Disgust

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 Heptaméron (1559)

  To complete his wickedness, he went away to the house of a lady who loved the Cordeliers above all other folk ; and after he had preached a sermon or two before her, he cast eyes upon her daughter, who was very hand- some ; and because she did not rise in the morning to go and hear his sermon, he often scolded her before her mother, who used to say, " I wish to God, father, she had tasted a little of the discipline which you and your pious brethren administer to each other." The good father vowed he would give her some of it if she continued to be so lazy, and the mother begged he would do so. A day or two after, the good father entered the lady's room, and not seeing her daughter, asked where she was. " She fears you so little that she is still in bed," replied the lady. " Assuredly it is a very bad habit in young people to be so lazy," replied the friar. " Few people make much account of the sin of laziness ; but for my part I esteem T'ifth day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 300 it one of the most dangerous of all, both for the body and the soul ; wherefore you should chastise her well for it , or, if you will leave the business to me, I warrant I will cure her of lying in bed at an hour when she should be at her devotions." The poor lady, believing that he was a good man, begged he would be pleased to correct her daughter, which he proceeded to do forthwith. Going up a little wooden staircase, he found the girl all alone in bed, fast asleep, and sleeping as she was, he ravished her. The poor girl, waking up, knew not whether it was a man or a devil, and began to scream as loud as she could, and cry for help to her mother, who called out, from the foot of the stairs, " Do not spare her, sir ; give it her again, and chastise the naughty hussey." When the Cordelier had accomplished his wicked purpose he went down to the lady, and said to her, with his face all on fire, " I think, madam, your daughter will not forget the discipline I have given her." After thanking him heartily, the mother went up to her daughter, who was making such lamentation as a virtuous woman well might who had been the victim of such a crime ; and when she had learned the truth, she sent everywhere to look for the Cordelier, but he was already far away, and never afterwards was he found in the realm of France.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He would describe the foul fluids of the gutters as they filled the air with the fetid stink of the butcher-shops, the greasy and sickly odor of dishwater from the houses, and the acrid vapors of chlorinated water from the laundries. He spoke of the mountains of garbage where the sunlight hatched swarms of green and black flies, and of the roaches that emerged from them, so well fed that they could scarcely crawl along on their thin legs. In a tone of condescension he deplored the common lavatory that several families must share. We might well have but one room, but we were only two families to share our kitchen and our toilet. Besides, we had the privilege of running water and were not obliged to fetch it, at the risk of freezing our fingers till they were blue, from the fountain in the street. Meanwhile, I was being spared the extreme poverty of the ghetto. Often, on Saturday evenings, I went to see my aunt Abbou, who lived in one of the sixteen rooms of the poorhouse called Oukala of the Birds. In the morning my cousins and I used to race each other to the toilet. The walls of the tiny closet were as sticky as a slug’s hole, the ceiling so low that one couldn’t stand upright. I shall never forget the heat, experienced nowhere else, of that hive, with its stairs of rotting wood. How can wood be so warm, so brotherly? I loved those rooms that seemed to trespass on each other, all built to a man’s size, with no preconceived plan but the eye’s desires and the limits of an arm’s reach. One of the rooms was halfway up the stairs. To economize on kerosene, all doors were closed as soon as it was dark, and we all woke up together, with the same lisping voices. The Oukala of the Birds lived according to the rhythm of the world. But I believed in some social distinction between its inhabitants and ourselves, since we lived a good five hundred meters from the nearest Jewish home. Besides, my father owned a store and was an employer. Once the crops have been harvested, the Bedouin has a little cash on hand and comes down to the city to buy a new halter for his horse, and this makes him feel important. Crossing the threshold of the narrow store where two men, as poorly dressed as he, are both busy at their tasks, he proudly proclaims: “I want to speak to the boss.” Without interrupting his work, my father would then raise his head and invite the customer to be seated on a stool.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  If a quick tour of two thousand years of church history leaves us somewhat confused about the meaning of the cross, we will not be surprised that there is plenty of confusion in our own day as well. When, as I mentioned earlier, the National Gallery opened its 2000 exhibition “Seeing Salvation” and the skeptics sneered, the standard Christian response might have been, “Well, he died for our sins.” But that, for many today, just makes it worse. Skeptics come back with more scorn. “Sin” itself is out of date, they say. It’s just a projection of anxieties or childhood phobias. To land our “sins” onto a dead first-century Jew is not just ridiculous; it’s disgusting. To suggest that some god projected our “sins” onto that man is even worse: it’s a sort of cosmic child abuse, a nightmare fantasy that grows out of—or might actually lead to!