me,” Shirley whispered to Tucker when she could talk again. “I never wanted it, and if you come to me for it again, I’ll cut your thing off and feed it to these damn brats you pulled out of me.” Tucker said nothing. The doctor had told him he’d have to be very gentle with Shirley for a while, that she was gonna be weak for a good long time. “You don’t know Shirley,” Tucker told him. “She might be sick, but she an’t never gonna be weak.” It was October when the baby was born dead. Shirley Boatwright would not go back to work till May. The pennies saved up over the summer were gone by then, as were the canned goods Tucker’s sisters had sent over in the fall. By February, half the Boatwright children were wearing strips of sacking tied around their broken shoes. Every morning they’d stand still while Shirley directed Mattie in tying the sacking correctly. It was Bo’s birthday, the eleventh of that month, when she caught hold of Mattie’s sleeve as she headed for the door with the other children. “No,” Shirley said. “You’re thirteen now, no need to waste your time in school. You either, Bo.” All the children stood still for a moment, and then Mattie and Bo stepped back and let the others go. It took Shirley half an hour to get herself dressed, shaking off Mattie’s hand when she came to help. It took them all another hour to walk the eight blocks together to the mill. Neither Bo nor Mattie spoke. Both of them just kept looking up to their mother with swollen frightened eyes.

• From Trash (1988)

  I put it all away. I began to live my life as if nothing I did would survive the day in which I did it. I used my grief and hatred to wall off my childhood, my history, my sense of being part of anything greater than myself. I used women and liquor, constant righteous political work, and a series of grimly endured ordeals to convince myself that I had nothing to decide, that I needed nothing more than what other people considered important to sustain me. I worked on a feminist journal. I read political theory, history, psychology, and got a degree in anthropology as if that would quiet the roar in my own head. I watched other women love each other, war with each other, and take each other apart while never acknowledging the damage we all did to each other. I went through books and conferences, CR groups and study groups, organizing committees and pragmatic coalition fronts. I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn’t know it. Just as I did not know that what I needed had to come up from inside me, not be laid over the top of my head. The bitterness with which I had been born, that had been nurtured in me, could not be eased with a lover or a fight or any number of late-night meetings and clumsily written manifestos. It may never be eased. The decision to live when everything inside and out shouts death is not a matter of moments but years, and no one has ever told me how you know when it is accomplished.

• From Trash (1988)

  He used it to beat them all to death and went back to work in the morning. Cousin Melvina married at fourteen, had three kids in two and a half years, and welfare took them all away. She ran off with a carnival mechanic, had three more babies before he left her for a motorcycle acrobat. Welfare took those, too. But the next baby was hydrocephalic, a little waterhead they left with her, and the three that followed, even the one she used to hate so—the one she had after she fell off the porch and couldn’t remember whose child it was. “How many children do you have?” I asked her. “You mean the ones I have, or the ones I had? Four,” she told me, “or eleven.” My aunt, the one I was named for, tried to take off for Oklahoma. That was after she’d lost the youngest girl and they told her Bo would never be “right.” She packed up biscuits, cold chicken, and Coca-Cola; a lot of loose clothes; Cora and her new baby, Cy; and the four youngest girls. They set off from Greenville in the afternoon, hoping to make Oklahoma by the weekend, but they only got as far as Augusta. The bridge there went out under them. “An Act of God,” my uncle said. My aunt and Cora crawled out downriver, and two of the girls turned up in the weeds, screaming loud enough to be found in the dark. But one of the girls never came up out of that dark water, and Nancy, who had been holding Cy, was found still wrapped around the baby, in the water, under the car. “An Act of God,” my aunt said. “God’s got one damn sick sense of humor.” My sister had her baby in a bad year. Before he was born we had talked about it. “Are you afraid?” I asked. “He’ll be fine,” she’d replied, not understanding, speaking instead to the other fear. “Don’t we have a tradition of bastards?” He was fine, a classically ugly healthy little boy with that shock of white hair that marked so many of us. But afterward, it was that bad year with my sister down with pleurisy, then cystitis, and no work, no money, having to move back home with my cold-eyed stepfather. I would come home to see her, from the woman I could not admit I’d been with, and take my infinitely fragile nephew and hold him, rocking him, rocking myself. One night I came home to screaming—the baby, my sister, no one else there. She was standing by the crib, bent over, screaming red-faced. “Shut up! Shut up!” With each word her fist slammed the mattress fanning the baby’s ear. “Don’t!”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  So careful she was when they were together, so guarded lest she should betray her feelings, so pitifully insistent that all was yet well — that life had in no way lessened her courage. But Martin was not deceived by these protests, knowing how she clung to what he could offer, how gladly she turned to the simple things that so easily come to those who are normal. Under all her parade of gallantry he divined a great weariness of spirit, a great longing to be at peace with the world, to be able to face her fellow men with the comforting knowledge that she need not fear them, that their friendship would be hers for the asking, that their laws and their codes would be her protection. All this Martin perceived; but Stephen’s perceptions were even more accurate and far- reaching, for to her there had come the despairing knowledge that the woman she loved was deeply unhappy. At first she had blinded herself to this truth, sustained by the passionate stress of the battle, by her power to hold in despite of the man, by the eager response that she had awakened. Yet the day came when she was no longer blind, when nothing counted in all the world except this grievous unhappiness that was being silently borne by Mary. Martin, if he had wished for revenge, might have taken his fill of it now from Stephen. Little did he know how, one by one, Mary was weakening her defences; gradually undermining her will, her fierce determination to hold, the arrogance of the male that was in her. All this the man was never to know; it was Stephen’s secret, and she knew how to keep it. But one night she suddenly pushed Mary away, blindly, scarcely knowing what she was doing; conscious only that the weapon she thus laid aside had become a thing altogether unworthy, an outrage upon her love for this girl. And that night there followed the terrible thought that her love itself was a kind of outrage. And now she must pay very dearly indeed for that inherent respect of the normal which nothing had ever been able to destroy, not even the long years of persecution — an added burden it was, handed down by the silent but watchful founders of Morton. She must pay for the instinct which, in earliest childhood, had made _ her feel something akin to worship for the perfect thing which 498 THE WELL OF LONELINESS

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The sun, which was exceeding hot, being now risen to the meridian, beat full and straight upon her tender and delicate body and upon her head, which was all uncovered, with such force that not only did it burn her flesh, wherever it touched it, but cracked and opened it all over little by little, and such was the pain of the burning that it constrained her to awake, albeit she slept fast. Feeling herself on the roast and moving somewhat, it seemed as if all her scorched skin cracked and clove asunder for the motion, as we see happen with a scorched sheepskin, if any stretch it, and to boot her head irked her so sore that it seemed it would burst, which was no wonder. And the platform of the tower was so burning hot that she could find no restingplace there either for her feet or for otherwhat; wherefore, without standing fast, she still removed now hither and now thither, weeping. Moreover, there being not a breath of wind, the flies and gads flocked thither in swarms and settling upon her cracked flesh, stung her so cruelly that each prick seemed to her a pike-stab; wherefore she stinted not to fling her hands about, still cursing herself, her life, her lover and the scholar. Being thus by the inexpressible heat of the sun, by the flies and the gads and likewise by hunger, but much more by thirst, and by a thousand irksome thoughts, to boot, tortured and stung and pierced to the quick, she started to her feet and addressed herself to look if she might see or hear any one near at hand, resolved, whatever might betide thereof, to call him and crave aid. But of this resource also had her unfriendly fortune deprived her. The husbandmen were all departed from the fields for the heat, more by token that none had come that day to work therenigh, they being all engaged in threshing out their sheaves beside their houses; wherefore she heard nought but crickets and saw the Arno, which latter sight, provoking in her desire of its waters, abated not her thirst, but rather increased it. In several places also she saw thickets and shady places and houses here and there, which were all alike to her an anguish for desire of them. What more shall we say of the ill-starred lady? The sun overhead and the heat of the platform underfoot and the stings of the flies and gads on every side had so entreated her that, whereas with her whiteness she had overcome the darkness of the foregoing night, she was presently grown red as ruddle,[391] and all bescabbed as she was with blood, had seemed to whoso saw her the foulest thing in the world. [Footnote 391: Lit. red as rabies (_rabbia_). Some commentators suppose that Boccaccio meant to write _robbia_, madder.]

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Joy can be known only through despair here. My father was by nature sensitive. He instinctively understood cloud language, the meanings of birds and their appearances, and water. What took precedence in his expression was his father’s violent hand. My father was sent from home at a young age to a military academy. He learned anger as a method to control sensitivity. When my father asked my mother to dance, she shyly but surely entered his arms. They had just met, yet it felt like they had known each other for as far as forever can reach. When my mother first saw this man who would be my father, she knew he was the one, despite his reputation for being a man who loved women. There were many women chasing after him, buying him drinks, pulling on him to dance. They wanted to touch him for his sensual good looks. I imagine that my mother struck a light inside the deepest room in his heart. His charisma was power that had come down from the ancestors. It is something given to us to use to assist others. I was close to my father through the end. He never spoke of my mother in a negative manner. My parents danced. What dancers they were, their feet jumping in swing, together in time. My mother-to-be was fire. Those of fire move about the earth with inspiration and purpose. They are creative, and can consume and be consumed by their desires. They are looking for purpose, a place in which to create. They can be so entranced with the excitement of creation that their dreams burn up, turn to ashes. My father-to-be was of the water, and could not find a hold on the banks of earthiness. Water people can easily get lost. And they may not comprehend that they are lost. They succumb easily to the spirits of alcohol and drugs. They will always search for a vision that cannot be found on earth. Their dance was an ancient dance, one that most of us who take on breath know. It is fate setting the story into place. Within the year, I was born to earth, of water and fire. Because I came through them in this life, I would be quick to despair, and understand how to enter and emerge from ancestor realms. I had no way to translate the journey and what I would find there until I found poetry. THIS IS MY HEART This is my heart. It is a good heart. Weaves a membrane of mist and fire. When we speak love in the flower world My heart is close enough to sing to you in a language too clumsy for human words. This is my head. It is a good head. Whirs inside with a swarm of worries. What is the source of this mystery? Why can’t I see it right here, right now, as real as these hands hammering the world together? This is my soul.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Rockets of pain, burning rockets of pain — their pain, her pain, all welded together into one great consuming agony. Rocket 506 THE WELL OF LONELINESS of pain that shot up and burst, dropping scorching tears of fire on the spirit — her pain, their pain . . . all the misery at Alec’s. And the press and the clamour of those countless others — they fought, they trampled, they were getting her under. In their mad- ness to become articulate through her, they were tearing her to pieces, getting her under. They were everywhere now, cutting off her retreat; neither bolts nor bars would avail to save her. The walls fell down and crumbled before them; at the cry of their suffering the walls fell and crumbled: ‘ We are coming, Stephen —we are still coming on, and our name is legion — you dare not disown us!’ She raised her arms, trying to ward them off, but they closed in and in: ‘ You dare not disown us! ? They possessed her. Her barren womb became fruitful — it ached with its fearful and sterile burden. It ached with the fierce yet helpless children who would clamour in vain for their right to salvation. They would turn first to God, and then to the world, and then to her. They would cry out accusing: ‘ We have asked for bread; will you give us a stone? Answer us: will you give us a stone? You, God, in Whom we, the outcast, believe; you, world, into which we are pitilessly born; you, Stephen, who have drained our cup to the dregs — we have asked for bread; will you give us a stone? ’ And now there was only one voice, one demand; her own voice into which those millions had entered. A voice like the aw- ful, deep rolling of thunder; a demand like the gathering together of great waters. A terrifying voice that made her ears throb, that made her brain throb, that shook her very entrails, until she must stagger and all but fall beneath this appalling burden of sound that strangled her in its will to be uttered. ‘ God,’ she gasped, ‘ we believe; we have told You we believe . . . We have not denied You, then rise up and defend us. Ac- knowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence! ’ THE END Ta a a Ee ARS See ee EY ed (OEE OL NOON ve ne ON Tits 7 He 7 H nt i ; Hat Hi 7 o if it he 7 ite Hf ey i i i ih i Fieber ilm pi aN iff iit i PH s) i arels eae PaS i i fel Fy ; HAANS Rhone be i +h j i $ i J ii if air iit Hi ae st ait Heit holy Tied (iret f jji fei H ast SE Satta SEHR HIFR SER see

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Rabbit realized he’d made a clay man with no ears. I was not brave. I was pulled from my mother, whom I almost killed with the struggle. I was hooked up to a ventilator. I was dying even as I was being born. This continues to be a theme in my life, this struggle with transitions: between night and day, here and there, desert and water, earth and sky, and beginnings and endings. As I was being born, I had the same dying, gulping breaths as my father’s last breaths when he died several years later, in a small Texas town near the water. We are linked by water and fire. My father and I surfaced in an ancient memory once when I was in my thirties. We lived by the water near a volcano. We who lived there had a long relationship with the spirit of the volcano. Our behavior broke the trust. We littered the land with trash and discord. We forgot to acknowledge the gifts. The volcano mountain blew with a terrible pressure. The earth rocked and fell open. Lava the color of fiery blood streamed toward us. Fire and ash rained down. We panicked for air. The man who was now my father and I stumbled to the sea with our lungs on fire. I was his companion, friend, not the daughter I was to be in this life, this story. Many others rushed toward the sea to get away from the raining fire. We fell into a boat docked near shore, as did many others, more than the boat could carry. We attempted to move away from the falling ash, into the ocean, which was moving oddly in the disturbance. Hundreds were jumping into the water, clinging to the boat. I lost earth consciousness. One version of the Mvskoke creation story begins with a volcano. It marked our journey from a place in the west. Sam Proctor, the helis heya or medicine maker of my tribal town, told me that in that time seven Hawaiian canoes came to shore. Those people became part of us. We walked east to more stable lands. A compassionate fire appeared before us to guide us. We made it to what is now known as the southeastern part of the United States. Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts. My guardian remains, and reminds me of those older generations of Creek people who stayed close to the teachings, like my cousin John Jacobs of

• From Carmina (-50)

