Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  Between her tears she bitterly cursed Cimon’s love and censured his temerity, declaring that this alone had brought about the raging tempest, though it could also have arisen because Cimon’s desire to marry her was contrary to the will of the gods, who were determined, not only to deny him the fruits of his presumptuous longing, but to make him witness her demise before he, too, died a miserable death. These laments she continued to pour forth, along with others of still greater vehemence, until, with the wind blowing fiercer all the time, the seamen at their wits’ end, and everyone ignorant of the course they were steering, they arrived off the island of Rhodes. Not realizing where they were, they did everything in their power to make a good landfall, and thus prevent loss of life. Fortune was kindly to their endeavours, and guided them into a tiny bay, to which the Rhodians released by Cimon on the previous day had brought their own vessel a little while before. Dawn was breaking as they entered the bay, turning the sky a little brighter, and no sooner did they become aware that they were at the island of Rhodes than they perceived the very ship from which they had parted company, lying no more than a stone’s throw away from their own. Cimon was dismayed beyond measure by this discovery, and fearing just such a fate as eventually overtook him, he called upon his crew to spare no effort in getting away from there and allowing Fortune to carry them wherever she pleased, since she could hardly choose a worse place than the one they were in. They strove with might and main to make good their escape, but without success, for a fierce gale was blowing directly against them, which not only prevented them from leaving the bay but drove them of necessity to the shore. They eventually ran aground and were recognized by the Rhodian sailors, who by now were already ashore. One of these hurried off to inform the young Rhodian nobles, who had mean-while made their way to a nearby town, that the ship carrying Cimon and Iphigenia had, like their own, been driven into the bay by the storm. Overjoyed by these tidings, the young Rhodians assembled a large number of the townspeople and instantly returned to the shore. Cimon and his companions had meanwhile disembarked, intending to seek refuge in some neighbouring woods, but before they could do so they were all seized, along with Iphigenia, and led away to the town. Here they were held until Lysimachus, the chief magistrate of Rhodes in that particular year, came from the city and marched them all off to prison under a specially heavy armed escort, as arranged by Pasimondas, who had lodged a complaint with the Senate of Rhodes as soon as the news had reached him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The day went on and the sun shone out brightly, dazzling the tired eyes of the drivers. Dusk fell, and the roads grew treacherous and vague. Night came—they dared not risk having lights, so that they must just stare and stare into the darkness. In the distance the sky turned ominously red, some stray shells might well have set fire to a village, that tall column of flame was probably the church; and the Boches were punishing Compiègne again, to judge from the heavy sounds of bombardment. Yet by now there was nothing real in the world but that thick and almost impenetrable darkness, and the ache of the eyes that must stare and stare, and the dreadful, patient pain of the wounded—there had never been anything else in the world but black night shot through with the pain of the wounded. 4On the following morning the two ambulances crept back to their base at the villa in Compiègne. It had been a tough job, long hours of strain, and to make matters worse the reliefs had been late, one of them having had a breakdown. Moving stiffly, and with red rimmed and watering eyes, the four women swallowed large cups of coffee; then just as they were they lay down on the floor, wrapped in their trench coats and army blankets. In less than a quarter of an hour they slept, though the villa shook and rocked with the bombardment. CHAPTER 361T here is something that mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being. The ageing and the cynical may make wars, but the young and the idealistic must fight them, and thus there are bound to come quick reactions, blind impulses not always comprehended. Men will curse as they kill, yet accomplish deeds of self-sacrifice, giving their lives for others; poets will write with their pens dipped in blood, yet will write not of death but of life eternal; strong and courteous friendships will be born, to endure in the face of enmity and destruction. And so persistent is this urge to the ideal, above all in the presence of great disaster, that mankind, the wilful destroyer of beauty, must immediately strive to create new beauties, lest it perish from a sense of its own desolation; and this urge touched the Celtic soul of Mary.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On learning of her husband’s intentions, from which it appeared she would have to return to her father’s house, in order perhaps to look after the sheep as she had in the past, meanwhile seeing the man she adored being cherished by some other woman, Griselda was secretly filled with despair. But she prepared herself to endure this final blow as stoically as she had borne Fortune’s earlier assaults. Shortly thereafter, Gualtieri arranged for some counterfeit letters of his to arrive from Rome, and led his subjects to believe that in these, the Pope had granted him permission to abandon Griselda and remarry. He accordingly sent for Griselda, and before a large number of people he said to her: ‘Woman, I have had a dispensation from the Pope, allowing me to leave you and take another wife. Since my ancestors were great noblemen and rulers of these lands, whereas yours have always been peasants, I intend that you shall no longer be my wife, but return to Giannùcole’s house with the dowry you brought me, after which I shall bring another lady here. I have already chosen her and she is far better suited to a man of my condition.’ On hearing these words, the lady, with an effort beyond the power of any normal woman’s nature, suppressed her tears and replied: ‘My lord, I have always known that my lowly condition was totally at odds with your nobility, and that it is to God and to yourself that I owe whatever standing I possess. Nor have I ever regarded this as a gift that I might keep and cherish as my own, but rather as something I have borrowed; and now that you want me to return it, I must give it back to you with good grace. Here is the ring with which you married me: take it. As to your ordering me to take away the dowry that I brought, you will require no accountant, nor will I need a purse or a pack-horse, for this to be done. For it has not escaped my memory that you took me naked as on the day I was born.6 If you think it proper that the body in which I have borne your children should be seen by all the people, I shall go away naked. But in return for my virginity, which I brought to you and cannot retrieve, I trust you will at least allow me, in addition to my dowry, to take one shift away with me.’ Gualtieri wanted above all else to burst into tears, but maintaining a stern expression he said: ‘Very well, you may take a shift.’