—real human abuses in today’s world. We can do without that nonsense. The angry scorn of the skeptics gets extra traction from the fact that some have found the sign of the cross to be a symbol of fear. The horrible dark history of “Christian” persecution of people of other faiths, particularly Jewish people, has left a stain on what should be a symbol of hope and welcome. I remember being shocked, as a young man, to read about Jews who had escaped from persecution in supposedly “Christian” cultures in eastern Europe and who then, upon arriving in America, saw on street corners the sign of the cross, which they had come to fear and loathe. Those of us who grew up with crosses in our churches and all around us and with no anti-Jewish ideas in our heads have to face the fact that our central symbol has often been horribly abused. It has been used as a sign of a military might or of a dominant culture determined to stamp out all rivals. The emperor Constantine, facing a crucial battle, saw a vision of the cross in the sky and was told, “In this sign you will conquer.” The Ku Klux Klan burns crosses, claiming to bring the light of the Christian gospel into dark places. The fact that such nonsense is a scandalous denial of the early Christian meaning of the cross doesn’t make it any better. It isn’t just those outside the Christian faith who have found the cross a symbol of fear. Many inside the church too have shrunk back from one particular interpretation that, in some form or other, has dominated much Western Christianity over the last half millennium. One recent hymn puts it like this: And on the cross, when Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied— (This makes it sound like hunger that is satisfied by a good meal.) The line of thought goes like this, usually based on a particular arrangement of biblical texts:

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  This was partly true; but he had actually cut himself off from his own family when he had married my mother, a pretty girl from a humble background. Still, catastrophes and rare occasions of great joy brought the Benillouche clan together again and made them aware of their unity. Joseph, the eldest of my uncles on my father’s side, was the patriarchal head of the family and respect was owed him because he had really been a father to his younger brothers when they had become orphans at a tender age. I refused, however, to accept these old-fashioned hierarchical systems and smiled contemptuously when my father bemoaned the disappearance of an uncle’s rights. Had we been on more intimate terms, my uncles would have had the right to box my ears. Still, I would have liked to see one of them try to spank me! But I knew how irritated my father would be if I failed to come home at once, and how the whole family would be scandalized. If my oral examination hadn’t been only two days off, I wouldn’t have minded wasting a whole afternoon. But I couldn’t afford now to squander precious time on such absurd family obligations; besides, I hardly knew Uncle Joseph at all. I sent Birou away with a vague explanation that I couldn’t come now and promised to go home as soon as I was free. I went back along the warm passage to the study hall and dropped into my uncomfortable wooden seat. I tried to get back into the mood for work. The air moved wearily, but all hope of a breeze vanished when I realized a sirocco was raising and stirring the white dust in the courtyard: it would be wiser now to close the windows. I didn’t like thinking about death. It seemed dirty and ugly to me; it stank of sulphur disinfectants and of black draperies that had been badly laundered and were produced hastily out of closets. To me, death was as disgusting as it was frightening. The mere thought of my scandalized family and of my father’s probable anger upset me, and I couldn’t settle back to my work. The heat was such that I could scarcely breathe, and I was offered the alternatives of stewing in my own sweat where I was or of swallowing the dust of the yard. Finally, I decided to interrupt my work long enough for a visit to my Uncle Joseph’s home. Why irritate my father unnecessarily? Why not take a little time off to simulate, like all the others? I shut my book and went out into the furnace of the street where I was attacked by the dry breath of the sirocco that parched my lips and my eyelids. Somehow, I still found the energy to run all the way home. I went first to the Passage.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  When I reached the entrance to our street, I noted at once the wild music of tambourines and flutes, which meant that this dreadful ceremony was still in full swing. That was, I felt, too bad; so I climbed the stairs four at a time, rushing past the first floor, where I was met by a violent cacophony of cymbals that sounded strangely explosive in the sudden silence of all the other instruments. I knocked in vain at our own door; the show seemed to have attracted everyone, and the children, I was sure, were now staring wide-eyed at the unwholesome display. To get the key to our door, I would now have to go there myself. So I went downstairs again. The whole band was in a frenzy, in response to the clashing cymbals that never ceased sounding. The door was literally vibrating as I knocked on it, at first with my fists, then with my feet too. They must all have become quite deaf, if not insane, from this awful music. At last, someone opened the door for me and the din was at once unbelievably louder, swelling to fill the whole staircase, right up to the glass roof at the top. I dived into this weird mixture of hysterical flutes, wild cymbals, tom-tom drums, and darbouka bagpipes, all seasoned with the babble of excited women. The air seemed tropical, damp and warm, heavy with human breath and incense. With great difficulty, I forced my way through the throng of women, all of them familiar faces, aunts, cousins, neighbors, but each one of them now a stranger under the spell that had overcome her. They stood there motionless, their hair disheveled, their eyes aglow, rigid as statues, or perhaps like stupid cows that I had to push aside, as if they couldn’t understand me. They even seemed not to recognize me. But I had still not penetrated into the room where the dance was being held, beyond a broad doorway that was cloudy with smoke. To get there, I had to make my way through a tangled throng of women who were watching, some of them standing on chairs, stools, even tables, leaning against the walls, clinging together in clusters, all peering deep into the cloud of smoke. How could they see anything at all? Close to me, I recognized my Aunt Noucha, dressed for the occasion in Bedouin costume. I shouted into her ear: “Where is Mother?” When I got no answer, I grasped hold of her arm and shook it roughly. It was oily and sticky with sweat, and seemed to slither out of my grasp. “Where is Mother,” I shouted again. “I want our keys!”