Excitement

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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  Nothing but the ironing board is between me and being trampled by the horses behind us. Then suddenly horse, driver, and I are in a capsule by ourselves. A blur of light and wind surrounds us. We are isolated for what could be minutes or hours, as one with this powerful horse. I think: Racing a car may be about ego, but racing a horse is about trust. As we begin to slow down, the blur sharpens back into trees, stadium, fence, people. My driver turns to me, smiles, and says, We won! We parade in front of the huge, noisy stadium. An amplified male voice booms out, “Ms. beat M*A*S*H !” He doesn’t say that a mare beat a gelding, or that an old black driver beat a young white one, but I hear Loretta saying to a reporter with delight: The outs beat the ins! Like Alice in Wonderland, I feel as if I’ve fallen into another universe. I was horse crazy as a child. Now I remember why I loved these smart, sleek creatures that deign to let us travel with them. Our share of the gate turns out to be disappointing—under $5,000 each. We even forgot to bet on ourselves. Each of us could have raised more money in less time and with way less danger. However, now whenever I pass the Laurel sign on the way to and from Washington, I have a sense memory of speed and blur, a proud driver, a beautiful mare, a moment of altered reality. V.It’s 1967, and I’m sitting in a diner in rural Virginia, preparing for an interview nearby. Public schools have been ordered to integrate racially, and most white parents have put their kids into newly created, all-white “private” schools that are actually funded with tax dollars by a racist state legislature. My interview is with a sixth-grade white girl who is a prodigy of organizing. She is buzzing around the halls, welcoming black students into this newly desegregated public school. She has her parents’ permission, but this was her idea. If I write about her story, I think she might inspire more students to take the lead, but so far I can’t even get past editors. Newspapers say it’s apolitical “soft news” and women’s magazines say it’s political “hard news.”5 Next to me at the counter are three young white guys who are also talking about school integration or, in their words, “race mixing.” They seem oblivious to the older black waitress who is serving us, and her face is inscrutable. These guys start arguing about Vietnam, and whether black GIs will follow orders from white officers. “I hope not,” says a solitary older white man sitting down at the counter. “We’re on the wrong side in this war.” Silence. I wonder if combat will start right here. The older man has interrupted the younger ones, at a minimum, and at a maximum, he’s talking treason.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Christ’s foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for it. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected and saw everything too much. There was only one stage in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible. Today he was too much agitated. He would have covered the picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, as it were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home. Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word _talent_, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it. They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for want of education—the common defect of our Russian artists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories, and they were continually coming back to it. “What an exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn’t even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn’t let it slip; I must buy it,” said Vronsky. Chapter 13 Mihailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work. From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty. It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her characteristic beauty. “One needs to know and love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul,” Vronsky thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it. “I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,” he said of his own portrait of her, “and he just looked and painted it. That’s where technique comes in.”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  • I’m headed to the airport for the third time in a week, trying to hail a taxi in the pouring rain. I’m late, I’m grouchy, and when a driver finally picks me up, I’m in no mood to talk to this scruffy white kid in his twenties. The only personal thing I see is a drawing of a gigantic eye propped up on the front seat next to him. I suppress my curiosity. After a long time of quiet, he asks what I do. I offer just three words—I’m a writer —hoping brevity won’t invite conversation. “Then I wouldn’t know you,” he says seriously, “because I don’t read.” Assuming he’s a smart-ass, I don’t answer. “I also don’t watch television,” he goes on. “I don’t look at the Internet or read newspapers or books or play video games. I haven’t done any of those things in almost a year. I don’t want anything to interpret the world for me. I’m mainlining life.” My resolve is slipping. He has made me think of a classics professor who told us to read Plato or Shakespeare or Dante as if we found their books in the street and had no idea who they were. I always loved his trust in the work itself—and also his trust in us. Finally, I can no longer resist asking this guy why he is shutting out all the usual signals. He explains that his girlfriend was taking courses like women’s studies and black studies, so she put tape over the names of authors and told him to judge without knowing the identity of the author. He found this so disorienting that he started to count the filters that were telling him what to think. “Filters let in a cup of water,” he says, “but keep out the ocean.” It turns out that driving a taxi is just part of a year he’s planned, working his way cross-country, doing odd jobs like repairing cars and picking fruit to support himself, all the while going cold turkey on media. He is seeing America without being told first what he’s seeing. I tell him he has a lot in common with organizers. We’re trying to create spaces where people can listen and talk, without first putting each other in categories. After his year is up, I suggest he take what he’s learned and teach it to others. “You see?” he says seriously as we pull into LaGuardia, “This is what happens with no filters.” Instead of a tip, he asks for a bargain. “Write about my experiment,” he says. “Explain that you met this recovering media addict who used to dream about people in movies instead of real people. I never read a book unless some reviewer told me to. I was such a news junkie, I went to sleep with my headset on. I even worried about missing email while I was making love to my girlfriend. I had media-itis, but now I’m trying to see life unmediated.

• From Querelle (1953)

  164 I JEAN GENET Entering the old penitentiary Quere11e was elated by fear and by the responsibility he was about to assume. Silently walking along beside Roger he felt a budding within himself-soon they would open, th ose buds, all over his body, and perfume it with th eir corollae : the budding of a violent adventure. Danger was what he needed in order to bloom. Danger and fear made him hi gh. \Vhat would he find in the depths of the abandoned prison? He held on to himself. The least sense of excitement would have been enough to make him fear the place. With a tightness in his chest he thought of all those massive walls converging to crush him, and so he fought against them, fought them off, strained against them as he strained against his own anger, with the same effort, almost the same motions as those of the sergeant of the guard when he closes, using both his hands and all the weight of his body, the giant gates of th e citadel. In some shadowy sense he was walking back to meet a former and blessed existence. Not that he seriously thought he had ever been a galley slave, nor did his imagination get involved in such fantasies, but he experienced a wonderful sense of well-being, a presentiment of rest, at the idea of entering, a free man, sover eign, the dark interior of these thick walls, which had through out the ages contained so much shackled pain, so much physical and moral suffering, so many bodies contorted by torture, worn out by disease, knowing no other joys but the memory of marvelous crimes that stood like a pillar of smoke in the light, or pierced the dark in which they had been committed, with a blazing shaft of light. 'What could remain of these murders un der the stones of this prison, or in its corners, or suspended in the humid air? Even though, for Querelle, these reflections were no clear thoughts, at lea�t the same thing that brings them so easily to pen and paper gave him a heavy, confused feeling of pain and bothered his brain with a smidgen of anguish. What's more, Q � erelle was on his way, for the first time in his life, to meet another criminal, a brother. He had already entertained vague dreams of meeting a murderer of his own stature, with

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “_Bon appétit—bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu’au fond de mes bottes_,” Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the French saying as he finished his second chicken. “Well, now our troubles are over, now everything’s going to go well. Only, to atone for my sins, I’m bound to sit on the box. That’s so? eh? No, no! I’ll be your Automedon. You shall see how I’ll get you along,” he answered, not letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman drive. “No, I must atone for my sins, and I’m very comfortable on the box.” And he drove. Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh. Chapter 10 Vassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot. As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get rid of Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him. “How shall we go? It’s a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the reeds. “Where there are hawks, there is sure to be game.” “Now, gentlemen,” said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, “do you see those reeds?” He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. “The marsh begins here, straight in front of us, do you see—where it is greener? From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the pools are? That’s the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe. We’ll separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then meet over there at the mill.” “Well, which shall go to left and which to right?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch. “It’s wider to the right; you two go that way and I’ll take the left,” he said with apparent carelessness. “Capital! we’ll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!” Vassenka exclaimed. Levin could do nothing but agree, and they divided.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants’ dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he went out of the barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the thrashing floor for seed. Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in which Levin had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now it had been let to a former house porter. Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village, would not take the land for the coming year. “It’s a high rent; it wouldn’t pay Platon, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” answered the peasant, picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt. “But how does Kirillov make it pay?” “Mituh!” (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone of contempt), “you may be sure he’ll make it pay, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! He’ll get his share, however he has to squeeze to get it! He’s no mercy on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch” (so he called the old peasant Platon), “do you suppose he’d flay the skin off a man? Where there’s debt, he’ll let anyone off. And he’ll not wring the last penny out. He’s a man too.” “But why will he let anyone off?” “Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God.” “How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?” Levin almost shouted. “Why, to be sure, in truth, in God’s way. Folks are different. Take you now, you wouldn’t wrong a man....” “Yes, yes, good-bye!” said Levin, breathless with excitement, and turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant’s words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God’s way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as though they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light. Chapter 12 Levin strode along the highroad, absorbed not so much in his thoughts (he could not yet disentangle them) as in his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had experienced before. The words uttered by the peasant had acted on his soul like an electric shock, suddenly transforming and combining into a single whole the whole swarm of disjointed, impotent, separate thoughts that incessantly occupied his mind. These thoughts had unconsciously been in his mind even when he was talking about the land. He was aware of something new in his soul, and joyfully tested this new thing, not yet knowing what it was.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle scored a humdinger on Mario's chin. Happy to be fighting (with his bare hands) , he knew for certain that he would not have to get the better of anything but what could be beaten to submission by fists and feet. Mario blocked the next blow and replied by socking Querelle in the mouth. Querelle retreated. For an instant he hesitated, then pounced. For a few minutes the men fought without a sound. Coming out of their clinches they knew they could have withdrawn to outer limits that would have put a stop to the fight, but they remained at a distance of two meters, watched each other, and then suddenly flew at each other again. Querelle was pleased to be fighting a cop, and he knew already that this fight, in which, due to his youth and good condition, he was doing very well, was com· parable to the coquetries of a reputable young girl who went on protesting right up to the moment of penetration. He made himself go through the most courageous, the toughest, the manliest motions-not in the hopes of disgusting Mario, nor to 197 I QUERELLE make Mario believe he had been mistaken-but in order to make him realize that he would have to vanquish a real man, to tire him out slowly, to take him, then, with care, to slowly pluck away his male attributes. They went on fighting. The nobility of Querelle's stance inspired Mario to comparable fairness. At first, seeing that he didn't cut as dashing a figure as the sailor, the detective had cursed the other man's style, that very nobility, so that he wouldn' t have to despise himself for not having it. He \\'anted to prove to hin1self that that was precisely what he was fighting against, so as to be better able to beat it down, exalting and pitting against it his own commonness and heaviness. Thus �1ario took on a new beauty. They were still slugging away at each other. Querelle was faster on his feet and hit harder.

• From Querelle (1953)

  favorite gesture was to keep turning his golden signet ring round his middle finger; the signet was so large that its edges caused a slight irritation of the adjoining fingers. The tic was particularly evident when Mario was sitting behind his desk and grilling someone caught pilfering at the docks or in the warehouses. He shared an office with a colleague, but they both had desks of their own. Mario was quite an elegant man ( there was no question about it, he had excellent taste) . He liked to appear well-dressed. We might further note the good, plain cut of his clothes, the austere manner in which he wore them, the predominantly impassive expression_ on his face, finally, the sobriety and assurance of his gestures. The very fact that he had a desk in an office lent Mario, in the eyes of the delinquents he interrogated, the air of someone of indisputable intellectual superiority. Som��times he got up, leaving the desk without, it seemed, a second thought, the way one may part from something one knows to be in good hands. That was mostly when he went to consult one of his numerous files. This added further to his prestige : it showed him as the possessor of the secrets of several thousand people. When he went outside, his_ face instantly turned . into a mask. Under no circumstances must anyone suspect, in the cafes or elsewhere, that they were plying a policeman with confidences. But behind that mask-as there always has to be a face behind such a thing, to support it Mario composed his features into a policeman's face. For a number of hours, every day, he had to be the one who uncovers the weaknesses of mortal men, their sins, the slightest clues whereby they then could be led, \Vith maximum expediency, and even if they had seemed beyond ail suspicion, to a most terrible atonement. A sublime profession, and he would have been a fool to degrade it to the level of eavesdropping or peeping through keyholes.- Mario felt no curiosity whatsoever about these people, always wanted to remain at the correct distance from them : but as soon as he thought he had discovered that slight indication of guilt, he proceeded in a 245 I QUERELLE manner similar to that of a child blowing soap bubbles, picking out of the froth, with the end of its straw, the one little conglomeration of suds that can be worked into a lovely iridescent bubble. Proceeding from one discovery to the next, �1ario experienced an exquisite feeling of elation : he was breathing into it, and the crime started swelling, then inflating some more, finally to detach itself from him and rise up into the sky.

• From Querelle (1953)

  245 I QUERELLE manner similar to that of a child blowing soap bubbles, picking out of the froth, with the end of its straw, the one little con glomeration of suds that can be worked into a lovely iridescent bubble. Proceeding from one discovery to the next, �1ario experienced an exquisite feeling of elation: he was breathing into it, and the crime started swelling, then inflating some more, finally to detach itself from him and rise up into the sky. No doubt l\1ario told himself on more than one occasion that his profession was a useful and a perfectly ethical one. For over a year now his young friend Dede had organized his life around tw o principles: the principle of stealing, and the one of de nouncing thieves to the police. A truly ren1arkable achievement, the more so as l\1ario, in order to reinforce him in his aspect of paid informer, often said to him: .. You're useful, you know. You're he lping us apprehend those scoundrels." As the boy lived in perfect harmony with himself, the argu ment seemed quite commonplace to him, except for that us, which made him feel that he was taking part in a wo nderful adven ture. He sold the scoundrels and he went on stealing with them, there was nothing to it. .. Gilbert Turko-did you know him, Dede?'' uy cs. Can't say we were buddies, but I used to kno w him." ''\Vhere is he now?" "I have no idea." "C , orne on ... "But Mario, I swear. I don't know anything about it. If I did, I'd tell you." As a matter of fact, Dcde _had conducted his own investiga tion even before the detective asked him about it, but he had not been able to find out. anything. \Vithout having really managed to interpret Gil's amorous passes at Roger, he had, at least, an intuitive understanding of what their smiles and their meetings really meant; but Roger's ingenuousness made him in many ways impervious to what we ca11 cunning.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  All Mihailov’s mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishtchev’s capacity for understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the fidelity of the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might have seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while nothing was said of more serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of delight at this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate’s figure just what Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was but one of millions of reflections, which as Mihailov knew for certain would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishtchev’s remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for this remark, and from a state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy. At once the whole of his picture lived before him in all the indescribable complexity of everything living. Mihailov again tried to say that that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not pronounce the words. Vronsky and Anna too said something in that subdued voice in which, partly to avoid hurting the artist’s feelings and partly to avoid saying out loud something silly—so easily said when talking of art—people usually speak at exhibitions of pictures. Mihailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on them too. He went up to them. “How marvelous Christ’s expression is!” said Anna. Of all she saw she liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was the center of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant to the artist. “One can see that He is pitying Pilate.” This again was one of the million true reflections that could be found in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that He was pitying Pilate. In Christ’s expression there ought to be indeed an expression of pity, since there is an expression of love, of heavenly peace, of readiness for death, and a sense of the vanity of words. Of course there is the expression of an official in Pilate and of pity in Christ, seeing that one is the incarnation of the fleshly and the other of the spiritual life. All this and much more flashed into Mihailov’s thoughts. “Yes, and how that figure is done—what atmosphere! One can walk round it,” said Golenishtchev, unmistakably betraying by this remark that he did not approve of the meaning and idea of the figure. “Yes, there’s a wonderful mastery!” said Vronsky. “How those figures in the background stand out! There you have technique,” he said, addressing Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation between them about Vronsky’s despair of attaining this technique.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Next day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and, disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which the sportsmen still did not come out. The first to come out was Vassenka Veslovsky, in new high boots that reached half-way up his thick thighs, in a green blouse, with a new Russian leather cartridge-belt, and in his Scotch cap with ribbons, with a brand-new English gun without a sling. Laska flew up to him, welcomed him, and jumping up, asked him in her own way whether the others were coming soon, but getting no answer from him, she returned to her post of observation and sank into repose again, her head on one side, and one ear pricked up to listen. At last the door opened with a creak, and Stepan Arkadyevitch’s spot-and-tan pointer Krak flew out, running round and round and turning over in the air. Stepan Arkadyevitch himself followed with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his mouth. “Good dog, good dog, Krak!” he cried encouragingly to the dog, who put his paws up on his chest, catching at his game bag. Stepan Arkadyevitch was dressed in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of indefinite form, but his gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and his game bag and cartridge belt, though worn, were of the very best quality. Vassenka Veslovsky had had no notion before that it was truly _chic_ for a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of the best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Stepan Arkadyevitch, radiant in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian nobleman. And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he would certainly adopt the same get-up. “Well, and what about our host?” he asked. “A young wife,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. “Yes, and such a charming one!” “He came down dressed. No doubt he’s run up to her again.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Straight the way mounted through the rock, toward such a quarter, that in front of me I stayed the rays of sun who already was low. And of few steps made we assay, when I and my sages perceived that the sun had set behind us, because of the shadow which had vanished. And ere the horizon in all its stupendous range had become of one hue, and night held all her dominion, each of us made a bed of a step; for the law of the mount took from us the power, rather than the desire, to ascend. As goats that have been agile and wanton upon the heights ere they are fed, grow tame while ruminating, silent in the shade, when the sun is hot, guarded by the shepherd who has leaned upon his staff, and, leaning, minds them; and like the shepherd who lodges in the open, holds silent vigil by night longside his flock, watching lest a wild beast scatter it; such were we then all three, I as a goat and they as shepherds, bounded by the high rock on this side and on that. Little of the outside could there be seen, but through that little I saw the stars brighter and bigger than their wont. As I was thus ruminating, and thus gazing at them, sleep fell on me, sleep which oft doth know the news ere the fact come to pass.8 In the hour, methinks, when Cytherea,9 who seemeth ever burning with fire of love, first beamed from the east on the mount, meseemed to behold in a dream, a lady, young and fair, going along a plain gathering flowers; and singing she said: “Know, whoso asketh my name, that I am Leah, and go moving my fair hands around to make me a garland. To please me at the glass here I deck me; but Rachel my sister ne’er stirs from her mirror, and sitteth all day. She is fain to behold her fair eyes, as I to deck me with my hands: her, contemplation; me, action, doth satisfy.”10 And now, at the brightness ere dayspring born, which rises the gratefuller to wayfarers as on their return they lodge less far from home, the shades of night were fleeing on every side, and my sleep with them; wherefore I arose, seeing the great Masters already risen. “That sweet fruit11 whereof the care of mortals goeth in search on so many boughs, this day shall give thy hungerings peace.” Words such as these did Virgil use to me, and never have there been gifts that were equal in sweetness to these. So greatly did desire upon desire come over me to be above, that at every step after I felt my pinions grow for the flight. When the stairway was all sped beneath us, and we were upon the topmost step, on me did Virgil fix his eyes,

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be “unfeminine,” so we suppress it—until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward an activist place where she herself could never go. —MY OWN POLITICAL LIFE didn’t begin until my last year in high school. I was living with my sister in Washington, D.C., where she was a buyer in a department store and shared a house with three other young working women. They assumed I must be homesick, and it seemed disloyal to tell the truth. Because I was responsible only for myself, I was in heaven. In my new high school, everyone seemed headed for college. Some had even taken the college boards before just for practice, something I’d never heard of. They came from families with bank accounts instead of pay envelopes, dinner parties instead of TV dinners, and vacations in countries my Toledo friends’ families had fled in poverty. Many of my new classmates came from high-level military families, and regarded presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower as war hero and father-figure combined. To me Adlai Stevenson, a reluctant candidate drafted by Democrats, sounded more like Roosevelt, but I wasn’t about to argue. I had a handsome new boyfriend who was headed for West Point, the son and grandson of generals. Only by accident did I discover that a makeshift Stevenson for President office was just a streetcar ride away. The minute I walked into that big room full of ringing phones and rushing people, I felt it was the most exciting place I’d ever been. Staff members were presiding over cluttered desks, volunteers were talking intensely while stuffing envelopes, and teenagers were stacking lawn signs for nearby Maryland and Virginia, where people could actually vote for president, unlike residents of D.C. who were supposed to be neutral. Most amazing, all this was open to anyone off the street. Soon I had a place working alongside other young women volunteers, getting purple ink on our hands while tending a big drumlike mimeograph machine churning out Students for Stevenson. It was a newsletter designed to attract volunteers, since no one under twenty-one could vote. I could see there was a clear hierarchy. Male staffers made decisions, and women carried them out, even women old enough to be their mothers. Paid staff were white men, and the few black women and men were volunteers or messengers. Still, this was much more like the real world than my new high school.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “You certainly forget your condition, Kitty,” said the old princess, hurriedly coming out at the door. “You mustn’t shout like that.” Varenka, hearing Kitty’s voice and her mother’s reprimand, went with light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her movement, her flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of the common was going on in her. Kitty knew what this was, and had been watching her intently. She called Varenka at that moment merely in order mentally to give her a blessing for the important event which, as Kitty fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the wood. “Varenka, I should be very happy if a certain something were to happen,” she whispered as she kissed her. “And are you coming with us?” Varenka said to Levin in confusion, pretending not to have heard what had been said. “I am coming, but only as far as the threshing-floor, and there I shall stop.” “Why, what do you want there?” said Kitty. “I must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to check the invoice,” said Levin; “and where will you be?” “On the terrace.” Chapter 2 On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always liked sitting there after dinner, and that day they had work to do there too. Besides the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were busy, that afternoon jam was being made on the terrace by a method new to Agafea Mihalovna, without the addition of water. Kitty had introduced this new method, which had been in use in her home. Agafea Mihalovna, to whom the task of jam-making had always been intrusted, considering that what had been done in the Levin household could not be amiss, had nevertheless put water with the strawberries, maintaining that the jam could not be made without it. She had been caught in the act, and was now making jam before everyone, and it was to be proved to her conclusively that jam could be very well made without water. Agafea Mihalovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and her thin arms bare to the elbows, was turning the preserving-pan over the charcoal stove, looking darkly at the raspberries and devoutly hoping they would stick and not cook properly. The princess, conscious that Agafea Mihalovna’s wrath must be chiefly directed against her, as the person responsible for the raspberry jam-making, tried to appear to be absorbed in other things and not interested in the jam, talked of other matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove. “I always buy my maids’ dresses myself, of some cheap material,” the princess said, continuing the previous conversation. “Isn’t it time to skim it, my dear?” she added, addressing Agafea Mihalovna. “There’s not the slightest need for you to do it, and it’s hot for you,” she said, stopping Kitty.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Thirdly, that she should love him. And so it is ... that is, it would be so splendid!... I look forward to seeing them coming out of the forest—and everything settled. I shall see at once by their eyes. I should be so delighted! What do you think, Dolly?” “But don’t excite yourself. It’s not at all the thing for you to be excited,” said her mother. “Oh, I’m not excited, mamma. I fancy he will make her an offer today.” “Ah, that’s so strange, how and when a man makes an offer!... There is a sort of barrier, and all at once it’s broken down,” said Dolly, smiling pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Mamma, how did papa make you an offer?” Kitty asked suddenly. “There was nothing out of the way, it was very simple,” answered the princess, but her face beamed all over at the recollection. “Oh, but how was it? You loved him, anyway, before you were allowed to speak?” Kitty felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her mother on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest in a woman’s life. “Of course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country.” “But how was it settled between you, mamma?” “You imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new? It’s always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles....” “How nicely you said that, mamma! It’s just by the eyes, by smiles that it’s done,” Dolly assented. “But what words did he say?” “What did Kostya say to you?” “He wrote it in chalk. It was wonderful.... How long ago it seems!” she said. And the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Kitty was the first to break the silence. She remembered all that last winter before her marriage, and her passion for Vronsky. “There’s one thing ... that old love affair of Varenka’s,” she said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. “I should have liked to say something to Sergey Ivanovitch, to prepare him. They’re all—all men, I mean,” she added, “awfully jealous over our past.” “Not all,” said Dolly. “You judge by your own husband. It makes him miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? that’s true, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes. “But I really don’t know,” the mother put in in defense of her motherly care of her daughter, “what there was in your past that could worry him? That Vronsky paid you attentions—that happens to every girl.” “Oh, yes, but we didn’t mean that,” Kitty said, flushing a little. “No, let me speak,” her mother went on, “why, you yourself would not let me have a talk to Vronsky. Don’t you remember?” “Oh, mamma!” said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be “unfeminine,” so we suppress it—until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward an activist place where she herself could never go. —MY OWN POLITICAL LIFE didn’t begin until my last year in high school. I was living with my sister in Washington, D.C., where she was a buyer in a department store and shared a house with three other young working women. They assumed I must be homesick, and it seemed disloyal to tell the truth. Because I was responsible only for myself, I was in heaven. In my new high school, everyone seemed headed for college. Some had even taken the college boards before just for practice, something I’d never heard of. They came from families with bank accounts instead of pay envelopes, dinner parties instead of TV dinners, and vacations in countries my Toledo friends’ families had fled in poverty. Many of my new classmates came from high-level military families, and regarded presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower as war hero and father-figure combined. To me Adlai Stevenson, a reluctant candidate drafted by Democrats, sounded more like Roosevelt, but I wasn’t about to argue. I had a handsome new boyfriend who was headed for West Point, the son and grandson of generals. Only by accident did I discover that a makeshift Stevenson for President office was just a streetcar ride away. The minute I walked into that big room full of ringing phones and rushing people, I felt it was the most exciting place I’d ever been. Staff members were presiding over cluttered desks, volunteers were talking intensely while stuffing envelopes, and teenagers were stacking lawn signs for nearby Maryland and Virginia, where people could actually vote for president, unlike residents of D.C. who were supposed to be neutral. Most amazing, all this was open to anyone off the street. Soon I had a place working alongside other young women volunteers, getting purple ink on our hands while tending a big drumlike mimeograph machine churning out Students for Stevenson. It was a newsletter designed to attract volunteers, since no one under twenty-one could vote. I could see there was a clear hierarchy. Male staffers made decisions, and women carried them out, even women old enough to be their mothers. Paid staff were white men, and the few black women and men were volunteers or messengers. Still, this was much more like the real world than my new high school.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  During the first screening of the film, he had a heart attack, and died. The story may be apocryphal, but I can well believe it.) Vian himself points out, somewhat savagely, that I Shall Spit on Your Graves is not a very good novel: he was enraged (and enlightened) by the vogue it had in France. This vogue was due partly to the fact that it was presented as Vian 's translation of an American novel. But this vogue was due also to Vian himself, who was one of the most striking figures of a long ago Saint-Germain des Pres. I am speaking of the immediate post-war years. Paris was then on bicycles: there were few cars, and gas (along with milk, cheese, and butter) was rationed. Juliette Greco was in the process of becoming famous in Le Tabou, and was often to be seen driving an ancient automo bile: she was the envy of the neighborhood. Sydney Bechet and Claude Luter were playing together at Le Vieux Co/om bier, Kenny Clarke was soon to arrive. There were jam sessions over a theater in rue Fontaine which lasted until dawn, and sometimes until noon, at one of which jam sessions I first heard Annie Ross. I was sitting at the Cafe Flore one afternoon when an enor mous car, with baggage piled on the roof, stopped before the cafe. A large woman opened the car door, leaned out, and yelled, "Is Jean-Paul Sartre here today?" The waiter said, 505 506 THE DEVIL FINDS WORK "No, madame," whereupon the car door slammed, and the car drove off. Camus's hour had yet so savagely to strike: and both men eventually disappeared fr om the Flore. The curious, and, on the whole, rather obvious doctrine of l'existentialisme flourished, and the word negritude, though it was beginning to be muttered, had yet to be heard. I Shall Spit on Your GraJJes, and Vian himself, and a tense, even rather terrified wonder about Americans, were part of this ferment: and, fur ther, the straight-laced French (who had not yet heard ofJcan Genet, and who remain absolutely impervious to Rimbaud and Baudelaire) considered the novel pornographic. One of the reasons-perhaps the reason-that the novel was considered pornographic is that it is concerned with the vin dictive sexual aggression of one black man against many white women.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed right. Levin had run up again to his wife to ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and, moreover, to beg her for Christ’s sake to be more careful. The great thing was for her to keep away from the children—they might any minute push against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare that she was not angry with him for going away for two days, and to beg her to be sure to send him a note next morning by a servant on horseback, to write him, if it were but two words only, to let him know that all was well with her. Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big and strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him cheerfully. “Pardon, gentlemen!” he said, running out onto the steps. “Have you put the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesn’t matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!” “Put it with the herd of oxen,” he said to the herdsman, who was waiting for him at the steps with some question. “Excuse me, here comes another villain.” Levin jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken his seat, to meet the carpenter, who came towards the steps with a rule in his hand. “You didn’t come to the counting house yesterday, and now you’re detaining me. Well, what is it?” “Would your honor let me make another turning? It’s only three steps to add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be much more convenient.” “You should have listened to me,” Levin answered with annoyance. “I said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now there’s no setting it right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase.” The point was that in the lodge that was being built the carpenter had spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the space it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was put in place. Now the carpenter wanted, keeping the same staircase, to add three steps. “It will be much better.” “But where’s your staircase coming out with its three steps?” “Why, upon my word, sir,” the carpenter said with a contemptuous smile. “It comes out right at the very spot. It starts, so to speak,” he said, with a persuasive gesture; “it comes down, and comes down, and comes out.” “But three steps will add to the length too ... where is it to come out?”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Consider your origin: ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.’ With this brief speech I made my companions so eager for the voyage, that I could hardly then have checked them; and, turning the poop towards morning, we of our oars made wings for the foolish flight, always gaining on the left. Night already saw the other pole, with all its stars; and ours so low, that it rose not from the ocean floor. Five times the light beneath the Moon had been rekindled and quenched as oft, since we had entered on the arduous passage, when there appeared to us a Mountain, dim with distance; and to me it seemed the highest I had ever seen. We joyed, and soon our joy was turned to grief: for a tempest rose from the new land, and struck the forepart of our ship. Three times it made her whirl round with all the waters; at the fourth, made the poop rise up and prow go down, as pleased Another, till the sea was closed above us.” 1. Probably the Cardinal Nicholas of Prato, who was, in 1304, sent to Florence by Benedict XI to endeavour to reconcile the hostile factions. His efforts proving futile, he laid the city under an interdict; and several local disasters that occurred shortly after, such as the fall of a bridge and a great conflagration, were attributed to the curse of the Church. This interpretation is better than taking Prato as the town ten miles north-west of Florence: for this place appears to have been on friendly terms with Florence. 2. In the summer-time, when the days are longest. 3. Elisha, having seen Elijah carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire, was mocked by little children, who were devoured by bears, as a punishment for having scoffed at him (2 Kings ii. 11, 12, 23, 24). 4. Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Œdipus, King of Thebes, quarrelled over the succession to the throne. This dispute gave rise to the war of the Seven against Thebes, in the course of which the brothers slew each other in single combat. Their hatred continued after death, for, according to Statius (Thebaid xii), the very flame of their funeral pyre was divided. 5. The Wooden Horse, in which were concealed the Greeks who opened the gates of Troy to their countrymen, thus raising the siege And causing Æneas and his followers to leave the city. —Deidamia, daughter of Lycomedes, King of Scyros, at whose court Thetis had left her son Achilles in female disguise, to prevent his taking part in the expedition against Troy (see Purg. ix). After Deidamia had become enamoured of Achilles and borne him a son, Ulysses discovered the hero’s secret and induced him to sail for Troy, whereupon Deidamia died of grief.— The Palladium, a statue of Pallas, was stolen by Ulysses because the fortunes of Troy were supposed to depend on it. 6. There can be no doubt that Dante was ignorant of Greek and that his knowledge of everything relating to Greece was derived from intermediate Latin sources, principally Virgil. Perhaps this is the meaning intended. 7. Gaeta, a town in southern Italy, north of Campania, thus named by Æneas after his nurse, Caïeta. For Circe, see Purg. xiv, note 3. 8. The name of Ulysses’ father was Laertes, that of his wife Penelope, and that of his son Telemachus. 9. This account of Ulysses’ voyage is entirely of Dante’s invention. The “columns of Hercules” (i.e. Mount Abyla in North Africa and Mount Calpe=Gibraltar) were regarded as the western limit of the habitable world. The other pole would indicate that the ship had crossed the equator. The Mountain can be no other than the Mount of Purgatory.

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

  Purely mental, goal-based concepts such as “Things That Can Protect You from Stinging Insects” reveal that categorization cannot be so simple and static. A flyswatter and a house have no perceptual similarities. Goal-based concepts therefore free you from the shackles of physical appearance. When you walk into an entirely new situation, you don’t experience it based solely on how things look, sound, or smell. You experience it based on your goal. So, what’s happening in your brain when you categorize? You are not finding similarities in the world but creating them. When your brain needs a concept, it constructs one on the fly, mixing and matching from a population of instances from your past experience, to best fit your goals in a particular situation. And herein lies a key to understanding how emotions are made. 1 7 Emotion concepts are goal-based concepts. Instances of happiness, for example, are highly variable. You can smile in happiness, sob in happiness, scream in happiness, raise your arms in happiness, clench your fists in happiness, jump up and down doling out high fives in happiness, or even be stunned motionless in happiness. Your eyes might be wide or narrowed; your breathing rapid or slow. You can have the heart-pounding, exciting happiness of winning the lottery or the calm, relaxed happiness of lying on a picnic blanket with your lover. You’ve also perceived many other people as happy in various ways. Altogether, this motley assortment of experiences and perceptions can involve different actions and inner-body changes, they may feel affectively different, and they can include different sights, sounds, and smells. To you, in the moment, however, these sets of physical changes are equivalent for some goal. Perhaps your goal is to feel accepted, to feel pleasure, to achieve an ambition, or to find meaning in life. Your concept of “Happiness” in the moment is centered on such a goal, binding together the diverse instances from your past. Let’s unpack an example. Suppose that you are in an airport waiting for your close friend to arrive for a visit, her first one in a long time. As you stare at the exit gates and await her imminent arrival, your brain is busily issuing thousands of predictions based on your concepts, in milliseconds, all outside of your awareness. After all, there are a host of different emotions you might experience in such a situation. You could experience the happiness of seeing your friend, the anticipation that she’s about to appear, the fear that she won’t arrive, or worry that you might no longer have anything in common.