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.

Page 41 of 189 · 20 per page

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

  [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] Several weeks later, Anaïs phoned sounding much better. “I didn’t get a chance to speak with you the other evening, you got here so late. Jamie and I talked for two hours before you arrived.” Damn, I’d been hoping that she hadn’t noticed how late I’d been. She continued, “Come tomorrow while Rupert is out so we can have a visit just the two of us. We need to talk about my authorized biography.” Oh no! I’d thought that freighted idea was dead. Now I really knew I couldn’t write it. With the fraudulence I’d felt while pretending to be Anaïs at Royce Hall, and having witnessed her spiritual despair, I wanted to be done with her lies. I’d seen the guilt her falsehoods had caused her, and I didn’t want that in my life. I’d lost faith in her myth of “living the dream.” I wasn’t alone. The Women’s Movement had become more tough-minded and now found Anaïs to be an embarrassment whose soft “difference feminism” identified women stereotypically with emotions and intuition. I, too, felt myself pushing away from her. I tried to suppress a recurrent thought: the sooner she was gone, the sooner I would be free of her and her outdated philosophies. Options other than writing her biography were pulling on me, not ones I necessarily had the wherewithal to follow, but I knew if I agreed to write her faux biography, it would curtail any other options. My apprenticeship now felt like servitude, and I was eager for it to end. When I arrived, Anaïs appeared remarkably recovered from her hysterical collapse, her eyes bright aqua stones. We settled on the built-in couch, and Anaïs for some reason began, “We never talked about those horoscopes you had drawn of the two of us.” Why was she bringing those up now when I’d given them to her the previous Christmas? Not knowing what to get her, I’d been talked into a commission by an astrologer who wanted to do an analysis of Anaïs’s horoscope overlaid with mine, our “paired charts.” I didn’t believe in astrology, but I’d given Anaïs the beautifully hand-painted charts and analysis because I thought she did. She was always talking about being “under the sign of Pisces.” She’d never thanked me for the Christmas gift, which baffled me because ordinarily she had exquisite manners. Nor was she thanking me now. “I really do not believe in astrology.” “I thought you did. Both you and Henry Miller wrote about that astrologer Moricand you were friends with in Paris.” “Oh, him. I thought he was interesting for a while, but I learned a chart is no better than the person who makes it. It just tells you about the mind of the astrologer, and I prefer my own imagination.”

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Yet Augustine abandoned the policy of toleration practiced by the previous bishop of Carthage and pursued the attack on the Donatists. Like Chrysostom, he praised the church’s use of persuasion, not force; yet he himself, after beginning with polemics and propaganda, turned increasingly to force. First came laws denying civil rights to non-Catholic Christians; then the imposition of penalties, fines, eviction from public office; and finally, denial of free discussion, exile of Donatist bishops, and the use of physical coercion. According to Catholic historians, the Donatist cause became increasingly identified with active resistance to authority, including outbreaks of violence.116 Despite his earlier misgivings, Augustine came to find military force “indispensable” in suppressing the Donatists and “wrote the only full justification, in the history of the early church, of the right of the state to suppress non-Catholics.”117 He came to realize, he explained, that fear and coercion, which Chrysostom had considered necessary only to govern outsiders, were necessary within the church as well; many Christians as well as pagans, he noted regretfully, respond only to fear.118 After Augustine had spent more than thirty years battling the Donatists, he was dismayed to confront Christians he called the Pelagians who, despite many differences, as we shall see in Chapter 6, shared with the Donatists both a sectarian view of the church and an insistence on free will. When his own party was outvoted in the Christian synods, Augustine unhesitatingly allied himself with imperial officials against the clergy who defended Pelagius. In 416 Innocent, bishop of Rome, received from African synods two condemnations of Pelagian ideas, together with a long personal letter from Augustine and his closest associates as well as an open letter from Augustine challenging Pelagius. The documents went beyond a condemnation of Pelagius and his followers. They went on to warn, in Peter Brown’s words, that the ultimate consequence of [Pelagian] ideas … cut at the roots of episcopal authority.… The documents claimed that by appeasing the Pelagians the Catholic church would lose the vast authority it had begun to wield as the only force that could “liberate” men from themselves.119 Pelagius’s supporters would make the counterclaim (and with reason) that they were following ancient tradition concerning the church and human nature—tradition most recently championed by John Chrysostom himself. But the declarations of the African synods, engineered primarily by Augustine and his associates, signaled a major turning point in the history of western Christianity. They offered to the bishop of Rome and to his imperial patrons a clear demonstration of the political efficacy of Augustine’s doctrine of the fall. By insisting that humanity, ravaged by sin, now lies helplessly in need of outside intervention, Augustine’s theory could not only validate secular power but justify as well the imposition of church authority—by force, if necessary—as essential for human salvation.