  Siqua recordanti benefacta priora uoluptas est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium, nec sanctam uiolasse fidem, nec foedere in ullo diuum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, multa parata manent in longa aetate, Catulle, 5 ex hoc ingrato gaudia amore tibi. nam quaecumque homines bene cuiquam aut dicere possunt aut facere, haec a te dictaque factaque sunt. omnia quae ingratae perierunt credita menti. quare iam te cur amplius excrucies? 10 quin tu animo offirmas atque istinc te ipse reducis, et dis inuitis desinis esse miser? difficile est longum subito deponere amorem. difficile est, uerum hoc qua lubet efficias: una salus haec est, hoc est tibi peruincendum, 15 hoc facias, siue id non pote siue pote. o di, si uestrum est misereri, aut si quibus umquam extremam iam ipsa in morte tulistis opem, me miserum aspicite et, si uitam puriter egi, eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi, 20 sei mihi surrepens imos ut torpor in artus expulit ex omni pectore laetitias. non iam illud quaero, contra ut me diligat illa, aut, quod non potis est, esse pudica uelit: ipse ualere opto et taetram hunc deponere morbum. 25 o di, reddite mi hoc pro pietate mea. LXXVII Rufe mihi frustra ac nequiquam credite amice (frustra? immo magno cum pretio atque malo), sicine subrepsti mei, atque intestina perurens ei misero eripuisti omnia nostra bona? eripuisti, heu heu nostrae crudele uenenum 5 uitae, heu heu nostrae pestis amicitiae. sed nunc id doleo, quod purae pura puellae suauia comminxit spurca saliua tua. uerum id non impune feres: nam te omnia saecla noscent, et qui sis fama loquetur anus. 10 LXXVIII Gallus habet fratres, quorum est lepidissima coniunx alterius, lepidus filius alterius. Gallus homo est bellus: nam dulces iungit amores, cum puero ut bello bella puella cubet. Gallus homo est stultus, nec se uidet esse maritum, 5 qui patruus patrui monstret adulterium. LXXIX Lesbius est pulcer. quid ni? quem Lesbia malit quam te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua. sed tamen hic pulcer uendat cum gente Catullum, si tria natorum suauia reppererit. LXXX Quid dicam, Gelli, quare rosea ista labella hiberna fiant candidiora niue, mane domo cum exis et cum te octaua quiete e molli longo suscitat hora die? nescio quid certe est: an uere fama susurrat 5 grandia te medii tenta uorare uiri? sic certe est: clamant Victoris rupta miselli ilia, et emulso labra notata sero. LXXXI Nemone in tanto potuit populo esse, Iuuenti, bellus homo, quem tu diligere inciperes, praeterquam iste tuus moribunda ab sede Pisauri hospes inaurata pallidior statua, qui tibi nunc cordi est, quem tu praeponere nobis 5 audes, et nescis quod facinus facias? LXXXII Quinti, si tibi uis oculos debere Catullum aut aliud si quid carius est oculis, eripere ei noli, multo quod carius illi est oculis seu quid carius est oculis. LXXXIII

• From Carmina (-50)

