Disappointment

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

  This list has been growing ever since in size (1590, 1596, 1607, 1664, 1758, 1819, etc.), but declining in authority, till it became, like the bull against the comet, an anachronism and a brutum fulmen.757 § 93. Protestantism in Saxony. H. G. Hasse: Meissnisch-Albertinisch-Sächsische Kirchengesch. Leipz. 1847, 2 parts. Fr. Seifert: Die Reformation in Leipzig, Leipz. 1881. G. Lechler: Die Vorgeschichte der Reform. Leipzigs, 1885. See also the literary references in Köstlin, II. 426 and 672. Electoral Saxony was the first conquest of the Reformation. Wittenberg was the centre of the whole movement, with Luther as the general in chief, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, as his aids. The gradual growth of Lutheranism in this land of its birth is identical with the early history of the Reformation, and has been traced already. In close connection with the Electorate is the Duchy of Saxony, and may here be considered, although it followed the movement much later. The Duchy included the important cities of Dresden (the residence of the present kingdom of Saxony) and Leipzig with its famous university. Duke George kept the Reformation back by force during his long reign from 1500 to 1539. He hated the papal extortions, and advocated a reform of discipline by a council, but had no sympathy whatever with Luther. He took a dislike to him at the disputation in Leipzig, forbade his Bible, issued a rival version of the New Testament by Emser, sent all the Lutherans out of the land, and kept a close watch on the booksellers.758 He executed the Edict of Worms to the extent of his power, and would have rejoiced in the burning of Luther, who in turn abused him most unmercifully by his pen as a slave of the pope and the devil, though he prayed for his conversion.759 George made provision for the perpetuation of Romanism in his dominion but his sons died one after another. His brother and heir, Heinrich the Pious, was a Lutheran (as was his wife). Though old and weak, he introduced the Reformation by means of a church visitation after the Wittenberg model and with Wittenberg aid. The Elector of Saxony, Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, and Cruciger were present at the inaugural festivities in Leipzig, May, 1539. Luther had the satisfaction of preaching at Pentecost before an immense audience in the city, where twenty years before he had disputed with Eck, and provoked the wrath of Duke George. Yet he was by no means quite pleased with the new state of things, and complained bitterly of the concealed malice of the semi- popish clergy, and the overbearing and avaricious conduct of the nobles and courtiers. Nevertheless, the change was general and permanent. Leipzig became the chief Lutheran university, and the center of the Protestant book-trade, and remains so to this day. Joachim Camerarius (Kammermeister), an intimate friend and correspondent of Melanchthon, labored there as professor from 1541– 1546 for the prosperity of the university, and for the promotion of classical learning and evangelical piety.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now, there happened at that time to be living in Naples a compatriot of ours, Pietro dello Canigiano, 4 who was treasurer to Her Highness the Empress of Constantinople 5 – a man of great intelligence and shrewdness, and a very close friend of Salabaetto and his family. Knowing him to be the very soul of discretion, Salabaetto took him into his confidence a few days after his arrival, told him about what he had done and about the sad fate which had befallen him, and requested his assistance and advice in finding some means of livelihood in Naples, declaring that he had no intention of ever returning to Florence. Saddened by what he had heard, Canigiano replied: ‘A fine state of affairs, I must say; a fine way to carry on; a fine sense of loyalty you have shown to your employers. No sooner do you lay your hands on a large sum of money, than you squander the lot in riotous living. But what’s done is done, and now we must look to the remedy.’ Since he had a shrewd head on his shoulders, Canigiano quickly saw what was to be done, and explained his plan to Salabaetto, who, thinking it an excellent idea, set about putting it into effect. He still had a little money of his own, and supplementing this with a loan from Canigiano, he ordered a number of bales of merchandise to be packed and tightly corded up, and having purchased and filled about a score of oil-casks, he loaded the entire consignment aboard a ship and returned to Palermo. There he presented the invoice for the bales to the officers of the dogana, to whom he also declared the value of the casks, and having made sure that they had registered everything under his own name, he placed the goods in store, saying that he wished to leave them there until the arrival of a further consignment of merchandise he was expecting. On learning of his return and hearing that the goods he had brought were worth two thousand gold florins at the very least, without counting the goods

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  than repudiated, his radical ideas. As an anti-aristocratic gesture he henceforth wrote his surname as one word, Lammenais; and his Paroles d’un Croyant (1834) was a sustained attack on tyranny, an aggressive defence of democracy, and a plea for ‘a free church in a free state’ – he prophesied that God would shortly transform society by casting down the oppressors of the poor, and by inaugurating a new age of justice, peace and love. Thus Lammenais in his own lifetime had come full circle, from a legitimist condemnation of revolution to the hope of a Christian millenium. The book was the subject of an explicit papal condemnation, and for the rest of his life (he died in 1854) Lammenais, though never excommunicated, was pushed into the shadows of Catholic disapproval. The failure of his movement meant that the Church in France lost the romantic intellectuals – Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Lamartine and many others. Thus at the very moment when the Oxford intellectuals – or some of them – were moving to Rome and even crossing the Tiber, the Paris intellectuals were moving out. Intellectually, they met on the drawbridge – some pursuing authority, others fleeing it. But it would not be true to say that the Church, or even specifically the triumphalists, learned nothing from Lammenais. They accepted his view that the Church could become a popular institution, and the Pope a populist leader. What they denied was his assumption that the Church needed to compromise on its traditional social attitudes to win such support. Indeed some of them, if only dimly, grasped the important point that it was the very refusal of the papacy to compromise that, for many, formed its chief attraction. What repelled a Lammenais attracted a Manning; and not just Mannings but men and women of all classes and nations who saw the Vatican fortress as a security-symbol. It was this instinct which lay behind the success of Giovanni Mastari-Ferretti, who became Pope as Pius IX on the death of Gregory XVI in 1846. His life was a Lammenais-type pilgrimage in reverse. He was an aristocrat and a soldier, but epilepsy forced him to give up the army. He had been to Latin-America during the anti-colonial period, and he began his pontificate with a series of liberal reforms in the papal states. He visited prisons and released political prisoners, allowed some freedom of the press, reformed the criminal code, excused Rome’s Jews from attending compulsory sermons, installed gas-lighting and built a railway. The desperate revolutionary year of 1848 turned him round completely: thereafter, for the next thirty years, he aligned himself totally with reaction in Church and State, and set his face steadily against liberalism in any form. In his old age,

• From The Decameron (1353)

  TENTH STORY Pietro di Vinciolo goes out to sup with Ercolano, and his wife lets a young man in to keep her company. Pietro returns, and she conceals the youth beneath a chicken coop. Pietro tells her that a young man has been discovered in Ercolano’s house, having been concealed there by Ercolano’s wife, whose conduct she severely censures. As ill luck would have it, an ass steps on the fingers of the fellow hiding beneath the coop, causing him to yell with pain. Pietro rushes to the spot and sees him, thus discovering his wife’s deception. But in the end, by reason of his own depravity, he arrives at an understanding with her . When the queen’s tale had reached its conclusion, they all praised God for having given Federigo so fitting a reward, and then Dioneo, who was not in the habit of waiting to be asked, began straightway as follows: Whether it is an accidental failing, stemming from our debased morals, or simply an innate attribute of men and women, I am unable to say; but the fact remains that we are more inclined to laugh at scandalous behaviour than virtuous deeds, especially when we ourselves are not directly involved. And since, as on previous occasions, the task I am about to perform has no other object than to dispel your melancholy, enamoured ladies, and provide you with laughter and merriment, I shall tell you the ensuing tale, for it may well afford enjoyment even though its subject matter is not altogether seemly. As you listen, do as you would when you enter a garden, and stretch forth your tender hands to pluck the roses, leaving the thorns where they are. This you will succeed in doing if you leave the knavish husband to his ill deserts and his iniquities, whilst you laugh gaily at the amorous intrigues of his wife, pausing where occasion warrants to commiserate with the woes of her lover. Not so very long ago, there lived in Perugia 1 a rich man called Pietro di Vinciolo, who, perhaps to pull the wool over the eyes of his fellow-citizens or to improve the low opinion they had of him, rather than because of any real wish to marry, took to himself a wife. But the unfortunate part about it, considering his own proclivities, was that he chose to marry a buxom young woman with red hair and a passionate nature, who would cheerfully have taken on a pair of husbands, let alone one, and now found herself wedded to a man whose heart was anywhere but in the right place. Having in due course discovered how matters stood, his wife, seeing that she was a fair and lusty wench, blooming with health and vitality, was greatly upset about it, and every so often she gave him a piece of her mind, calling him the foulest names imaginable.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  penalties for transgressions, it added: ‘And otherwise than thus, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let the saints of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.’ This was confirmed by royal charter in 1663: ‘No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and who do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all . . . may from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments.’ This was the first commonwealth in modern history to make religious freedom, as opposed to a mere degree of toleration, the principle of its existence, and to make this a reason for separating Church and State. Its existence, of course, opened the door to the Quakers and the Baptists, and indeed to missionaries from the Congregationalists of the north and the Anglicans of the south. In fact, once this decisive breach had been made, it was inevitable that America, with its lay predominance, should move steadily towards religious liberty and the separation of Church and State, and that the vision should cease to be Augustinian and become Erasmian. Economic factors pushed strongly in this direction. The later waves of emigrants had not, for the most part, experienced ‘conversion’ and ‘saving grace’; they tended, increasingly, to be a mere cross-section of Englishmen (and later of Northern Irish and Scottish Presbyterians). A New England synod of 1662 declared that baptism was sufficient for church membership, but not for full communion. This ‘halfway Covenant’ was the beginning of the end of a pure Church, which went into a period of what was woefully termed ‘declension’; calamitous events, such as Indian attacks, were seen as divine punishments. In 1679 it was decided to make ‘a full inquiry . . . into the cause and state of God’s controversy with us’. Thus a ‘Reforming Synod’ was called and reported: ‘That God hath a controversy with his New England people is undeniable, the Lord having written his displeasure in dismal characters against us.’ A new covenant and confession of faith were produced, but everything, it seemed, conspired to frustrate the elect. James II’s attempt to reintroduce Catholicism, the Glorious Revolution, and the subsequent settlement, imposed toleration, an Anglican element, and a franchise based on property rather than church membership. Church leadership was discredited by the

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FIRST STORY A worthy knight enters the service of the King of Spain, by whom he feels that he is ill-requited; so the King gives him irrefutable proof that the fault lies, not with himself, but with the knight’s own cruel fortune, in the end rewarding him most handsomely. I account it an especial favour, honourable ladies, that our king should have singled me out to speak first on so weighty a theme as that of munificence, which, even as the sun embellishes and graces the whole of the heavens, is the light and splendour of every other virtue. So I shall tell you a little story, which to my way of thinking is most delightful, and which surely cannot be other than profitable to recall. You are to know, then, that of the many gallant knights who have graced our city for longer than I can remember, there was one in particular, Messer Ruggieri de’ Figiovanni, 1 who was possibly the finest of them all. Being both wealthy and stout of heart, and seeing that, because of the general tenor of Tuscan manners, there would be little or no opportunity for him to prove his worth by remaining in these parts, he made up his mind to spend some time with King Alphonso of Spain, 2 who was better renowned for his prowess than any other ruler of his day. And so he set out with a most impressive array of armour and horses and a large retinue, and made his way to Alphonso’s court in Spain, where the King accorded him a gracious welcome. There accordingly he settled, and because of his princely style of living and the prodigious feats he accomplished in the field, he quickly made his mark as a man of valour. But the longer he remained at Alphonso’s court, the more it seemed to him, through closely observing the ways of the King, that he was granting castles, towns and baronies to one man after another with very little discretion, giving them to people who had done nothing to deserve them. Now, Messer Ruggieri was conscious of his own merits, and since nothing was given to him, he considered that his own standing was thereby greatly diminished. He therefore decided to leave, and went to the King to ask his permission to do so. The King granted his request, and presented him with a most handsome- looking mule, the finest that any man had ever ridden, for which Messer Ruggieri was grateful in view of the long journey ahead of him. The King then instructed one of his confidential servants to arrange as best he could to accompany Messer Ruggieri throughout the first day of his journey without allowing him to suspect that he had been sent by the King, and to make a mental note of everything Ruggieri said about him, so that he could report it later word for word.

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

  How wrong I had been, I berated myself. Why would I have ever trusted Anaïs with the confidences of my friends? I knew how she was, adamant about others keeping her secrets, but careless in exposing the intimacies of others. Luise Rainer, the actress Anaïs had compared me to when we met, and the writer Leslie Blanch had both accused her of publishing private details about their marriages revealed in confidence. Anaïs had betrayed those friendships in the Diaries, so what made me think she wouldn’t betray me and the friends I’d convinced to trust her? Clara was right. Anaïs wasn’t a feminist; she was a male-identified woman. She was of another generation, had never been in a consciousness-raising group, had gone from her mother’s house surrounded by her protective brothers to become Hugo’s bride at twenty, and had never lived without at least one husband at her side. Oh, she’d understood sisterhood well enough to benefit from our promotion of her as a woman writer, but she didn’t have a clue about the supportive trust that grew between women. When I phoned Anaïs the following week, I complimented her on receiving another honorary doctorate, but could not hold back my disappointment in her. “I told you those tapes were only for you! What am I going to tell the women who trusted me?” “Don’t tell them anything,” she replied lightly. “I want to come to your house tomorrow to pick them up.” “Why do you need them? Are you going to publish them?” Anaïs asked. “No! I’m going to destroy them.” “Oh, don’t do that. I’ll take care of them. They shouldn’t be destroyed.” “Are you going to publish them?” I asked her. “Who told you that?” “No one. You’re the one who said you were looking for erotic stories to buy.” I stopped short, knowing that when she was guilty she would just lie more. “Please let me pick them up.” “I don’t know where they are,” she said. “They got misplaced.” “Oh, don’t do this,” I moaned. “What do you mean?” There was a clear warning in her voice. I had stepped over the line. I was silent, afraid of what I might say. “Just tell those women,” she said in her most soothing voice, “that I returned them to you, and you destroyed them. They don’t need to know anything else.” “What will you do with them?” I asked. “Are you going to give them to that porn collector?” “I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” she said, dismissing my concern. “Rupert and I could hardly hear the voices over the sound of the waves.” I was so upset by the conversation that I immediately phoned Renate. “Those women trusted me, Renate,” I groaned. “If I lie and say what Anaïs told me to tell them, and then one of them discovers the tapes in that collector’s hands, or at the Kinsey Institute, or published somewhere, I couldn’t hold my head up!”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Not only did the lady fail to repay Salabaetto by the date she had promised, but a further month went by, then another, and when he asked her for his money, all he could get out of her was a string of excuses. Salabaetto now realized how cleverly he had been taken in by her villainy, and knowing that he could prove nothing against her (for he had no written evidence of the transaction, and there was no independent witness), he was exceedingly distressed and reproached himself bitterly for his foolishness. Moreover, he was too ashamed to lodge a complaint with the authorities, because he had been warned of her character beforehand and had only himself to blame if he was made a laughing-stock for behaving so stupidly. And when he received several letters from his principals ordering him to change the money and forward it to them, fearing lest his lapse should be discovered if he remained in Palermo any longer without obeying their instructions, he decided to leave. So he boarded a small ship, and instead of sailing to Pisa as he should have done, he went to Naples. Now, there happened at that time to be living in Naples a compatriot of ours, Pietro dello Canigiano,4 who was treasurer to Her Highness the Empress of Constantinople5 – a man of great intelligence and shrewdness, and a very close friend of Salabaetto and his family. Knowing him to be the very soul of discretion, Salabaetto took him into his confidence a few days after his arrival, told him about what he had done and about the sad fate which had befallen him, and requested his assistance and advice in finding some means of livelihood in Naples, declaring that he had no intention of ever returning to Florence. Saddened by what he had heard, Canigiano replied: ‘A fine state of affairs, I must say; a fine way to carry on; a fine sense of loyalty you have shown to your employers. No sooner do you lay your hands on a large sum of money, than you squander the lot in riotous living. But what’s done is done, and now we must look to the remedy.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Rinieri,’ she said, ‘my mistress is positively at her wits’ end, for one of her brothers called on her this evening and kept her talking for ages, after which he insisted on staying for supper, and he still hasn’t left, though I think he’ll be going quite soon. This explains why she hasn’t been able to come to you; but she’ll be down in a moment, and begs you not to be angry with her for having to wait so long.’ Thinking the maid’s story was true, the scholar replied: ‘Tell my lady that she is not to worry on my account until it is convenient for her to come. But tell her to come as soon as she can.’ The maid closed the window and retired to bed, whereupon the lady said to her lover: ‘What do you say to that, my dearest? Do you think I’d keep him out there freezing to death if I cared for him, as you suspect?’ Her lover’s doubts were by now almost totally dispelled, and she got into bed with him, where they disported themselves merrily and rapturously for hours on end, laughing and making fun of the hapless scholar. The scholar was walking up and down the courtyard to keep himself warm, and since there was nowhere for him to sit down or take shelter, he kept cursing the lady’s brother for tarrying so long with her. Whenever he heard a sound, he thought it must be the lady opening a door to let him in, but his hopes were dashed every time.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  And the sense of a noble tragedy may compensate for the defeat. But societies risk the welfare of millions when they gamble for the attainment of the absolute. And, since coercion is an invariable instrument of their policy, absolutism transmutes this instrument into unbearable tyrannies and cruelties. The fanaticism which in the individual may appear in the guise of a harmless or pathetic vagary, when expressed in political policy, shuts the gates of mercy on mankind. CHAPTER EIGHT — JUSTICE THROUGH POLITICAL FORCETHE division of the working class into a more favored and a less favored group, roughly identical with the skilled and the unskilled workers, has been previously considered. The group, which feels itself defrauded of its just proportion of the common wealth of society, but which has a measure of security and therefore does not feel itself completely disinherited, expresses its political aspirations in a qualified Marxism in which the collectivist goal is shared with the more revolutionary Marxians, but in which parliamentary and evolutionary methods are substituted for revolution as means of achieving the goal. In all industrial nations, except America, the trade unions are the source of the voting strength of this evolutionary socialism, though its political philosophy has usually been elaborated by middle-class intellectuals. In America the trade unions still adhere to the futile policy of rewarding their friends and punishing their foes in the old parties. Their failure to recognise the futility of this procedure proves how difficult it is to transfer the results of social experience from one nation to another; for the history of European industrial nations has fully discredited this kind of political strategy. Inasfar as it rests upon confidence in the adequacy of the purely economic weapons of the trade union movement it is no less fallacious. The combination of political and economic power which the dominant classes set against the worker in the modern state must be met by a combination of political and economic power. The power of the worker in the economic society (chiefly the weapon of the strike) is not adequate for the defense of his interests. It suffers from several limitations. It is lamed by the state, which under the influence of the dominant classes passes legislation to diminish the power of the strike weapon as much as possible. The use and abuse of federal injunctions in labor disputes, compulsory arbitration, the declaration of martial law and the use of troops against the strikers are a few of the many methods used by the state against the worker. Even without facing the opposition of political power, the worker’s economic weapon is weak, and is becoming weaker. It is weak because the worker is never able to match the economic resources of the owner in a dispute of some duration. He can be starved into submission.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  If the farmer should try to save himself from his present plight in an industrial civilisation by voluntary co-operative enterprises or if he should be reduced to the status of a proletarian by large scale capitalistic farm projects, he may ultimately come to terms with the urban industrial worker. If he attempted escape by way of voluntary cooperatives he would discover that increased efficiency alone would not establish his prosperity, as long as greater economic and political power is used against him in determining state policies detrimental to his interests. The greater efficiency of cooperative farming would not eliminate the handicaps of tariff and money policies which financial and industrial classes force upon the state at the expense of the farmer. Gradual disillusionment, which may require many decades, might in that event force the farmer on the side of his natural ally, the industrial worker. If large scale farming, backed by strong financial interests, should reduce the independent farmer to the position of an agrarian proletarian, the convergence of the political theories of the farmer and the worker might also proceed more rapidly; but in either case such a development is not to be reckoned with in any realistic political prognostication limited to the next decades. The hope of establishing a third party in America on the combined strength of the farmer and the worker, will remain unrealistic for many decades to come. {138} It may never be realized. It may be that the farmer will never be able to espouse collectivist political goals fervently, no matter how much he suffers from a capitalistic system. The necessities of an industrial civilisation may never seem relevant to the needs of an agrarian, who wants his own piece of land more than he wants anything else, and who will never quite understand the industrial worker’s passion for common ownership. {139} It is not even certain that Russia, where the industrial worker established complete political supremacy by a momentary convergence of agrarian and proletarian political interests, and then used that supremacy to force the peasant into collectivisation, may not yet witness the revenge of the peasant upon the industrial worker. It may be that the proletarian will be able to use force upon the peasant long enough to change the circumstances of his life so completely, that collectivist social ideals will finally be accepted by the agrarian. But the degree of force which the Russian dictatorship is using is so great, that it would be rather remarkable if it did not create profound psychological and moral reactions. It may, as in the case of suppressed nationalities, generate and increase a vehemence of resentment which will be its ultimate undoing. At any rate it is not safe to count upon the farmer as a political ally of the industrial worker, however much the logic of economic facts might seem to make him a natural ally of the proletarian.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Sometimes the sociologists are so completely oblivious to the real facts of an industrial civilisation that, as Floyd All-port for instance, they can suggest that the unrest of industrial workers is due not to economic injustice but to a sense of inferiority which will be overcome just as soon as benevolent social psychologists are able to teach the workers that “no one is charging them with inferiority except themselves.” {5} These omniscient social scientists will also teach the owners that “interests and profits must be tempered by regard for the worker.” Thus “the socialisation of individual control” in industry will obviate the necessity of “socialistic control.” Most of the social scientists are such unqualified rationalists that they seem to imagine that men of power will immediately check their exactions and pretensions in society, as soon as they have been apprised by the social scientists that their actions and attitudes are anti-social. Professor Clarence Marsh Case, in an excellent analysis of the social problem, places his confidence in a “reorganisation of values” in which, among other things, industrial leaders must be made to see “that despotically controlled industry in a society that professes democracy as an article of faith is an anachronism that cannot endure.” {6} It may be that despotism cannot endure but it will not abdicate merely because the despots have discovered it to be anachronistic. Sir Arthur Salter, to name a brilliant economist among the social scientists, finishes his penetrating analysis of the distempers of our civilisation by expressing the usual hope that a higher intelligence or a sincerer morality will prevent the governments of the future from perpetrating the mistakes of the past. His own analysis proves conclusively that the failure of governments is due to the pressure of economic interest upon them rather than to the “limited capacities of human wisdom.” In his own words “government is failing above all because it has become enmeshed in the task of giving discretionary, particularly preferential, privileges to competitive industry.” {7} In spite of this analysis Sir Arthur expects the governments to redeem our civilisation by becoming more socially minded and he thinks that one method which will help them to do so is to “draw into the service of the public the great private institutions which represent the organised activities of the country, chambers of commerce, banking institutions, industrial and labor organisations.” His entire hope for recovery rests upon the possibility of developing a degree of economic disinterestedness among men of power which the entire history of mankind proves them incapable of acquiring. It is rather discouraging to find such naïve confidence in the moral capacities of collective man, among men who make it their business to study collective human behavior. Even when, as Professor Howard Odum, they are prepared to admit that “conflict will be necessary” as long as “unfairness in the distribution of the rewards of labor exists,” they put their hope in the future.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  If we thus exclude the middle-class urbanite and the farmer as possible adherents of a parliamentary socialist party, we must arrive at the conclusion that the possibility of winning a parliamentary majority for evolutionary socialism is fairly remote and may be entirely out of question. If this should be the case, the same political forces which make the victory of revolutionary socialism doubtful would also cast doubt upon the possibility of a final triumph for melioristic socialism. If these conclusions are valid we would be forced to the further conviction that there is no single political force which can break through and completely reorganise the present unstable equilibrium of forces in modern society. If such a conclusion should be correct (always with the reservation that another war might completely change the picture), it would become necessary to abandon the hope of achieving a rational equalitarian social goal, and be content with the expectation of its gradual approximation. The latter expectation need not be abandoned, because the economically and politically weaker classes of society have not yet, in any nation, developed the full strength which they potentially hold. They can exert more political and economic pressure than they have thus far exerted. Furthermore the social intelligence of the general community, or rather of all classes in the community, can rise higher than its present level, even if there are limits beyond which it cannot rise. If it is the fate of modern society thus to approach a gradual approximation of a rational social ideal by the progressive adjustment and readjustment of power to power, and interest to interest, a non-violent type of political coercion is clearly preferable to a violent one. Parliamentary socialism would, in that case, be justified, even if it were robbed of the hope of a final and complete triumph. It would be justified because no community can live in a permanent state of civil war, which would result from a revolutionary socialism unable to press through to its goal. If violence can be justified at all, its terror must have the tempo of a surgeon’s skill and healing must follow quickly upon its wounds. A parliamentary socialism which presses toward the goal of social ownership by exerting the full force of the worker’s political power in the shifting equilibrium of social and political forces, without certainty that the ultimate goal can be reached, and which is forced to use the method of collaboration with other parties, is, however, under some moral and psychological difficulties which have not been fully appreciated by socialists. The abandonment of the eschatological element in socialism means the sacrifice of its religious fervor and the consequent loss of motive power. The effort of evolutionary socialists to interpret this loss as a gain merely proves that they have become too completely rationalistic to understand the roots of human fervor. The goal, said Eduard Bernstein, philosopher of evolutionary socialism, means nothing, the movement everything.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Rinuccio was heartbroken over what had happened, and cursed his evil luck, but instead of going home, he waited till the officers had gone, and returned to the place where he had dumped Alessandro. He then began to grope about on hands and knees in search of the body so that he could carry out the rest of his assignment, but being unable to find it, he assumed it had been taken away by the officers, and sadly made his way back home. Not knowing what else he could do, Alessandro likewise returned home without ever having discovered who had fetched him from the tomb, feeling bitterly disappointed that things should have turned out so disastrously. Next morning, when Scannadio’s tomb was found open and there was no sign of the corpse (Alessandro having rolled it down into the lower depths), the whole of Pistoia was alive with rumours as to what exactly had happened, the more simple-minded concluding that Scannadio had been spirited away by demons. Each of the lady’s suitors informed her what he had done and what had happened, and, apologizing on this account for not carrying out her instructions to the full, demanded her forgiveness and her love. But she pretended not to believe them, and by curtly replying that she wanted no more to do with either of them, as they had failed to carry out her bidding, she neatly rid herself of both. SECOND STORYAn abbess rises hurriedly from her bed in the dark when it is reported to her that one of her nuns is abed with a lover. But being with a priest at the time, the Abbess claps his breeches on her head, mistaking them for her veil. On pointing this out to the Abbess, the accused nun is set at liberty, and thenceforth she is able to forgather with her lover at her leisure. When Filomena was silent, the good sense shown by the lady in ridding herself of those she had no wish to love was praised by the whole of the company, who one and all described not as love but as folly the daring presumption of the lovers. Then Elissa was graciously asked by the queen to continue, and she promptly began as follows: Dearest ladies, the manner in which Madonna Francesca released herself from her affliction was indeed very subtle; but I should now like to tell you of a young nun who, with the assistance of Fortune, freed herself by means of a timely remark from the danger with which she was threatened. As you all know, a great many people are foolish enough to instruct and condemn their fellow creatures, but from time to time, as you will observe from this story of mine, Fortune deservedly puts them to shame. And that is what happened to the Abbess who was the superior of the nun whose deeds I am now about to relate.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I can’t let you in at present, because this accursed brother of mine, who came to supper with me yesterday evening, still hasn’t gone. However, he’ll be going soon, and when he does, I’ll come and let you in right away. I had an awful job to tear myself away from him just now, so that I could come and encourage you not to take offence over having to wait.’ ‘But, madam,’ said the scholar, ‘I implore you for the love of God to let me in, so that I can take shelter, for there was never such a heavy fall of of snow as this, and it’s still coming down. Once you’ve let me in, I’ll wait as long as you please.’ ‘Alas, my dearest, I can’t do that,’ said the lady. ‘This door makes such a din when it’s opened that my brother would be sure to hear it. But I’ll see if I can persuade him to go away now, and then I’ll come back to let you in.’ ‘Go quickly then,’ said the scholar. ‘And I beg you to make sure there’s a nice big fire, so that I can warm myself up when I come in. I’m so cold that I scarcely have any feeling left in my body.’ ‘I don’t see how that can be possible,’ said die lady. ‘You always claim in your letters that you are burning all over because of your love for me. But it’s clear to me now that you must have been joking. However, I must go now. Wait here, and keep your fingers crossed.’ The lady’s lover, having heard every syllable, was mightily pleased, and returned with his mistress to bed, where they slept very little, but spent virtually the entire night disporting themselves and making fun of the unfortunate scholar. Perceiving that he had been duped, the scholar, whose teeth were chattering so vigorously that he seemed to have been turned into a stork, 3 tried the door several times to see whether it would open, and searched all round the courtyard for some other way out. But finding none, he paced to and fro like a lion in a cage, cursing the severity of the weather, the perfidy of the lady, the inordinate length of the night, and his own stupidity. So indignant did he feel about the way he had been treated by the lady that his fervent and longstanding love was transformed into savage and bitter hatred, and his mind dwelt on various elaborate schemes for securing his revenge, which he now desired far more ardently than he had formerly yearned to hold her in his arms. It seemed to him that the night would never end, but eventually the dawn began to appear, and the maidservant, following the instructions of her mistress, came down to open the courtyard gate. Pretending to be very sorry for him, she said: ‘A curse on that brother of hers for coming here yesterday evening.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The vital sap which all plants need to make them grow had already arrived, when Father Gianni, standing back, said: ‘Alas! Neighbour Pietro, what have you done? Didn’t I tell you not to say a word no matter what you saw? The mare was just about to materialize, but now you’ve ruined everything by opening your mouth, and there’s no way of ever making another.’ ‘That suits me,’ said Neighbour Pietro. ‘I didn’t want the tail. Why didn’t you ask me to do it? Besides, you stuck it on too low.’ To which Father Gianni replied: ‘I didn’t ask you because you wouldn’t have known how to fasten it on, the first time, as deftly as I.’ The young woman, hearing these words, stood up and said to her husband, in all seriousness: ‘Pah! what an idiot you are! Why did you have to ruin everything for the pair of us? Did you ever see a mare without a tail? So help me God, you’re as poor as a church mouse already, but you deserve to be a lot poorer.’ Now that it was no longer possible to turn the young woman into a mare because of the words that Neighbour Pietro had uttered, she put on her clothes again, feeling all sad and forlorn. Meanwhile her husband prepared to return to his old trade, with no more than a donkey as usual: then he and Father Gianni went off to the fair at Bitonto4 together, and he never asked the same favour of him again. * * * How the ladies laughed to hear this tale, whose meaning they had grasped more readily than Dioneo had intended, may be left to the imagination of those among my fair readers who are laughing at it still. However, the stories were now at an end, the sun’s heat had begun to abate, and the queen, knowing that her sovereignty had run its course, rose to her feet and removed her crown. This she placed upon the head of Panfilo, who alone remained to be invested with the honour; and smiling she said: ‘My lord, you are left with an arduous task, for since you are the last, you must make up for the failings of myself and my predecessors in the office to which you have now acceded. God grant you grace in this undertaking, as He has granted it to me in crowning you our king.’ Accepting with joy the honour she had bestowed upon him, Panfilo replied: ‘Your own excellence, madam, and that of my other subjects, will ensure that my reign is no less worthy of praise than those that have preceded it.’ Then, following the example of his predecessors, he made all necessary arrangements with the steward; after which he turned to address the waiting ladies:

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

  “On business, and I’m very busy when I’m there.” I saw the nervous movement she’d used to describe Sabina, covering her mouth with her hand as if holding back something. Then she lowered her hand and stood up, erect, poised. “I’m sorry, I’m going to be late for a meeting with Gore.” That was what she had said when she’d shooed me out the door the last time. I had no choice but to follow her to the elevator. “Shall I call you to see if you have spoken with Jean-Jacques?” “If there’s time.” Her enthusiasm for putting us together had vanished. I could hear the supplication in my voice when I said, “I’m going to read your novels again with your donnée.” “That’s fine.” Her lips curved in a smile, but its power of eternal reassurance was gone. She pressed the elevator button and instead of the hug for which I yearned, she air-kissed me on both cheeks. I stepped inside and watched her rush away before the elevator doors shut. The cage plunged to street level and jolted with a kick. CHAPTER 4 Los Angeles, California, 1964 I NEVER HEARD FROM JEAN-JACQUES or Anaïs. Although I wrote to her from LA, she sent back only a violet card announcing the French publication of her novel Ladders to Fire. Her world was now as inaccessible to me as Camelot. I dutifully embraced college life at USC, supplementing my scholarship with a waitressing job and joining a sorority that pledged me for my grades. I dated frat boys, drank beer from kegs at street parties, and had my hair frosted blond. In high school, I had pursued stage acting; in college, I gave up the theater to disappear behind the role of uncomplicated coed. Despite scoring the pill from student health, I was still a virgin at twenty, thanks to the ineptitude of the business majors, ROTC plebs, and frat boys at USC—and my own fears, which had returned as if the night with Jean-Jacques had never happened. However, the summer before my junior year, I wrangled a scholarship to study at Cambridge, England for a month, and given the affordability of Europe then at five dollars a day, I extended my stay to a three-month European tour, on which I was determined to find, as Anaïs had recommended, a European man to deflower me. When I saw the desk clerk who checked me in at the student hostel in Rome, I recalled Michelangelo’s David, which I’d stared at in Florence. If that was what a naked Italian man looked like, I’d thought, I was in the right country. To my everlasting good fortune, that’s what Gerardo Palmieri looked like. An hour after he had assigned me a tiny room in the hostel, Gerardo knocked on its door. Would I like to have dinner with him when he got off work?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Boccaccio’s return to Florence was at all events dictated by a combination of political and economic factors. The traditional ties of friendship between the Florentine commune and the Angevin monarchy had come under considerable strain, partly because of King Robert’s refusal to support the Florentines in their protracted wars against Lucca, and partly, also, because the dependence of the Angevins on Florentine bankers had by that time dwindled to comparative insignificance. Boccaccio’s father had already left Naples after breaking off his connection with the Bardi company in or around October 1338, and some of Boccaccio’s biographers have suggested, without any real evidence, that his own return to Florence was an inevitable consequence of his father’s bankruptcy. A more probable explanation is that far-reaching changes in Neapolitan foreign and economic policy had impaired his social links with the Angevin court and raised the spectre of insecurity, though there may well have been some more pressing reason for his reluctant departure. That his departure from Naples was indeed reluctant is attested by a letter he wrote from Florence on 28 August 1341 to the friend and companion of his Neapolitan youth, Niccola Acciaiuoli, now a powerful and influential figure in the Angevin court. Acciaiuoli, three years older than Boccaccio, was a fellow Florentine who had gone to Naples in 1331. According to the chronicler Giovanni Villani, his meteoric rise to fame and fortune was not unconnected with his having become the lover of Catherine of Valois, sister-in-law to King Robert and Empress of Constantinople. It was Acciaiuoli who had been instrumental in introducing Boccaccio to the ranks of Neapolitan high society, and in the letter of August 1341 Boccaccio tells him of his dissatisfaction with life in Florence, 1 at the same time strongly hinting that his former friend could perhaps bring about a change in his fortunes, presumably by finding him a sinecure at court. But his plea, like others he addressed to Acciaiuoli on later occasions, fell upon deaf ears. In a work Boccaccio wrote some two or three years after his return to Florence, the Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta , there is a passage which to some extent clarifies his motives for leaving Naples, at the same time confirming the distaste for life in Florence of which he had written to Acciaiuoli. In Book II, the Neapolitan heroine is remonstrating with her young Florentine lover, Panfilo, concerning his decision to abandon her and return to the distant city of his birth. It is mid-winter, a detail that accords with the hypothesis that Boccaccio’s own return took place in the winter of 1340–41. Although, as stated earlier, such ‘autobiographical’ passages require to be treated with caution, it seems reasonable to assume that Panfilo, whose name will later be given to one of the three male storytellers of the Decameron , is an idealized self-portrait.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Far from being discouraged by this outward token of Acciaiuoli’s lack of esteem for the friend of his youth, Boccaccio continued to court his patronage almost up to the time of Acciaiuoli’s death on 8 November 1365, though his attitude to the Grand Seneschal was by no means always one of fawning subservience. In the eighth of the sixteen Latin eclogues that comprise, under the title of Buccolicum carmen , Boccaccio’s own contribution to that arcane and allusive genre of Latin poetry which both Dante and Petrarch had sought without success to revive, he complains of the indifference of Acciaiuoli during his Neapolitan journey of 1355. But it was only after yet another fruitless expedition to Naples that began in October 1362 and ended five months later that the full force of his invective was released, in a letter to Francesco Nelli. Having been expressly invited by Acciaiuoli to make his home in Naples, he had set off with his stepbrother Iacopo from Tuscany, in high hopes and with all of his books, only to discover upon his arrival that the lodging to which he had been allocated was quite unfit for human habitation. The shortcomings of the place are described in minute detail in the letter to Nelli, a fellow Florentine who occupied a prominent position at the Angevin court. The letter was probably never sent, however, for there is no record of any response in the correspondence of either Nelli or Acciaiuoli. Meanwhile, in 1359–60, Boccaccio had given a significant new impetus to humanistic studies by persuading the Florentine Studium to establish the first chair of Greek in non-Byzantine Europe, and to invite Leontius Pilatus to occupy it. Leontius had been a pupil of the celebrated Greek scholar Barlaam of Calabria, whom Boccaccio had known in Naples, once describing him as ‘tiny of body but very great in knowledge’, and who had attempted in vain to teach the rudiments of Greek to Petrarch in Avignon. During his brief tenure of the Florentine chair, Leontius, whose unkempt appearance and barbaric manners are described in a passage of the Genealogia deorum gentilium , was a guest in Boccaccio’s house, and it was Boccaccio who prodded him into completing the first, rudimentary translations into Latin of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey , as well as some of the works of Euripides and Aristotle. As for his lectures at the Studium , they aroused much adverse comment, not only because of the man’s extraordinary boorishness, but because the instruction he provided was not sufficiently practical for those young Florentines preparing for a mercantile or diplomatic career in the eastern Mediterranean. All the same, Boccaccio prided himself with good reason on the role he had played in ensuring that the study of ancient Greek literature should take its place alongside the almost exclusively Latin-based researches of the fourteenth-century Italian humanists.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The vital sap which all plants need to make them grow had already arrived, when Father Gianni, standing back, said: ‘Alas! Neighbour Pietro, what have you done? Didn’t I tell you not to say a word no matter what you saw? The mare was just about to materialize, but now you’ve ruined everything by opening your mouth, and there’s no way of ever making another.’ ‘That suits me,’ said Neighbour Pietro. ‘I didn’t want the tail. Why didn’t you ask me to do it? Besides, you stuck it on too low.’ To which Father Gianni replied: ‘I didn’t ask you because you wouldn’t have known how to fasten it on, the first time, as deftly as I.’ The young woman, hearing these words, stood up and said to her husband, in all seriousness: ‘Pah! what an idiot you are! Why did you have to ruin everything for the pair of us? Did you ever see a mare without a tail? So help me God, you’re as poor as a church mouse already, but you deserve to be a lot poorer.’ Now that it was no longer possible to turn the young woman into a mare because of the words that Neighbour Pietro had uttered, she put on her clothes again, feeling all sad and forlorn. Meanwhile her husband prepared to return to his old trade, with no more than a donkey as usual: then he and Father Gianni went off to the fair at Bitonto4 together, and he never asked the same favour of him again. * * * How the ladies laughed to hear this tale, whose meaning they had grasped more readily than Dioneo had intended, may be left to the imagination of those among my fair readers who are laughing at it still. However, the stories were now at an end, the sun’s heat had begun to abate, and the queen, knowing that her sovereignty had run its course, rose to her feet and removed her crown. This she placed upon the head of Panfilo, who alone remained to be invested with the honour; and smiling she said: ‘My lord, you are left with an arduous task, for since you are the last, you must make up for the failings of myself and my predecessors in the office to which you have now acceded. God grant you grace in this undertaking, as He has granted it to me in crowning you our king.’ Accepting with joy the honour she had bestowed upon him, Panfilo replied: ‘Your own excellence, madam, and that of my other subjects, will ensure that my reign is no less worthy of praise than those that have preceded it.’ Then, following the example of his predecessors, he made all necessary arrangements with the steward; after which he turned to address the waiting ladies: