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 Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Was it about this time that Mnemjian startled me by breathing into my ear the words: ‘Cohen is dying, you know?’ The old furrier had drifted out of sight for some months past. Melissa had heard that he was in hospital suffering from uraemia. But the orbit we once described about the girl had changed; the kaleidoscope had tilted once more and he had sunk out of sight like a vanished chip of coloured glass. Now he was dying? I said nothing as I sat exploring the memories of those early days — the encounters at street-corners and bars. In the long silence that ensued Mnemjian scraped my hairline clean with a razor and began to spray my head with bay-rum. He gave a little sigh and said: ‘He has been asking for your Melissa. All night, all day.’ ‘I will tell her’ I said, and the little memory man nodded with a mossy conspiratorial look in his eyes. ‘What a horrible disease’ he said under his breath, ‘he smells so. They scrape his tongue with a spatula. Pfui!’ And he turned the spray upwards towards the roof as if to disinfect the memory: as if the smell had invaded the shop. Melissa was lying on the sofa in her dressing-gown with her face turned to the wall. I thought at first she was asleep, but as I came in she turned and sat up. I told her Mnemjian’s news. ‘I know’ she said. ‘They sent me word from the hospital. But what can I do? I cannot go and see him. He is nothing to me, never was, never will be.’ Then getting up and walking the length of the room she added in a rage which hovered on the edge of tears. ‘He has a wife and children. What are they doing?’ I sat down and once more confronted the memory of that tame seal staring sadly into a human wineglass. Melissa took my silence for criticism I suppose for she came to me and shook me gently by the shoulders, rousing me from my thoughts. ‘But if he is dying?’ I said. The question was addressed as much to myself as to her. She cried out suddenly and kneeling down placed her head on my knees. ‘Oh, it is so disgusting! Please do not make me go.’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘But if you think I should I will have to.’

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The scene upon which we intruded was ferociously original, if for no other reason than that the light, pushing up from the mud floor, touched out the eyebrows and lips and cheek-bones of the participants while it left great patches of shadow on their faces — so that they looked as if they had been half-eaten by the rats which one could hear scrambling among the rafters of this wretched tenement. It was a house of child prostitutes, and there in the dimness, clad in ludicrous biblical night-shirts, with rouged lips, arch bead fringes and cheap rings, stood a dozen fuzzy-haired girls who could not have been much above ten years of age; the peculiar innocence of childhood which shone out from under the fancy-dress was in startling contrast to the barbaric adult figure of the French sailor who stood in the centre of the room on flexed calves, his ravaged and tormented face thrust out from the neck towards Justine who stood with her half-profile turned towards us. What he had just shouted had expired on the silence but the force with which the words had been uttered was still visible in the jut of the chin and the black corded muscles which held his head upon his shoulders. As for Justine, her face was lit by a sort of painful academic precision. She held a bottle raised in one hand, and it was clear that she had never thrown one before, for she held it the wrong way. On a rotting sofa in one corner of the room, magnetically lit by the warm shadow reflected from the walls, lay one of the children horribly shrunk up in its nightshirt in an attitude which suggested death. The wall above the sofa was covered in the blue imprints of juvenile hands — the talisman which in this part of the world guards a house against the evil eye. It was the only decoration in the room; indeed the commonest decoration of the whole Arab quarter of the city. We stood there, Nessim and I, for a good half-second, astonished by the scene which had a sort of horrifying beauty — like some hideous coloured engraving for a Victorian penny bible, say, whose subject matter had somehow become distorted and displaced. Justine was breathing harshly in a manner which suggested that she was on the point of tears. We pounced on her, I suppose, and dragged her out into the street; at any rate I can only remember the three of us reached the sea and driving the whole length of the Corniche in clean bronze moonlight, Nessim’s sad and silent face reflected in the driving-mirror, and the figure of his silent wife seated beside him, gazing out at the crashing silver waves and smoking the cigarette which she had burrowed from the pockets of his jacket. Later, in the garage, before we left the car, she kissed Nessim tenderly on the eyes. * * * * *

• From Less (2017)

  They are met by a woman in a long black dress patterned with hibiscus blossoms, their guide, who leads them to one of Mexico City’s markets, a stadium of blue corrugated steel, where they are met by four young Spanish men, clearly friends of Arturo’s. Their guide stands before a table of candied fruits and asks if anyone has allergies or things they will not or cannot eat. Silence. Less wonders if he should mention make-believe foods like bugs and slimy Lovecraftian sea horrors, but she is already leading them between the stalls. Bitter chocolates wrapped in paper, piled in ziggurats beside a basket of Aztec whisks, shaped like wooden maces, and jars of multicolored salts such as those Buddhist monks might use to paint mandalas, along with plastic bins of rust- and cocoa-colored seeds, which their guide explains are not seeds but crickets; crayfish and worms both live and toasted, alongside the butcher’s area of rabbits and baby goats still wearing their fluffy black-and-white “socks” to prove they are not cats, a long glass butcher’s case that for Arthur Less increases in horrors as he moves along it, such that it seems like a contest of will, one he is sure to fail, but luckily they turn down the fish aisle, where somehow his heart grows colder among the gray speckled bodies of octopuses coiled in ampersands, the unnamable orange fish with great staring eyes and sharp teeth, the beaked parrotfish whose flesh, Less is told, is blue and tastes of lobster (he smells a lie); and how very close this all is to childhood haunted houses, with their jars of eyeballs, dishes of brains and jellied fingers, and that gruesome delight he felt as a boy. “Arthur,” the Head says as their guide leads them on between the icy shoals. “What was it like to live with genius? I understand you met Brownburn in your distant youth.” No one is allowed to say “distant youth” but you, isn’t that a rule? But Less merely says, “Yes, I did.” “He was a remarkable man, playful, merry, tugging critics this way and that. And his movement was sublime. Full of joy. He and Ross were always one-upping each other, playing a game of it. Ross and Barry and Jacks. They were pranksters. And there’s nothing more serious than a prankster.” “You knew them?” “I know them. I teach every one of them in my course on middle-American poetry, by which I don’t mean the middle America of small minds and malt shops, or midcentury America, but rather the middle, the muddle, the void, of America.” “That sounds—” “Do you think of yourself as a genius, Arthur?” “What? Me?” Apparently the Head takes that as a no. “You and me, we’ve met geniuses. And we know we’re not like them, don’t we? What is it like to go on, knowing you are not a genius, knowing you are a mediocrity? I think it’s the worst kind of hell.”

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Not all princes agreed to be slaughtered on the altar of Hymen for the good of the state. In the 1670s the future James II of England found himself widowed with no son and cast about Europe for an attractive young wife. Louis XIV, hoping to seat a Frenchwoman on the English throne, evidently had difficulties finding a candidate both beautiful and virtuous at the court of Versailles. Finally, deciding that a wife’s appearance could be of no great significance, Louis pushed forward a noble but repulsive French widow, Madame de Guise. The French minister Louvois wrote to England hopefully, “If the Duke of York is desirous of a wife in order to have children, he cannot make a better choice than Madame de Guise, who has been pregnant three times in two years, and whose birth, wealth, and prospects of fecundity appear to me to atone for her want of beauty.”11 James declined the offer, and the disappointed French ambassador wrote scoffingly to his king that the duke of York insisted on finding a beautiful wife. Madame de Guise and her fecundity were dropped. James married the loveliest princess in Europe, fifteen-year-old Mary of Modena, a tall, slender, ravishing brunette with whom he fell deeply in love. The future George IV of Great Britain (1762–1830) had avoided putting his neck in the noose for years but finally, ham-strung by debts, was bribed to marry Princess Caroline of Brunswick by his royal father and Parliament. George, a dandy who spent hours tying his cravat, was poorly suited to the good-natured but ill-mannered princess, who had no regard for dress or personal hygiene. When the prince was first introduced to his newly arrived bride, he was so thunderstruck with terror at her appearance that he wiped his brow, whispered, “I am not well,” and called for brandy to quell a fit of faintness.12 Neither was the bride well pleased with her groom. After George had stumbled away, Caroline said to her lady-in-waiting, “Is the Prince always like that? I find him very fat and not nearly so handsome as his portrait.”13 George managed to rise to the occasion with his wife three times during the first two nights of marriage. He wrote to a friend, “She showed…such marks of filth both in the fore and hind part of her…that she turned my stomach and from that moment I made a vow never to touch her again.”14 Fortunately for George, he had already made Caroline pregnant during his halfhearted efforts. With the birth of an heir the pressure was off, and George never did touch her again. In 1821 the British people were treated to a rare sight—prizefighters hired by the new king barring the doors of Westminster Abbey as Caroline bellowed that she be allowed in and crowned alongside her estranged husband. The same year, when Napoleon expired, the king was informed that his “greatest enemy” was dead. George’s face was suffused with joy as he exclaimed, “Is she, by God!”15

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Given reports of babies’ bones in La Voisin’s garden, the police started digging. And digging. And digging. They uncovered the remains of twenty-five hundred infants—aborted, stillborn, premature, and those who had been sacrificed alive. There was a small oven in the garden pavilion where La Voisin would burn an infant’s body if it was too large to bury easily. Louis finally understood why for thirteen years he had awoken with a headache every morning after having dined with Athénaïs de Montespan the night before. He was revolted at the quantities of noxious potions he had consumed over the years, but perhaps he was even more disgusted at the behavior of the woman he had loved. There was no question of allowing the police to interrogate Madame de Montespan—Louis would be the laughingstock of Europe if word got out. Witnesses who had even mentioned her name were either executed or locked in solitary confinement in distant fortresses until their deaths. The former favorite remained at Versailles for another decade, throwing parties and dazzling guests with her brilliant wit. But the king’s visits to her were rare and always in the company of others, and he never ate or drank anything she offered him. The revelation of Madame de Montespan’s witchcraft sent the king fleeing to Madame de Maintenon for religious consolation. She advised him to return to his wife’s bed, which he did, making the last three years of Queen Marie-Thérèse’s life the happiest ever. After her death in 1683, he secretly married Madame de Maintenon, who otherwise would never have slept with him. The poor widow, the children’s nanny, was now the uncrowned queen of France. Vipers Nourished in the BreastCertain royal mistresses, adept at quietly seeking and destroying potential rivals, were blindsided by their own relatives, often poor young women from the country invited to enjoy the pleasures of court. Madame de Mailly, the first mistress of Louis XV, won the dubious distinction of being unseated by her three sisters in succession. Born Louise-Julie de Mailly-Nesle, she had married her cousin the comte de Mailly and been appointed lady-in-waiting to the queen. Madame de Mailly was a plain, sweet woman who for seven years in the 1730s helped the young king grow out of his painful shyness. Paradoxically, one of her greatest assets in Louis’s eyes was her lack of beauty and grandeur—the bold advances of countless stunning women at court actually frightened the introverted monarch. According to a contemporary, Madame de Mailly had “a long face, long nose…a large mouth…. [She was] tall, without grace or presence…amusing, cheerful, good-tempered, a good friend, generous and kind.”24

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

