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 52 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  1. A frog having offered to carry a mouse across a piece of water tied it to its leg; but when they got half-way, the frog treacherously dived and the mouse was drowned. Suddenly a kite swooped down and devoured both of them. This fable is not to be found in the original. Æsop, but is contained, with slight variations, in most of the medieval collections of fables that went under his name. In one of these versions, as Mr. Paget Toynbee points out, the mouse escapes, and this may have been the form of the story known to Dante, whose mouse escapes, too, though of course, only for a time.2. Frederick II punished those guilty of treason by having them fastened in cloaks of lead which were then melted over a fire.3. Catalano de’ Catalani, or de’ Malavolti (ca. 1210-1285), a Guelf of Bologna, and Loderingo degli Andolò, a Ghibelline of the same city, were in 1266 jointly appointed to the office of Podestà of Florence, as it was thought that two outsiders, belonging to different factions, would be likely to rule impartially. The Gardingo, that portion of Florence now occupied by the Piazza di Firenze, was the site of the palace of the Uberti, which was destroyed in 1266 during a popular rising against the Ghibellines.—Frati Gaudenti was the nickname given to the Ordo militiæ beattæ Mariæ, founded at Bologna in 1261, with the approval of Urban IV. The objects of the Order were praiseworthy (reconciliation of enemies, protection of the weak, etc.), but the rules were so lax that it soon had to be disbanded.4. The words of the high priest Caiaphas at the Council were: “Yo know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John xi. 49, 50). For the father-in-law of Caiaphas see John xviii. 13.5. For Malacoda’s falsehood see Canto xxi.C A N T O X X I Vin this canto, the vehement despair of the poor Italian peasant, who has no food for his sheep, and thinks he is going to lose them, gives a lively image of Dante’s dependence on his mystic Guide; while the Sun with freshened hair points to the real Virgil. Here too on the shattered bridge, as at the foot of the Hill in Canto First, help in many senses is necessary; and Dante, put quite out of breath by climbing from the den of the Hypocrites, sits down exhausted. Virgil reminds him of their Errand—of the great things which lie beyond this painful journey through Hell—and he rises instantly; and “keeps speaking,” as they go on, “that he may not seem faint.” In the Seventh Chasm, which is very dark and filled with hideous serpents, they find the Thieves; and get speech of Vanni Fucci. He is ashamed at being found amongst the Thieves, and recognized by Dante, who had “seen him a man of blood and brutal passions”; and he foretells the disasters that will lead to the Poet’s exile.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Before Judy and John told them, Judy had consulted a family counselor who warned her that the children would have questions—and she needed to come prepared with answers. Unlike other kinds of unhappy couples, the Blumes weren’t demonstrative in their moments of friction. They weren’t big yellers or fighters. As far as young Randy and Larry were concerned, their polite, upstanding parents were perfectly content. “It was a nice marriage,” Blume later said, “but inside I was dying.” To explain herself, Judy wrote letters to the kids before they left for the summer, which they read alone in their rooms and then came together to sob. When home feels safe, divorce can be catastrophic to the children. Judy knew that all too well, having put herself in Karen’s shoes to write It’s Not the End of the World . Despite the book’s sunny title and its optimistic ending, Judy recognized the pain that it took to get there. Still, she felt she had no other choice. A few years before she initiated the split, Judy felt herself, at the age of thirty-five, undergoing a massive change—one that she’d eventually describe as an adolescent rebellion, just delayed by twenty years. Essie, who she spoke to twice a day, became representative of Judy’s subtle, lifelong indoctrination into a role—the self-annihilating housewife—that no longer suited her. That perspective transformed John in her eyes from a good-enough spouse and a solid provider to a figurehead of her mother’s middle-class values. Judy was sick of it all: the PTA meetings, the dinners at the club, the aqua-lined pool in the backyard. Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming urge “to taste and experience life,” she said in Presenting Judy Blume . “I wasn’t terrible. I was responsible. I was working. I loved the kids. But I was rebelling… My divorce was all part of that rebellion.” Judy recognized a level of childishness in herself, which she came by honestly, having gone straight from her parents’ house to her husband’s. She felt immature in ways she didn’t like, and realized that John treated her in kind, like something delicate and unformed. Before the divorce, Judy had understood—with a level of dread—that she wanted desperately to take shape. She wished to be a person with edges and depth and firm, well-defined corners, just like one of her characters. John blamed Fear of Flying . Erica Jong’s unrestrained roman à clef, about marriage and a successful female writer’s messy interior life, came out in 1973, before the Blumes separated. Isadora White Wing is a twice-wed Jewish poet from New York who, five years into her second marriage to psychoanalyst Bennett Wing, finds herself desperate for adventure and sexual novelty. She still loves Bennett but can’t deny the sense of yearning that has cast a shadow over her daily life with him. “What was marriage anyway?” Wing wonders early in the novel.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  For now, no decision had to be made. No decision. Such a relief. She felt very tired but the idea of going home to Birmingham filled her with hope. If only she knew for sure what had gone wrong with her marriage. If only she understood how he could leave her for that woman. Miri’s mother, no less. It was unthinkable. And when, exactly, had they fallen so in love they were leaving town together, disrupting so many lives? Was it New Year’s Eve, when Rusty twirled in the finished basement with Tewky? If she had never invited her to the party, would it have happened? She could kick herself every time she thought of that night. Of Arthur reminding her that Tewky was that way and she had no business foisting him on Rusty Ammerman. Had it started between them already? No, she didn’t think so because that was the night, after all the guests had gone home, they’d made love to start the new year with a bang—to quote Arthur. And they’d laughed the next morning about their clothes, strewn around the floor of their bedroom. So how had this happened? How could she not have known? Wasn’t he just begging her to come to Las Vegas with him? If she’d said, Yes, of course, darling—whither thou goest— and all that, would they be leaving together to start a new chapter of their lives? Had she made a terrible mistake? Maybe. Would Steve be going off to Lehigh with Phil in September if she’d said yes to Las Vegas? Would Natalie get well in the dry desert air? She had to stop asking herself these questions. They only upset her and made everything worse. Ceil Rubin gave a luncheon in her honor. Her friends promised to visit her in Birmingham but she knew they wouldn’t. She promised to come back regularly to check on the house but she knew she wouldn’t. Twenty years, just like that. Twenty years of marriage to Arthur, three children, friends, a life— They toasted her. To starting over. They didn’t need to say what they were thinking. Corinne was the first of their crowd to be divorcing. She wouldn’t be the last, though no one would admit to being in an unhappy marriage. You’re lucky, Corinne. You have your own money. Her mother always told her never to turn up her nose at the family money. And she never had. MiriNewark Airport was still closed and wasn’t expected to open anytime soon, so on a warm summer day, Henry drove them to LaGuardia in Ben Sapphire’s Packard. Ben had given the car to Henry and Leah as a wedding present and all six of them, plus Fern on Dr. O’s lap, squeezed in for the ride. At the departure gate Miri clung to Henry, not wanting to say goodbye.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  When we got back, he went and knocked timidly at the sergeant’s door and I waited outside. When he came out again, I guessed at once why his smile was so constrained and sad : “My son, you’ll have to be reasonable about it. You must stick it out till the end of your holiday.” He didn’t add a word, not even one of encouragement. I was too downhearted or perhaps I felt some pity for him and allowed him to leave without witnessing my tears and protestations. My despair adopted, from then on, a different tone. I was cornered, without any escape, and began to think of death for the first time in my life. Without being at all strange or foreign, this idea of suicide was born within me quite spontaneously and gently, like the world coming to life at dawn. At once, suicide seemed familiar to me, like a release, and I was surprised how convenient and tempting so serious an action could seem. The ultimate solution to my problems was within my own power. In my solitary afternoon retreats, I had discovered a huge depression in the ground that constituted a barrier to my further escape. This ditch that was several meters deep now fascinated me. Full of self-pity and weeping salt tears that dripped into my open mouth, I closed my inflamed eyes and walked ahead, a step at a time, my chest thrust forward, trying hard to abolish all my will power, as when one learns to float on one’s back. Often, in a kind of sleepwalking mood, I imagined that I no longer had the solid ground beneath my feet. But no matter how much I kept my eyes closed and tried to forget my own conscience, the reflexes of my body that I allowed to guide me never drove me into the ditch. I fell into a kind of stupor, lost all appetite, and gave up even my blindman’s excursions on the brink of my abyss. Some time after all this, one morning when I woke up, I could no longer get out of bed. In a kind of awakened dream, I heard the voices of my comrades murmuring around me. The sergeant who was on duty was very worried and had me transported on a stretcher to the little mountain dispensary that was far from our camp. My sleepy refusal to live lasted several days, then I developed a fever. As the doctor failed to understand the meaning of it but said he was sure it must be a tropical disease, I was forgotten up there in my infirmary. That was when I discovered that I had not yet reached the lowest depths of solitude. I was all alone, the only patient in a huge square ward. On the other beds, there weren’t even any sheets.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  It is now time to put an end to this disastrous business. I am beaten. In any case, had I been capable of continuing, I did not want to. How could I go on taking seriously this little world of conventions, of arbitrary values, of exams and their little emotions, together with the absurd administrative hierarchies? The sheet of paper before me waits for me to tell the examiners what I think of John Stuart Mill and of Condillac. What do I think? Precisely, today I am incapable of thinking about anything but my own ideas and what I am. I look at my comrades around me. With their pale heads bent over their work and their nervous hands in their tousled hair, they know exactly what they want. They can work themselves into a frenzy over something that is not themselves. What is required of us? That we express the balanced opinions of our examiners and the impersonal ideas of the university concerning John Stuart Mill and Condillac? They would then be able to choose the twenty essays that are most alike because they reflect most slavishly the university’s ideal version. I am no longer able to forget myself and to think of something else. Nothing can distract me now from this basic quest. Anything else would be a luxury. As if my life were on the same pattern as all the others, clear and comfortable and without any mystery or contradiction, I tried to organize it quietly on the same model as any other man. I am poor; so I shall get a lucrative job and forget all my humiliations. I cannot pay for my studies; so I will coach other students and work my way through school, studying only in the evenings. My memory is full of superstitions and Djnouns and strange anxieties; so I vigorously opt for Western culture and try to ignore all that is barbarian. I saw, of course, that I was simplifying a great deal and that I would have to hack my way with an ax; still, I believed that it was only a matter of effort and will power. But my life has again risen like a vomit in my throat; I cannot be simplified. Every event proves this, every move brings me back to myself. Perhaps I would not give up if I still had some strength. I have already proved myself, but I have now come to the end of my tether. Perhaps it is best as it is. I have already told how I came up for these finals. The official decree which announced that exams would be held again and the Vichy laws would be repealed had suddenly put an end to my hesitation.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  We regretfully left the wretched farm, which still had something human about it, for the wild, hostile countryside where we had no compass to guide us in our wanderings. Outside, horror had taken on the quiet and sinister disguise of a machine. Regular and even flights of bombers came over us in waves, dropped their bombs on the hills, and flew off again. During all this relay race, the machine guns kept quiet and there were no accessory noises. Death, at this stage, seemed to neglect all the smaller means that were at its disposal. I had not tried to eat since our last departure, so I now put a piece of sugar in my mouth, but sucking it was so painful that I soon spat it out. Was it a mirage? A dirty yellow jalopy, crudely painted with a red cross, rattled around an elbow in the road; it was the community ambulance! The men yelled, threw themselves forward in an effort to run, and waved their thin arms. In my tired head, another useless question had formed: how had Picchonero arrived so soon? How much time had gone by? I found it unpleasant to feel that I had lost all conception of time. The men surrounded the prehistoric vehicle deliriously; with their stiff hands they touched it and groped for the door handle, found it, and dived inside. They climbed into it with their knees and chests and elbows and heads banging against each other, pushing, squeezing, piling up, disappearing in the dark as fast as possible. This took as long as was necessary for the driver and the guide, who was not Picchonero, to set the brakes, open the doors, leave their seats, and appear smiling and shy. They gazed at the overflowing truck with its wide-open doors, covered with men hanging onto the windows and standing on the step. Unfortunately, they explained, they had precise orders, and first they must... The others, their arms hanging and silent, stared vacantly at their lost hope. “Who is the group leader?” the driver asked timidly. Nobody answered. The redhead was certainly buried in the dark belly of the ambulance. “We’ll come back and fetch you,” he shamefully went on. “The community could find no other transport. We’ll be back as fast as we can.” The driver and his guide hesitated, waited in vain for a reply, and got back into their seats. With great difficulty, the truck turned round, jumped, and slowly started on its way. With its doors open on both sides, it looked like a great beetle, too heavy for its wings, with masses of little fleas on its back.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Aristotle living in a slaveholding society said: “There are in the human species individuals as inferior to others as the body is to the soul, or as animals are to men. Adapted to corporeal labor only, they are incapable of a higher occupation. Destined by nature to slavery, there is nothing better for them to do than lo obey.” Similarly in feudal society the lord regarded the serf as by nature little different from a beast of burden, and even the serf regarded oppression as a fixed fact in life, like cold and rain. If we allow deep and permanent inequality to grow up in our country, it is as sure as gravitation that not only the old democracy and frankness of manners will go, but even the theory of human equality, which has been part of our spiritual atmosphere through Christianity, will be denied. It is already widely challenged. The crumbling of political democracy Any shifting of the economic equilibrium from one class to another is sure to be followed by a shifting of the political equilibrium. If a class arrives at economic wealth, it will gain political influence and some form of representation. For instance, when the cities grew powerful at the close of the Middle Ages, and the lesser nobles declined in power, that fact was registered in the political constitution of the nations. The French Revolution was the demand of the business class to have a share in political power proportionate to its growing economic importance. A class which is economically strong will have the necessary influence to secure and enforce laws which protect its economic interests. In turn, a class which controls legislation will shape it for its own enrichment. Politics is embroidered with patriotic sentiment and phrases, but at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, the economic interests dominate it always. If therefore we have a class which owns a large part of the national wealth and controls nearly all the mobile part of it, it is idle to suppose that this class will not see to it that the vast power exerted by the machinery of government serves its interests. And if we have another class which is economically dependent and helpless, it is idle to suppose that it will be allowed an equal voice in swaying political power. In short, we cannot join economic inequality and political equality. As Oliver Cromwell wrote to Parliament, “If there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a Commonwealth.” The words of Lincoln find a new application here, that the republic cannot be half slave and half free. The power of capitalism over the machinery of our government, and its corroding influence on the morality of our public servants, has been revealed within recent years to such an extent that it is almost superfluous to speak of it.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  For a long time we marched to the dull thud of our wooden clogs. When we passed through Pont-du-Fahs in Indian file, the night was already dissolving. The village was deserted and sinister, with great black wounds on the houses where the doors and windows had been torn out. Solitude is more oppressive in places abandoned by men than in the middle of the wildest desert. After the bewildered crowds of the Italian sector, we were, in this deserted village, rather like the survivors of a huge catastrophe which had emptied the world of its inhabitants. We had to walk round great shell craters in the road. At long last, after Pont-du-Fahs, we came to the expected fork in the road. There were two green signposts with black lettering. To the left: Nach Tunis. To the right: Nach Bir-Halima. It was here that the first men let themselves fall into the ditch, weighed down by the bags they had not the courage to unfasten. We were still in a group and, without protesting, we lay down by the hedges. I then felt my own weariness, which was no longer muscular but nervous, and which no short pause could cure. Then men said nothing this time and did not joke. When the more impatient ones got up, two men just removed their straps and lay down again. “The grace of God be with us,” they decided. “If we survive, we will continue on our way, but we can go no further now.” The group leader, a little redhead who was silent and tenacious when it came to the execution of an idea though he himself was incapable of ever formulating one, swore copiously at them and at their mothers and grandmothers and said they would not be alive long if they stayed where they were. “It is no use,” said Picchonero, the little shoemaker with feverish eyes and a bloodless face. “In five minutes, their trucks can cover the distance that we take an hour to go.” But the men obeyed, glad to be led by someone. We set forth again, our clogs dragging along the tar-surfaced road, stiff with exhaustion, each body a painful heavy mass that passively obeyed. In my empty head, a last obsessive relic of thought beat to the rhythm of my blood: “I want to get home, I want to get home, I want to get home...” It was like a hard little stone, condensing all my will power, with no possible answer: “I want to get home.” We took the road to the left, Nach Tunis. One man stopped, tore off his shoulder straps, and let his sack fall. Then, without looking back, without a word, he lightly quickened his step. Five others did the same, and the little group soon outstripped us.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  THE REFERRAL CAME FROM A STRANGER—A DOCTOR WHO was filling in for my regular provider when she was on vacation. At the urging of close friends who were concerned about my behavior, I made a same-day appointment and, when I was ushered into the replacement doctor’s office, I told her I thought I might be depressed, that I was drinking a lot, that I had trouble sleeping and eating. “I was sitting in the shower. I was crying. And the idea flashed in my head. I thought how I could make it end,” I said. It was a moment that had been a long time coming: I spent most of my life to that point only barely coping, grappling with various incarnations of clinical anxiety—hypochondria, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, and panic attacks. I had had an irrational, desperate, terrifying fear of disaster and dying, an ongoing flight impulse, and a penchant for panic at the most inopportune times. I found being alone in the world difficult, yet I also found being surrounded by people difficult. But the severe depression was a new development, one that had whittled away at my constant, debilitating fear of death and suddenly made it an ugly option for escape. At the point of my same-day appointment, I hadn’t slept properly in weeks, and my mind was caving in on itself via a particular brand of sleep-deprived psychosis. A well-intentioned friend had slipped me a generous supply of heavy-duty prescription sleeping pills she had taken from her boyfriend, handing them to me in a Ziploc bag in the hope of relieving my pervasive exhaustion. Sometimes I counted out the pills on the coffee table and wondered how many it would take. Sometimes I eyed the contents of the cutlery drawer, studying the knives and pondering their effectiveness. Friends would come to visit and bring me food in Styrofoam take-out containers, watching me slowly eat with barely concealed worry. I was in such a constant state of desperation, exacerbated by sleeplessness, that I cried hysterically in front of a complete stranger, this medical professional, while begging for help. The doctor, whose name I don’t even remember, calmly took me through a depression assessment questionnaire and generously prescribed me Ativan. She encouraged me to consider antidepressants. She wanted me to get in touch with my family practitioner immediately for a battery of tests. When I finally managed to splutter out, “something bad happened to me,” she just knew. Without saying a word, she slipped a small square of yellow paper across the desk toward me. It was printed with information about the rape-counseling clinic. I was struck by the ease with which she provided me with the contact, as if she’d done it hundreds of times before.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But Psyches went not about to dissever the graine, (as being a thing impossible to be brought to passe by reason it lay so confusedly scattered) but being astonyed at the cruell commandement of Venus, sate still and said nothing. Then the little pismire the emote, taking pitty of her great difficulty and labour, cursing the cruellnesse of the daughter of Jupiter, and of so evill a mother, ran about, hither and thither, and called to all her friends, Yee quick sons of the ground, the mother of all things, take mercy on this poore maid, espouse to Cupid, who is in great danger of her person, I pray you helpe her with all diligence. Incontinently one came after another, dissevering and dividing the graine, and after that they had put each kinde of corne in order, they ranne away againe in all haste. When night came, Venus returned home from the banket wel tippled with wine, smelling of balme, and crowned with garlands of roses, who when shee had espied what Psyches had done, gan say, This is not the labour of thy hands, but rather of his that is amorous of thee: then she gave her a morsel of brown bread, and went to sleep. In the mean season, Cupid was closed fast in the surest chamber of the house, partly because he should not hurt himself with wanton dalliance, and partly because he should not speake with his love: so these two lovers were divided one from another. When night was passed Venus called Psyches, and said, Seest thou yonder Forest that extendeth out in length with the river? there be great sheepe shining like gold, and kept by no manner of person. I command thee that thou go thither and bring me home some of the wooll of their fleeces. Psyches arose willingly not to do her commandement, but to throw her selfe headlong into water to end her sorrows. Then a green reed inspired by divine inspiration, with a gratious tune and melody gan say, O Psyches I pray thee not to trouble or pollute my water by the death of thee, and yet beware that thou goe not towards the terrible sheepe of this coast, untill such time as the heat of the sunne be past, for when the sunne is in his force, then seeme they most dreadfull and furious, with their sharpe hornes, their stony foreheads and their gaping throats, wherewith they arme themselves to the destruction of mankinde. But untill they have refreshed themselves in the river, thou must hide thy selfe here by me, under this great plaine tree, and as soone as their great fury is past, thou maist goe among the thickets and bushes under the wood side and gather the lockes their golden Fleeces, which thou shalt finde hanging upon the briers.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  hospitae sedile delicatum vel cibum beatum amplexa sed ante pedes eius residens humilis, cibario pane contenta, Veneriam pertulit legationem, statimque secreto repletam conclusamque pyxidem suscipit, et offulae sequentis fraude caninis latratibus ob- seratis, residuaque navitae reddita stipe, longe vegetior ab inferis recurrit. Et repetita atque adorata candida ista luce, quanquam festinans ob- sequium terminare, mentem capitur temeraria curio- sitate, et * Ecce' inquit *Inepta ego divinae for- mositatis gerula, quae nec tantillum quidem indidem mihi delibo, vel sic illi amatori meo formoso placitura,’ et cum dicto reserat pyxidem : nec quicquam ibi rerum nec formositas ulla, sed infernus somnus ac vere Stygius, qui statim coperculo revelatus invadit eam crassaque soporis nebula cunctis eius membris perfunditur et in ipso vestigio ipsaque semita col- lapsam possidet; et iacebat immobilis et nihil aliud quam dormiens cadaver. Sed Cupido iam cicatrice solida revalescens nec diutinam suae Psyches ab- sentiam tolerans, per altissimam cubiculi, quo cohi- bebatur, elapsus fenestram, refectisque pinnis ali- quanta quiete, longe velocius provolans Psychen accurrit suam, detersoque somno curiose et rursum in pristinam pyxidis sedem recondito, Psychen innoxio punctulo sagittae suae suscitat, et * Ecce" inquit * Rursum perieras, misella, simili curiositate. Sed interim quidem tu provinciam, quae tibi matris meae praecepto mandata est, exsequere naviter ; cetera egomet videro. His dictis amator levis in pinnas se dedit, Psyche vero confestim Veneri munus reportat Proserpinae. 278 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Steve On April 15 Steve got an acceptance letter from Syracuse. Phil got in, too. Just the way they’d planned. Instead of celebrating, Steve went down to Williamson Street and walked around where Kathy died, all the time talking to her, trying to explain what was going on. Or maybe he was trying to explain it to himself. How someone his age, someone beautiful, someone he had dreamed about, someone he had kissed, could have stepped onto a plane one January afternoon and be dead an hour and a half later. How could that happen? How could that be real? So, thanks, but no thanks, Syracuse. He was never setting foot on that campus again, never setting foot in that town, in the whole of upstate New York. Phil was waiting for him when he got home, sitting outside in his car. “I figured you’d come home sooner or later.” Steve shoehorned himself into Phil’s MG, an early graduation present from his parents. “I’m not going to Syracuse,” Steve told him. “Me neither,” Phil said. “So which one do you want to go to—Rutgers or Lehigh?” Steve shrugged. “I say Lehigh,” Phil said. “Put some distance between us and our families.” “Okay.” “We have to send back our forms with a check.” “Okay.” “Tomorrow, right?” “Sure. Tomorrow.” “I’m counting on you,” Phil said. “Don’t count on me too much.” “What do you mean? We’re in this together.” “I got to go,” Steve said, getting out of Phil’s car. He supposed by now his mother had told his father he’d gotten into all three schools he’d applied to. But maybe not. Because his mother and father didn’t seem to be speaking these days. Life at home was no fun, to put it mildly. Natalie was lucky she was at that rest home. He hoped she was getting plenty of

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  All at once it occurred to me that her illness was somehow the development of a theme—that it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey; I imagined that secret agent, or secret lover, or prankster, or hallucination, or whatever he was, prowling around the hospital—and Aurora had hardly “warmed her hands,” as the pickers of lavender say in the country of my birth, when I found myself trying to get into that dungeon again, knocking upon its green doors, breakfastless, stool-less, in despair.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then I thought to blame Fotis, but being deprived as wel of language as of humane shape, I looked upon her with my hanging lips and watery eyes. Who as soon as shee espied me in such sort, cried out, Alas poore wretch that I am, I am utterly cast away. The feare I was in, and my haste hath beguiled me, but especially the mistaking of the box, hath deceived me. But it forceth not much, in regard a sooner medicine may be gotten for this than for any other thing. For if thou couldst get a rose and eat it, thou shouldst be delivered from the shape of an Asse, and become my Lucius againe. And would to God I had gathered some garlands this evening past, according to my custome, then thou shouldst not continue an Asse one nights space, but in the morning I shall seek some remedy. Thus Fotis lamented in pittifull sort, but I that was now a perfect asse, and for Lucius a brute beast, did yet retaine the sence and understanding of a man. And did devise a good space with my selfe, whether it were best for me to teare this mischievous and wicked harlot with my mouth, or to kicke and kill her with my heels. But a better thought reduced me from so rash a purpose: for I feared lest by the death of Fotis I should be deprived of all remedy and help. Then shaking myne head, and dissembling myne ire, and taking my adversity in good part, I went into the stable to my owne horse, where I found another asse of Milos, somtime my host, and I did verily think that mine owne horse (if there were any natural conscience or knowledge in brute beasts) would take pitty on me, and profer me lodging for that night: but it chanced far otherwise. For see, my horse and the asse as it were consented together to work my harm, and fearing lest I should eat up their provender, would in no wise suffer me to come nigh the manger, but kicked me with their heels from their meat, which I my self gave them the night before. Then I being thus handled by them, and driven away, got me into a corner of the stable, where while I remembred their uncurtesie, and how on the morrow I should return to Lucius by the help of a Rose, when as I thought to revenge my selfe of myne owne horse, I fortuned to espy in the middle of a pillar sustaining the rafters of the stable the image of the goddesse Hippone, which was garnished and decked round about with faire and fresh roses: then in hope of present remedy, I leaped up with my fore feet as high as I could, stretching out my neck, and with my lips coveting to snatch some roses.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Or else I would get an abortion. A botched abortion which would kill me. Blood poisoning. Or else permanent sterility. Suddenly I wanted a child with my whole heart. Adrian’s child. Bennett’s child. My child. Anyone’s child. I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted to be big with child. I was lying awake in Adrian’s pup tent and crying. He went on snoring. We were sleeping by a roadside somewhere in France that night and it might as well have been the moon. That was how lonely I felt, how utterly bereft. “No one, no one, no one, no one…” I moaned, hugging myself like the big baby I was. I was trying to rock myself to sleep. From now on, I thought, I will have to be my own mother, my own comforter, my own rocker-to-sleep. Perhaps this is what Adrian meant about going down into the bottom of yourself and pulling yourself back up. Learning how to survive your own life. Learning how to endure your own existence. Learning how to mother yourself. Not always turning to an analyst, a lover, a husband, a parent. I rocked myself. I said my own name to try to remember who I was: “Isadora, Isadora, Isadora, Isadora…Isadora White Stollerman Wing…Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing…B.A., M.A., Phi Beta Kappa. Isadora Wing, promising younger poet. Isadora Wing, promising younger sufferer. Isadora Wing, feminist and would-be liberated woman. Isadora Wing, clown, crybaby, fool. Isadora Wing, wit, scholar, ex-wife of Jesus Christ. Isadora Wing, with her fear of flying. Isadora Wing, slightly overweight sexpot, with a bad case of astigmatism of the mind’s eye. Isadora Wing, with her unfillable cunt and holes in her head and her heart. Isadora Wing of the hunger-thump. Isadora Wing whose mother wanted her to fly. Isadora Wing whose mother grounded her. Isadora Wing, professional patient, seeker of saviors, sensuality, certainty. Isadora Wing, fighter of windmills, professional mourner, failed adventuress….” I must have slept. I woke up to see the sunlight streaming in through the brilliant blue of the pup tent. Adrian was still snoring. His hairy blond arm had fallen heavily across my chest and was pressing down on it, making me uncomfortably conscious of my breathing. The birds were chirping. We were in France. By some roadside. Some crossroads in my life. What was I doing there? Why was I lying in a tent in France with a man I hardly knew? Why wasn’t I home in bed with my husband? I thought of my husband with a sudden wave of tenderness. What was he doing? Did he miss me? Had he forgotten me? Had he found someone else? Some ordinary girl who didn’t have to take off on adventures to prove her stamina. Some ordinary girl who was content with making breakfast and raising kiddies. Some ordinary girl of car pools and swimming pools and cesspools. Some ordinary American girl out of Seventeen Magazine?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Elphinstone was, and I hope still is, a very cute little town. It was spread like a maquette, you know, with its neat green-wool trees and red-roofed houses over the valley floor and I think I have alluded earlier to its model school and temple and spacious rectangular blocks, some of which were, curiously enough, just unconventional pastures with a mule or a unicorn grazing in the young July morning mist. Very amusing: at one gravel-groaning sharp turn I sideswiped a parked car but said to myself telestically—and, telephathically (I hoped), to its gesticulating owner—that I would return later, address Bird School, Bird, New Bird, the gin kept my heart alive but bemazed my brain, and after some lapses and losses common to dream sequences, I found myself in the reception room, trying to beat up the doctor, and roaring at people under chairs, and clamoring for Mary who luckily for her was not there; rough hands plucked at my dressing gown, ripping off a pocket, and somehow I seem to have been sitting on a bald brown-headed patient, whom I had mistaken for Dr. Blue, and who eventually stood up, remarking with a preposterous accent: “Now, who is nevrotic, I ask?”—and then a gaunt unsmiling nurse presented me with seven beautiful, beautiful books and the exquisitely folded tartan lap robe, and demanded a receipt; and in the sudden silence I became aware of a policeman in the hallway, to whom my fellow motorist was pointing me out, and meekly I signed the very symbolic receipt, thus surrendering my Lolita to all those apes. But what else could I do? One simple and stark thought stood out and this was: “Freedom for the moment is everything.” One false move—and I might have been made to explain a life of crime. So I simulated a coming out of a daze. To my fellow motorist I paid what he thought was fair. To Dr. Blue, who by then was stroking my hand, I spoke in tears of the liquor I bolstered too freely a tricky but not necessarily diseased heart with. To the hospital in general I apologized with a flourish that almost bowled me over, adding however that I was not on particularly good terms with the rest of the Humbert clan. To myself I whispered that I still had my gun, and was still a free man—free to trace the fugitive, free to destroy my brother.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We were usually drunk from noon on, careening down the Autobahn in a right-hand-drive car, taking wrong turns everywhere, being tailgated by Volkswagens going 80 miles an hour, by Mercedes Benzes blinking their headlights aggressively and doing 110, by BMWs trying to outrun the Mercedes-Benzes. All a German had to see were our English license plates and he was out to run us off the road. Adrian drove like a maniac, too, passing on the wrong side, weaving in and out of the truck lane, allowing himself to get riled by the Germans and trying to outrun them. There was part of me that was terrified by this, but another part of me which thrilled to it. We were living on the edge. It was likely we’d be killed in a horrible wreck which would obliterate every trace of our faces and our sins. At least I knew for sure I wasn’t bored. Like all people who are preoccupied with death, who hate plane rides, who study their tiniest wrinkles in the mirror and are morbidly afraid of birthdays, who worry about dying of cancer or a brain tumor or a sudden aneurysm, I am secretly in love with death. I will suffer morbidly through a shuttle flight from New York to Washington, but behind the wheel of a sports car I’ll start doing 110 without hesitation and love every terrifying minute. The excitement of knowing that you may be the author of your own death is more intense than orgasm. It must have been what the kamikazes felt, creating their own holocaust and being swallowed up by it, instead of waiting for the holocaust to catch up with them some surprising morning in their safe beds in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. There was another reason for our heavy drinking: namely my depressions. I would alternate between elation and despair (self-hatred for what I’d done, dismal despair over being alone with a man who did not love me, anguish about the future I was not supposed to mention). So we got drunk, and in our giggling drunken antics, the despair would get blurred. It would never quite vanish, of course, but it would become easier to bear. Like getting drunk on a plane to ease your fear of flying. You still believe you’re going to die whenever the sound of the engines changes, but you don’t care anymore. You almost like the idea. You imagine yourself gliding down through the flocculent clouds into a blue ocean full of your fondest memories of childhood.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Marrying Bennett sprung me from graduate school. I took a leave of absence to follow him into the army. What else could I do? It wasn’t that I wanted to give up my fellowship—it was History giving me a boot in the ass. Marrying Bennett also got me away from New York and away from my mother and away from the Graduate English Department at Columbia and away from my ex-husband and away from my ex-boyfriends—all of whom had come to seem identical in my mind. I wanted out. I wanted escape. And Bennett was the vehicle for it. Our marriage began under that heavy burden. That it survived at all is rather a miracle. In Heidelberg, we set up house in a vast American concentration camp in the postwar section of town (a far cry from the beautiful old section near the Schloss, which tourists see). Our neighbors were mostly army captains and their “dependents.” With a few notable exceptions they were the most considerate people I’ve ever lived among. The wives welcomed you with coffee when you moved in. The children were maddeningly friendly and polite. The husbands would spring gallantly to help you dig your car out of a snowbank or carry heavy boxes upstairs. It was all the more astonishing then when they announced to you that life was cheap in Asia, that the U.S. ought to bomb the hell out of the Viet Cong, and finally, that soldiers were only there to do a job but not to have political opinions. They regarded Bennett and me as creatures from outer space, and that was rather how we felt ourselves. Across the way were our other neighbors, the Germans. In 1945, when they were still militarists, they had hated Americans for winning the war. Now, in 1966, the Germans were pacifists (at least where other nations were concerned) and they hated the Americans for being in Vietnam. The ironies multiplied so fast you could hardly absorb them. If San Antonio had been strange, Heidelberg was a thousand times stranger. We lived between two sets of enemies and we were both so unhappy that we were enemies to each other as well.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  The rain had been cancelled miles before. It was a black warm night, somewhere in Appalachia. Now and then cars passed me, red tail-lights receding, white headlights advancing, but the town was dead. Nobody strolled and laughed on the sidewalks as relaxing burghers would in sweet, mellow, rotting Europe. I was alone to enjoy the innocent night and my terrible thoughts. A wire receptacle on the curb was very particular about acceptable contents: Sweepings. Paper. No Garbage. Sherry-red letters of light marked a Camera Shop. A large thermometer with the name of a laxative quietly dwelt on the front of a drugstore. Rubinov’s Jewelry Company had a display of artificial diamonds reflected in a red mirror. A lighted green clock swam in the linenish depths of Jiffy Jeff Laundry. On the other side of the street a garage said in its sleep—genuflexion lubricity; and corrected itself to Gulflex Lubrication. An airplane, also gemmed by Rubinov, passed, droning, in the velvet heavens. How many small dead-of-night towns I had seen! This was not yet the last. Let me dally a little, he is as good as destroyed. Some way further across the street, neon lights flickered twice slower than my heart: the outline of a restaurant sign, a large coffee-pot, kept bursting, every full second or so, into emerald life, and every time it went out, pink letters saying Fine Foods relayed it, but the pot could still be made out as a latent shadow teasing the eye before its next emerald resurrection. We made shadow-graphs. This furtive burg was not far from The Enchanted Hunters. I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  My soul, in its disdainful mood, thinking to escape disdain by death, made me, though just, unjust against myself. By the new roots of this tree, I swear to you, never did I break faith to my lord, who was so worthy of honour. And if any of you return to the world, strengthen the memory of me, which still lies prostrate from the blow that envy gave it.” The Poet listened awhile, and then said to me: “Since he is silent, lose not the hour; but speak, and ask him, if thou wouldst know more.” Whereat I to him: “Do thou ask him farther, respecting what thou thinkest will satisfy me; for I could not, such pity is upon my heart.” He therefore resumed: “So may the man do freely for thee what thy words entreat him, O imprisoned spirit, please thee tell us farther, how the soul gets bound up in these knots; and tell us, if thou mayest. whether any ever frees itself from such members.” Then the trunk blew strongly, and soon that wind was changed into these words: “Briefly shall you be answered. When the fierce spirit quits the body, from which it has torn itself, Minos sends it to the seventh gulf. It falls into the wood, and no place is chosen for it; but wherever fortune flings it, there it sprouts, like grain of spelt; shoots up to a sapling, and to a savage plant; the Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, give pain, and to the pain an outlet. Like the others, we shall go for our spoils, but not to the end that any may be clothed with them again: for it is not just that a man have what he takes from himself.7 Hither shall we drag them, and through the mournful wood our bodies shall be suspended, each on the thorny tree of its tormented shade.” We still were listening to the trunk, thinking it would tell us more, when by a noise we were surprised; like one who feels the boar and chase approaching to his stand, who hears the beasts and the branches crashing. And, lo! on the left hand, two spirits,8 naked and torn, fleeing so violently that they broke every fan of the wood. The foremost: “Come now, come, O death!” And the other, who thought himself too slow, cried. “Lano, thy legs were not so ready at the jousts of Toppo.” And since his breath perhaps was failing him, of himself and of a bush he made one group. Behind them, the wood was filled with black braches, eager and fleet, as greyhounds that have escaped the leash. Into him, who squatted, they thrust their teeth, and rent him piece by piece; then carried off his miserable limbs. My Guide now took me by the hand, and led me to the bush, which was lamenting through its bleeding fractures, in vain.