  quis angusta malis cum moenia uexarentur, 80 ipse suum Theseus pro caris corpus Athenis proicere optauit potius quam talia Cretam funera Cecropiae nec funera portarentur. atque ita naue leui nitens ac lenibus auris magnanimum ad Minoa uenit sedesque superbas. 85 hunc simul ac cupido conspexit lumine uirgo regia, quam suauis exspirans castus odores lectulus in molli complexu matris alebat, quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtus, auraue distinctos educit uerna colores, 90 non prius ex illo flagrantia declinauit lumina, quam cuncto concepit corpore flammam funditus atque imis exarsit tota medullis. heu misere exagitans immiti corde furores sancte puer, curis hominum qui gaudia misces, 95 quaeque regis Golgos quaeque Idalium frondosum, qualibus incensam iactastis mente puellam fluctibus, in flauo saepe hospite suspirantem! quantos illa tulit languenti corde timores! quanto saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri! 100 cum saeuum cupiens contra contendere monstrum aut mortem appeteret Theseus aut praemia laudis. non ingrata tamen frustra munuscula diuis promittens tacito succendit uota labello. nam uelut in summo quatientem brachia Tauro 105 quercum, aut conigeram sudanti cortice pinum, indomitus turbo contorquens flamine robur, eruit (illa procul radicitus exturbata prona cadit, late quaeuiscumque obuia frangens), sic domito saeuum prostrauit corpore Theseus 110 nequiquam uanis iactantem cornua uentis. inde pedem sospes multa cum laude reflexit errabunda regens tenui uestigia filo, ne labyrintheis e flexibus egredientem tecti frustraretur inobseruabilis error. 115 sed quid ego a primo digressus carmine plura commemorem, ut linquens genitoris filia uultum, ut consanguineae complexum, ut denique matris, quae misera in nata deperdita lamentata est, omnibus his Thesei dulcem praeoptarit amorem: 120 aut ut uecta ratis spumosa ad litora Diae, aut ut eam deuincta .... lumina somno liquerit immemori discedens pectore coniunx? saepe illam perhibent ardenti corde furentem clarisonas imo fudisse e pectore uoces, 125 ac tum praeruptos tristem conscendere montes, unde aciem in pelagi uastos protenderet aestus, tum tremuli salis aduersas procurrere in undas mollia nudatae tollentem tegmina surae, atque haec extremis maestam dixisse querellis, 130 frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem. 'sicine me patriis auectam, perfide, ab aris, perfide, deserto liquisti in litore, Theseu? sicine discedens neglecto numine diuum, immemor a deuota domum periuria portas? 135 nullane res potuit crudelis flectere mentis consilium? tibi nulla fuit clementia praesto, immite ut nostri uellet miserescere pectus? at non haec quondam nobis promissa dedisti uoce: mihi non haec miserae sperare iubebas, 140 sed conubia laeta, sed optatos hymenaeos, quae cuncta aerei discerpunt irrita uenti. tum iam nulla uiro iuranti femina credat, nulla uiri speret sermones esse fideles; quis dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci, 145 nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt: sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est, dicta nihil metuere, nihil periuria curant. certe ego te in medio uersantem turbine leti eripui, et potius germanum amittere creui, 150 quam tibi fallaci supremo in tempore dessem. pro quo dilaceranda feris dabor alitibusque praeda, neque iniacta tumulabor mortua terra. quaenam te genuit sola sub rupe leaena, quod mare conceptum spumantibus exspuit undis, 155 quae Syrtis, quae Scylla rapax, quae uasta Carybdis, talia qui reddis pro dulci praemia uita?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Mary wept and cried out against her: ‘I won’t let you go—I won’t let you, I tell you! It’s your fault if I love you the way I do. I can’t do without you, you’ve taught me to need you, and now .. .’ In half-shamed, half-defiant words she must stand there and plead for what Stephen withheld, and Stephen must listen to such pleading from Mary. Then before the girl realized it she had said: ‘ But for you, I could have loved Martin Hallam! ’ Stephen heard her own voice a long way away: ‘ But for me, you could have loved Martin Hallam.’ Mary flung despairing arms round her neck: ‘ No, no! Not that, I don’t know what I’m saying.’ 3 Tue First faint breath of spring was in the air, bringing daffodils to the flower-stalls of Paris. Once again Mary’s young cherry tree in the garden was pushing out leaves and tiny pink buds along the whole length of its childish branches. Then Martin wrote: ‘ Stephen, where can I see you? It must be alone. Better not at your house, I think, if you don’t mind, because of Mary.’ She appointed the place, They would meet at the Auberge du Vieux Logis in the Rue Lepic. They two would meet there on the following evening. When she left the house without saying a word, Mary thought she was going to Valérie Seymour. Stephen sat down at a table in the corner to await Martin’s coming — she herself was early. The table was gay with a new check cloth-red and white. white and red, she counted the 500 THE WELL OF LONELINESS squares, tracing them carefully out with her finger. The woman behind the bar nudged her companion: ‘ En voila une originale — et quelle cicatrice, bon Dieu! ’ The scar across Stephen’s pale face stood out livid. Martin came and sat quietly down at her side, ordering some coffee for appearances’ sake. For appearances’ sake, until it was brought, they smiled at each other and made conversation. But when the waiter had turned away, Martin said: “It’s all over — you’ve beaten me, Stephen . . . The bond was too strong.’ Their unhappy eyes met as she answered: ‘I tried to strengthen that bond.’ He nodded: ‘I know « . « Well, my dear, you succeeded.’ Then he said: ‘ I’m leaving Paris next week; ’ and in spite of his effort to be calm his voice broke, “Stephen . . . do what you can to take care of Mary í She found that she was holding his hand. Or was it some one else who sat there beside him, who looked into his sensitive, troubled face, who spoke such queer words? “No, don’t go — not yet.’ ‘ButI don’t understand .. .’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As she abode on this wise, without aught of hope or counsel,[392] expecting death more than otherwhat, it being now past half none, the scholar, arising from sleep and remembering him of his mistress, returned to the tower, to see what was come of her, and sent his servant, who was yet fasting, to eat. The lady, hearing him, came, all weak and anguishful as she was for the grievous annoy she had suffered, overagainst the trap-door and seating herself there, began, weeping, to say, 'Indeed, Rinieri, thou hast beyond measure avenged thyself, for, if I made thee freeze in my courtyard by night, thou hast made me roast, nay burn, on this tower by day and die of hunger and thirst to boot; wherefore I pray thee by the One only God that thou come up hither and since my heart suffereth me not give myself death with mine own hands, give it me thou, for that I desire it more than aught else, such and so great are the torments I endure. Or, an thou wilt not do me that favour, let bring me, at the least, a cup of water, so I may wet my mouth, whereunto my tears suffice not; so sore is the drouth and the burning that I have therein.' [Footnote 392: _i.e._ resource (_consiglio_). See ante, passim.]