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The Bedouin smiled foolishly and, without giving an answer, finally closed the door before sitting down heavily beside the French lady who, without making any display of it, grew tense and pulled herself together. She didn’t actually move, but my own antennae had already detected a violent disturbance in her magnetic equilibrium. The third odor of the Bedouin now became more recognizable in the closed car: the bitter and penetrating smell of burned charcoal. “Come on! Sell me your little tail,” the Djerban began again. The child’s attention had wandered, and he now started. “No! No!” “I’ll give you fifty francs for it.” “No!” “One hundred francs!” “No!” “Ah, you’re a tough number! Two hundred!” “No!” “Well, I’ll go all the way: a thousand francs!” “No!” The eyes of the Djerban tried to express greed. “And I’ll throw in a bag of candy too!” “No! No!” “So it’s no deal? Is that your last word?” shouted the Djerban, pretending now to be angry. “Repeat it once more: is it still no?” “No!” Then, suddenly, the Djerban threw himself on the child, pulling a terrifying face, and grabbed roughly at the boy’s fly. The child defended himself with his fists, shrieking in terror that was no longer a pretense, tore the fez off his aggressor’s head and began to pull at his hair. In the end, the Djerban, almost blinded and his face already bruised by the tiny hands, let go of the tiny little animal. The boy’s father was laughing out loud, the Djerban was doubled up with nervous laughter, and all our neighbors were smiling broadly. Even the lady who sat beside the Bedouin must have found it, deep inside her, quite funny. At last the child, still pale and distrustful, decided to smile at his partner in the game. Can I ever forget the Orient? It is deeply rooted in my flesh and blood, and I need but touch my own body to feel how I have been marked for all time by it. As though it were all a mere matter of cultures and of elective affinities! When the boy in the streetcar screamed with fear, I felt my own sexual organs quiver as if in response to a scream that reached me suddenly from the depths of my own childhood. Throughout this little byplay, I had looked up at the roof, like a man who pretends to have better manners and doesn’t want to seem to mind the business of his fellow-passengers. But my whole body followed the game with great attention and shared in the disgust of the child and the complicity of the crowd. Yes, I know well that unpleasant but voluptuous tremor. Before going to grade school, I used to go to the kouttab, the Hebrew cheder school in our neighborhood, where every morning the rabbi used to make us repeat aloud and in chorus the prayers of the Jewish faith.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The cymbals and the bagpipes were suddenly silent and gave precedence to the tom-tom drum that began, at first in a solo, to send forth grave, slow, evenly spaced sounds that seemed to be muffled, as if rising from the ground. The dancer followed this rhythm and became more calm; she allowed her arms to fall to her sides, relaxed her legs, seized by an occasional tremor that followed the drum’s play as it urged her to leap in a single mass from the ground to the sky. The silence of the other instruments, subjected to the strenuous authority of the drum, seemed to crush the crowded women, who were silent now and gathered together in a single moody mass. I could distinguish them more clearly. There were women everywhere, clustered together, seated, standing, on the floor, literally lining the whole room. Their anxious motionlessness, repeated everywhere, disarmed me, in spite of my ironical nature, and prevented me from flying into a rage. Suddenly, as the cymbals clashed again, together with all the other instruments now released in a frenzy of revolt, the confusion became general. The tom-tom seemed to go insane, beating ever faster, struggling against time; the flock of women was seized by nervous spasms, and the dancer was again overcome by her seizures that seemed to tear her apart. Her arms and legs and head, each one moving in a different direction, appeared to respond to contradictory impulses, going off madly at cross purposes, as if trying to tear themselves away from the body. I could almost hear and feel the flesh torn in its dreadful struggle against rhythm, against the demons, when suddenly the crazy dancer turned toward me — my mother, she was my own mother! My contempt and disgust and shame now became clearer, more concentrated. Instead of running away, I stayed there, crushed by the crowd of women pressing against my back. Was this really my mother’s face, this primitive mask, glazed with sweat, with its disheveled hair, eyes tightly closed, lips all bloodless? I recognized the tawdry finery that she had unpacked from her wooden boxes, the orange-colored djebbah gown strewn with red and green sequins, the artificial silk fouta veil, brilliantly colored and gaudy, orange, yellow, green, and red, and the green and yellow scarf decorated with Fatma’s hand and a fish. To myself, I kept on saying: “She’s my mother, my mother,” as if these mere words could re-establish the lost contact and express all the affection that they should contain. But the words refused to adapt themselves to the barbaric apparition in its strange costume. And this woman who was dancing before me, with her breasts barely covered, abandoning herself unconsciously to magical contortions, suggested to me nothing that was familiar or that I could understand. In the books that I had read, the mother was always somebody more soft and human than all others, a symbol of devotion and of intuitive intelligence. How her children must be grateful and happy, proud of having such a mother! As for my own mother, here she was: this wretched moron, with a spell cast on her by the dreadful music, by these savage musicians, themselves under the spell of their dark and obscure beliefs. My mother? Well, here she was...

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  We shared the tasteless chow of the army, with its heavy portions of starches that were either badly prepared or cooked too long, and its gravies of inferior quality. The only ones who took to this life easily were the kids from public institutions. These I despised and pitied because of their frightful lack of parents, and I feared them because they were so brutal. We never associated with them and they seemed to ignore us too. The very first day, it was explained to me in a whisper: “They have no parents, and that’s why they’re like that.” They were indeed different, not like us, nor do I rely, for this, on distorted memories. Each time I have had to do with children from public institutions, I have experienced this same shifty laughter and brutality, these expressions of loneliness and privation. I at least had parents, though I was away from them for the time being. But the mere faculty of being able to reduce the distance between us by thinking of my father, of my mother, of our alley, this gave my heart some security and balance. Life, in our summer camp, was healthy and simple, but void of any tenderness or friendliness. We were not even subjected to the tyrannous demands of instructors; on the contrary, we were alone, each one of us left to his own resources. The young men who had been assigned to stay with us, as one of the duties of their period of military service, lived among themselves, watching us from afar and approaching us as seldom as possible, for summary and brutal punishments if they found us too troublesome. Once, one of the boys from an institution, whether unintentionally or on purpose, threw a pebble into an open kitchen window. Suddenly there emerged an unusually angry mess sergeant. With oddly brusque gestures he seized the culprit, grasped him between his knees, tore his pants down and set about thrashing him with both arms. The child screamed and the man, made even more angry by these screams, continued to beat his victim’s buttocks, soon red and then bruised, with all the force of his huge and unrelenting hands. Fascinated, I watched all of this, my lips tightened with horror, as the bruised buttocks became purple beneath such an avalanche of blows. It went on and on, and I felt sick, with a cold feeling at the roots of my hair and behind my ears, like when I hear the rasping of broken glass. The boy, after that, had to be put to bed, and the soldiers nursed him themselves: he became, in all our camp, the only child who was at all spoiled. Another time, a sergeant’s intrusion in our activities hurt us cruelly.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But how is one to stop this collective seizure of epilepsy? I felt like shouting insults at them, like beating them, beating with all my strength these women and musicians. But I was paralyzed, as if watching all of this through a glass pane. How could I communicate with these people? Perhaps I too should dance until I became giddy, until I lost consciousness after accepting these rhythms and beating my own head again and again with disjointed gestures, repeated until it continued to shake all by itself, as empty as a doll’s head that moves as it follows its leaded pendulum, until my whole body became dislocated in all its joints, so that no longer a single bone, not a muscle, remained in its proper place, with all my consciousness vanished and my body disintegrated while I allowed the bagpipes to seize my nerves, the tom-tom to rule the beating of my heart and blood, and the cymbals to tear my limbs apart and scatter them north, south, east, and west, throughout the sky and the earth? Would I then manage in turn to get through to the other side of this pane of glass? I felt almost delirious. Suddenly, the music stopped on a single beat, leaving behind it a silence that was heavy and painful. Like a puppet when the thread that guides it breaks, my mother now collapsed, abandoned by the music, limp as a rag, motionless. Why, at this point, such a nauseous pity within me? My heart followed her to the floor and suffered from the sound of her heavy fall on the woven straw mat. Meanwhile, the other women continued their movements. Fat old Khmeissa, our neighbor from across the hallway, seemed to be suffering as she bent forward, with her head and her heavy breasts over my inanimate mother and, forcing her spine so that her buttocks protruded like something monumental, managed at last to place her mouth close to my mother’s ear. The women whispered among themselves in a moment of relative peace. Khmeissa then placed her ear close to my mother and seemed to be listening attentively for a long while. Suddenly, she shouted: “They have spoken! They have said: a red scarf and a white cock!” So the Djnoun spirits had answered! They had expressed their desires to the dancer in her seizure! But what could you really hear, you crazy old witch, from the lips of this poor woman in her coma? Still, Khmeissa may not have been lying that day, perhaps she really heard the voice of her own imagination, educated to this end and convinced of its truth ever since childhood.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But the sergeant was informed of this by the kids from the institutions and was horrified. He burst into our room and struck Mimouni, who was terrified and couldn’t understand how it could be wrong to imitate his own father. Then the sergeant scolded all of us and, seeing that we failed to follow his line of argument, became even more angry. Almost speechless with rage, the soldier finally resorted to the decisive argument, and that is how, for the first time in my life, I encountered the device of explaining a defect or a fault in an individual by referring it back to his Jewish faith. The furious sergeant revealed to us indeed why this infamous idea had ever occurred to Mimouni: Mimouni was a Jew and all Jews are irresistibly drawn toward commerce. This was my first experience of what was to become a commonplace, and I thus learned to associate the idea of being Jewish with the idea of trade, so that I began to resent all Jews who dared engage in business. In order to avoid any recurrence of this kind of thing, the sergeant decided that all parcels received from home would henceforth be shared in common. As the orphans among us were the majority, our parcels seemed to melt away, leaving the individual receiver a mere biscuit, two candles, or half a chocolate bar. To me, this democratic measure to make us share and share alike was even more hateful. The goodies that we received in our parcels were unaccustomed gifts that we had earned by being far from home, and that was why I never ate them but hoarded them in a tin box, counting them again and again every evening. I got my fill of them by merely looking at them and ate only the broken pieces of candy, when the tin box became too full. In an access of educational or vengeful zeal, the sergeant now made us open all our parcels. His face expressed sheer disgust when he discovered my own sweets, which had begun to melt, all stuck together and their various colors running. He decided that they were not fit to eat, so he ordered me to throw them away. I think I would more gladly have allowed my eyes to be torn out. Fortunately, he was carried away by his own ardor and spared me this martyrdom.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  by sheer habits of living and grabbing and analyzing. He’s a grasshopper. He has now hopped into my life. My feeling of dislike becomes intensified. When he tries to kiss me, I evade him. At the same time I concede to myself that he knows the technique of kissing better than anyone I’ve met. His gestures never miss their aim, no kiss ever goes astray. His hands are deft. My curiosity for sensuality is stirred. I have always been tempted by unknown pleasures. He has, like me, a sense of smell. I let him inhale me, then I slip away. Finally I lie still on the couch, but when his desire grows, I try to escape. Too late. Then I tell him the truth: woman’s trouble. That does not seem to deter him. “You don’t think I want that mechanical way—there are other ways.” He sits up and uncovers his penis. I don’t understand what he wants. He makes me get down on my knees. He offers it to my mouth. I get up as if struck by a whip. He is furious. I say to him, “I told you we have different ways of doing things. I warned you I was inexperienced.” “I never believed it. I don’t yet believe it. You can’t be, with your sophisticated face and your passionateness. You’re playing a trick on me.” I listen to him; the analyst in me is uppermost, still on the job. He pours out stories to show me that I don’t appreciate what other women do. In my head I answer, “ You don’t know what sensuality is. Hugo and I do. It’s in us, not in your devious practices; it’s in feeling, in passion, in love.” He goes on talking. I watch him with my “sophisticated face.” He does not hate me because, however repulsed, however angry I am, I have a facility for forgiveness. When I see that I have let him be aroused, it seems natural to let him release his desire between my legs. I just let him, out of pity. That, he senses. Other women, he says, would have insulted him. He understands my pity for his ridiculous, humiliating physical necessity. I owed him that; he had revealed a new world to me. I had understood for the first time the abnormal experiences Eduardo had warned me against. Exoticism and sensuality now had another meaning for me. Nothing was spared my eyes, so that I might always remember: Drake looking down at his wet handkerchief, offering me a towel, heating water on the gas stove. I tell Hugo the story partially, leaving out my activity, extracting the meaning for him and for me. As something forever finished, he accepts it. We efface an hour by passionate love, without twists, without aftertaste. When it is finished, it is not finished, we lie still in each other’s arms, lulled by our love, by tenderness—sensuality in which the whole being can participate.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Can I ever forget the Orient? It is deeply rooted in my flesh and blood, and I need but touch my own body to feel how I have been marked for all time by it. As though it were all a mere matter of cultures and of elective affinities! When the boy in the streetcar screamed with fear, I felt my own sexual organs quiver as if in response to a scream that reached me suddenly from the depths of my own childhood. Throughout this little byplay, I had looked up at the roof, like a man who pretends to have better manners and doesn’t want to seem to mind the business of his fellow-passengers. But my whole body followed the game with great attention and shared in the disgust of the child and the complicity of the crowd. Yes, I know well that unpleasant but voluptuous tremor. Before going to grade school, I used to go to the kouttab, the Hebrew cheder school in our neighborhood, where every morning the rabbi used to make us repeat aloud and in chorus the prayers of the Jewish faith. We used to make a fine noise, which any surprised wanderer in our part of town may yet hear if he goes into the heart of the ghetto. Out of the windows of the chedarim the voices escape toward freedom, a cacophony of the tones of fifty children of all ages as they repeat constantly, in every kind of nasal singsong, a mysterious text that is meaningless to the listener outside and, it would seem, to the children themselves. One morning, as he had to go away, the rabbi entrusted the supervision of the class to the oldest among the boys, who submissively promised to watch us carefully: “Yes, Rabbi, yes...,” repeating this after each one of the rabbi’s remarks, so that our collective recitation continued: “Yes, Rabbi...,” without being interrupted once until he returned, “Yes, Rabbi...”; only the smaller boys were to be allowed to leave the room to go to the toilet, the older boys only in extremely urgent cases; nothing in the old synagogue that served us as a kouttab was to be touched; our new supervisor would be allowed to report to the rabbi all those among us who were guilty of breaking any rule, and they would be punished with ten strokes of the cane on the soles of the feet — ”Yes, Rabbi. Yes, Rabbi. Yes, Rabbi...“

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Each time I have had to do with children from public institutions, I have experienced this same shifty laughter and brutality, these expressions of loneliness and privation. I at least had parents, though I was away from them for the time being. But the mere faculty of being able to reduce the distance between us by thinking of my father, of my mother, of our alley, this gave my heart some security and balance. Life, in our summer camp, was healthy and simple, but void of any tenderness or friendliness. We were not even subjected to the tyrannous demands of instructors; on the contrary, we were alone, each one of us left to his own resources. The young men who had been assigned to stay with us, as one of the duties of their period of military service, lived among themselves, watching us from afar and approaching us as seldom as possible, for summary and brutal punishments if they found us too troublesome. Once, one of the boys from an institution, whether unintentionally or on purpose, threw a pebble into an open kitchen window. Suddenly there emerged an unusually angry mess sergeant. With oddly brusque gestures he seized the culprit, grasped him between his knees, tore his pants down and set about thrashing him with both arms. The child screamed and the man, made even more angry by these screams, continued to beat his victim’s buttocks, soon red and then bruised, with all the force of his huge and unrelenting hands. Fascinated, I watched all of this, my lips tightened with horror, as the bruised buttocks became purple beneath such an avalanche of blows. It went on and on, and I felt sick, with a cold feeling at the roots of my hair and behind my ears, like when I hear the rasping of broken glass. The boy, after that, had to be put to bed, and the soldiers nursed him themselves: he became, in all our camp, the only child who was at all spoiled. Another time, a sergeant’s intrusion in our activities hurt us cruelly. Mimouni was the son of a street vendor and, as he received no pocket money from home, had the bright idea of imitating his father by selling the goodies that came in his parcels. The news of his initiative spread like wildfire throughout the dormitories, and Mimouni’s bed soon became a real country grocery, while the owner patiently awaited customers.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  He might even be pleased best by immoral actions, by the immolation of human victims, by the sacrifice of woman’s chastity, or by the burning of the first-born. In the primitive life of the Israelitish tribes the religion of the common folk was probably much of this kind. Jehovah was the tribal god of Israel. Fortunately he was stronger and more terrible than the gods of the neighboring tribes, so that he was able to drive them out and give their land to his own people, but he was not fundamentally different from them and they were believed to be quite as real as Jehovah. There were certain forms of moral evil which he hated and certain social duties which he loved and blessed, but the surest way of remaining in his favor was to sacrifice duly and plentifully. If a man had offended against his fellow or his tribe, Jehovah would forgive when the rich smell of burnt meat filled his nostrils. Against this current conception of religion the prophets insisted on a right life as the true worship of God. Morality to them was not merely a prerequisite of effective ceremonial worship. They brushed sacrificial ritual aside altogether as trifling compared with righteousness, nay, as a harmful substitute and a hindrance for ethical religion. “I desire goodness and not sacrifice,” said Hosea, and Jesus was fond of quoting the words. The Book of Isaiah begins with a description of the disasters which had overtaken the nation, and then in impassioned words the prophet spurns the means taken to appease Jehovah’s anger. He said the herds of beasts trampling his temple-court, the burning fat, the reek of blood, the clouds of incense, were a weariness and an abomination to the God whom they were meant to please. Their festivals and solemn meetings, their prayers and prostrations, were iniquity from which he averted his face. What he wanted was a right life and the righting of social wrongs: “Your hands are full of blood. Wash you! Make you clean! Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes! Cease to do evil! Learn to do right! Seek justice! Relieve the oppressed! Secure justice for the orphaned and plead for the widow.” Perhaps the simplest and most beautiful expression of that reformatory conception of true religion is contained in the words of Micah: “Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  Perhaps seventy years of age, with the corpulence of a eunuch held in by stays, old Lili was usually referred to as ‘passing all bounds’, without these ‘bounds* being defined. Her round pink painted face was enlivened by a ceaseless girlish gaiety, and her large eyes and small mouth, thin-lipped and shrunken, flirted shamelessly. Old Lili followed the fashion to an outrageous degree. A striking blue-and-white striped skirt held in the lower part of her body, and a little blue jersey gaped over her skinny bosom crinkled like the wattles of a turkey-cock; a silver fox failed to conceal the neck, which was the shape of a flower-pot and the size of a belly. It had engulfed the chin. “It*s terrifying,” Lea thought. She was unable to tear her eyes away from details that were particularly sinister - a white sailor hat, for instance, girlishly perched on the back of a short-cut, strawberryroan wig; or, again, a pearl necklace visible one moment and the next interred in a deep ravine which once had been termed a * collier de Vdniis \ ‘Lea, Ida, my little chickabiddy!’ old Lili exclaimed as she did her best to hasten towards L£a. She walked with difficulty on round swollen feet, tightly swaddled in high-heeled laced boots with paste buckles on the ankle-straps, and was the first to congratulate herself on this performance: I waddle like a duckling! it is a special little way I have. Guido, my passion, you remember Madame de Lonval? Don t remember her too well or I’ll tear your eyes out. A slim youth with Italian features, enormous empty eyes, and a weak receding chin kissed Lea’s hand hastily and retired into the shadows without a word- Lili caught him in flight, pulled his head down to her scaly chest, calling the onlookers to witness: ‘Do you know what this is, Madame, do you know what this is? This, ladies, is the love of my life! * ‘Restrain yourself, Lili!’ Madame de la Berche advised in her masculine voice. ‘But why? But why?* from Charlotte Peloux. ‘For the sake of decency,’ said the Baroness. ‘Baroness, that’s not nice of you! I think they’re so sweet. Alii* she sighed, ‘ they remind me of my own children.’ T was thinking of them,’ Lili said, with a delighted smile. ‘It’s our honeymoon too, Guido’s and mine. Indeed, we’ve just come to ask about the other young couple! We want to hear all about them.’ Madame Peloux became stem. ‘Lili, you don’t expect me to go into details, do you?’ ‘ Oh, yes, yes, I do,* Lili cried, clapping her hands. She tried to skip, but succeeded only in raising her shoulders and hips a little. ‘That’s always been my besetting sin, and always will be! I adore spicy talk! I’ll never be» cured of it. That little wretch there knows how I adore it.’

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  He shook Cheri’s hand with a hand that had changed its character: from being narrow and boneless, it had become broad, purposeful, disguised as the rather firm hand of an honest man. “The war ...” thought Cheri, tongue in cheek. ‘You’re off? Where?’ Desmond asked. He kept Cheri standing on the top of the steps long enough to be able to show off such a decorative client to his wine merchant. Over there/ said Cheri, with a vague gesture. ‘Mystery,’ murmured Desmond. ‘Be off to your seraglio!’ ‘ Oh no/ said Cheri, ‘you’re quite wrong.’ He conjured up the vision of some female — moist flesh, nakedness, a mouth. He shuddered with impersonal disgust, and, repeating “You’re quite wrong” under his breath, got into his runabout. He carried away with him an all too familiar uneasiness, the embarrassment and irritation of never being able to put into words all that he really wanted to say; of never meeting the person to whom he would have to confide a half-formed admission, a secret that could have changed everything, and which, for instance, this afternoon would have dispersed the ominous atmosphere from the bleached pavements and the asphalt, now beginning to melt under a vertical sun. “Only two o’clock,” he sighed, “and, this month, it stays light till well after nine.” The breath of wind raised by the speed of his motor was like a hot dry towel being flapped in his face, and he yearned for the makebelieve night behind his blue curtains, to the accompaniment of the simple drip-drop-drip of the Italian fountain’s sing-song in the garden. “If I slip quickly through the hall, I’ll be able to get in again without being seen. TkeyU be having coffee by now.” He could almost catch a whiff of the excellent luncheon, of the lingering smell of the melon, of the dessert wine which Edmee always had served with the fruit; and, ahead of time, he saw the verdigrised reflection of Cheri closing the door lined with plate glass. “In we go!”

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  For some little time Edmee gazed at the half-stripped stranger lying like a drugged man beside her. Her watchful eye wandered from bluish lips to hollowed eyes, from outflung hand to forehead sealed upon a single secret. She summoned her self-control and composed her features, as though afraid the sleeper might take her by surprise. She got out of bed softly, and, before shutting out the dazzling sunlight, drew a silk counterpane to hide the outstretched untidy body looking like a burglar who had been knocked out. She arranged this so as to give the beautiful rigid features their full splendour, carefully pulling it down over the drooping hand with a slight qualm of pious disgust, as though hiding a weapon that perhaps had killed. He never twitched a muscle — having retired for a few moments within an impregnable fastness. In any case, Edmee’s hospital training had given her fingers a professional touch, which, if not exactly gentle, was competent to go straight to the required spot without touching or in any way affecting the surrounding area. She did not get back into bed; but, sitting half-naked, enjoyed the unexpected freshness of the hour when the sun rouses the winds. The long curtains stirred, as if breathing and, dependent on the breeze, stippled Cheri’s sleep with fitful flecks of dark blue. As she gazed at him, Edmee was not thinking of the wounded, or of the dead, whose peasant hands she had joined together upon coarse cotton sheets. No invalid in the grip of a nightmare, not one among the dead, had ever resembled Cheri: sleep, silence, and repose made him magnificently inhuman. Extreme beauty arouses no sympathy. It is not the prerogative of any one country. Time’s finger had touched Cheri only to make him more austere. The mind - whose task it is to curb the splendour of mankind while degrading it piecemeal - respected Cheri as an admirable temple dedicated to instinct. What could avail the Machiavellian deceit, the ardour, and the cunning self-sacrifice imposed by love, against this inviolable standard-bearer of light and his untutored majesty? Patient and, on occasion, subtle as she was, it never occurred to Edmee that the feminine appetite for possession tends to emasculate every living conquest, and can reduce a magnificent but inferior male to the status of a courtesan. Her lower-middle-class wisdom made her determined not to relinquish the gains — money, ease, domestic tyranny, marriage - acquired in so few years and rendered doubly attractive by the war.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  When the narcotic has once gained control over them, it works more rapidly with them than with the well fed who work in the open. Tuberculosis and alcoholism are social diseases, degenerating the stock of the people, fostered by the commercial interests of landowners and liquor dealers, thriving on the weak and creating the weak. This condition of exhaustion tends to perpetuate itself. Children are begotten in a state of physical exhaustion. Underfed and overworked women in tenement and factory are nourishing the children in their prenatal life. During the years when a workingman’s family is bringing up young children, before their earnings become available, the family is submerged in poverty through these parental burdens, and neither the parents nor the growing children are likely to be well fed and well housed. Very early in life the children are hitched to the machine for life, and the vitality which ought to build their bodies during the crucial period of adolescence is used up to make goods a little cheaper, or, what is more likely, merely to make profits a little larger. Imagine that any breeder of live stock should breed horses or cows under such conditions, what would be the result in a few generations? Our apple orchards are planted in wide squares, so that every tree has the soil, the air, the sunshine, which it needs. If we planted a dense jungle of trees, we should have a dwarfed growth, scraggy and thorny, and only here and there a crabbed apple. What harvest of human kind will we have in the broad field of our republic if we plant men in that way? The physical drain of which we have spoken is gradual and slow, and therefore escapes observation and sympathy. But it is the lot of the working people in addition to this to suffer frequent mangling and mutilation. A workman who tends one of our great machines is pitted against a monster of blind and crushing strength and has to be ever alert, like one who enters a cage of tigers. Yet human nature is so constituted that it grows careless of danger which is always near, and cheerfully plucks the beard of death. Unless the machines are surrounded with proper safeguards, they take a large toll of life and limb. The state accident insurance system in Germany has revealed a terrible frequency of industrial accidents. We have never yet dared to get the facts for our country, except in mining and railroading; but it is safe to say that no country is so reckless of accidents as our own. It is asserted that one in eight of our people dies a violent death. The Interstate Commerce Commisssion in October, 1904, stated that 78,152 persons had been killed on the railroads in the previous ten years, and 78, 247 had been injured in the single preceding year.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘Mohair is a kind of alpaca, but it hangs better, of course. Lea was afraid to wear lawn in the summer: she maintained that it was best for underwear and handkerchiefs. Her own lingerie was fit for a queen, you’ll remember, and in the days when that photograph was taken yes, that beauty over there with the long legs — they didn’t wear the plain underclothes of to-day. It was frill upon frill, a foam, a flurry of snow; and the drawers, dear boy! they’d have sent your head whirling. ... White Chantilly lace at the sides and black Chantilly in between. Can’t you just see the effect? But can you imagine it?’ “Revolting,” thought Cheri, “revolting. Black Chantilly in between. A woman doesn’t wear black Chantilly in between simply to please herself. In front of whose eyes did she wear them? For whom?” He could see L6a’s gesture as he entered her bathroom or boudoir 2,38 - the furtive gesture as she drew her wrap across her body. He could see the chaste self-confidence of her rosy body as she lay naked in the bath, with the water turned to milk by some essence or other. ... “But, for others, she wore drawers of Chantilly lace. ...” He kicked one of the hay-stuffed moquette cushions to the floor. ‘Are you too warm, Ch£ri?* ‘No. Let me have another look at that photo ... the large framed one. Tilt the what’s-its-name of your lamp up a bit... a bit more ... that’s it!’ Abandoning his usual circumspection, he applied a searching eye to the study of every detail that was new to him, and almost refreshing. “ A high-waisted belt with cameos!... Never saw that about the place. And boots like buskins! Was she wearing tights? No, of course not, her toes are bare. Revolting. ...” ‘At whose house did she wear that costume?’ * I don’t rightly remember. ... A reception at the club, I believe ... or at Molier’s.* He handed back the frame at arm’s length, to all appearances disdainful and bored. He left shortly afterwards, under an overcast sky, towards the close of a night that smelt of wood smoke and dankness. He was deteriorating physically and took no account of it. He was losing weight through eating and sleeping too little, walking and smoking too much, thus bartering his obvious vigour for a lightness, an apparent return to youth, which the light of day repudiated. At home, he lived as he pleased, welcoming or running away from guests and callers. All that they knew of him was his name, his almost petrified good looks fined down little by little under an accusing chisel, and the inconceivable ease with which he would ignore them.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This type of reaction is seen when children are abused or forced to do something against their will—something that they cannot “stomach.” This could be anything from forced bottle feeding to forced fellatio or, often, something they cannot stomach metaphorically. ‡ Bull analyzed the fear response and found it consisted of a similar compulsion to avoid or escape and was associated with a generalized tensing up or freezing of the whole body . It was also noted that subjects frequently reported the desire to get away, which was opposed by an inability to move. This opposition led to paralysis of the entire body (though somewhat less in the head and neck). However, the turning away in fear was different from that of disgust. Associated with fear was the additional component of turning toward potential resources of security and safety. Bull discovered that the emotion of anger involves a fundamental split. There was, on the one hand, a primary compulsion to attack, as observed in a tensing of the back, arms and fists (as if preparing to hit). However, there was also a strong secondary component of tensing the jaw, forearm and hand. This was self-reported by the subjects, and observed by the experimenters, as a way of controlling and inhibiting the primary impulse to strike. In addition, these experiments explored the bodily aspects of sadness and depression. Depression was characterized, in the subject’s consciousness, as a chronically interrupted drive. It was as though there was something they wanted but were unable to attain. These states of depression were frequently associated with a sense of “tired heaviness,” dizziness, headache and an inability to think clearly. The researchers observed a weakened impulse to cry (as though it were stifled), along with a collapsed posture, conveying defeat and apparent lethargy. We all recognize that there is a fundamental difference between negative and positive emotions. When Bull studied the patterns of elation, triumph and joy, she observed that these positive affects (in contrast to the negative ones of depression, anger and disgust) did not have an inhibitory component; they were experienced as pure action . Subjects feeling joy reported an expanded sensation in their chests, which they experienced as buoyant, and which was associated with free deep breathing. The observation of postural changes included a lifting of the head and an extension of the spine. These closely meshed behaviors and sensations facilitated the freer breathing. Most subjects feeling joy reported feeling “ready for action.” This readiness was accompanied with energy and the abundant sense of purpose and optimism that they would be able to achieve their goals. Understanding the contradictory basis of the negative emotions, and their structural contrast to the positive ones, is revealing in the quest for wholeness. All of the negative emotions studied were comprised of two conflicting impulses , one propelling action and the other inhibiting (i.e., thwarting) that action.