  With this was connected the unnatural and monstrous custom of exposing poor, sickly, and deformed children to a cruel death, or in many cases to a life of slavery and infamy-a custom expressly approved, for the public interest, even by a Plato, an Aristotle, and a Seneca! "Monstrous offspring," says the great Stoic philosopher, "we destroy; children too, if born feeble and ill-formed, we drown. It is not wrath, but reason, thus to separate the useless from the healthy." "The exposition of children"—to quote once more from Gibbon—"was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity by the nations who never entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy and compassion .... The Roman Empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment."639 § 99. The Christian Family. Such was the condition of the domestic life of the ancient world, when Christianity, with its doctrine of the sanctity of marriage, with its injunction of chastity, and with its elevation of woman from her half-slavish condition to moral dignity and equality with man, began the work of a silent transformation, which secured incalculable blessings to generations yet unborn. It laid the foundation for a well-ordered family life. It turned the eye from the outward world to the inward sphere of affection, from the all-absorbing business of politics and state-life into the sanctuary of home; and encouraged the nurture of those virtues of private life, without which no true public virtue can exist. But, as the evil here to be abated, particularly the degradation of the female sex and the want of chastity, was so deeply rooted and thoroughly interwoven in the whole life of the old world, this ennobling of the family, like the abolition of slavery, was necessarily a very slow process. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the high estimate of celibacy, which in the eyes of many seemed to be the only radical escape from the impurity and misery of married life as it generally stood among the heathen. But, although the fathers are much more frequent and enthusiastic in the praise of virginity than in that of marriage, yet their views on this subject show an immense advance upon the moral standard of the greatest sages and legislators of Greece and Rome.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Henry went to his wedding with less grace than many of his victims had gone to their executions. On the way to the chapel, he opined to his counselors, “My lords, if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do what I must do this day for any earthly thing.”6 The wedding night was a fiasco. The morning after, when Lord Thomas Cromwell, who had arranged the wedding, nervously asked Henry how he had enjoyed his bride, the king thundered, “Surely, my lord, I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse! She is nothing fair, and have very evil smells about her. I took her to be no maid by reason of the looseness of her breasts and other tokens, which, when I felt them, strake me so to the heart, that I had neither will nor courage to prove the rest. I can have none appetite for displeasant airs. I have left her as good a maid as I found her.” The rest of the day he told everyone who would listen that “he had found her body disordered and indisposed to excite and provoke any lust in him.”7 True to the double standard of the time, no one asked Anne what she thought of the king’s appearance. Her royal bridegroom boasted a fifty-seven-inch waist and a festering ulcer on his leg. Anne was quickly divorced and glad to depart with her head still on her shoulders. But Lord Cromwell felt the full force of Henry’s wrath in the form of an ax cleaving his neck. Through debacles like these, everyone soon learned that portraits lied. In 1680 Louis XIV ordered Bavarian princess Maria Anna Christina as a bride for his son and heir. The lovely portrait carted about the court was irrelevant compared to the marriage treaty. According to Madame de Sévigné, as the bride was approaching, “the King was so curious to know what she looked like that he sent Sanguin [his chief butler] whom he knows to be a truthful man and no flatterer. ‘Sire,’ that man told him, ‘once you get over the first impression, you will be delighted.’ ”8 The unhappy couple managed to catapult three children into the world before the neglected wife died. Even less fortunate with his Bavarian princess was the future Joseph II of Austria (1741–1790). In 1765 Joseph found his bride Princess Josepha so loathsome he was unable to consummate the marriage. “Her figure is short,” he reported bitterly, “thickset and without a vestige of charm. Her face is covered with spots and pimples. Her teeth are horrible.”9 “They want me to have children,” he lamented in another letter. “How can one have them? If I could put the tip of my finger on the tiniest part of her body which was not covered by pimples, I would try to have a child.”10 Joseph was not grieved when his young wife died of smallpox shortly after the wedding.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In 1354 Prince Pedro of Portugal married his mistress of fourteen years, Inez de Castro, after his wife Princess Constanza died. Pedro’s father, King Alfonso IV, was furious and feared that Pedro’s four illegitimate children with Inez could take away the crown from those born with Constanza. The king sent assassins to stab Inez to death while her royal lover was away on a hunting trip. They fell upon her as she sat by a fountain in her garden and ripped her to shreds. Royal mistresses who married their monarchs and were crowned invariably met with thinly veiled disgust. So many people protested Henry VIII’s 1533 marriage to Anne Boleyn and her coronation that the king passed a law making it treasonable to write or act against the marriage, and forced all adult males to swear to uphold it. Those who refused to swear were executed. Anne, who was pregnant at the wedding, produced not the longed-for male heir, but a mere girl. After two more miscarriages, in 1536 she was tried on trumped-up charges of adultery and lost her head on the chopping block. English courtiers and subjects were not sad to see her go. In 1568 the unstable Eric XIV of Sweden married his mistress Karin Mansdotter, whom he crowned queen. Eric’s half brother Johan claimed this act was proof of the king’s insanity. He locked Eric up and in 1577 poisoned him, grabbing the crown for himself. Queen Karin was exiled to an estate in the country. In 1578 Archduke Francesco of Tuscany married his mistress of twelve years, Bianca Cappello, and had the nerve to crown her in the cathedral. Upon hearing the news, the duke of Mantua, who had only a short time previously asked for the hand of Francesco’s daughter Eleonora in marriage, rescinded his offer. He wrote angrily, “Now hath the character of the new Grand Duchess under whose care the Princesses live in Florence so increased by objection that it cannot be overcome.”1 Despised by the Tuscan people and her husband’s family, Bianca knew that life without the protection of Francesco would be worthless. When both lay ill of a fever in 1587, the archduke expired first. “And now must I die with my lord,” she moaned, and, as if willing herself to, breathed her last.2 Francesco’s brother Ferdinando, the new archduke, had detested Bianca. Unable to revenge himself on Bianca while she was alive, within the bounds of propriety he dishonored her in death. As Pharaoh had done with the disgraced Moses, Ferdinando had her name effaced from every portrait and monument. He had her coat of arms removed from all public buildings and replaced with Johanna of Austria’s. When asked if Bianca should wear the ducal coronet in her coffin, Ferdinando replied that she had already worn it far too long. While Francesco was given an elaborate state funeral, Bianca was placed in a plain coffin and dumped at night in an unmarked grave.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  cumcision, but would go on to emasculation. There is possibly a tacit reference to the emasculation of the priests of Cybele, with which the Galatians would doubtless be familiar and, quite possibly, in the apostle's mind, at least, though he could hardly have expected his Galatian readers to think of it, to the language of Deut. -23 * (see below). The whole expression is most significant as showing that to Paul circumcision had be- come not only a purely physical act without religious signifi- cance, but a positive mutilation, like that which carried with it exclusion from the congregation of the Lord. It is not im- probable that he has this consequence in mind: "I wish that they who advocate this physical act would follow it out to the logical conclusion and by a further act of mutilation exclude themselves from the congregation of the Lord." Cf. Phil. 32, where he applies to circumcision as a physical act the deroga- tory term mraro/j7?, "mutilation." To get the full significance of such language in the mouth of a Jew, or as heard by Jewish Christians, we must imagine a modern Christian speaking of baptism and the Lord's Supper as if they were merely physical acts without spiritual significance; yet even this would lack the element of deep disgust which the language of Paul suggests. On dcvaaTaT6w, meaning "to disturb," see M. and M. Voc. s. v. 8<peXov, a shortened aorist indicative for &<peXov, "I ought," has in N. T. the force of an interjection, " would that." Used by classical writers generally with the infinitive, it occurs in Callimachus (260 B. c.) with a past tense of the indicative; so also in the Lxx (Ex. i63 Num. i43, etc.) and elsewhere in N. T. (i Cor. 4* 2 Cor. n1 Rev. 3") of a wish probably conceived of as unattainable. It occurs with the future here only, probably with the intent of presenting the wish rhetorically as attainable, though it can hardly have been actually thought of as • such. "BMT 27. Rem. i2. 'Aicox,6ircea6ae with an accusative of specification, -rck f&fyiycw&f expressed, or unexpressed but to be supplied mentally, refers to a form of emasculation said to be still common in the East. See Deut. 23* <l>: ofljc efoeXefltjovrai 6Xa8(ag o&8& ditoxEXO^p^vex; Kupfou. Epict. Diss. 2. 20": ol dwcoxexomilvoi t&<; f€ T&V cfcvBp&v dicox6<l>aa6at 06 S6vavtac. Philo, Sacrif. 325 (13); Leg. alleg. Ill 8 (3); Dion. Cass. 79". Cf. Keil and Delitzsch on Deut 23*: "n3T-j£i3fs [Lxx 6X«B(«?] literally 'wounded by crushing,' denotes one 290 GALATIANS

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Among them was a very dark-skinned Jesuit who had some Indian blood, the face of a satyr, large ears glued to his head, piercing eyes, a loose-lipped mouth that was always watering, thick hair and the smell of an animal. Under his long brown robe the boys had often noticed a bulge which the younger boys could not explain and which older boys laughed at behind his back. This bulge would appear unexpectedly at any hour—while the class read Don Quixote or Rabelais, or sometimes while he merely watched the boys, and one boy in particular, the only fair-haired one in all the school, with the eyes and skin of a girl. He liked to get this boy off by himself and show him books from his private collection. These contained reproductions of Inca pottery on which there were often depictions of men standing against each other. The boy would ask questions which the old priest had to answer elusively. Other times the prints were quite clear; a long member came out of the middle of one man and penetrated the other from behind. At confession this priest plied the boys with questions. The more innocent they appeared to be, the closer he questioned them in the darkness of the little confessional box. The kneeling boys were unable to see the priest, who was sitting inside. His low voice came through a small grilled window, asking, “Have you ever had sensual fantasies? Have you thought about women? Have you tried to imagine a woman naked? How do you behave at night in bed? Have you ever touched yourself? Have you ever fondled yourself? What do you do in the morning upon rising? Do you have an erection? Have you ever tried to look at other boys while they dress? Or at the bath?” The boy who did not know anything would soon learn what was expected of him and be tutored by these questions. The boy who knew took pleasure in confessing in detail his emotions and dreams. One boy dreamed every night. He did not know what a woman looked like, how she was made. But he had seen the Indians making love to the vicuña, which resembled a delicate deer. And he dreamed about making love to vicuñas and awakened all wet every morning. The old priest encouraged these confessions. He listened with endless patience. He imposed strange punishments. A boy who masturbated continuously was ordered to go into the Chapel with him when no one was around, dip his penis in the holy water, and thus be purified. This ceremony was carried out in great secrecy at night.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  It is not im- probable that he has this consequence in mind: “I wish that they who advocate this physical act would follow it out to the logical conclusion and by a further act of mutilation exclude themselves from the congregation of the Lord.” Cf. Phil. 3?, where he applies to circumcision as a physical act the deroga- tory term katatouy, “mutilation.” To get the full significance of such language in the mouth of a Jew, or as heard by Jewish Christians, we must imagine a modern Christian speaking of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as if they were merely physical acts without spiritual significance; yet even this would lack the element of deep disgust which the language of Paul suggests. On dvactatéw, meaning “to disturb,” see M. and M. Voc. s. v. égeAov, a shortened aorist indicative for OgeAov, “I ought,” has in N. T. the force of an interjection, “would that.” Used by classical writers generally with the infinitive, it occurs in Callimachus (260 B. c.) with a past tense of the indicative; so also in the Lxx (Ex. 163 Num. 14%, etc.) and elsewhere in N. T. (1 Cor. 48 2 Cor. 11! Rev. 315) of a wish probably conceived of as unattainable. It occurs with the future here only, probably with the intent of presenting the wish rhetorically as attainable, though it can hardly have been actually thought of as such. BMT 27. Rem. 12. *Axoxéntecbat with an accusative of specification, t& yevvyntixé, expressed, or unexpressed but to be supplied mentally, refers to a form of emasculation said to be still common in the East. See Deut. 23? : obx sicehebcovtat OAadiag ob88 amoxexoupévos sic exxAnalay Kuolov. Epict. Diss. 2. 2019: of &roxexouuévor tao ye neobuulas ta¢ toy avdoay amoxdpacbat ob Sbvavtat. Philo, Sacrif. 325 (13); Leg. alleg. III 8 (3); Dion. Cass. 79%. Cf. Keil and Delitzsch on Deut. 23?: “maa-yasa [Lxx 0Aa8tac] literally ‘wounded by crushing,’ denotes one 19 290 GALATIANS who is mutilated in this way; Vulg. eunuchus attritis vel amputatis testiculis. 2p n> [Lxx dxoxexouyévoc] is one whose sexual mem- ber was cut off; Vulg. abscisso veretro. According to Mishnah Jebam. VI 2, ‘contusus 721 est omnis, cuius testiculi vulnerati sunt, vel certe unus eorum; exsectus (n17>), cujus membrum virile praecisun. est.’ In the modern East emasculation is generally performed in this way. (See Tournefort, Reise, ii, p.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  (so in 2 Chron. 29* 16, or perhaps in the more literal sense, “dirt”’), as in Pap. Oxyr. VIII 1128%, or of “moral impurity,” “wickedness,” with no special emphasis on sexual vice: Prov. 616 (Lxx); 1 Esdr. 14 Ezek. 99, etc. In N. T. once only of physical filth, or of that which is ceremonially defil- ing, Mt. 2327 (yet even here as a figure for wickedness); elsewhere of moralimpurity. The latter instances are all in Paul (Rom. 174 619, etc.) and seven out of the nine stand in association with xoopvela or other word denoting sexual vice. It is probable, therefore, that in the pres- ent instance also the apostle has in mind especially sins of the flesh in the narrower sense, &xaaecta being a somewhat broader term even than xoopveta. Cf. Eph. 5%, wopvela 38 xat dxnabapcta ma&on. ’ Aoédyeta, of doubtful etymology, is used by Greek authors with the meaning “ wantonness,”’ ‘‘violence”; so in Plato, Iszus, Demosthenes, Aristotle. In Polyb. 37. 24 the addition of the words ep tac swuatixas éxtbuutac makes it refer especially to lewdness, yet dséAyeta itself means simply “wantonness.” It is not found in the Lxx (canonical books), and in the Apocr. only in Wisd. 1426 and 3 Mac. 226, in the former passage with probable reference to sensuality, lewdness; in the latter without indication of such limitation. InN. T. it occurs in Mk. 722 without restriction to sensual sin, in 1 Pet. 4% 2 Pet. 22, 7,18 without decisive indication of this limitation. Cf. Trench, Synom. § XVI, who gives further evidence that doéAyet« is not exclu- sively “lasciviousness,”’ but ‘“‘wantonness,” “unrestrained wilfulness.”’ Yet in view of Paul’s association of it elsewhere with words denoting 20 306 GALATIANS sensuality (Rom. 13!* 2 Cor. 12%! Eph. 41°) and its grouping here with mopvela and dxadaecta, it is probable that it refers here especially to wantonness in sexual relations. Like dxafaectz, less specific than mopvela, and referring to any indecent conduct, whether involving violation of the person or not, doéAyet« differs from dxabeeota in that the latter emphasises the grossness, the impurity of the conduct, the former its wantonness, its unrestrainedness. Lightfoot’s distinction: “A man may be &xé@aetos and hide his sin; he does not become dceAyns¢ until he shocks public decency” seems scarcely sustained by the usage of the words. &oéAyetx is, indeed, unrestrained, but not necessarily public, and dxafaectx carries no more suggestion of secrecy than acéhyeta. Cf. Eph. 41°. EiswAoAatefa, not found in classic writers or in the Lxx, occurs in N. T. (t Cor. ro Col. 35 1 Pet. 4%) and thereafter in ecclesiastical writers. Greek writers did not use etwAoyv with specific reference to the gods of the Gentiles or their images, and the term etéwAodateta apparently arose on Jewish soil. efdwdov, signifying in the Lxx and N.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  used with various verbs, such as Xapip&vci), Ipip&XXot), BfSciHAt, in speaking of pledges received or given: Horn. //. VI 233: xetp&s *' dfcXXfjXwv Xag^ajv. 0<Z. I 12 1 : xeip' gXe Se&TepTJv. Soph. Ph. 813: l^jiaXXe xetpb<; xfcmv. Tr. 1181: IpL^aXXe %etpa 8e5i£v. Xen. -Aw. I. 6e: $e£idv IXa^ov xal ISwxa. 2. 59, 8e?dc; SeSo^vas. In a papyrus of the second century A. D. the expression PLTJ <puXdaa[c]v aou T^JV 5«£id:v, "not to keep your pledge" (Grenf ell, Hunt, and Hogarth, Fayum Towns and their Papyri^ 124"), indicates that 8e5tde had acquired the meaning "pledge." In the Jewish Greek writings StS6vat 8e?t<£v (or Se&dte) is a token of a friendly com- pact. See i Mac. 6s8 n80- ^ •• 13" 2 Mac. IT" 12" 13"; Jos, Ant. 18. 328 (9*), 20. 62 (3*). In none of these cases does the giving of the hand indicate submission, but a pledge of friendship, in most cases from the superior power to the inferior. Notice esp, the use of §oQvai and Xapelv in i Mac. u«* 13*° 2 Mac. 12"- w, but also in 2 Mac. 13", where in the case of a mutual compact the same person both gives and receives 5t ^tdcv. xoivcovte;, " fellowship, partnership," implying a friendly participation in the same work (cf. Phil is) defines that which the giving of the right hands expressed, and to which the givers pledged themselves. It thus excludes the idea of surrender or submission which the phrase "to give the hand" without qualification (r Chr. ag34) might suggest, or that of superiority which usually accompanies its use in t and 2 Mac, The genitive can hardly be denned grammatically more exactly than as a genitive of inner connection, WM. pp. 235 jf. On 8oxo0vr«<; a-r^Xot tlvcst, see note on ol 5oxo0vtt?» v. *. The term " pillars " as a designation of those upon whom responsibility re$t% is found in classical, Jewish, and Christian writers. Thus In Kur. Iph* T. 57: <rc6Xot ydp oTxwv icctlMq i?atv ^pcrivt^. ^c*h» Afc BgB: orfiXov •jcoS^pij, {xovoYivic tlxvov worpC. Cf. exx. from Rabbinic writings in SchSttgen, florae Ilebmka^ ad he., and for early Christian writers, sec Clem. Rom, 5*, ol ^ly toroc xal Sc^uctoroetoc <yt6Xo8t referring to the apostles, of whom Peter and Paul axe especially named* c& rd I9i^7, aurol Si m rfyv irtpirQ/Atfv* "that we should go (or preach the gospel) among the Gentiles, and they among the circumcised." A verb such as iXd^fmv or G&wfy®kMr<&/j£0a is to be supplied in the first part, and a cor- responding predicate for afoot in the second part. On the omission of the verb after Zw, sec Th. Iva II 4 c, and cf. Rom, 418 1 Cor, iw 2 Cor* 818, The clause defines the content of the agreement implied in Se^wk i&mtcw , . „ ic®imwta^« See BAT r 217 (b) and cf. John Q*. a^ro/ stands in antithesis to v, and is thus slightly emphatic^ but not properly II, 9 97

• From Manhunt (2022)

  She came around a massive chunk of ruined wall and nearly stumbled into a seething pile of men tearing at a woman who lay curled on the ground. She screamed, bringing her gun up. The TEC-9 cut through the pack like a sickle through wheat. The thing that remained looked up at her. “You saved me,” it croaked. Not a woman at all. She stumbled back with a low groan of horror and sprayed lead into its face and tits, ripping through all of some poor plastic surgeon’s work. Had anyone seen? She stared wildly around the courtyard and for a moment her heart leapt at the sight of a blessed XX daubed across a suit of riot gear. But it was only a corpse. One among many, men heaped all around them in drifts of scabby, sickly flesh. Some still whining and dragging themselves over the bloody soil. Her girls, her beautiful girls, so many of them dead, and the beautiful Galbraith sunk, and all of it ruined. She wanted to scream and tear her hair and cry. She wanted to suck on her revolver. And then she saw him. Another man knelt there by the sea wall, his hand on the hilt of a knife buried in the chest of one of her girls, who lay on her back in the dirt. Kate Quinn, who had been with her since Bethesda in the wake of the first outbreaks. The man wasn’t one of the things, but a man like men used to be, thin and of middling height with long, straight black hair, dark reddish skin, and a high forehead. He saw her, yanked his knife out of Kate’s chest, and broke into a dead sprint. His sneakers splashed in the growing puddles. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, ejecting the spent banana clip from the submachine gun and yanking a fresh one from her belt. She slapped it home and brought the gun up, whipping a line of fire across the courtyard and the wall of the gardener’s shed behind which the man vanished at a run. Glass shattered. Splinters flew. It wasn’t a man. It was a dirty little brainwashed traitor, one of those pitiful women conned into abandoning her gender to grasp at the straws the patriarchy dangled just out of her reach. Sawed into, T-poisoned, and spiritually mutilated. She crossed the courtyard slowly, pausing twice to shoot oncoming men and pump more rounds into the shed. Glass shattered. Sawdust flew. Finally the little traitor lurched out from behind the ruins. She’d winged him—he was bleeding heavily from a deep groove on his right arm, struggling to hold up some huge boxy power tool. What, did he think he could take her with a fucking cordless drill? She laughed. And then it came up, and she realized. Nail gun.

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

  He then explains away the proof texts for the doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7 (which he accepts as genuine, though Erasmus omitted it from his first edition); John 10:30; 14:11; Rom. 11:36. The chief passages, the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19) and the apostolic benediction (2 Cor. 13:14) where the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are coordinated, he understands not of three persons, but of three dispositions of God. In the second book be treats of the Logos, the person of Christ, and the Spirit of God, and chiefly explains the prologue to the fourth Gospel. The Logos is not a metaphysical being, but an oracle; the voice of God and the light of the world.1045 The Logos is a disposition or dispensation in God, so understood by Tertullian and Irenaeus.1046 Before the incarnation the Logos was God himself speaking; after the incarnation the Logos is Jesus Christ, who makes God known to us.1047 All that God before did through the Word, Christ does in the flesh. To him God has given the kingdom and the power to atone and to gather all things in him. The third book is an exposition of the relation of Christ to the divine Logos. The fourth book discusses the divine dispositions or manifestations. God appeared in the Son and in the Spirit. Two divine manifestations are substituted for the orthodox tripersonality. The position of the Father is not clear; he is now represented as the divinity itself, now as a disposition and person. The orthodox christology of two natures in one person is entirely rejected. God has no nature (from nasci), and a person is not a compound of two natures or things, but a unit. The fifth book is a worthless speculative exposition of the Hebrew names of God. The Lutheran doctrine of justification is incidentally attacked as calculated to make man lazy and indifferent to good works. The sixth book shows that Christ is the only fountain of all true knowledge of God, who is incomprehensible in himself, but revealed himself in the person of his Son. He who sees the Son sees the Father. The seventh and last book is an answer to objections, and contains a new attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, which was introduced at the same time with the secular power of the pope. Servetus probably believed in the fable of the donation of Constantine. It is not surprising that this book gave great offence to Catholics and Protestants alike, and appeared to them blasphemous. Servetus calls the Trinitarians tritheists and atheists.1048 He frivolously asked such questions as whether God had a spiritual wife or was without sex.1049 He calls the three gods of the Trinitarians a deception of the devil, yea (in his later writings), a three-headed monster.1050

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  They walked in silence through the little streets of Chinatown. Women from all over the world smiled at them from open windows, stood on the doorsteps inviting them in. Some of the rooms were exposed to the street. Only a curtain concealed the beds. One could see couples embracing. There were Syrian women wearing their native costume, Arabian women with jewelry covering their half-naked bodies, Japanese and Chinese women beckoning slyly, big African women squatting in circles, chatting together. One house was filled with French whores wearing short pink chemises and knitting and sewing as if they were at home. They always hailed the passers-by with promises of specialities. The houses were small, dimly lit, dusty, foggy with smoke, filled with dusky voices, the murmurs of drunkards, of lovemaking. The Chinese adorned the setting and made it more confused with screens and curtains, lanterns, burning incense, Buddhas of gold. It was a maze of jewels, paper flowers, silk hangings, and rugs, with women as varied as the designs and colors, inviting men who passed by to sleep with them. It was in this quarter that Antonio had a room. He took Mathilde up the shabby stairway, opened a door that was almost worn away, and pushed her in. There was no furniture in it. On the floor there was a Chinese mat, and on this lay a man in rags, a man so gaunt, so diseased-looking, that Mathilde drew back. “Oh, you’re here,” said Antonio rather irritably. “I had nowhere to go.” “You can’t stay here you know. The police are after you.” “Yes, I know.” “I suppose you’re the one who stole that cocaine the other day? I knew it must be you.” “Yes,” the man talked sleepily, indifferently. Then Mathilde saw that his body was covered with scratches and small wounds. The man made an effort to sit up. He held an ampoule in one hand, in the other hand, a fountain pen and a penknife. She watched him with horror. He broke the top of the ampoule with his finger, shaking off the broken bits. Then, instead of inserting a hypodermic syringe, he inserted the fountain pen and drew the liquid out. With his penknife he made a slit in his arm that was already covered with old wounds and more recent ones, and in this slit he inserted the fountain pen and pushed the cocaine into his flesh. “He’s too poor to get an injection needle,” said Antonio. “And I did not give money to him because I thought I could save him from stealing it. But that’s what he has found to do.” Mathilde wanted to go. But Antonio would not let her. He wanted her to take cocaine with him. The man was lying back with his eyes closed. Antonio took out a needle and gave Mathilde an injection.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The Count sits down again, he allows his wife a moment's respite, and, turning his attention to his two little followers, he now obliges them to suck each other, and now he arranges them in such a way that while he sucks one, the other sucks him, and now again the one he sucked first brings round his mouth to render the same service to him by whom he was sucked: the Count received much but gave little. Such was his satiety, such his impotence that the extremest efforts availed not at all, and he remained in his torpor: he did indeed seem to experience some very violent reverberations, but nothing manifested itself; he several times ordered me to suck his little friends and immediately to convey to his mouth whatever incense I drained from them; finally he flung them one after the other at the miserable Countess. These young men accosted her, insulted her, carried insolence to the point of beating her, slapping her, and the more they molested her, the more loudly the Count praised and egged them on. Chapter 30 Then Gernande turned to me; I was in front of him, my buttocks at the level of his face, and he paid his respects to his God; but he did not abuse me; nor do I know why he did not torment his Ganymedes; he chose to reserve all his unkindness for the Countess. Perhaps the honor of being allied to him established one's right to suffer mistreatment at his hands; perhaps he was moved to cruelty only by attachments which contributed energy to his outrages. One can imagine anything about such minds, and almost always safely wager that what seems most apt to be criminal is what will inflame them most. At last he places his young friends and me beside his wife and enlaces our bodies; here a man, there a woman, etc., all four dressing their behinds; he takes his stand some distance away and muses upon the panorama, then he comes near, touches, feels, compares, caresses; the youths and I were not persecuted, but each time he came to his wife, he fussed and bothered and vexed her in some way or other. Again the scene changes: he has the Countess lie belly down upon a divan and taking each boy in turn, he introduces each of them into the narrow avenue Madame's posture exposes: he allows them to become aroused, but it is nowhere but in his mouth the sacrifice is to be consummated; as one after another they emerge he sucks each.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  They came into the house through the kitchen door and were hit by last night’s mess—the macaroni and cheese pot on the floor, licked clean by Sweetie, their gooey plates still on the table, together with boxes of breakfast cereals, banana skins, and a half-eaten piece of toast smeared with grape jelly. Abby’s face registered surprise, then disgust. Vix spied the milk carton on the counter and tried sneaking it into the fridge, but Abby didn’t miss that either. Sweetie, who’d been resting under the table, began to bark and when Daniel kneeled down to pet her she growled at him. “Jesus … what kind of dog is this anyway?” Daniel asked, jumping out of the way. “A lab,” Lamb said. “She’s usually very friendly.” He opened the door and shooed Sweetie outside. “Well …” Abby said, trying to be positive. “This house has a lot of … possibilities.” They went on an island tour, all six of them crammed into the Volvo, the two boys in the back seat, one staring out the left window, one staring out the right, and Caitlin and Vix on the floor in the way-back with Sweetie. Lamb opened the rear window so they wouldn’t suffocate. In the front, Abby and Lamb were just la-ti-da , as if this were even better than the Brady Bunch . While they were gone the cleaning service would be trying to whip the house into shape. They’d told Lamb it would take all day, maybe two days. Lamb promised a bonus if they finished in one. They didn’t visit Trisha’s boat this time, or go to the nude beach. Instead of clam dogs and french fries, lunch was a dreary affair at a harborside restaurant, with Daniel sulking and Sharkey’s inner motor running on high. Caitlin moved her food around on her plate but didn’t eat a bite. Vix tried her best, pretending to be fascinated by The Story of Abby and Lamb , and how they’d met and how they’d instantly been attracted and blah blah blah … who cared? “He couldn’t believe I was a student at The B-School,” Abby said, laughing. “Still can’t,” Lamb added, nuzzling her. Vix didn’t have a clue what The B-School was but it didn’t matter. Nobody noticed. “I came to Boston after the divorce, after living my entire life in Chicago,” Abby said. “I’d hoped Daniel would come, but you know how it is, he didn’t want to leave his friends or his school.” She tried to tousle Daniel’s hair but he pulled away angrily. “So, for now, Daniel’s living with his dad.” Vix kept nodding, the way reporters do on TV when they’re conducting an interview, to prove they’re really listening. “And when I get my MBA, next summer,” Abby continued, “I’ll decide whether to go back to Chicago or look for a job in the East.” She smiled at Lamb, a private kind of smile. Vix wondered if she knew about Trisha. LambSHE’S WONDERFUL , isn’t she?

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The two little ones are sent tumbling head over heels; he wishes to fly at his wife, I restrain him: I pump the last drop from him, his need of me makes him respect me; at last I bring him to his senses by ridding him of that fiery liquid, whose heat, whose viscosity, and above all whose abundance puts him in such a frenzy I believe he is going to expire; seven or eight tablespoons would scarcely have contained the discharge, and the thickest gruel would hardly give a notion of its consistency; and with all that, no appearance of an erection at all, rather, the limp look and feel of exhaustion: there you have the contrarieties which, better than might I, explain artists of the Count's breed. The Count ate excessively and only dissipated each time he bled his wife, every four days, that is to say. Would this be the cause of the phenomenon? I have no idea, and not daring to ascribe a reason to what I do not understand, I will be content to relate what I saw. However, I rush to the Countess, I stanch her blood, untie her, and deposit her upon a couch in a state of extreme weakness; but the Count, totally indifferent to her, without condescending to cast even a glance at this victim stricken by his rage, abruptly goes out with his aides, leaving me to put things in whatever order I please. Such is the fatal apathy which better than all else characterizes the true libertine soul: if he is merely carried away by passion's heat, limned with remorse will be his face when, calmed again, he beholds the baleful effects of delirium; but if his soul is utterly corrupt? then such consequences will affright him not: he will observe them with as little trouble as regret, perhaps even with some of the emotion of those infamous lusts which produced them. I put Madame de Gernande to bed. She had, so she said, lost much more this time than she ordinarily did; but such good care and so many restoratives were lavished upon her, that she appeared well two days later.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The adventure began with the Doris Hamlin having to be towed out of Baltimore harbor because of lack of wind. That was almost the end of the expedition, since the tug was pulling toward the sea while the ship was still tied to the dock. Once in the Atlantic, the ship was either becalmed in glassy seas or roiling in high chop. The mainsails blew out in a squall as the expedition steered toward St. Thomas. Seasickness was rampant. At every port, more of the disgusted crew deserted. The only film that was shot was a desultory cockfight in Martinique. It soon became evident that the expedition was broke. There was no meat or fruit, and the crew was soon reduced to buying their own food in port. Hubbard didn’t have enough money to pay the only professional sailors on the ship—the captain, the first mate, and the cook—so he offered to sell shares in the venture to his crewmates and borrowed money from others. He raised seven or eight hundred dollars that way, and was able to set sail from Bermuda, only to become mired in the Sargasso Sea for four days. After a meager supper one night, George Blakeslee, who had been brought along as a photographer, had had enough. “I tied a hangman’s noose in a rope and everybody got the same idea,” he wrote in his journal. “So we made an effigy of Hubbard and strung it up in the shrouds. Put a piece of red cloth on the head and a sign on it. ‘Our red- headed ______!’ ” Hubbard stayed in his cabin after that. The furious captain wired for money, then steered the ship back to Baltimore, pronouncing the expedition “the worst and most unpleasant I ever made.” Hubbard was not aboard as the “jinx ship,” as it was called in the local press, crept back into its home port. He was last seen in Puerto Rico, slipping off with a suitcase in each hand. In some respects, Hubbard discovered himself on that unlucky voyage, which he termed a “glorious adventure.” His infatuation with motion pictures first became evident on this trip, although no movies were actually made. Despite the defections, Hubbard demonstrated an impressive capacity to summon others to join him on what was clearly a shaky enterprise. Throughout his life he would enlist people—especially young people—in romantic, ill-conceived projects, often at sea, where he was out of reach of process servers. He was beginning to invent himself as a charismatic leader. The grandeur of his project was not yet evident, even to him, but in the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition he clearly defined himself as an explorer, sailor, filmmaker, and leader of men, even though he failed spectacularly in each of those categories. He had an incorrigible ability to float above the evidence and to extract from his experiences lessons that others would say were irrational and even bizarre.