• From Carmina (-50)

  Super alta uectus Attis celeri rate maria, Phrygium ut nemus citato cupide pede tetigit, adiitque opaca siluis redimita loca deae, stimulatus ibi furenti rabie, uagus animis, deuoluit ile acuto sibi pondere silicis. 5 itaque ut relicta sensit sibi membra sine uiro, etiam recente terrae sola sanguine maculans, niueis citata cepit manibus leue typanum, typanum, tubam Cybelles, tua, mater, initia, quatiensque terga taurei teneris caua digitis, 10 canere haec suis adorta est tremebunda comitibus. agite ite ad alta, Gallae, Cybeles nemora simul, simul ite, Dindimenae dominae uaga pecora, aliena quae petentes uelut exules loca, sectam meam exsecutae duce me mihi comites, 15 rapidum salum tulistis truculentaque pelagi, et corpus euirastis Veneris nimio odio; hilarate aere citatis erroribus animum. mora tarda mente cedat: simul ite, sequimini Phrygiam ad domum Cybelles, Phrygia ad nemora deae, 20 ubi cymbalum sonat uox, ubi tympana reboant, tibicen ubi canit Phryx curuo graue calamo, ubi capita Maenades ui iaciunt hederigerae, ubi sacra sancta acutis ululatibus agitant, ubi sueuit illa diuae uolitare uaga cohors, 25 quo nos decet citatis celerare tripudiis. simul haec comitibus Attis cecinit notha mulier, thiasus repente linguis trepidantibus ululat, leue tympanum remugit, caua cymbala recrepant, uiridem citus adit Idam properante pede chorus. 30 furibunda simul anhelans uaga uadit animam agens comitata tympano Attis per opaca nemora dux, ueluti iuuenca uitans onus indomita iugi: rapidae ducem secuntur Gallae properipedem. itaque, ut domum Cybelles tetigere lassulae, 35 nimio e labore somnum capiunt sine Cerere. piger his labante languore oculos sopor operit: abit in quiete molli rabidus furor animi. sed ubi oris aurei Sol radiantibus oculis lustrauit aethera album, sola dura, mare ferum, 40 pepulitque noctis umbras uegetis sonipedibus, ibi Somnus excitum Attin fugiens citus abiit: trepidante eum recepit dea Pasithea sinu. ita de quiete molli rapida sine rabie simul ipse pectore Attis sua facta recoluit, 45 liquidaque mente uidit sine queis ubique foret, animo aestuante rusum reditum ad uada tetulit. ibi maria uasta uisens lacrimantibus oculis, patriam allocuta maestast ita uoce miseriter. 'patria o mei creatrix, patria o mea genetrix, 50 ego quam miser relinquens, dominos ut herifugae famuli solent, ad Idae tetuli nemora pedem, ut aput niuem et ferarum gelida stabula forem, et earum omnia adirem furibunda latibula, ubinam aut quibus locis te positam, patria, reor? 55 cupit ipsa pupula ad te sibi dirigere aciem, rabie fera carens dum breue tempus animus est. egone a mea remota haec ferar in nemora domo? patria, bonis, amicis, genitoribus abero? abero foro, palaestra, stadio et gymnasiis? 60 miser a miser, querendum est etiam atque etiam, anime. quod enim genus figuraest, ego non quod obierim? ego mulier, ego adolescens, ego ephebus, ego puer, ego gymnasei fui flos, ego eram decus olei: mihi ianuae frequentes, mihi limina tepida, 65 mihi floridis corollis redimita domus erat, linquendum ubi esset orto mihi Sole cubiculum. ego nunc deum ministra et Cybeles famula ferar? ego Maenas, ego mei pars, ego uir sterilis ero? ego uiridis algida Idae niue amicta loca colam? 70 ego uitam agam sub altis Phrygiae columinibus, ubi cerua siluicultrix, ubi aper nemoriuagus? iam iam dolet quod egi, iam iamque paenitet.' roseis ut huic labellis sonitus citus abiit, geminas deorum ad auris noua nuntia referens, 75 ibi iuncta iuga resoluens Cybele leonibus laeuumque pecoris hostem stimulans ita loquitur. 'agedum' inquit 'age ferox i, face ut hunc furor agitet, face uti furoris ictu reditum in nemora ferat, mea libere nimis qui fugere imperia cupit. 80 age caede terga cauda, tua uerbera patere, face cuncta mugienti fremitu loca retonent, rutilam ferox torosa ceruice quate iubam.' ait haec minax Cybelle religatque iuga manu. ferus ipse sese adhortans rapidum incitat animo, 85 uadit, fremit, refringit uirgulta pede uago. at ubi umida albicantis loca litoris adiit, tenerumque uidit Attin prope marmora pelagei, facit impetum: ille demens fugit in nemora fera: ibi semper omne uitae spatium famula fuit. 90 dea, magna dea, Cybelle, dea, domina Dindimei, procul a mea tuos sit furor omnis, hera, domo: alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos. LXIV