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

  For us, the only valid test is historical fact. Were Savonarola’s prophecies fulfilled? The two prophecies, upon whose fulfilment stress is laid, were the political revolution in Florence, which occurred, and the coming of Charles VIII. from across the Alps. Savonarola saw in Charles a Cyrus whose advent would release Florence from her political bondage and introduce an era of civil freedom . He also predicted Charles’ subsequent retreat. Commines, who visited Savonarola in the convent of St. Mark’s after the trials which followed Charles’ advent in Italy had begun, went away impressed with the friar’s piety and candor, and declared that he predicted with certainty to him and to the king, "things which no one believed at the time and which have all been fulfilled since."1183 On the other hand, such solemn prognostications failed of fulfilment, as the extension of Florentine dominion even to the recovery of Pisa, made May 28, 1495, and the speedy conversion of the Turks and Moors, made May 3, 1495. The latter purported to be a revelation from the Virgin on his visit to paradise. Where a certain number of solemn, prophetic announcements remained unfulfilled, it is fair to suspect that the remainder were merely the predictions of a shrewd observer watching the progress of events. Many people trusted the friar as a prophet but, as conditions became more and more involved, they demanded with increasing insistence that he should substantiate his prophetic claim by a miracle. Even the predictions which came true in part, such as the coming of Charles VIII. across the Alps, received no fulfilment in the way of a permanent improvement of conditions, such as Savonarola expected. The statement of Prof. Bonet-Maury expresses the case well. Savonarola’s prophetic gift, so-called, was nothing more than political and religious intuition.1184 Some of his predictions were not in the line of what Christian prophecies might be expected to be, such as the rehumiliation of Pisa. The Florentines felt flattered by the high honor which the prophet paid to their city, and his predictions of her earthly dominion as well as heavenly glory. In his Manual of Revelations he exclaims, "Whereas Florence is placed in the midst of Italy, like the heart in the midst of the body, God has chosen to select her, that she may be the centre from which this prophetic announcement should be spread abroad throughout all Italy."