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  As I sat there not knowing what to do, Renate’s revelation of Anaïs’s adult incest with her father broke through my willed amnesia. I had convinced myself that it had just been Renate’s drunkenness, but Anaïs’s desperate cry and her emotional collapse in front of my eyes gave it credence. Was I witnessing the Oedipal curse that Anaïs had escaped until then? I recalled the terror and awe at the end of Sophocles’s tragedy, where King Oedipus is cursed for his violation of the ultimate taboo—along with all his supporters. Indeed, seeing Anaïs quaking with despair cursed me as well. It made me question her whole philosophy of self-healing through creativity. Anaïs had assured me, and proclaimed publicly, that diary writing and psychoanalysis had healed her from the wound of her father’s abandonment. She credited her analysis with Dr. Bogner for enabling her to move beyond her obsession with her father and write about other subjects. She’d even claimed to have forgiven her father! I had trusted that if I followed faithfully in Anaïs’s footsteps, I would eventually outpace the effects of father abandonment: the crippling insecurity, the need for approval in a man’s world, the abiding fear of loss, the attacks of anxiety and hyper-vigilance. I had believed myself blessed in one way: my intimacy with Anaïs, the person who shared my particular wound and had healed herself. She had gone on from an unhappy childhood like mine to a big life, savoring love, adventure, literary success, travel, and friendships. In maturity, she seemed to dwell not only on stage, but in life, in her wise and centered persona of Djuna. Her achievement of happiness had given me hope. Now it appeared that I had been deluded. For here was Anaïs near the end of her life, hunched in a fetal position, sobbing about her father, the wound he’d inflicted still not healed, and she had let a bunch of pimply faced, eighteen-year-old white light zealots do it to her. If this could happen to Anaïs, after all the maturity she’d worked for, after her thousands of hours of psychoanalysis, after her tens of thousands of journal pages, what hope was there for me? The leader of the white light group timidly leaned down to Rupert, who was holding Anaïs in his arms, her head buried in his chest, her hunched shoulders shaking as if palsied. “We’d like to try something we think might help.” Desperate, Rupert readily agreed, and the timorous young man told Anaïs to breathe with him as he counted. “Breathe in. One omm, Two omm …” Jamie and I saw Rupert nod that we could leave, and we tiptoed out. The next day when I told Renate about Anaïs’s tearful collapse she said, “Anaïs neglected her spiritual life all those years, and now when she needs it, it isn’t there.” It sounded harsh, but I knew Renate was saying it as a warning to me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  seldom and unobtrusively), had now been brought home to the feeble-minded as well, but the scale of the calamity caused them to regard it with indifference. Such was the multitude of corpses (of which further consignments were arriving every day and almost by the hour at each of the churches), that there was not sufficient consecrated ground for them to be buried in, especially if each was to have its own plot in accordance with long-established custom. So when all the graves were full, huge trenches were excavated in the churchyards, into which new arrivals were placed in their hundreds, stowed tier upon tier like ships’ cargo, each layer of corpses being covered over with a thin layer of soil till the trench was filled to the top. But rather than describe in elaborate detail the calamities we experienced in the city at that time, I must mention that, whilst an ill wind was blowing through Florence itself, the surrounding region was no less badly affected. In the fortified towns, conditions were similar to those in the city itself on a minor scale; but in the scattered hamlets and the countryside proper, the poor unfortunate peasants and their families had no physicians or servants whatever to assist them, and collapsed by the wayside, in their fields, and in their cottages at all hours of the day and night, dying more like animals than human beings. Like the townspeople, they too grew apathetic in their ways, disregarded their affairs, and neglected their possessions. Moreover they all behaved as though each day was to be their last, and far from making provision for the future by tilling their lands, tending their flocks, and adding to their previous labours, they tried in every way they could think of to squander the assets already in their possession. Thus it came about that oxen, asses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, and even dogs (for all their deep fidelity to man) were driven away and allowed to roam freely through the fields, where the crops lay abandoned and had not even been reaped, let alone gathered in. And after a whole day’s feasting, many of these animals, as though possessing the power of reason, would return glutted in the evening to their own quarters, without any shepherd to guide them. But let us leave the countryside and return to the city. What more remains to be said, except that the cruelty of heaven (and possibly, in some measure, also that of man) was so immense and so devastating that between March and July of the year in question, what with the fury of the pestilence and the fact that so many of the sick were inadequately cared for or abandoned in their hour of need because the healthy were too terrified to approach them, it is reliably thought that over a hundred thousand human lives were extinguished within the walls of the city of Florence?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  SEVENTH STORY On hearing that a young woman called Lisa has fallen ill on account of her fervent love for him, King Peter goes to comfort her, and later on he marries her to a young nobleman; and having kissed her on the brow, he thenceforth always styles himself her knight . When Fiammetta had reached the end of her tale, and fulsome praise had been accorded to the heroic munificence of King Charles (albeit one of the ladies present, being a Ghibelline, refused to extol him), Pampinea at the king’s behest began as follows: Winsome ladies, no sensible person would disagree with what you have said about good King Charles, unless she had other reasons for disliking him; but since his deed has now reminded me of another, perhaps equally commendable, that was performed by an adversary of his for the sake of yet another young country-woman of ours, I should like to tell you about it. At the time when the French were driven from Sicily, 1 there was living in Palermo a very rich Florentine apothecary called Bernardo Puccini, whose wife had borne him one child only, an exquisitely beautiful daughter who was now of marriageable age. King Peter of Aragon, 2 having made himself master of the island, was staging a magnificent tournament in Palermo with all his lords, and whilst he was jousting in the Catalan style, 3 it happened that Bernardo’s daughter, whose name was Lisa, was viewing the proceedings from a window along with some other ladies. When she saw the King riding in the joust, she was filled with so much admiration that after watching him perform in one or two further contests she fell passionately in love with him. The festivities came to an end, and Lisa went about her father’s house, unable to think of anything else but the lofty and splendid love to which she aspired. But that which grieved her most was the knowledge of her lowly condition, which left her with scarcely any hope that her love could be brought to a happy conclusion. Nevertheless she would not be deterred from loving the King, though for fear of making things worse for herself, she dared not reveal her love to a single living soul. The King neither noticed nor cared about any of this, which made her affliction all the more difficult to bear. As her love continued to increase, so also did her melancholy, till eventually, being unable to endure it any longer, the beautiful Lisa fell ill and began to waste visibly away from one day to the next, like snow in the rays of the sun. Her father and mother, who were heartbroken by the turn that events had taken, assisted her in every way they could, nursing her day and night, calling in various physicians, and plying her with medicines. But it was all to no avail, for the girl, having despaired of her love, had chosen not to go on living.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now there crept into Stephen’s brain the worst torment of all, a doubt of her father. He had known and knowing he had not told her; he had pitied and pitying had not protected; he had feared and fearing had saved only himself. Had she had a coward for a father? She sprang up and began to pace the room. Not this—she could not face this new torment. She had stained her love, the love of the lover—she dared not stain this one thing that remained, the love of the child for the father. If this light went out the engulfing darkness would consume her, destroying her entirely. Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation—one point of light. The most perfect Being of all had cried out for light in His darkness—even He, the most perfect Being of all. And then as though in answer to prayer, to some prayer that her trembling lips had not uttered, came the memory of a patient, protective back, bowed as though bearing another’s burden. Came the memory of horrible, soul-sickening pain: ‘No—not that—something urgent—I want—to say. No drugs—I know I’m—dying—Evans.’ And again an heroic and tortured effort: ‘Anna—it’s Stephen—listen.’ Stephen suddenly held out her arms to this man who, though dead, was still her father. But even in this blessèd moment of easement, her heart hardened again at the thought of her mother. A fresh wave of bitterness flooded her soul so that the light seemed all but extinguished; very faintly it gleamed like the little lantern on a buoy that is tossed by tempest. Sitting down at her desk she found pen and paper.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Things did not start out so badly. I rented a house with some photography students who blew up their grainy black-and-white images of fallow fields and lonely churches and plastered them on billboards set along the country roads. Though I ignored the rabid English department politics, I enjoyed my role as an avant-garde feminist lecturer from California, hired because I could teach both the traditional canon and the hot new field of women’s studies. Then, over summer break, the only good friend I’d made on the IU faculty blew his brains out in a soybean field. Soon after, a group of coeds from my spring semester’s Twentieth-Century Women’s Lit class declared that they, too, had been seduced by the romance of suicide thanks to having read Sylvia Plath’s Ariel in my class; though I resolved never to teach Plath again, her black gloves beckoned me as well. The bottom didn’t fall out, though, until Clara phoned to report back to me on Philip’s sustained silence. When I’d left him after summer vacation, we were on good terms. My understanding was that he was still my boyfriend, who would be waiting when I flew back at Christmas. But Clara reported that Philip had moved out of the beach house, given notice to the landlord, and taken an apartment with a new girlfriend to whom he was engaged, all without mentioning a word about it to me. And one other piece of news: I’d left my cat Jadu in Philip’s care, and Jadu was dead, either eaten by coyotes or hit by a car on Pacific Coast Highway. The hidden explosive device—buried when my father left—was triggered by Philip’s betrayal and detonated. Eight years before, when Neal had left me, I’d been surprised that all existence was not wiped out. Anaïs and Rupert and Renate had encircled and protected me from impact. This time, though, I was entirely alone. With detached interest, I watched myself become a perpetual motion machine that did nothing but shake and leak tears. It didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and had no stop switch, although it somehow turned itself off for the hours I taught in the classroom. Anaïs had been right; she was the only one who had understood that although taking the job was the honorable and feminist thing to do, my emotions and nerves could not follow suit. I’d let happen what Anaïs had warned me about in the beginning: I had failed to protect myself from re-injury by a man. I hid in my upstairs bedroom, watching the endless, frigid rain roll down my windowpane and splash in the courtyard below. When the phone rang and Anaïs said hello, it was a voice from another life. “Tristine, are you alright? I got worried that I haven’t heard from you. How is it there?” “Not so good.” Gently she asked, “What’s the most immediate problem?” “I have a blister on my foot that’s infected.” “Have you been to the doctor?”

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  12 Lecture 2: By the Rivers of Babylon—Exile By the Rivers of Babylon—Exile Lecture 2 I n our last lecture, we discussed the Bible as a resource for our study of life in ancient Israel. In a sense, the ancient Israelites left us their library; perusing the shelves helps us discover who they were and why they collected this set of books. But if we’re going to use the Bible as an ancient library, we need to take a moment to understand who produced it and when. What happened in the lives of ancient Israelites that caused them, unlike any of their neighbors, to preserve their history in writing and successfully pass that history down to succeeding generations? We’ll explore that question in this lecture, the first in a unit on stories of origin. The Babylonian Exile • Psalm 137 describes the period known as the Babylonian Exile, which began in 597 but is most commonly dated to 586 B.C.E., when Babylonia conquered Jerusalem and Judah and deported many of the inhabitants. o It was after this national defeat and crisis that many of the books of the Bible were compiled, edited, and shaped into a library. o The selection of stories seems designed to respond in some way to the realities of being an exiled people. • The Bible describes the actual event of the conquest in a surprisingly brief text in 2 Kings 25:8–12. o During the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah, Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and “burned the house of the Lord, and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; … he broke down the walls around Jerusalem.” Aside from a group described as the “poorest of the land,” all the people— “the rest of the multitude”—were carried into exile.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I needed a new dream. One so buoyant that it could float like a hot air balloon and pull me out of the depths. As a child I’d imagined pretty clothes, a crown on my head, or a chocolate candy tree to keep myself from despair. I’d visualized myself as a famous movie star whom everyone wanted to touch, so I wouldn’t care that no one touched me. I’d promised myself I would become a famous writer with her picture in a magazine, so it would no longer hurt that I was all but invisible. Later I’d imagined myself as a distinguished professor of literature so that people would have to respect me. But having failed at those dreams, it was harder now to put my faith in a ginned-up fantasy to comfort myself. Now I knew the charlatan’s gears behind my compensatory trick. But I did it anyway. I looked at my tear-ravaged face in the mirror and told myself: You will go to film school and become the most renowned woman film director in the world. You will no longer be the fragile woman who was dumped and fell apart. You will be powerful and admired and you will direct movies that will win Academy Awards. No one will know that you fell off the wall and shattered. No one will be able to see the million cracks. It will not matter that you were admitted to film school without qualifying. No one will guess that you no longer care and have no hope, because you will act so driven that you will fool even yourself. CHAPTER 30 Malibu, California, 1974-75 TRISTINE I WAS ABANDONED AND ABANDONED again, and then I abandoned myself. I abandoned my hard-won career, and once I’d returned to LA, I abandoned my body to one man after another, just for the thrill. When my plane landed at 5 a.m. at LAX, I hit the ground running on adrenalin. Arriving by taxi at the beach house at dawn, I cleaned the house, re-arranged the remaining furniture, napped for an hour on the cold waterbed, and showed up at UCLA in time to register for a full load of film production classes. Now I had to keep running hard and fast enough to keep the wolf of depression from catching my heels. My mother could not have been pleased with my surprise visit after I told her that being an English prof hadn’t worked out and I’d enrolled in film school. But she allowed herself no sign of disappointment, sautéed me a plate of mushrooms—my favorite dish—and offered me furniture from her endless stash to replace what Philip had taken from the beach house.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  13 o Why did a military defeat and a national displacement serve as a catalyst for the collection and editing of a nation’s history? Periods of national crisis are often followed by a reshaping of a nation’s story, as we see in our own history with such events as the Vietnam War or 9/11. • Although the Bible does not give us a great deal of detail concerning the individual experiences of deported Judeans, we can make some generalizations based on what we know to be the military practices of Babylonia in this period. Judeans at all levels of society may well have been forced to watch as their family members were killed, as was the case with King Zedekiah. They would have seen their homes burned and their sacred sites looted. • Tens of thousands of Judeans were probably taken into exile. They would have traveled from Jerusalem north into Syria, east across southern Turkey, and finally, south along the Euphrates River into what was then Babylonia (modern Iraq), a distance of 800 to 900 miles. Because the group included women, children, and the elderly, the journey would have been long and slow, and it’s likely that many people died along the way. • Once the Judean exiles arrived in Babylonia, a new stage of transition would begin. They would find themselves in a land very different from their own, surrounded by a people who spoke a foreign language and worshipped foreign gods. • Much of what was ultimately preserved in the Bible speaks in some way to the horrific loss and displacement the Judeans experienced during the period of exile. Psalm 137 • Psalm 137 was probably written during the Babylonian Exile and offers one of the few descriptions we have of exilic life. • In the psalm, the captives ask, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” They have a sense that singing praises to their

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She dragged the coat more closely around her, and stared at the house which was reddening with sunrise. Her heart beat anxiously, fearfully even, as though in some painful anticipation of she knew not what—every window was dark except one or two that were fired by the sunrise. How long she stood there she never knew, it might have been moments, it might have been a lifetime; and then suddenly there was something that moved—the little oak door that led into that garden. It moved cautiously, opening inch by inch, until at last it was standing wide open, and Stephen saw a man and a woman who turned to clasp as though neither of them could endure to be parted from the arms of the other; and as they clung there together and kissed, they swayed unsteadily—drunk with loving. Then, as sometimes happens in moments of great anguish, Stephen could only remember the grotesque. She could only remember a plump-bosomed housemaid in the arms of a coarsely amorous footman, and she laughed and she laughed like a creature demented—laughed and laughed until she must gasp for breath and spit blood from her tongue, which had somehow got bitten in her efforts to stop her hysterical laughing; and some of the blood remained on her chin, jerked there by that agonized laughter. Pale as death, Roger Antrim stared out into the garden, and his tiny moustache looked quite black—like an ink stain smeared above his tremulous mouth by some careless, schoolboy finger. And now Angela’s voice came to Stephen, but faintly. She was saying something—what was she saying? It sounded absurdly as though it were a prayer—‘Christ!’ Then sharply—razor-sharp it sounded as it cut through the air: ‘You, Stephen!’ The laughter died abruptly away, as Stephen turned and walked out of the garden and down the short drive that led to the gates of The Grange, where the motor was waiting. Her face was a mask, quite without expression. She moved stiffly, yet with a curious precision; and she swung up the handle and started the powerful engine without any apparent effort. She drove at great speed but with accurate judgment, for now her mind felt as clear as spring water, and yet there were strange little gaps in her mind—she had not the least idea where she was going. Every road for miles around Upton was familiar, yet she had not the least idea where she was going. Nor did she know how long she drove, nor when she stopped to procure fresh petrol. The sun rose high and hot in the heavens; it beat down on her without warming her coldness, for always she had the sense of a dead thing that lay close against her heart and oppressed it. A corpse—she was carrying a corpse about with her. Was it the corpse of her love for Angela? If so that love was more terrible dead—oh, far more terrible dead than living.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  121 Life in Exile, Life in Judah Lecture 17 I n our last lecture, Ezekiel was our informant on the experience of conquest, deportation, and exile. We saw that his experience served as a catalyst for reformulating Judean theology, as the prophet imagined the Israelite god mounting a chariot and joining the exiles in Babylonia. In this lecture and the next two, we will continue to look at specific aspects of the exilic experience. In this lecture, we’ll consider those Israelites who ended up in Egypt instead of Babylonia and those who remained in Judah. In the following lecture, we’ll look at the issue of literacy and education in ancient Israel and Judah and the gradual development of monotheism as a religious belief system. Multiple Experiences of Exile • The biblical account of the Babylonian conquest of Judah would lead us to believe that nearly all the Judeans were either killed or carried into exile in Babylonia, leaving Judah a desolate and empty wasteland for three generations (e.g., 2 Kings 25:10–12). o In all reality, the total number of exiles taken to Babylonia was somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of the population. o The remaining three-fourths or two-thirds were killed in battle, fled to Egypt of their own accord, or stayed in the land of Judah. • The segments of the Judean population were different from one another in several respects. o The Judean exiles who ended up in Babylonia were compelled militarily to leave their land. They arrived in Babylonia in three successive deportations, in 597, 586, and 582 B.C.E. These exiles were almost exclusively members of the upper class: royalty, priests, landowning nobles, and artisan craftsman.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  the Vergellesi family of Pistoia A leading family of Pistoia, north of Florence, the Vergellesi were politically active in the early part of the fourteenth century on behalf first of the White Guelphs then of the Ghibellines. Francesco de’ Vergellesi is recorded as having undertaken a political mission to the French court in 1313, and around 1326 he was indeed appointed podestà (governor) in the province of Lombardy. Sixth Story 1 . one of those prudes Nothing in what we are told about Catella merits such a description, with the possible exception of her jealous love for her husband, which is exploited by her admirer in a fashion that can only be thought of as callous and despicable. Possibly the most unpleasant story in the whole collection, this account of the cruel rape of a virtuous wife gives the lie to the claim that the Decameron is a feminist work ante litteram . Although the story is being narrated by one of the young ladies, Fiammetta, the viewpoint is decidedly masculine and anti-feminist. It is fair to add that the specious arguments presented in B.’s tale by the rapist to his victim are based upon passages from Livy and Valerius Maximus describing Tarquin’s rape of Lucretia. 2 . Ricciardo Minutolo The surname is also that of the dead archbishop in II, 5. Minutolo was the name of a leading Neapolitan patrician family, as also was Sighinolfo, the married name of the lady, Catella, who is the object of Ricciardo’s obsessive affection. Both Ricciardo Minutolo and Filippo Sighinolfi were known to B. during his fourteen-year sojourn in Naples, although Sighinolfi’s wife was not called Catella, but Mattea. It is unlikely that either family would have approved of B.’s fictive account of their marital arrangements. 3 . to meet in secret at a bagnio The bagnio (in Italian, bagno ), or Turkish bath-house, was a favourite meeting-place for adulterous lovers. Seventh Story 1 . Tedaldo degli Elisei… Aldobrandino Palermini As in the previous tale, the two families involved were among the oldest-established in the city where the novella is set, but the historical records reveal no trace of either a Tedaldo degli Elisei or an Aldobrandino Palermini. 2 . the devil’s mouth at the bottom of the abyss It was common for artists to depict the souls of the damned being devoured by demons. In his Inferno , Dante reserves this punishment for the three worst sinners of all, Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. As traitors to the founders of Church and Empire, each is being gnawed by one of the three slavering mouths of the giant Lucifer at the very centre of Hell. 3 . There was once a time … The lengthy tirade that follows, against the depravity of the religious, was to become a model for later writers engaging in anti-clerical invective. The Decameron contains numerous examples of a mocking attitude towards the religious, who along with women were the most popular target for medieval satirists.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Georgette listened quietly as she polished Lupita’s nails. I told Lupita I wanted to paint, to be an artist. She told me that what she wanted was someone to love her. And then she said to me nonchalantly, as she looked sideways at Georgette, “What do you know about that Navajo boy, the cowboy with the eyelashes—Clarence?” She had perfect timing, the mark of a good hunter or singer. Then she said directly to Georgette, “He’s a good kisser.” I hated confrontation and kept quiet. “He’s spoken for,” spit Georgette, who stood up quickly to face Lupita, spilling acetone all over her and my prized suede pants. The whole room stank of rotten apples. Lupita knew exactly what Georgette had been up to all along when she invited her to our room. I wondered if she knew anything about Clarence’s bet and whether I should tell her, and if so, when. Lupita picked up Georgette’s sharp nail file and began to file her nails. Georgette wasn’t through, though. “You Mexican bitch!” she snapped. “Get out of here.” “This is my room too,” I said. “She can stay. And by the way, please take off my pants.” Georgette glared at me as she quickly replaced my pants with her skirt. She kicked the ruined pants aside. “You’re both sick,” she spit out. “Nobody can be from Venus or anyplace else but here.” She marched out of the room carrying her case of nail polish and a story she would vent to her friends in the next room. Later I set out for the painting studio to get myself back together. When I painted, everything went away: the seductions, the sad need for attention, the missing fathers, fearful mothers, and evil stepfathers. I could fly to the moon, and to Venus too, if I wanted. I understood Lupita when she said she was from Venus. I was also from somewhere far away, the other side of the Milky Way, and would return there someday. I knew it, as I knew I could count on cerulean blue to be absolutely cerulean blue when I spread it on a canvas. An approaching cold front froze the stars to the dark sky. The Powwow Club was practicing in the gym, and a song flew out the tall narrow windows toward the white shell of the moon. The moon leaned delicately toward the bright point of Venus, framed by the graceful cottonwoods lining the sidewalk. I felt flawed, imperfect, but what haunted me was not flamboyant like Georgette’s ghost. It was a subtle thing, a delicate force, like the field of stars under the sky when we danced in the summer. I was haunted by a paradox: if there is such beauty, then why are we suffering? As I opened the door to the studio, Herbie jumped me. I screamed. I chased him, then held him down, made him promise never to frighten me again. Then I told him everything: about Lupita, about Georgette, about Mrs.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Came the day when Mary refused to see Martin, when she turned upon Stephen, pale and accusing: ‘Can’t you understand? Are you utterly blind—have you only got eyes now for Valérie Seymour?’ And as though she were suddenly smitten dumb, Stephen’s lips remained closed and she answered nothing. 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.’ 3The 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 squares, tracing them carefully out with her finger. The woman behind the bar nudged her companion: ‘En voilà 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 . . .’ 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.’

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But, after all, the Devil has no real power over believers. He hates prayer, and flees from the cross and from the Word of God as from a flaming fire. If you cannot expel him by texts of Holy Scripture, the best way is to jeer and flout him. A pious nun once scared him away by simply saying: "Christiana sum." Christ has slain him, and will cast him out at last into the fire of hell. Hence Luther sings in his battle hymn, — "And let the Prince of ill Look grim as e’er he will, He harms us not a whit: For why? His doom is writ, One little word shall slay him." Luther was at times deeply dejected in spirit. He wrote to Melanchthon, July 13, under the influence of dyspepsia which paints every thing in the darkest colors: "You elevate me too high, and fall into the serious error of giving me too much credit, as if I were absorbed in God’s cause. This high opinion of yours confounds and racks me, when I see myself insensible, hardened, sunk in idleness, alas! seldom in prayer, and not venting one groan over God’s Church. My unsubdued flesh burns me with devouring fire. In short, I who ought to be eaten up with the spirit, am devoured by the flesh, by luxury, indolence, idleness, somnolence. Is it that God has turned away from me, because you no longer pray for me? You must take my place; you, richer in God’s gifts, and more acceptable in his sight. Here, a week has passed away since I put pen to paper, since I have prayed or studied, either vexed by fleshly cares, or by other temptations. If things do not improve, I will go to Erfurt without concealment; there you will see me, or I you, for I must consult physicians or surgeons. Perhaps the Lord troubles me so much in order to draw me from this wilderness before the public."422 Notwithstanding his complaints of illness and depression, and assaults from the evil spirit, he took the liveliest interest in the events of the day, and was anxious to descend to the arena of conflict. He kept writing letters, books, and pamphlets, and sent them into the world. His literary activity during those few months is truly astounding, and contrasts strangely with his repeated lament that he had to sit idle at Patmos, and would rather be burned in the service of God than stagnate there. He had few books in the Wartburg. He studied the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures very diligently;423 he depended for news on the letters of his friends at Wittenberg; and for his writings, on the resources of his genius.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Came the thought of that unforgettable scene with her mother. ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet.’ Oh, yes—very easy to talk about death, but not so easy to manage the dying. ‘We two cannot live together at Morton. . . . One of us must go, which of us shall it be?’ The subtlety, the craftiness of that question which in common decency could have but one answer! Oh, well, she had gone and would go even farther. Raftery was dead, there was nothing to hold her, she was free—what a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes—free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger. At Morton there lived an ageing woman with sorrowful eyes now a little dim from gazing for so long into the distance. Only once, since her gaze had been fixed on the dead, had this woman turned it full on her daughter; and then her eyes had been changed into something accusing, ruthless, abominably cruel. Through looking upon what had seemed abominable to them, they themselves had become an abomination. Horrible! And yet how dared they accuse? What right had a mother to abominate the child that had sprung from her own secret moments of passion? She the honoured, the fulfilled, the fruitful, the loving and loved, had despised the fruit of her love. Its fruit? No, rather its victim. She thought of her mother’s protected life that had never had to face this terrible freedom. Like a vine that clings to a warm southern wall it had clung to her father—it still clung to Morton. In the spring had come gentle and nurturing rains, in the summer the strong and health-giving sunshine, in the winter a deep, soft covering of snow—cold yet protecting the delicate tendrils. All, all she had had. She had never gone empty of love in the days of her youthful ardour; had never known longing, shame, degradation, but rather great joy and great pride in her loving. Her love had been pure in the eyes of the world, for she had been able to indulge it with honour. Still with honour, she had borne a child to her mate—but a child who, unlike her, must go unfulfilled all her days, or else live in abject dishonour. Oh, but a hard and pitiless woman this mother must be for all her soft beauty; shamelessly finding shame in her offspring. ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet. . . .’ ‘Too late, too late, your love gave me life. Here am I the creature you made through your loving; by your passion you created the thing that I am. Who are you to deny me the right to love? But for you I need never have known existence.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But her plans misfired, for the ship was driven by strong winds to the island of Ponza, 3 where they put in to a little bay and began to await more favourable weather for their voyage. Like the others, Madonna Beritola went ashore there, and she sought out a deserted and remote spot on the island where, in complete solitude, she could give vent to her sorrow for the loss of her husband. This became a daily ritual of hers, until one day, as she was busy sorrowing, it happened that a pirate- galley arrived, taking the crew and everyone else unawares, and departed again after capturing the ship and all hands. Having completed her daily lament, Madonna Beritola, following her usual practice, returned to the shore to look for her children. On finding nobody in sight she was at first perplexed, and then, suddenly suspecting what had happened, she cast her eyes seaward and saw the galley, not yet very far distant, with the little ship in tow. Realizing all too clearly that she had now lost her children as well as her husband, and finding herself abandoned there, alone and destitute, without the slightest notion of how she was going to find them again, she fell in a dead faint on to the sand with the names of her husband and children on her lips. There was nobody at hand to revive her with cold water or other remedies, and hence it was some time before she came to her senses. When, eventually, the strength returned to her poor exhausted body, bringing with it further tears and lamentations, she called out over and over again to her children and searched high and low for them in every cavern she could find. But when she saw that her efforts were useless and that the night was approaching, she began, prompted by an instinctive feeling that all was not entirely lost, to devote some attention to her own predicament. And, leaving the shore, she returned to the cave where she was in the habit of giving vent to her tears and sorrow. She had had nothing to eat since midday, and a little after tierce on the following morning, having spent the night in great fear and incredible anguish, she was compelled to start eating grass in order to appease her hunger. Having fed herself to the best of her ability, she then started brooding, tearfully, about what was to become of her. And whilst in the midst of these various reflections, she caught sight of a doe, which came towards her and disappeared into a nearby cave, emerging shortly afterwards and then running away into the woods. Getting up from where she was sitting, she entered the cave from which the doe had emerged, and inside she saw two newly born roebucks, no more than a few hours old, which seemed to her the sweetest and most charming sight it was possible to imagine.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The sun was positively blazing, and having reached its zenith, was beating freely down, with all its power, straight on to her soft and tender body and on to her unprotected head, so that not only did it scorch every part of her flesh that was exposed to its rays, but it caused her skin to split into countless tiny cracks and fissures. And so intense was the roasting she received that although she was soundly asleep, it forced her to wake up. On finding she was being burnt, she attempted to move, whereupon she felt as if the whole of her scorched skin was being rent asunder like a piece of flaming parchment being stretched from both ends. Moreover (and this was not in the least surprising), she had such an excruciating pain in her head that she thought it would burst. The floor of the tower-roof was so hot that she could find nowhere to stand or sit down, and so she kept shifting her position the whole time, weeping incessantly. But apart from all this, there being not a breath of wind, the air was literally teeming with flies and gadflies, which, settling in the fissures of her flesh, stung her so ferociously that every sting was like a spear being thrust into her body. And hence she flailed her arms in all directions, heaping a constant stream of curses upon herself, her life, her lover, and the scholar. Being thus goaded, tormented, and pierced to the very quick by the incalculable heat, the rays of the sun, the flies and gadflies, her hunger and above all her thirst, as well as by a thousand agonizing thoughts, she stood up straight and looked about her in the hope of seeing or hearing someone who could be summoned to her assistance, being by now prepared to do anything, come what may, to effect her release. But here too she was dogged by ill luck. The peasants had all deserted the fields on account of the heat, and in any case nobody had been working near the tower that morning because they were staying at home to thresh the corn. So all she heard was the sound of cicadas, and the only moving thing in sight was the Arno, whose inviting waters did nothing to lessen her thirst, but only made it worse. And scattered about the countryside she could see houses and woods and shaded places, all of which played no less cruelly upon her desires. What more are we to say of this hapless widow?