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Angela, for God’s sake, try to love me a little—don’t throw me away, because if you do I’m utterly finished. You know how I love you, with my soul and my body; if it’s wrong, grotesque, unholy—have pity. I’ll be humble. Oh, my darling, I am humble now; I’m just a poor, heart-broken freak of a creature who loves you and needs you much more than its life, because life’s worse than death, ten times worse without you. I’m some awful mistake—God’s mistake—I don’t know if there are any more like me, I pray not for their sakes, because it’s pure hell. But oh, my dear, whatever I am, I just love you and love you. I thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. It’s alive—so terribly alive to-night in my bedroom. . . .’ And so it went on for page after page. But never a word about Roger Antrim and what she had seen that morning in the garden. Some fine instinct of utterly selfless protection towards this woman had managed to survive all the anguish and all the madness of that day. The letter was a terrible indictment against Stephen, a complete vindication of Angela Crossby. 5 Angela went to her husband’s study, and she stood before him utterly shaken, utterly appalled at what she would do, yet utterly and ruthlessly determined to do it from a primitive instinct of self-preservation. In her ears she could still hear that terrible laughter—that uncanny, hysterical, agonized laughter. Stephen was mad, and God only knew what she might do or say in a moment of madness, and then—but she dared not look into the future. Cringing in spirit and trembling in body, she forgot the girl’s faithful and loyal devotion, her will to forgive, her desire to protect, so clearly set forth in that pitiful letter. She said: ‘Ralph, I want to ask your advice. I’m in an awful mess—it’s Stephen Gordon. You think I’ve been carrying on with Roger—good Lord, if you only knew what I’ve endured these last few months! I have seen a great deal of Roger, I admit—quite innocently of course—still, all the same, I’ve seen him—I thought it would show her that I’m not—that I’m not—’ For one moment her voice seemed about to fail her, then she went on quite firmly: ‘that I’m not a pervert; that I’m not that sort of degenerate creature.’ He sprang up: ‘What?’ he bellowed. ‘Yes, I know, it’s too awful. I ought to have asked your advice about it, but I really did like the girl just at first, and after that, well—I set out to reform her. Oh, I know I’ve been crazy, worse than crazy if you like; it was hopeless right from the very beginning. If I’d only known more about that sort of thing I’d have come to you at once, but I’d never met it.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Yet Stephen was his friend—he had sought her out, had all but forced his friendship upon her; had forced his way into her life, her home, her confidence; she had trusted his honour. And now he must either utterly betray her or through loyalty to their friendship, betray Mary. And he felt that he knew, and knew only too well, what life would do to Mary Llewellyn, what it had done to her already; for had he not seen the bitterness in her, the resentment that could only lead to despair, the defiance that could only lead to disaster? She was setting her weakness against the whole world, and slowly but surely the world would close in until in the end it had utterly crushed her. In her very normality lay her danger. Mary, all woman, was less of a match for life than if she had been as was Stephen. Oh, most pitiful bond so strong yet so helpless; so fruitful of passion yet so bitterly sterile; despairing, heart-breaking, yet courageous bond that was even now holding them ruthlessly together. But if he should break it by taking the girl away into peace and security, by winning for her the world’s approbation so that never again need her back feel the scourge and her heart grow faint from the pain of that scourging—if he, Martin Hallam, should do this thing, what would happen, in that day of his victory, to Stephen? Would she still have the courage to continue the fight? Or would she, in her turn, be forced to surrender? God help him, he could not betray her like this, he could not bring about Stephen’s destruction—and yet if he spared her, he might destroy Mary. Night after night alone in his bedroom during the miserable weeks of that summer, Martin struggled to discover some ray of hope in what seemed a well-nigh hopeless situation. And night after night Stephen’s masterful arms would enfold the warm softness of Mary’s body, the while she would be shaken as though with great cold. Lying there she would shiver with terror and love, and this torment of hers would envelop Mary so that sometimes she wept for the pain of it all, yet neither would give a name to that torment. ‘Stephen, why are you shivering?’ ‘I don’t know, my darling.’ ‘Mary, why are you crying?’ ‘I don’t know, Stephen.’ Thus the bitter nights slipped into the days, and the anxious days slipped back into the nights, bringing to that curious trinity neither helpful counsel nor consolation. 2 It was after they had all returned to Paris that Martin found Stephen alone one morning. He said: ‘I want to speak to you—I must.’ She put down her pen and looked into his eyes: ‘Well, Martin, what is it?’ But she knew already. He answered her very simply: ‘It’s Mary.’

• From Trash (1988)

  So I made a list. I told her: that one went insane—got her little brother with a tire iron; the three of them slit their arms, not the wrists but the bigger veins up near the elbow; she, now she strangled the boy she was sleeping with and got sent away; that one drank lye and died laughing soundlessly. In one year I lost eight cousins. It was the year everybody ran away. Four disappeared and were never found. One fell in the river and was drowned. One was run down hitchhiking north. One was shot running through the woods, while Grace, the last one, tried to walk from Greenville to Greer for some reason nobody knew. She fell off the overpass a mile down from the Sears, Roebuck warehouse and lay there for hunger and heat and dying. Later sleeping, but not sleeping, I found that my hands were up under Jesse’s chin. I rolled away, but I didn’t cry. I almost never let myself cry. Almost always, we were raped, my cousins and I. That was some kind of joke, too. “What’s a South Carolina virgin?” “ ’At’s a ten-year-old can run fast.” It wasn’t funny for me in my mama’s bed with my stepfather; not for my Cousin Billie in the attic with my uncle; nor for Lucille in the woods with another cousin; for Danny with four strangers in a parking lot; or for Pammy, who made the papers. Cora read it out loud: “Repeatedly by persons unknown.” They stayed unknown since Pammy never spoke again. Perforations, lacerations, contusions, and bruises. I heard all the words, big words, little words, words too terrible to understand. DEAD BY AN ACT OF MAN. With the prick still in them, the broom handle, the tree branch, the grease gun . . . objects, things not to be believed . . . whiskey bottles, can openers, grass shears, glass, metal, vegetables . . . not to be believed, not to be believed. Jesse says, “You’ve got a gift for words.” “Don’t talk,” I beg her, “don’t talk.” And this once, she just holds me, blessedly silent. I dig out the pictures, stare into the faces. Which one was I? Survivors do hate themselves, I know, over the core of fierce self-love, never understanding, always asking, “Why me and not her, not him?” There is such mystery in it, and I have hated myself as much as I have loved others, hated the simple fact of my own survival. Having survived, am I supposed to say something, do something, be something?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In the course of his harrowing description of the plague and its disastrous effects on the traditions and institutions of Florentine society,54 Boccaccio repeatedly directs attention to the chaos and disorder brought by the Black Death to the city he nostalgically recalls as the most noble of any in Italy (‘oltre ad ogni altra italica nobilissima’), and he deplores the breakdown of those moral and legal restraints which had contributed to the city’s cultural and social pre-eminence. He stresses that in the face of the misery and affliction occasioned by the plague all respect for the laws of God and of man had broken down and been extinguished, and that consequently everyone was free to behave as he pleased. The departure from generally accepted rules and standards of behaviour is graphically illustrated in two passages referring to women. In the first, Boccaccio writes that whenever a woman was taken ill, she raised no objection, no matter how gracious or beautiful or gently bred she might be, to being attended by a male servant, and that she had no scruples about showing him every part of her body as freely as she would have displayed it to a woman. This practice, he goes on to suggest in a slightly flippant aside, was responsible for a subsequent decline in the sexual morals of those women who were fortunate enough to recover. But if chastity waned, so too did the compassion ordinarily associated with the feminine ideal. In a passage describing Florentine burial customs, and the role that had traditionally been played in them by the womenfolk of the dead, it is pointed out that these customs had been abandoned, and that not only did people die without having many women about them, but they also died with few people if any to mourn them, or even to witness their passing. Indeed, with the overturning of normal values that accompanied the plague, bereavement became the signal for black humour – laughter, witticisms, and general jollification – the practice of which, as the author ruefully adds, women had learned to perfection.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  All of them were only too eager to eat one of the sweets, and so Bruno, having lined them up with Calandrino in the middle, started from one end and began to hand one out to each of them in turn. When he came to Calandrino, he picked up one of the sweets of the canine variety and placed it in the palm of his hand. Calandrino promptly tossed it into his mouth and began to chew on it, but no sooner did his tongue come into contact with the aloe than, finding the bitter taste quite intolerable, he spat it out again. They were all keeping a close watch on one another to see who was going to spit out his sweet, and Bruno, who still had several more to distribute, carried on as though nothing had happened until he heard a voice behind him saying: ‘Hey, Calandrino, what’s the meaning of this?’ Turning quickly round, and seeing that Calandrino had spat his out, he said: ‘Wait a minute! Perhaps he spat it out for some other reason. Here, take another!’ And picking up the second one, he thrust it into Calandrino’s mouth before proceeding to hand out the ones he had left. Bitter as Calandrino had found the first, the second seemed a great deal more so, but being ashamed to spit it out, he kept it in his mouth for a while. As he chewed away at it, tears as big as hazelnuts began to roll down his cheeks until eventually, being unable to bear it any longer, he spat it out like the first. Buffalmacco was meanwhile handing out drinks all round, with the assistance of Bruno. And when, along with all the others, they observed what had happened, everyone declared that Calandrino had obviously stolen the pig himself, and there were one or two who gave him a severe scolding about it. However, when the crowd had dispersed, leaving Bruno and Buffalmacco alone with Calandrino, Buffalmacco turned to him and said: ‘I was convinced all along that you were the one who had taken it. You were just pretending to us that it had been stolen so that you wouldn’t have to buy us a few drinks out of the proceeds.’ Calandrino, who still had the bitter taste of the aloe in his mouth, swore to them that he had not taken the pig, but Buffalmacco said: ‘Own up, man, how much did it fetch? Six florins?’ Calandrino was by now on the brink of despair, but Bruno said: