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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  “No, Stiva,” she said, “I’m lost, lost! worse than lost! I can’t say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it’s not over. I’m an overstrained string that must snap. But it’s not ended yet ... and it will have a fearful end.” “No matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little. There’s no position from which there is no way of escape.” “I have thought, and thought. Only one....” Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape in her thought was death, and he would not let her say it. “Not at all,” he said. “Listen to me. You can’t see your own position as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion.” Again he smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile. “I’ll begin from the beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let’s admit.” “A fearful mistake!” said Anna. “But I repeat, it’s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your husband knew it and forgave it.” He stopped at each sentence, waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. “That’s so. Now the question is: can you go on living with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish it?” “I know nothing, nothing.” “But you said yourself that you can’t endure him.” “No, I didn’t say so. I deny it. I can’t tell, I don’t know anything about it.” “Yes, but let....” “You can’t understand. I feel I’m lying head downwards in a sort of pit, but I ought not to save myself. And I can’t....” “Never mind, we’ll slip something under and pull you out. I understand you: I understand that you can’t take it on yourself to express your wishes, your feelings.” “There’s nothing, nothing I wish ... except for it to be all over.” “But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on him any less than on you? You’re wretched, he’s wretched, and what good can come of it? while divorce would solve the difficulty completely.” With some effort Stepan Arkadyevitch brought out his central idea, and looked significantly at her. She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from the look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old beauty, he saw that if she did not desire this, it was simply because it seemed to her unattainable happiness. “I’m awfully sorry for you! And how happy I should be if I could arrange things!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly. “Don’t speak, don’t say a word! God grant only that I may speak as I feel. I’m going to him.” Anna looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing. Chapter 22

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Of course,” he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room, looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking steps of his servant coming through the drawing-room brought him to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew he had shot himself. “Idiotic! Missed!” he said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver was close beside him—he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his balance, fell over, streaming with blood. The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varya, his brother’s wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him. Chapter 19

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. “How could I say such cruel things to her?” he would say. “How could I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is....” Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness. “Death!” she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. “No, anything—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will pass,” she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his room. He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost consciousness.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?” she thought, staring at two men who walked by. “Can one ever tell anyone what one is feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it’s a good thing I didn’t tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery! She would have concealed it, but her chief feeling would have been delight at my being punished for the happiness she envied me for. Kitty, she would have been even more pleased. How I can see through her! She knows I was more than usually sweet to her husband. And she’s jealous and hates me. And she despises me. In her eyes I’m an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me ... if I’d cared to. And, indeed, I did care to. There’s someone who’s pleased with himself,” she thought, as she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived his mistake. “He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice cream, that they do know for certain,” she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice cream seller, who took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring face with a towel. “We all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Kitty’s the same—if not Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies me, and hates me. And we all hate each other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that’s the truth. ‘_Tiutkin, coiffeur._’ _Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin...._ I’ll tell him that when he comes,” she thought and smiled. But the same instant she remembered that she had no one now to tell anything amusing to. “And there’s nothing amusing, nothing mirthful, really. It’s all hateful. They’re singing for vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if he were afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this singing and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other like these cab drivers who are abusing each other so angrily. Yashvin says, ‘He wants to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his.’ Yes, that’s the truth!” She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that she left off thinking of her own position, when the carriage drew up at the steps of her house. It was only when she saw the porter running out to meet her that she remembered she had sent the note and the telegram. “Is there an answer?” she inquired.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world. Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up. On completing his high school and university courses with medals, Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle’s aid, immediately started in a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school and the university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey Alexandrovitch had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after Alexey Alexandrovitch’s marriage. While he was governor of a province, Anna’s aunt, a wealthy provincial lady, had thrown him—middle-aged as he was, though young for a governor—with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town. Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. There were at the time as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of abstaining when in doubt. But Anna’s aunt had through a common acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound to make her an offer. He made the offer, and concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he was capable.

• From Querelle (1953)

  were numb and red. They saw the sea, or rather, from out of the depths of the fog they could hear the shouts of captains, free sailors, fishermen, the creaking of oars, the oaths rolling across the water, and then, little by little, they could see the sails billowing out, with the solemn self-importance of that double escutcheon of stone. The roosters were crowing. On the Roads, dawn came, more radiant every day. Barefoot on the damp cobblestones the galley convicts waited a few moments longer, in silence or whispering to each other. In a couple of minutes they would be boarding the galley and start rowing. Then a captain in silk stockings, ruffed and cuffed with lace, passed through their ranks, brightening the air. Seated in a sedan chair suddenly surging out of the fog he appeared as its god or incarnation, and all the mist vanished on his arrival. Surely he had remained in it all night, commingling with it, turning hims.elf into that dense vapor (yet lacking something, a certain particle of radium which, eight or ten hours later, would crystallize around itself the most attenuated elements of that fog and thus obtain that man, hard, violent, gilded, sculpted and decorated like a frigate) . The galley convicts are dead. They may have died of hope. They have not been replaced. On the Penfeld wharves today, specialist workmen are constructing ships of steel. Another hardness-even more ferocious-has replaced the hardness of faces and hearts that used to make this such a sorrowful place. There exists a beauty of the fugitive, revealed and illuminated by fear in a wonderful interior flash; and then there is the beauty of the conqueror, whose serenity has been accomplished, whose life has been achieved, and who now has to remain immobile. On the water, and in the fog, the presence of metal is cruel. The fa�ade and the front yard are intact, but within the penitentiary there is nothing but coils of rope, tarred heaps of rigging, and rats. When the sun rises, revealing the Jeanne cf Arc anchored under the cliffs of Recouvrance, one can see the cub sailors already at it. These clumsy children are the monstrous, delicate and degenerate 115 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Dear friend!” repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her eyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner corners, describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow face became still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that she was sorry for him and was preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it. “Dear friend!” she said in a voice breaking with emotion. “You ought not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but you ought to find consolation.” “I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming eyes. “My position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot find within me strength to support me.” “You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I beseech you to believe in my friendship,” she said, with a sigh. “Our support is love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light,” she said, with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. “He will be your support and your succor.” Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear this now. “I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand nothing.” “Dear friend,” repeated Lidia Ivanovna. “It’s not the loss of what I have not now, it’s not that!” pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it.” “Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working within your heart,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes rapturously, “and so you cannot be ashamed of your act.” Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands, he cracked his fingers.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Two maid-servants walking along the platform turned their heads, staring at her and making some remarks about her dress. “Real,” they said of the lace she was wearing. The young men would not leave her in peace. Again they passed by, peering into her face, and with a laugh shouting something in an unnatural voice. The station-master coming up asked her whether she was going by train. A boy selling kvas never took his eyes off her. “My God! where am I to go?” she thought, going farther and farther along the platform. At the end she stopped. Some ladies and children, who had come to meet a gentleman in spectacles, paused in their loud laughter and talking, and stared at her as she reached them. She quickened her pace and walked away from them to the edge of the platform. A luggage train was coming in. The platform began to sway, and she fancied she was in the train again. And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the train the day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew what she had to do. With a rapid, light step she went down the steps that led from the tank to the rails and stopped quite near the approaching train. She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the screws and chains and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first carriage slowly moving up, and trying to measure the middle between the front and back wheels, and the very minute when that middle point would be opposite her. “There,” she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the carriage, at the sand and coal dust which covered the sleepers—“there, in the very middle, and I will punish him and escape from everyone and from myself.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations with Anna. “Well, I will go on,” he said, collecting himself. “The great thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,—and this I have not. Conceive the position of a man who knows that his children, the children of the woman he loves, will not be his, but will belong to someone who hates them and cares nothing about them! It is awful!” He paused, evidently much moved. “Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?” queried Darya Alexandrovna. “Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,” he said, calming himself with an effort. “Anna can, it depends on her.... Even to petition the Tsar for legitimization, a divorce is essential. And that depends on Anna. Her husband agreed to a divorce—at that time your husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse it. It is only a matter of writing to him. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of course,” he said gloomily, “it is one of those Pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a letter from her. I can understand that it is agony to her. But the matter is of such importance, that one must _passer par-dessus toutes ces finesses de sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de l’existence d’Anne et de ses enfants._ I won’t speak of myself, though it’s hard for me, very hard,” he said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for its being hard for him. “And so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him and ask for a divorce.” “Yes, of course,” Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as she vividly recalled her last interview with Alexey Alexandrovitch. “Yes, of course,” she repeated with decision, thinking of Anna. “Use your influence with her, make her write. I don’t like—I’m almost unable to speak about this to her.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X I V in 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. IN THAT PART of the youthful year, when the Sun tempers his locks beneath Aquarius, and the nights already wane towards half the day, 1 when the hoar-frost 2 copies his white sister’s image on the ground, but short while lasts the temper of his pen, the peasant, whose fodder fails, rises, and looks, and sees the fields all white; whereat he smites his thigh, goes back into the house, and to and fro laments like a poor wight who knows not what to do; then comes out again, and recovers hope, observing how the world has changed its face in little time; and takes his staff, and chases forth his lambs to feed: thus the Master made me despond, when I saw his brow so troubled; and thus quickly to the sore the plaster came. For when we reached the shattered bridge, my Guide turned to me with that sweet aspect which I saw first at the toot of the mountain. He opened his arms after having chosen some plan within himself, first looking well at the ruin, and took hold of me And as one who works, and calculates, always seeming to provide beforehand: so, lifting me up towards the top of one big block, he looked out another splinter, saying: “Now clamber over that, but try first if it will carry thee.” It was no way for one clad with cloak of lead: for scarcely we, he light and I pushed on, could mount up from jag to jag. And were it not on that precinct the ascent was shorter than on the other, I know not about him, but I certainly had been defeated.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She was mortified, though desperately hungry for pleasure. And I pressed my face into her sweet, hungry little sex, rather eager to pleasure her. But as my tongue delved into her swollen cleft, as I licked her little clitoris, and her swollen lips, I was walloped by the belt continuously. My flaxen-haired one chose one welt after another for her work, and I was in great pain as the bound Princess finally shuddered with pleasure in spite of herself. "Of course, there were others who had been punished enough and now must be rewarded. I did my work as best I could, finding a refuge in it. "And then with a panic I saw there were no more to be rewarded. I was again at the hands of my captor with nothing so sweet as a bound Princess in my arms. "And again, my chest and chin pressed to the floor, I struggled along on my knees under the wallops of her strap back to the Special Punishment Hall. "Now all the Princesses begged Lord Gregory to make me pleasure them, but Lord Gregory silenced them at once. They had their Lords and Ladies to serve, and he would not hear one word from them unless they wanted to be hung from the ceiling of the other Hall as they deserved. "I was now taken away, and out into the garden. As the Queen ordered, I was taken to a large tree, and my hands were tied up high so that my feet barely touched the grass beneath them. It was growing dusk and I was left there. "It had been excruciating, but I had obeyed, I had not run away, and there had come that moment. I was tormented now only by usual needs, my aching cock which might not be rewarded for another day or more by the Queen due to her anger. "But the garden was quiet, full of twilight sounds. The sky was purple and the trees were thickening with shadows. In a little while, they grew skeletal, the sky was white with evening, and then darkness fell around me. "I had resigned myself to sleep in this manner. I was too far from the trunk of the tree to rub my miserable cock against it, or I would have done this, tormented as I was, for whatever pleasure the friction could give me. "And from habit more than training, its hardness would not die away. I remained stiff and tense as though expecting something. "Then Lord Gregory appeared. He materialized out of the dark in his grey velvet, with the gold on the edge of his cloak gleaming. I saw the shimmer of his boots, and the dull sheen of the leather strap he carried. More punishment, I thought wearily, but I must obey. I am a slave Prince and there is nothing to be done for it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “But that is just why a divorce is necessary.” But Anna did not hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she had so many times convinced herself. “What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!” She looked at Dolly, but without waiting for a reply she went on: “I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,” she said. “If they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.” These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. “How can one wrong creatures that don’t exist?” she thought. And all at once the idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling, mad ideas. “No, I don’t know; it’s not right,” was all she said, with an expression of disgust on her face. “Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I.... And besides that,” added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dolly’s objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, “don’t forget the chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For you the question is: do you desire not to have any more children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And that’s a great difference. You must see that I can’t desire it in my position.” Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak. Chapter 24 “Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize your position, if possible,” said Dolly. “Yes, if possible,” said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly different tone, subdued and mournful. “Surely you don’t mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your husband had consented to it.” “Dolly, I don’t want to talk about that.” “Oh, we won’t then,” Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing the expression of suffering on Anna’s face. “All I see is that you take too gloomy a view of things.” “I? Not at all! I’m always bright and happy. You see, _je fais des passions._ Veslovsky....” “Yes, to tell the truth, I don’t like Veslovsky’s tone,” said Darya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "'Beautiful little tits,' said one of the girls as she did this. She had flaxen hair, as straight as yours. 'When I've finished my work, they'll feel like breasts,' she said, and proceeded to stretch them, and stroke them. "All the while, to my shame, my cock was hard as if it knew its mistresses even when I refused to acknowledge them. This girl with the flaxen hair laid her thighs against mine, growing fiercer as she pulled on my nipples. I felt her wet sex against me. 'You think you are too good to suffer at our hands, Prince Alexi?' she crooned. I wouldn't answer her. "Then the paddle handle in my anus thrust harder and more roughly. My hips were pushed forward as cruelly as they had ever been by my stable boy Lord, and I was almost lifted off the floor by the thrusts. 'You think you are too good for us to punish?' she asked again. The other girls laughed and watched her as she commenced to slap my cock hard from right to left. I winced, I could not quite control myself. I wished for all the world that I were gagged, but I wasn't. She ran her fingers over my lips and my teeth to remind me of this, and commanded me to answer her respectfully. "And when I didn't she took her paddle now, and withdrawing the instrument of rape, she proceeded, as she kept her face next to mine, her eyelashes tickling the side of my face, to spank me soundly. Of course I was already sore as we all are, always, and her blows were very hard, and they were without rhythm. She caught me off guard and when I winced and groaned, all the girls laughed appreciatively. "My cock was slapped by others. My nipples twisted by them, but she had clearly shown her supremacy. 'You will beg me for mercy, Prince Alexi,' she said. 'I am not the Queen, you may beg me, for all the good it will do you.' They thought all that was amusing too, and she continued to spank me harder and harder. I prayed she would break the skin before my will broke, but she was too clever for that. She spread the blows. She had them lower the chain slightly, so she could spread my legs even wider. "She held my cock now in her left hand, tightly, roughly, running her open palm over the tip to torment me, and then tightening her grip again as she spanked furiously. "When she slapped my nipples and my cock, and lifted my balls in her hands, I felt the tears flowing, and overcome with shame I groaned unable to conceal it. It was an astonishing moment of pain and pleasure. My buttocks were raw. "But she had only just begun. She ordered the other Princesses to lift my legs in front of me.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is the miracle of NOTHING PERSONAL 7 01 love, love strong enough to guide or drive one into the great estate of maturity, or, to put it another way, into the appre hension and acceptance of one's own identity. For some deep and ineradicable instinct-! believe-causes us to know that it is only this passionate achievement which can outlast death, which can cause life to spring fr om death. Nevertheless, sometimes, at four AM, when one feels that one has probably become simply incapable of supporting this miracle, with all one's wounds awake and throbbing, and all one's ghastly inadequacy staring and shouting fr om the walls and the floor-the entire universe having shrunk to the prison of the self-death glows like the only light on a high, dark, mountain road, where one has, forever and forever! lost one's way.-And many of us perish then. But if one can reach back, reach down-into oneself, into one's life-and find there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one's reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day. (We used to sing in the church, It's another day's journey, and I ' m so glad, the world can't do me no harm!) What one must be enabled to recognize, at four o'clock in the morning, is that one has no right, at least not for reasons of private anguish, to take one's life. All lives arc connected to other lives and when one man goes, much more than the man goes with him. One has to look on oneself as the custodian of a quantity and a qual ity-oneself-which is absolutely unique in the world because it has never been here before and will never be here again. But it is extremely difficult, in this place and time, to look on oneself in this way. Where all human connections arc dis trusted, the human being is very quickly lost. Four AM passes, the dangerous turning maneuvered once more; and here comes the sun or the rain and the hard, me tallic, unrevealing light and sounds of life outside and movement in the streets. Cautiously, one pecks through the blinds, guessing at the weather. And, presently, out of the limbo of the bathroom steam and fog, one's face comes float ing up again, from unimaginable depths.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is not a moment which the film can afford, for it conveys, too vividly, how that victim, the black, yet refuses to be a victim, has another source of sustenance: Billie's morality, at that moment, indeed, threatens the very foundations of the Stock Exchange. The film does not suggest that the obsolete and vindictive narcotics Jaws had anything to do with her fate: does not pick up the challenge implicit in her statement: When I was on, I was on, and nobody bothered me. . . . I got into trouble when I tried to get off. Neither does it suggest that the distinction between Big Business and Organized Crime is like the old ad, CHAPTER THREE which asks, Which twin has the Toni? The film leaves us with the impression, and this is a matter of choices coldly and de liberately made, that a gifted, but weak and self-indulgent woman, brought about the murder of her devoted Piano Man because she was not equal, either to her gifts, or to the society which had made her a star, and, as the closing sequence proves, adored her. There was a rite in our church, called pleading the blood. When the sinner fell on his face before the altar, the soul of the sinner then found itself locked in battle with Satan: or, in the place ofJacob, wrestling with the angel. All of the forces of Hell rushed to claim the soul which had just been aston ished by the light of the love of God. The soul in torment turned this way and that, yearning, equally, for the light and for the darkness: yearning, out of agony, for reconciliation and for rest: for this agony is compounded by an unimagin able, unprecedented, unspeakable fatigue. Only the saints who had passed through this fire-the incredible horror of the fainting of the spirit-had the power to intercede, to "plead the blood," to bring the embattled and mortally endangered soul "through." The pleading of the blood was a plea to who soever had loved us enough to spill his blood for us, that he might sprinkle the soul with his love once more, to give us power over Satan, and the love and courage to live out our days. One of the songs we sang comes out of the last of the Egyptian plagues, the death of the firstborn: when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

• From Querelle (1953)

  What new body would be his? To his despair, however, was added the comforting certainty that the execution would wash him clean of the murder, which he now thought of as an illdigested morsel of food. At last he would have to pay for that somber feast that death-dealing always is. It is always a dirty business : one has to wash oneself afterwards. And wash so thoroughly that nothing of oneself remains. Be reborn. Die, to be reborn. After that he would not be afraid of anybody. Sure, the police could still track him down and have his head cut off: thus it was necessary to take precautions not to give oneself away, but in front of the fantasy court of justice he had created for himself Quereile would no longer have anything to answer for, since he who committed that murder would be dead. The abandoned corpse, would it get past the city gates? Querelle could hear that long, rigid object, always wrapped in its narrow fog shroud, complaining, murmuring some exquisite tune. It was Vic's dead body, bewailing its fate. It desired the honors of 71 I QUERELLE funeral rites and interment. Norbert turned the key in the lock of the door. It was a big, shiny key, and it was reflected in the mirror opposite the door. "Take your pants down." The brothelkeeper's tone was indifferent. Already he had ceased to have any feelings for a guy who interfered with the laws of chance. Querelle remained standing in the middle of the room, his legs wide apart. The idea of women had never bothered him much. Sometimes, at night, in his hammock, his hand would mechanically seek out his prick, caress it, jack off quietly. He watched Nono unbuttoning. There was a moment's silence, and his gaze became fixed on the boss's finger as he was prying one of the buttons out of its buttonhole. "We11, have you made up your mind?" Querelle smiled. He began, desultorily, to undo the flap of his sailor's pants. He said : "You'll take it easy, you hear? They say you can get hurt." "Well, hell, it won't be the first time . . . " Norbert sounded dry, almost mean. A flash of anger ran through Querelle's body: he looked extremely beautiful now, with his head held up, shoulders motionless and tense, buttocks tight, hips very straight (drawn in by the strain in the legs that was raising the buttocks ) , yet of a slimness that enhanced the overall impression of cruelty. Unbuttoned, his flap fell forward over his thighs, like a child's bib. His eyes were glittering. His face, even his hair seemed to be gleaming with hatred. "Listen, buddy, I'm telling you it's the first time all right. So don't you try any monkey business." Norbert, struck by this sudden outburst as by a whiplash, felt his wrestler's muscles tense for action, ready to recoil, and answered right back:

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “A ticket to Obiralovka?” said Pyotr. She had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and only by a great effort she understood the question. “Yes,” she said, handing him her purse, and taking a little red bag in her hand, she got out of the carriage. Making her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room, she gradually recollected all the details of her position, and the plans between which she was hesitating. And again at the old sore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of her tortured, fearfully throbbing heart. As she sat on the star-shaped sofa waiting for the train, she gazed with aversion at the people coming and going (they were all hateful to her), and thought how she would arrive at the station, would write him a note, and what she would write to him, and how he was at this moment complaining to his mother of his position, not understanding her sufferings, and how she would go into the room, and what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her heart was beating. Chapter 31 A bell rang, some young men, ugly and impudent, and at the same time careful of the impression they were making, hurried by. Pyotr, too, crossed the room in his livery and top-boots, with his dull, animal face, and came up to her to take her to the train. Some noisy men were quiet as she passed them on the platform, and one whispered something about her to another—something vile, no doubt. She stepped up on the high step, and sat down in a carriage by herself on a dirty seat that had been white. Her bag lay beside her, shaken up and down by the springiness of the seat. With a foolish smile Pyotr raised his hat, with its colored band, at the window, in token of farewell; an impudent conductor slammed the door and the latch. A grotesque-looking lady wearing a bustle (Anna mentally undressed the woman, and was appalled at her hideousness), and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down the platform. “Katerina Andreevna, she’s got them all, _ma tante!_” cried the girl. “Even the child’s hideous and affected,” thought Anna. To avoid seeing anyone, she got up quickly and seated herself at the opposite window of the empty carriage. A misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a cap from which his tangled hair stuck out all round, passed by that window, stooping down to the carriage wheels. “There’s something familiar about that hideous peasant,” thought Anna. And remembering her dream, she moved away to the opposite door, shaking with terror. The conductor opened the door and let in a man and his wife. “Do you wish to get out?”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Fear of conflict with those who supported McCarthy so fiercely had kept me from trusting what I knew. —SINCE DEMOCRATS OWNED THE Vietnam War, might a Republican president be able to end it sooner? Addressing this question was my New York assignment on a next long journal-keeping trip on the campaign plane of Richard Nixon. It had taken three murders—Martin Luther King, Jr., and two Kennedys—to leave the country with this choice between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Neither one spoke for the national majority that was now against the war in Vietnam. This choice marked the low point in my campaigning life until then. After an eight-day cross-continental campaign trip, our planeload of journalists and campaign staff ended up in Tampa, where Florida governor Claude Kirk had filled an auditorium with patriotic banners and bleachers full of chanting Nixon supporters. Even sitting in the elevated press section overlooking the floor, we could barely see each other above the balloons and banners and choreographed enthusiasm. Resuming a game that the press corps had invented to stay attentive while Nixon gave The Speech, Max Frankel of The New York Times tossed us a note: “$1 reward still available for the first black face.” It was a tough dollar to win. Behind us, a choir began to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Its lyrics by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe celebrated an end to war and “the grapes of wrath” if one listened carefully—which no one did. The familiar music didn’t quite sink in for a moment, but when it did, some of the armor of objectivity began to crack in the male reporters around me. “They shouldn’t sing Bobby’s favorite hymn,” said a reporter softly. “It doesn’t belong to them.” Suddenly I felt tears welling up. It was as if we were surrounded by resentful, neighbor-fearing people—or rather by good people whose neighbor-fearing instincts were being played upon—and these ungenerous ones were going to win, and not just this election but the power to impose themselves, here and in many other countries, for a long dark time to come. I had got through funerals, the brutal streets of Chicago in 1968, and much personal sadness dry-eyed, but this ridiculous rally in Tampa was too much. It wasn’t the victory of one man or even the death of another. It was the resentment of those who feared the new majority that the civil rights and antiwar movements and rebellious women were creating. As I wrote then: We might be rather old before the conservers left and compassionate men came back. —AS I WOULD LEARN in the years to follow, I hadn’t guessed the half of it. Then, even Nixon supported the Equal Rights Amendment and allowed his Justice Department to support civil rights, much as Goldwater and later the first President Bush did.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “But my child!” she shrieked. “You see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can’t and won’t do that.” “But, for God’s sake, which is better?—leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?” “To whom is it degrading?” “To all, and most of all to you.” “You say degrading ... don’t say that. Those words have no meaning for me,” she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. “Don’t you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only—your love. If that’s mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because ... proud of being ... proud....” She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed. He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so. He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong. “Is not a divorce possible?” he said feebly. She shook her head, not answering. “Couldn’t you take your son, and still leave him?” “Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him,” she said shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had not deceived her. “On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled.” “Yes,” she said. “But don’t let us talk any more of it.” Anna’s carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-bye to Vronsky, and drove home. Chapter 23

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the moment. She had to wait for the next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. “Where am I? What am I doing? What for?” She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. “Lord, forgive me all!” she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something was working at the iron above her. And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever. PART EIGHT Chapter 1 Almost two months had passed. The hot summer was half over, but Sergey Ivanovitch was only just preparing to leave Moscow. Sergey Ivanovitch’s life had not been uneventful during this time. A year ago he had finished his book, the fruit of six years’ labor, “Sketch of a Survey of the Principles and Forms of Government in Europe and Russia.” Several sections of this book and its introduction had appeared in periodical publications, and other parts had been read by Sergey Ivanovitch to persons of his circle, so that the leading ideas of the work could not be completely novel to the public. But still Sergey Ivanovitch had expected that on its appearance his book would be sure to make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in the scientific world. After the most conscientious revision the book had last year been published, and had been distributed among the booksellers.