Embarrassment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you,” said Levin. Oblonsky seemed to ponder. “I’ll tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s to lunch, and there we can talk. I am free till three.” “No,” answered Levin, after an instant’s thought, “I have got to go on somewhere else.” “All right, then, let’s dine together.” “Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk afterwards.” “Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we’ll gossip after dinner.” “Well, it’s this,” said Levin; “but it’s of no importance, though.” His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making to surmount his shyness. “What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?” he said. Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled merrily. “You said a few words, but I can’t answer in a few words, because.... Excuse me a minute....” A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to Oblonsky with some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to explain some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out, laid his hand genially on the secretary’s sleeve. “No, you do as I told you,” he said, softening his words with a smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away from the papers, and said: “So do it that way, if you please, Zahar Nikititch.” The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the secretary Levin had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He was standing with his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a look of ironical attention. “I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it,” he said. “What don’t you understand?” said Oblonsky, smiling as brightly as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer outburst from Levin. “I don’t understand what you are doing,” said Levin, shrugging his shoulders. “How can you do it seriously?” “Why not?” “Why, because there’s nothing in it.” “You think so, but we’re overwhelmed with work.” “On paper. But, there, you’ve a gift for it,” added Levin. “That’s to say, you think there’s a lack of something in me?” “Perhaps so,” said Levin. “But all the same I admire your grandeur, and am proud that I’ve a friend in such a great person. You’ve not answered my question, though,” he went on, with a desperate effort looking Oblonsky straight in the face.

• From Querelle (1953)

  9.Z I JEAN GENET homosexual affairs. He would have liked to keep his mouth shut, but being aware that a sudden silence would appear shange to the inspector, he added, in an offhand manner: "Those disgusting characters are wonderfully organized . . ." That was too much. He himself noticed the ambivalence of the opening statement, with the "wonderfully" striking a note of joyous defiance. The inspectors felt they had had enough. Wit hout being able to distinguish exactly what it was that betrayed him, it seemed to them that his manner of speaking took pleasure in the manners and morals of precisely those elements whom he pretended- to condemn. Their thoughts might have been expressed in cliches like: "He talks about them quite sympathetically, doesn't he?" or ''It doesn't sound like he'd really detest them all that much." In short, he appeared suspect. Fortunately for him, he had an alibi, for he had been on board the night of the crime. When the interview was over, but before the two police officers had left the cabin, the Lieu tenant wanted to put on his cloak of navy blue, and then did so with such coquetry-which he at once, and clumsily, corrected -that the total effect was not of just "putting it on," that would have been far too manly, but rather that of "wrapping himself in it" -which, indeed, was the way he thought of it himself. Again, he experienced embarrassment, and he made up his mind (once more) never to touch a piece of· material again in public. Querelle donated ten francs, when they came round to collect for a wreath for Vic. And now some excerpts, picked at random, from the private diary. This journal can only be a book of prayers. God grant that I may envelop myself in my chilly gestures, in a chilly fashion, like some very languid Englishman in his traveling rug, an eccentric lady in her shawl. To confront men with, You have given me a gilded rapier, chevrons, me d als, gestures of com-

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Someone asked the eager promoter sent by the developers, "Who will you sell all those houses to—the jack rabbits?" Had you seen the delicate houses then, going up on the tract’s light gray soil, the ground scraped clean and as flat as Kansas, you might have wondered, too. 44 This is not a garden suburb. The streets do not curve or offer vistas. The street grid always intersects at right angles. The north-south roads are avenues. The east-west roads are streets. The four-lane highways in either compass orientation are boulevards. The city planted some of these with eucalyptus trees and red crape myrtle on narrow, well-tended medians and parkway strips. People passing through the city often mention the trees. They never mention the pattern over which they pass. [image "Image" file=Image00005.jpg] 45 The streets in my city are a fraction of a larger grid, anchored to one in