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

  “Don’t feel too bad,” the agent said. “He had me going, too. And you’re not the first hopefuls duped into thinking he was a rich movie producer.” “But why us?” Renate asked. “I can understand why he’d pose as a producer to get into poker games. He made money that way. But he didn’t get money out of us.” “That’s the interesting part. The woods are full of these guys posing as producers. They do it to live out the fantasy,” the agent said before taking another call. Renate looked at me, crestfallen. “What are we going to tell Anaïs?” “We have to tell her the truth,” I said. While Renate agonized over how this cruel hoax might push Anaïs into another breakdown, I worried about how it would affect Renate. When Anaïs phoned to find out how it had gone, Renate bluffed, “We can’t talk right now. A little emergency with the plumbing.” She hung up with a sigh of relief. “We have a reprieve until Tuesday. Anaïs wants us to come see the new house.” [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] Even though I’d been to the site before, I got lost driving to the Silver Lake house. By the time we drove up the steep hill to Hidalgo and into the long, narrow driveway, Renate and I were both thoroughly frazzled. There was still evidence of construction around, piles of bricks and paint cans by the back door. Rupert had apparently taken the Thunderbird to his teaching job, so we parked in the open garage. As we were about to knock on the door, Anaïs came around from the side wearing a Grecian-style white muumuu, her swimsuit straps visible at the neckline. She said we were at the back door and insisted we follow her along a walkway around the low-slung, modern house. When we entered and stepped past the cramped entry hall, the space opened into an expanse that floated above the trees. Anaïs glided toward a long wall of windows and slid open a glass door onto the outside deck. Beyond the rectangular pool where the narrow yard dropped off, Silver Lake Reservoir gleamed. As we all walked out to the pool, Anaïs said, “We can go swimming later. You don’t need a swimsuit; it’s private here.” I dipped my hand into the water. “Oh! You haven’t turned the heater on yet.” “There is no heater. Rupert insists they’re too expensive to run.” “Have you tried swimming in this water?” I asked. “Oh, yes, it’s wonderful once you get used to it.” Anaïs might be able to transform that water from freezing with her imagination, but I wasn’t going to try. We followed her back into the living room, which was really the only room. Folding partitions demarcated the bedroom, but they were wide open, so the locus of the house seemed to be the queen bed with its violet bedspread and new side-by-side lavender backrests.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The more stubbornly he resisted, the more Jehannot continued to pester him, until finally the Jew, overcome by such incessant importunity, said: ‘Now listen, Jehannot, you would like me to become a Christian, and I am prepared to do so on one condition: that first of all I should go to Rome, and there observe the man whom you call the vicar of God on earth, and examine his life and habits together with those of his fellow cardinals; and if they seem to me such that, added to your own arguments, they lead me to the conclusion that your faith is superior to mine, as you have taken such pains to show me, then I shall do as I have promised; but if things should turn out differently. I shall remain a Jew as I am at present.’ When Jehannot heard this, he was thrown into a fit of gloom, and said to himself: ‘I have wasted my energies, which I felt I had used to good effect, thinking I had converted the man; for if he goes to the court of Rome and sees what foul and wicked lives the clergy lead, not only will he not become a Christian, but, if he had already turned Christian, he would become a Jew again without fail.’ And turning to Abraham, he said: ‘Come now, my friend, why should you want to put yourself to the endless trouble and expense involved in going all the way from here to Rome? Besides, for a rich man like yourself, the journey both by sea and land is full of dangers. Do you suppose you will not find anyone here to baptize you? If by chance you have any doubts concerning the faith as I have outlined it to you, where else except in Paris will you find greater and more learned exponents of Christian doctrine, capable of answering your questions and resolving your difficulties? 1 Hence in my opinion this journey of yours is quite unnecessary. You must remember that the Church dignitaries in Rome are no different from the ones you have seen and can still see here, except that they are the better for being closer to the chief shepherd. And so if you will take my advice, you will save your energy for a pilgrimage on some later occasion, when perhaps I will keep you company.’ ‘Jehannot,’ replied the Jew, ‘I believe it to be just as you say it is, but to put the matter in a nutshell, if you really want me to do as you have urged me with so much insistence, I am fully prepared to go there. Otherwise, I shall do nothing about it.’ ‘Go then, and good luck to you,’ said Jehannot, seeing that the Jew had made up his mind. He was quite certain that Abraham would never become a Christian, once he had seen the court of Rome; but since it would make no difference, he did not insist any further.

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

  A surprised smile lifted the corners of her mouth and lingered as she studied me. “Perhaps we have been reacquainted to help each other.” She inhaled deeply and began, “Remember I confided in you that Hugo and I had not been sexually compatible?” “Because you were both inexperienced when you married.” She nodded. “Our lovemaking never really got much better, though we loved each other and tried. It was a terrible thing because I was so happy with him in every other way.” “I could see you were in love. He was devoted to you.” “Devoted, yes, but from the time I was a girl I dreamt of a marriage of passion as well as devotion. Don’t you want that, too?” “Yes … I don’t expect to find it, though.” “Oh, Tristine, you can’t give up hope so young! I never gave up expecting both passion and devotion. And because with Hugo I had only devotion, I was always looking elsewhere for the passion.” I realized she was telling me that she’d had affairs while married to Hugo; it must have been what led to their divorce. So my inkling when I read A Spy in the House of Love was correct: Sabina’s sexual adventures were autobiographical; the cuckolded Alan was Hugo. I asked, “So were you Sabina then?” “Yes. In her desperate way, Sabina is hunting for the great passion that can subdue and defeat her.” So that was it! That was why, though I longed for one true passion, I behaved like Sabina, who seduced and discarded men for her own amusement. Seemingly out of context, Anaïs asked, “Do you know who Gore Vidal is?” I recalled she had twice dropped his name when she’d shooed me out of her apartment in New York. Was that what she was afraid to tell? She’d been having an affair with Gore Vidal? I said, “I know that he’s a famous writer, but I’ve never read anything by him.” “He’s best known for The City and the Pillar, published when he was only nineteen. By that age, he’d already published two other novels.” A cramp contracted my ribs. I was already twenty-one and hadn’t published anything. Actually, I hadn’t even written anything other than some short stories and term papers. “Gore was an enfant terrible.” Anaïs’s smile twisted. “I met him in 1946. He was only seventeen then, and I was forty-three.” Had she seduced an underage boy? I had never heard of statutory rape by a woman. “Was he your lover?” I whispered. She laughed but not with her high jingling notes. “Everyone knows Gore is homosexual. He never made a secret of it.” “Oh.” “Not that it mattered to me.” I must have looked confused because she sighed. “When I met Gore, he was part of a clique of homosexuals who included me at all their parties in the Village.” She looked at me pleadingly. “You must be patient. I am trying to explain so that you can understand.”

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

  He encouraged Luther to enter the priesthood (1507), and brought him to Wittenberg; he induced him to take the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and to preach. He stirred him up against popery,130 and protected him in the transactions with Cardinal Cajetan. He was greeted by Scheurl in 1518 as the one who would lead the people of Israel out of captivity. But when Luther broke with Rome, and Rome with Luther, the friendship cooled down. Staupitz held fast to the unity of the Catholic Church and was intimidated and repelled by the excesses of the Reformation. In a letter of April 1, 1524,131 he begs Luther’s pardon for his long silence and significantly says in conclusion: "May Christ help us to live according to his gospel which now resounds in our ears and which many carry on their lips; for I see that countless persons abuse the gospel for the freedom of the flesh.132 Having been the precursor of the holy evangelical doctrine, I trust that my entreaties may have some effect upon thee." The sermons which he preached at Salzburg since 1522 breathe the same spirit and urge Catholic orthodoxy and obedience.133 His last book, published after his death (1525) under the title, "Of the holy true Christian Faith," is a virtual protest against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and a plea for a practical Christianity which shows itself in good works. He contrasts the two doctrines in these words: "The fools say, he who believes in Christ., needs no works; the Truth says, whosoever will be my disciple, let him follow Me; and whosoever will follow Me, let him deny himself and carry my cross day by day; and whosoever loves Me, keeps my commandments .... The evil spirit suggests to carnal Christians the doctrine that man is justified without works, and appeals to Paul. But Paul only excluded works of the law which proceed from fear and selfishness, while in all his epistles he commends as necessary to salvation such works as are done in obedience to God’s commandments, in faith and love. Christ fulfilled the taw, the fools would abolish the law; Paul praises the law as holy and good, the fools scold and abuse it as evil because they walk according to the flesh and have not the mind of the Spirit."134

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

  Jerome, the author of the Latin standard version of the Bible, took the lead in this ascetic crusade against marriage, and held up to the clergy as the ideal aim of the saint, to "cut down the wood of marriage by the axe of virginity." He was willing to praise marriage, but only as the nursery of virgins.756 Thus celibacy was gradually enforced in the West under the combined influence of the sacerdotal and hierarchical interests to the advantage of the hierarchy, but to the injury of morality.757 For while voluntary abstinence, or such as springs from a special gift of grace, is honorable and may be a great blessing to the church, the forced celibacy of the clergy, or celibacy as a universal condition of entering the priesthood, does violence to nature and Scripture, and, all sacramental ideas of marriage to the contrary notwithstanding, degrades this divine ordinance, which descends from the primeval state of innocence, and symbolizes the holiest of all relations, the union of Christ with his church. But what is in conflict with nature and nature’s God is also in conflict with the highest interests of morality. Much, therefore, as Catholicism has done to raise woman and the family life from heathen degradation, we still find, in general, that in Evangelical Protestant countries, woman occupies a far higher grade of intellectual and moral culture than in exclusively Roman Catholic countries. Clerical marriages are probably the most happy as a rule, and have given birth to a larger number of useful and distinguished men and women than those of any other class of society.758

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

  "We know," wrote the Pope in the instruction to his legate, Francesco Chieregati, "that for some time many abominations, abuses in ecclesiastical affairs, and violations of rights have taken place in the holy see; and that all things have been perverted into bad. From the head the corruption has passed to the limbs, from the Pope to the prelates: we have all departed; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." He regarded Protestantism as a just punishment for the sins of the prelates. He promised to do all in his power to remedy the evil, and to begin with the Curia whence it arose.500 The Emperor was likewise in favor of a reform of discipline, though displeased with Adrian for not supporting him in his war with France and his church-spoliation schemes. The attempt to reform the church morally without touching the dogma had been made by the great Councils of the fifteenth century, and failed. Adrian found no sympathy in Rome, and reigned too short a time (Jan. 9, 1522 to Sept. 14, 1523) to accomplish his desire. It was rumored that he died of poison; but the proof is wanting. Rome rejoiced. His successor, Clement VII. (1523–1534), adopted at once the policy of his cousin, Leo X. Complaint was made in the Diet against the Elector Frederick, that he tolerated Luther at Wittenberg, and allowed the double communion, the marriage of priests, and the forsaking of convents, but his controlling influence prevented any unfavorable action. The report of the suppression of the radical movements in Wittenberg made a good impression. Lutheran books were freely printed and sold in Nürnberg. Osiander preached openly against the Roman Antichrist. The Diet, in the answer to the Pope (framed Feb. 8 and published as an edict March 6, 1523), refused to execute the Edict of Worms, and demanded the calling of a free general council in Germany within a year. In the mean time, Luther should keep silence; and the preachers should content themselves with preaching the holy gospel according to the approved writings of the Christian church. At the same time the hundred gravamina of the German nation were repeated. This edict was a compromise, and did not decide the church question; but it averted the immediate danger to the Reformation, and so far marks a favorable change, as compared with the Edict of Worms. It was the beginning of the political emancipation of Germany from the control of the papacy. Luther was rather pleased with it, except the prohibition of preaching and writing, which he did not obey. The influence of the edict, however, was weakened by several events which occurred soon afterwards. At a new Diet at Nürnberg in January, 1524, where the shrewd Pope Clement VII. was represented by Cardinal Campeggio, the resolution was passed to execute the Edict of Worms, though with the elastic clause, "as far as possible."

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But suddenly, a totally unexpected war broke out in England between the King and one of his sons, 2 splitting the whole of the island into two rival factions, as a result of which the castles of the barons were taken out of Alessandro’s control, and all his other assets were frozen. But he remained in the island in the hope that son and father would make peace at any moment, in which case he might recover not only all his capital, but the outstanding interest as well. Meanwhile, in Florence, the three brothers made no attempt whatever to curb their enormous expenditure, but borrowed more and more each day. But as the years went by one after another, and their expectations were seen to be bearing no fruit, the three brothers lost their sources of credit, and immediately afterwards, since their creditors were demanding payment, they were thrown into prison. Their assets were realized to meet their debts, but the amount they raised was insufficient, and so they remained in prison, leaving their wives and little children to wander off in rags, some taking to the country, some going to one place, some to another, with nothing but a lifetime of poverty ahead of them. Alessandro, after waiting several years in England for a peace that never came, thought it not only pointless but positively dangerous to stay there any longer, and decided to return to Italy. He set out all alone on his journey, but as he was leaving Bruges 3 he happened to see, also leaving the city, an abbot dressed in white, who was attended by many monks and preceded by a large number of retainers and a substantial baggage train. Bringing up the rear were two worthy knights, relatives of the King, with whom Alessandro was personally acquainted. And so, having made his presence known, they readily received him as one of their company. As he jogged along beside the two knights, Alessandro made polite inquiries concerning the identity of the monks who were riding ahead with this large retinue of servants, and asked where they were all going. ‘The person riding up front,’ replied one of the knights, ‘is a young relative of ours who has just been appointed Abbot of one of the largest abbeys in England. But because he is below the minimum age prescribed by law for this great office, we are going with him to Rome in order to ask the Holy Father to give him dispensation for his excessive youth and confirm him in office. But we wish to keep the matter a secret.’ The new abbot rode on, sometimes going ahead, sometimes falling back behind his retinue, in the style regularly to be observed in gentlemen of quality when they are travelling, until eventually he found himself level with Alessandro, who was very young, exceedingly good-looking and well-built, and the most well-mannered, agreeable and finely spoken person you can imagine.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  They were years of extreme political and economic uncertainty throughout the peninsula, especially in Florence and Naples, a city to which he had still not abandoned hope of returning under the patronage of his erstwhile friend Niccola Acciaiuoli. In Florence, the autocratic rule of the Duke of Athens (Walter of Brienne), nephew of King Robert of Naples, was brought to an end in 1343, to be replaced by the provisional government of the lesser guilds and merchants, the popolo minuto , whose reforms had severely diminished the influence and wealth of the prosperous merchant classes to which Boccaccio’s family belonged. The collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi banking houses in 1345, largely brought about by Edward III of England’s repudiation of heavy debts he had contracted for his wars in France, aggravated the already serious decline in Florentine fortunes. In that same year, 1345, the Kingdom of Naples was thrown into confusion by the assassination of the husband of Queen Joanna, Andrew of Hungary, an event which two years later led to the punitive expedition into Italy of King Louis of Hungary. Joanna, along with her new husband, Luigi of Taranto, and their counsellor, Niccola Acciaiuoli, took refuge in Provence, and consequently Boccaccio’s already slender prospects of returning to the Neapolitan court were for the time being extinguished. The turbulent events in Florence had in any case already prompted him to seek patronage elsewhere, and by 1346 he was living in Ravenna, a city with strong Florentine connections. Dante had died there in exile in 1321, and his daughter, Suor Beatrice, still lived there in the convent of San Stefano dell’Uliva. A few years later, in the autumn of 1350, Boccaccio returned to Ravenna on an official mission on behalf of the Florentine commune, in the course of which he presented ten gold ducats to Suor Beatrice, a symbolic gift from the Compagnia di Or San Michele in tardy recognition of her father’s unique contribution to Florentine culture. Meanwhile, in 1348, Italy had been ravaged by the most disastrous plague in European history, graphically described by Boccaccio in the Introduction to the First Day of the Decameron , where it serves both as a pretext for the assembly and the flight from Florence of the ten young people, the lieta brigata (‘happy band’), to whom the telling of the hundred stories will be fictively entrusted. It also acts as the sombre and frightening prelude which medieval rhetoricians regarded as an essential component of the genre of comedy to which the Decameron , like Dante’s great poem, was intended to belong. Both works, in fact, despite their obvious differences in form and subject-matter, respect the definition of comedy formulated for instance by Uguccione da Pisa in his Derivationes: ‘a principio horribilis et fetidus, in fine prosperus desiderabilis et gratus’ (‘foul and horrible at the beginning, in the end felicitous, desirable and pleasing’).

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

  measure it succeeded, bringing as it did keen disappointment to the warlike king of France. The interdict was revoked in 1214, after having been in force more than six years. The victory of Innocent was complete. But in after years the remembrance of the dishonorable transaction encouraged steadfast resistance to the papal rule in England. The voice of Robert Grosseteste was lifted up against it, and Wyclif became champion of the king who refused to be bound by John’s pledge. Writing to one of John’s successors, the emperor Frederick II. called upon him to remember the humiliation of his predecessor John and with other Christian princes resist the intolerable encroachments of the Apostolic see. § 40. Innocent and Magna Charta. An original manuscript of the Magna Charta, shrivelled with age and fire, but still showing the royal seal, is preserved in the British Museum. A facsimile is given in the official edition of the Statutes of the Realm. Stubbs gives the Latin text in Select Charters, etc., 296–306. In his treatment of the Great Charter, the venerable instrument of English popular rights, Innocent, with monarchical instinct, turned to the side of John and against the cause of popular liberty. Stephen Langton, who had released John from the ban of excommunication, espoused the popular cause, thereby incurring the condemnation of the pope. The agreement into which the barons entered to resist the king’s despotism was treated by him with delay and subterfuge. Rebellion and civil war followed. As he had before been unscrupulous in his treatment of the Church, so now to win support he made fulsome religious promises he probably had no intention of keeping. To the clergy he granted freedom of election in the case of all prelates, greater and less. He also made a vow to lead a crusade. After the battle of Bouvines, John found himself forced to return to England, and was compelled by the organized strength of the barons to meet them at Runnymede, an island in the Thames near Windsor, where he signed and swore to keep the Magna Charta, June 15, 1215. This document, with the Declaration of Independence, the most important contract in the civil history of the English-speaking peoples, meant defined law as against uncertain tradition and the arbitrary will of the monarch. It was the first act of the people, nobles, and Church in combination, a compact of Englishmen with the king. By it the sovereign agreed that justice should be denied or delayed to no one, and that trial should be by the peers of the accused. No taxes were to be levied without the vote of the common council of the realm, whose meetings were fixed by rule. The single clause bearing directly upon the Church confirmed the freedom of ecclesiastical elections. After his first paroxysms of rage, when he gnawed sticks and straw like a madman,211 John called to his aid Innocent, on the ground that he had attached his seal under compulsion.