Los Angeles. That grid was laid out in September 1781. The Los Angeles grid is a copy of one carried from Mexico City to an anonymous stretch of river bank by Colonel Felipe de Neve, governor of California. The grid the Spanish colonel carried to the nonexistent Los Angeles in 1781 originally came from a book in the Archive of the Indies in Seville. The book prescribed the exact orientation of the streets, the houses, and the public places for all the colonial settlements in the Spanish Americas. That grid came from God. 46 “Stop counting, mother,” I said, bending over her hospital bed. And she stopped on three. All afternoon she had been telling numbers as she died. She kept saying, “3, 2, 5, 3, 2.” I said, “Stop counting, mother.” She stopped again on three. What were they? Were they a telephone number or a street address? They were coordinates for a map I did not have. 47 Three-quarters of the United States is platted on a grid that follows the lines of longitude and latitude across the continent. The Land Ordinance of 1785, written by Thomas Jefferson, provided for the survey and sale of mile-square sections of land in the wilderness west of the Ohio River. The survey specified the strict orientation of these sections to the cardinal points of the compass. Jefferson’s grid, extending endlessly, explains why so many western states have sharp edges. 48 After more than ten years, Mr. H has exhausted all of the city’s administrative procedures. These are the confer ences, warnings, and deadline extensions that are the city’s sidesteps to a confrontation. Mr. H’s case is turned over to the district attorney’s office. He is brought before a judge and ordered to clean up his property. Mr. H tries to comply with the judge’s order. The junk dwindles from his front yard over the next three months, and then again at night it gathers. I think of his wife’s embarrassment and his grown children’s anger. I think of his neighbors. Mr. H has another hearing and is found in contempt of court. Mr.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite of the bosom’s being very white, or just because it was very white, deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account, and felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had deceived someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to explain it was impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation. “You say,” she said, pursuing the subject that had been started, “that my husband cannot be interested in what’s Russian. It’s quite the contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but not as he is here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do, and he has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you’ve not been to see our school, have you?” “I’ve seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn’t it?” “Yes; that’s Nastia’s work,” she said, indicating her sister. “You teach in it yourself?” asked Levin, trying to look above the open neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction he should see it. “Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a first-rate schoolmistress now. And we’ve started gymnastic exercises.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “No, thank you, I won’t have any more tea,” said Levin, and conscious of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversation, he got up, blushing. “I hear a very interesting conversation,” he added, and walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was sitting with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sitting sideways, with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks. The gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Levin that Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman’s complaints, which would at once demolish his whole contention, but that in his position he could not give utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner’s comic speeches. The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring on the little finger. Chapter 27 “If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going ... such a lot of trouble wasted ... I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch ... to hear _La Belle Hélène_,” said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face. “But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; “so there must be something gained.” “The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you’d never believe it—the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the peace.” “But then you make complaints to the justice too,” said Sviazhsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Come, that’ll do, you can go,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, blushing suddenly. “Well now, do dress me.” He turned to Matvey and threw off his dressing-gown decisively. Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s collar, and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure over the well-groomed body of his master. Chapter 3 When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee, letters and papers from the office. He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was buying a forest on his wife’s property. To sell this forest was absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the forest—that idea hurt him. When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp morning paper, and began reading it. Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  See Barsalou 2008b for a review. the name of the object (“hammer”): Tucker and Ellis 2004. gripping motion with your hand: Klatzky et al. 1989; Tucker and Ellis 2001. [back] 18. represented throughout the entire brain: For a review, see Barsalou 2009. [back] 19. of neurons for each goal: Further details on this misconception are at heam.info/concepts-20 . see nothing of the kind: For a discussion of evidence, see Lebois et al. 2015. [back] 20. can be different each time: Within a concept, there can be several different goals, none of which is core; see heam.info/concepts-21 . [back] 21. dark, empty bucket: Years later, I finally forgave myself for this embarrassing error after reading Brian Greene’s 2007 book The Fabric of the Cosmos, whose second chapter is titled “The Universe and the Bucket: Is Space a Human Abstraction or a Physical Entity?” (Greene 2007). “eye of the beholder”: Ibid., 47. [back] 22. “memories” stored in your brain: Schacter 1996. [back]

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he had come, and why he would not come up. “He has been at home,” she thought, “and didn’t find me, and thought I should be here, but he did not come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s here.” All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at Anna’s album. There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man’s calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna. Chapter 22 The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the landing between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince Shtcherbatsky called “young bucks,” in an exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after running by, came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had to promise this youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and stroking his mustache, admired rosy Kitty. Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment’s attention, as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of it. When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother, tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn back a little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and graceful, and nothing could need setting straight.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Then going inside and ordering his meat and ale, the Price watched through the diamond-paned windows. The Captain of the Guard did not dare touch Beauty, except to put the rope about her wrists. He led her by this to the open gate of the courtyard, and throwing the rope up over the iron rod that held the sign of the Inn, he quickly secured her hands above her head, so that she was almost on tiptoe. Then he motioned for the people to move back, and he stood against the wall with his arms folded as they pressed to look at her. There were buxom women with stained aprons, and coarse men in breeches and heavy leather shoes, and the young well-to-do men of the town in their velvet cloaks with their hands on their hips as they eyed Beauty from a distance, unwilling to elbow in the crowd. And several young women, their elaborate white headdresses freshly done up, who had come out lifting their hems fastidiously as they looked at her. At first everyone was whispering, but now people began to speak more freely. Beauty had turned her face into her arm and let her hair shield her face, but then a soldier came out from the Prince and said: "His Majesty said to turn her and lift her chin so they might have a better look at her." An approving murmur went up from the crowd. "Very very lovely," said one of the young men. "And this is what so many died for," said an old Cobbler. The Captain of the Guard lifted Beauty's chin, and holding the rope above her, said gently: "You must turn around, Princess." "O, please, Captain," she whispered. "Don't make a sound, Princess, I beg you. Our Lord is very strict," he said. "And it's his wish that everyone admire you." Beauty, her cheeks flaming, obeyed, turning so the crowd could see her reddened buttocks and then again to show her breasts and her sex as the Captain kept his finger under her chin lightly. It seemed she breathed deeply as though trying to remain very calm. The young men were calling her beautiful and saying her breasts were magnificent. "But such buttocks," whispered an old woman nearby. "You can see that she's been spanked. I doubt the poor Princess did anything much to deserve it." "Not much," said a young man near her. "Except have the most beautiful and pertly shaped buttocks imaginable." Beauty was trembling. Finally the Prince himself came out, ready to leave, and seeing the crowd as attentive as before, he himself took the rope down, and holding it like a short leash above Beauty's head, he turned her. He seemed amused by the crowd's grateful nods, and thanks, and bows to him; and very gracious in his generosity. "Lift your chin, Beauty, I shouldn't have to lift it," he reproved her with a little deliberate frown of disappointment.

• From Querelle (1953)

  He laughed, but this time with some embarrassment. He felt nervous, what with the copper's paw on his shoulder and all. Querelle still did not understand that Mario had a crush on him, but his emotions were stirred by those questions, precise as those in an interrogation, by their urgency, by the insinuating tone of voice, by the method that seemed to be pushing for a confession, never mind what it would be. Querelle was aware of the strangeness of the surroundings and of the density of fog and night, further uniting the cop and his victim, together in this solitude that seemed to create a feeling of complicity. "I can't stand talking about it too much, it gives me a hardon." "Wow! No kidding." Querelle realized that this exclamation (as well as his previous admission that "it didn't disgust him" ) was only one more move in an entire game that would inevitably lead to an act he had begun tq suspect and that would put an end to his sense of freedom. He did not regret that he had agreed to head 204 I JEAN GENET this narrow path, but he was amazed at his own cunning, in going along with it, yet being so successful in concealing his own secret desire. At least he felt a slight sense of shame at performing with a real be-man, without recourse to the pretext of superior strength, an act which he might have dared to try out with, or on, a pederast without letting himself down, or with any manbut then only with the aid of some irresistible pretext. (4So you don't believe me?" Now Querelle could have simply replied ''Yes, I do," thus stopping the game right there. He smiled : (4Horseshit! Tell that to the Marines." ''I swear, it's true." "You're nuts. I don't believe you. It's too cold." "Why don't you see for yourself. Put your hand there." "No . . . I'm telling you, no. You don't even have one, it must've frozen off." They had stopped again. They looked at each other, smiling, defying their smiles. Mario raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion, wrinkling his forehead, attempting the expression of a young boy totally astonished by the fact of having an erection at such an hour, in such a spot, and for so little reason. (4T h ouc 't 1 , '11 you see . . " . Querelle did not move. By slowly relaxing his smile, which made his upper lip tremble, he caused it to appear more subtle, more mocking than before. "No, I won't. I'm telling you, it's impossible." Querelle stretched out his hand, extended his fingers and hesitantly touched Mario's crotch, but only the material of his trousers. (That hesitation made both of them shiver with anticipation. )

• From Querelle (1953)

  zts I JEAN GENET imposed herself on him and took possession of him, swathing him into gestures and lines of motion whose curves were very wide and beautiful. Those harmonious masses of fl�h, that dignified bearing exuded a heat, almost a kind of steam, be clouding Querelle's senses before he was aware of the wit c hcraft being worked upon him. Casually he glanced at the golden chain on her breasts, the bracelets ·on her wrists, and, always vaguely, he felt himself swaddled in opulence. Sometimes he mused, looking at her from a distance, that the brothelkeeper had a beautiful wife, his brother a beautiful mistress; but when she came closer to him, Madame Lysiane was merely a source of warm, amazingly fecund, but almost unreal radiation. "You wouldn't have a match, Madame Lysiane?'' "Certainly, my dear, I'll get you a light." She refused the cigarette the sailor offered her, with a smile. "But why don't you have one? I've never seen you smoking. It's a Craven, you know." ''I never smoke in here. I allow the girls to do it, because it would make a bad impression to be so severe, but I never do, mysel f. It just wouldn't be class, to have the patronne sit there, puffing away." She did not sound offended at all. She spoke directly, explain ing what was self-evident and not open to further discussion. She held out the small flame, to the tip of his cigarette, and she saw Querelle gazing at her. It embarrassed her a little, and without thinking she repeated the phrase she had hit upon from the start, and which had remained in her mouth, stuck to her palate: "My dear, there you are." "Thank you, Madame Lysiane." Neither Robert nor Querelle was sufficiently interested in love-making to experiment with new positions. Yet they did not

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would wish. He looked a long, tender look at her. “No, not very,” he said. And it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all, that he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with her rapid step out at the door. The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring her, would have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded his doing so. “Well then,” Vronsky began to start a conversation of some sort; “so you’re settled here? You’re still at the same work, then?” he went on, recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was writing something. “Yes, I’m writing the second part of the _Two Elements_,” said Golenishtchev, coloring with pleasure at the question—“that is, to be exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials. It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions. We in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium,” and he launched into a long and heated explanation of his views. Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the first part of the _Two Elements_, of which the author spoke as something well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down his opinions and Vronsky was able to follow them even without knowing the _Two Elements_, he listened to him with some interest, for Golenishtchev spoke well. But Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class, Vronsky could not make out the reason of his irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows, with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it? Vronsky disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and was sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible on his mobile, rather handsome face, while without even noticing Anna’s coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Princess Astafieva from the country. There remained only one filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass, which was that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted her to the room assigned them. “Go, do go!” she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes. He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little plumper. “Well, how is he? how is he?” “Very bad. He can’t get up. He has kept expecting you. He.... Are you ... with your wife?” Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her, but she immediately enlightened him. “I’ll go away. I’ll go down to the kitchen,” she brought out. “Nikolay Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady, and remembers her abroad.” Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to make. “Come along, come along to him!” he said. But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Marya Nikolaevna crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the point of tears, and clutching the ends of her apron in both hands, twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to do. For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so incomprehensible to her; but it lasted only a single instant. “Well! how is he?” she turned to her husband and then to her. “But one can’t go on talking in the passage like this!” Levin said, looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant across the corridor, as though about his affairs. “Well then, come in,” said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna, who had recovered herself, but noticing her husband’s face of dismay, “or go on; go, and then come for me,” she said, and went back into the room.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes, sir. And what table wine?” “You can give us Nuits. Oh, no, better the classic Chablis.” “Yes, sir. And _your_ cheese, your excellency?” “Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?” “No, it’s all the same to me,” said Levin, unable to suppress a smile. And the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes darted in with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl shells, and a bottle between his fingers. Stepan Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat, and settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters. “Not bad,” he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell with a silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. “Not bad,” he repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Levin to the Tatar. Levin ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would have pleased him better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the Tatar, uncorking the bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate glasses, glanced at Stepan Arkadyevitch, and settled his white cravat with a perceptible smile of satisfaction. “You don’t care much for oysters, do you?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, emptying his wine-glass, “or you’re worried about something. Eh?” He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin was not in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul, he felt sore and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking-glasses, gas, and waiters—all of it was offensive to him. He was afraid of sullying what his soul was brimful of. “I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me,” he said. “You can’t conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like me, as queer as that gentleman’s nails I saw at your place....” “Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch’s nails,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing. “It’s too much for me,” responded Levin. “Do try, now, and put yourself in my place, take the point of view of a country person. We in the country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we turn up our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as they will, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can do nothing with their hands.” Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily. “Oh, yes, that’s just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His work is with the mind....”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good housewife’s eye, scanned her room. All she had seen in entering the house and walking through it, and all she saw now in her room, gave her an impression of wealth and sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of which she had only read in English novels, but had never seen in Russia and in the country. Everything was new from the new French hangings on the walls to the carpet which covered the whole floor. The bed had a spring mattress, and a special sort of bolster and silk pillowcases on the little pillows. The marble washstand, the dressing table, the little sofa, the tables, the bronze clock on the chimney piece, the window curtains, and the _portières_ were all new and expensive. The smart maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair done up high, and a gown more fashionable than Dolly’s, was as new and expensive as the whole room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness, her deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with her. She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that had unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the very patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home. At home it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there would be needed twenty-four yards of nainsook at sixteen pence the yard, which was a matter of thirty shillings besides the cutting-out and making, and these thirty shillings had been saved. But before the maid she felt, if not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable. Darya Alexandrovna had a great sense of relief when Annushka, whom she had known for years, walked in. The smart maid was sent for to go to her mistress, and Annushka remained with Darya Alexandrovna. Annushka was obviously much pleased at that lady’s arrival, and began to chatter away without a pause. Dolly observed that she was longing to express her opinion in regard to her mistress’s position, especially as to the love and devotion of the count to Anna Arkadyevna, but Dolly carefully interrupted her whenever she began to speak about this. “I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna; my lady’s dearer to me than anything. Well, it’s not for us to judge. And, to be sure, there seems so much love....” “Kindly pour out the water for me to wash now, please,” Darya Alexandrovna cut her short. “Certainly. We’ve two women kept specially for washing small things, but most of the linen’s done by machinery. The count goes into everything himself. Ah, what a husband!...” Dolly was glad when Anna came in, and by her entrance put a stop to Annushka’s gossip. Anna had put on a very simple batiste gown. Dolly scrutinized that simple gown attentively. She knew what it meant, and the price at which such simplicity was obtained. “An old friend,” said Anna of Annushka.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile. This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband. “It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,” thought Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to himself in despair, and found no answer. Chapter 2 Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  He could only have remembered me as a child with my head in a book, refusing to sing along with his cheerful renditions of World War I songs, asking him to drive slowly past pretty houses and wishing aloud that we lived there. I fear he knew my childhood hope that I was adopted and that my real parents would come and take me to a home with a canopied bed and a horse to ride. In college, I tried to avoid the embarrassment of our atypical family by mining our odd life for stories like these: • My father was unable to resist swearing, and my mother had asked that he not swear around his daughters, so he named the family dog Dammit. When he felt something stronger was needed, he made up his own long composite word that he said at top speed: Goshdarn​Caloramorbus​AntonioCanova​ScipioAfrican​ustheYounger​theElder​theMiddleaged. Later when I discovered that Antonio Canova was a nineteenth-century Italian sculptor, Scipio Africanus the Elder had defeated Hannibal, and Scipio Africanus the Younger had sacked Carthage, I was impressed. But when I asked why he had chosen those names, he said, “I just liked their sound.” • At home in rural Michigan, we were missing our favorite nighttime programs due to a broken radio, and my father bet my mother that he could replace it, even though there were no stores within miles and all would be closed anyway. He got in his car—and was back in an hour with a huge brand-new model. He never told us how he did it. • As a connoisseur of extra-thick malteds, he knew all the best roadside sources from coast to coast. He also knew that if two customers came in together, each got half the contents of one tall malted mixer, in which two servings fit exactly. However, a solitary customer got the dividend in the bottom of the can. That’s why he gave me money as we sat in the car, and told me to go in, to order my own malted, and when he followed a few minutes later, to pretend I didn’t know him. Then we both got the dividend, though I doubt we were fooling anybody. If there was anything more delicious to a five- or six-year-old than a malted, it was pretending not to know your own father, and playing a part in a grown-up game. • In an elevator or any other public space, he coached me in routines like these: MY FATHER: “If you’re not a good girl, you won’t go to heaven.” ME: “I don’t want to go to heaven, Daddy. I want to go with you.” Or his all-time favorite: ME: “And then what happened, Daddy?” MY FATHER: “So I told the guy to keep his fifty thousand dollars!” • When I was about five and we were in a country store, I asked my father for a nickel. He asked me what for.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  No Miss Opposite sat on the vined porch—where to the lone pedestrian’s annoyance two pony-tailed young women in identical polka-dotted pinafores stopped doing whatever they were doing to stare at him: she was long dead, no doubt, these might be her twin nieces from Philadelphia. Should I enter my old house? As in a Turgenev story, a torrent of Italian music came from an open window—that of the living room: what romantic soul was playing the piano where no piano had plunged and plashed on that bewitched Sunday with the sun on her beloved legs? All at once I noticed that from the lawn I had mown a golden-skinned, brown-haired nymphet of nine or ten, in white shorts, was looking at me with wild fascination in her large blue-black eyes. I said something pleasant to her, meaning no harm, an old-world compliment, what nice eyes you have, but she retreated in haste and the music stopped abruptly, and a violent-looking dark man, glistening with sweat, came out and glared at me. I was on the point of identifying myself when, with a pang of dream-embarrassment, I became aware of my mud-caked dungarees, my filthy and torn sweater, my bristly chin, my bum’s bloodshot eyes. Without saying a word, I turned and plodded back the way I had come. An aster-like anemic flower grew out of a remembered chink in the sidewalk. Quietly resurrected, Miss Opposite was being wheeled out by her nieces, onto her porch, as if it were a stage and I the star performer. Praying she would not call to me, I hurried to my car. What a steep little street. What a profound avenue. A red ticket showed between wiper and windshield; I carefully tore it into two, four, eight pieces. Feeling I was losing my time, I drove energetically to the downtown hotel where I had arrived with a new bag more than five years before. I took a room, made two appointments by telephone, shaved, bathed, put on black clothes and went down for a drink in the bar. Nothing had changed. The barroom was suffused with the same dim, impossible garnet-red light that in Europe years ago went with low haunts, but here meant a bit of atmosphere in a family hotel. I sat at the same little table where at the very start of my stay, immediately after becoming Charlotte’s lodger, I had thought fit to celebrate the occasion by suavely sharing with her half a bottle of champagne, which had fatally conquered her poor brimming heart. As then, a moonfaced waiter was arranging with stellar care fifty sherries on a round tray for a wedding party. Murphy-Fantasia, this time.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  In a few instances, readers may feel an annotation belabors the obvious; I well remember my own resentment, as a college sophomore, when a textbook reference to Douglas MacArthur was garnished by the footnote “Famous American general (1880– ).” Yet the commonplace may turn out to be obscure. For instance, early in Lolita Humbert mentions that his first wife Valeria was “ deep in Paris-Soir . ” When in 1967 I asked a Stanford University class of some eighty students if they knew what Paris-Soir was, sixty of them had no idea, twenty reasonably guessed it to be a magazine or newspaper, but no one knew specifically that it was a newspaper which featured lurid reportage, and that the detail formulates Valeria’s puerility and Humbert’s contempt for her. In 1967, most of them knew what a “zoot suit” and “crooner” are; this is no longer true, so they’ve been glossed (only twelve of one hundred 1990 Northwestern University students could define a crooner or zoot suit, a new wrinkle in The Crisis in the Humanities). Several notes are thus predicated on the premise that one epoch’s “popular culture” is another’s esoterica (see Note the nasal voices ). Most of the Introduction is drawn from parts of my previously published articles in The New Republic (“Nabokov’s Puppet Show—Part II,” CLVI [January 21, 1967], 25–32), Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature (1967), The Denver Quarterly (1968), and TriQuarterly (1970). Several Notes are adapted from the two middle articles and my interview with Nabokov in Wisconsin Studies (see bibliography for full entries). The first edition was completed in 1968, save for eleventh-hour allusions to Ada , and published in 1969, but the vagaries and vagrancies of publishing delayed its appearance. In the meantime, Carl R. Proffer’s Keys to Lolita was published (1968). Two enchanted hunters (see Note The Enchanted Hunters ) working independently of each other, Mr. Proffer and I arrived at many similar identifications, and, excepting those which are readily apparent, I have tried to indicate where he anticipated me. The text of Lolita is that of the 1989 Vintage edition. It contains many corrections made over time, some of which are identified in the Notes. All were approved by Nabokov. Like the first American edition of 1958, this variorum edition concludes with Nabokov’s Afterword, which, along with its Notes, should be read in conjunction with the Introduction (where the reader will be offered exact instructions as to this procedure).

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes; wasn’t it his article you were praising so? Well, and after that?” said Kitty. “I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister’s business.” “And the concert?” she queried. “I shan’t go there all alone.” “No? do go; there are going to be some new things.... That interested you so. I should certainly go.” “Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner,” he said, looking at his watch. “Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on Countess Bola.” “But is it absolutely necessary?” “Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in, sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up and go away.” “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! I’ve got so out of the way of all this that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It’s such a horrible thing to do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with nothing to do, wastes their time and worries himself, and walks away!” Kitty laughed. “Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn’t you?” “Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I’m so out of the way of it that, by Jove! I’d sooner go two days running without my dinner than pay this call! One’s so ashamed! I feel all the while that they’re annoyed, that they’re saying, ‘What has he come for?’” “No, they won’t. I’ll answer for that,” said Kitty, looking into his face with a laugh. She took his hand. “Well, good-bye.... Do go, please.” He was just going out after kissing his wife’s hand, when she stopped him. “Kostya, do you know I’ve only fifty roubles left?” “Oh, all right, I’ll go to the bank and get some. How much?” he said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well. “No, wait a minute.” She held his hand. “Let’s talk about it, it worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away simply. We don’t manage well, somehow.” “Oh, it’s all right,” he said with a little cough, looking at her from under his brows. That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was displeased not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget. “I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case.” “Yes, but I’m afraid that altogether....” “Oh, it’s all right, all right,” he repeated. “Well, good-bye, darling.” “No, I’m really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice it would have been in the country! As it is, I’m worrying you all, and we’re wasting our money.”