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 The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  No measurements are as yet performed (it is safe to say none ever will be performed) which can show that it contributes energy to the result. We may then regard attention as a superfluity, or a 'Luxus,' and dogmatize against its causal function with no feeling in our hearts but one of pride that we are applying Occam's razor to an entity that has multiplied itself 'beyond necessity.' But Occam's razor, though a very good rule of method, is certainly no law of nature. The laws of stimulation and of association may well be indispensable actors in all attention's performances, and may even be a good enough 'stock-company' to carry on many performances without aid; and yet they may at times simply form the background for a 'star-performer,' who is no more their 'inert accompaniment' or their 'incidental product' than Hamlet is Horatio's and Ophelia's. Such a star-performer would be the voluntary effort to attend, if it were an original psychic force. Nature may, I say, indulge in these complications; and the conception that she has done so in this case is, I think, just as clear (if not as 'parsimonious' logically) as the conception that she has not. To justify this assertion, let us ask just what the effort to attend would effect if it were an original force. It would deepen and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more quickly away. The delay thus gained might not be more than a second in duration—but that second might be critical; for in the constant rising and falling of considerations in the mind, where two associated systems of them are nearly in equilibrium it is often a matter of but a second more or less of attention at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy the field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be excluded itself by the other. When developed, it may make us act; and that act may seal our doom. When we come to the chapter on the Will, we shall see that the whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on the amount of attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas may receive. But the whole feeling of reality, the whole sting and excitement of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Great meeting you, Silenski,” he said. Though he was compelled to look up to Richard, he did so with his head at an odd and belligerent angle, as though he were looking up in order more clearly to sight down. The hand he extended to Richard with a bulletlike directness suggested also the arrogant limpness of hands which have the power to make or break: only custom prevented the hand from being kissed. “I’ve been hearing tremendous things about you. Maybe we can have a chat a little later.” And his smile was good-natured, open, and boyish. When he was introduced to Ida, he stood stock-still, throwing out his arms as though he were a little boy. “You’re an actress,” he said. “You’ve got to be an actress.” “No,” said Ida, “I’m not.” “But you must be. I’ve been looking for you for years. You’re sensational!” “Thank you, Mr. Ellis,” she said, laughing, “but I am not an actress.” Her laugh was a little strained but Vivaldo could not know whether this was due to nerves or displeasure. People stood in smiling groups around them. Cass stood behind the bar, watching. Ellis smiled conspiratorially and pushed his head a little forward. “What do you do, then? Come on, tell me.” “Well, at the moment,” Ida said, rather pulling herself together, “I work as a waitress.” “A waitress. Well, my wife’s here, so I won’t ask you where you work.” He stepped a little closer to Ida. “But what do you think about while you walk around waiting on tables?” Ida hesitated, and he smiled again, coaxing and tender. “Come on. You can’t tell me that all you want is to get to be head waitress.” Ida laughed. Her lips curved rather bitterly, and she said, “No.” She hesitated and looked toward Vivaldo, and Ellis followed her look. “I’ve sometimes thought of singing. That’s what I’d like to do.” “Aha!” he cried, triumphantly, “I knew I’d get it out of you.” He pulled a card out of his breast pocket. “When you get ready to make the break, and let it be soon, you come and see me. Don’t you forget.” “You won’t remember my name, Mr. Ellis.” She said it lightly and the look with which she measured Ellis gave Vivaldo no clue as to what was going on in her mind. “Your name,” he said, “is Ida Scott. Right?” “Right.” “Well, I never forget names or faces. Try me.” “That’s true,” said his wife, “he never forgets a name or a face. I don’t know how he does it.” “I,” said Vivaldo, “am not an actress.” Ellis looked startled, then he laughed. “You could have fooled me,” he said. He took Vivaldo by the elbow. “Come and have a drink with me. Please.” “I don’t know why I said that. I was half-kidding.” “But only half. What’s your name?” “Vivaldo. Vivaldo Moore.” “And you’re not an actress—?” “I’m a writer. Unpublished.” “Aha! You’re working on something?” “A novel.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  For the first half hour all went according to program. Charlie and I moved the cattle together and drove them over the waves of prairie towards the river; it all seemed as easy as eating and we had begun to push the cattle into a fast walk when suddenly there was a shot in front and a sort of stampede! At once Charlie shot out on the left as I shot out on the right and using our whips, we quickly got the herd into motion again, the rear ranks forcing the front ones on; the cattle were soon pressed into a shuffling trot and the difficulty seemed overcome. Just at that moment I saw two or three bright flames half a mile away on the other side of Charlie and suddenly I heard the zip of a bullet pass my own head and turning, saw pretty plainly a man riding fifty yards away from me. I took very careful aim at his horse and fired and was delighted to see horse and man come down and disappear. I paid no further attention to him and kept on forcing the pace of the cattle. But Charlie was very busily engaged for two or three minutes because the fusillade was kept up from behind till he was joined by Bent and shortly afterwards by Bob. We were all now driving the cattle as hard as they could go, straight towards the ford. The shots behind us continued and even grew more frequent, but we were not further molested till three quarters of an hour later we reached the Rio Grande and began urging the cattle across the ford. There progress was necessarily slow. We could scarcely have got across had it not been that about the middle Bob came up and made his whip and voice a perfect terror to the beasts in the rear. When we got them out on the other side I began to turn them westwards towards our wooded knoll, but the next moment Bob was beside me shouting—“Straight ahead, straight ahead; they are following us and we shall have to fight. You get on with the herd always straight north and I’ll bring Charlie back to the bank so as to hold ’em off.” Boylike, I said I would rather go and fight, but he said: “You go on. If Charlie killed, no matter. I want you.” And I had perforce to do what the little devil ordered. When Texan cattle have been brought up together the largest herd can be driven like a small bunch. They have their leader and they follow him religiously and so one man can drive a thousand head with very little trouble. For two or three miles I kept them on the trot and then I let them gradually get down to a walk. I did not want to lose any more of them; some fat cows had already died in their tracks through being driven so fast.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Why do you smile?” he asked. “Because, sir, pay like water tends to find its level!” “What the devil d’ye mean by its level?” “The level,” I went on, “is surely the market price; sooner or later it’ll rise towards that and I can wait.” His keen grey eyes suddenly bored into me. “I begin to think you’re much older, than you look, as my nephew here tells me,” he said. “Put yourself down at a hundred a month for the present and in a little while we’ll perhaps find the ‘level,’” and he smiled. I thanked him and went out to my work. It seemed as if incidents were destined to crowd my life.... A day or so after this the taciturn steward, Payne, came and asked me if I’d go out with him to dinner and some theatre or other? I had not had a day off in five or six months so I said “Yes.” He gave me a great dinner at a famous French restaurant (I forget the name now) and wanted me to drink champagne. But I had already made up my mind not to touch any intoxicating liquor till I was twenty one and so I told him simply that I had taken the pledge. He beat about the bush a great deal, but at length said that as I was bookkeeper in place of Curtis, he hoped we should get along as he and Curtis had done. I asked him just what he meant but he wouldn’t speak plainly which excited my suspicions. A day or two afterwards I got into talk with a butcher in another quarter of the town and asked him what he would supply seventy pounds of beef and fifty pounds of mutton for, daily for a hotel; he gave me a price so much below the price Payne was paying that my suspicions were confirmed. I was tremendously excited. In my turn I invited Payne to dinner and led up to the subject. At once he said “of course there’s a ‘rake-off’ and if you’ll hold in with me, I’ll give you a third as I gave Curtis. The ‘rake-off’ don’t hurt anyone,” he went on, “for I buy below market-price.” Of course I was all ears and eager interest when he admitted that the ‘rake-off’ was on everything he bought and amounted to about 20 per cent. of the cost. By this he changed his wages from two hundred dollars a month into something like two hundred dollars a week.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Stackpole told the Head that I would be a good Shylock: Fawcett to my amazement didn’t want to play the Jew: he found it difficult even to learn the part, and finally it was given to me. I was particularly elated for I felt sure I could make a great hit. One day my sympathy with the bullied got me a friend. The Vicar’s son Edwards was a nice boy of fourteen who had grown rapidly and was not strong. A brute of sixteen in the Upper Fifth was twisting his arm and hitting him on the writhen muscle and Edwards was trying hard not to cry. “Leave him alone, Johnson”, I said, “why do you bully?” “You ought to have a taste of it”, he cried, letting Edwards go, however. “Don’t try it on if you’re wise”, I retorted. “Pat would like us to speak to him”, he sneered and turned away. I shrugged my shoulders. Edwards thanked me warmly for rescuing him and I asked him to come for a walk. He accepted and our friendship began, a friendship memorable for bringing me one novel and wonderful experience. The Vicarage was a large house with a good deal of ground about it. Edwards had some sisters but they were too young to interest me; the French governess, on the other hand, Mlle. Lucille, was very attractive with her black eyes and hair and quick, vivacious manner. She was of medium height and not more than eighteen. I made up to her at once and tried to talk French with her from the beginning. She was very kind to me and we got on together at once. She was lonely, I suppose, and I began well by telling her she was the prettiest girl in the whole place and the nicest. She translated nicest, I remember, as la plus chic. The next half-holiday Edwards went into the house for something. I told her I wanted a kiss, and she said: “You’re only a boy, mais gentil”, and she kissed me. When my lips dwelt on hers, she took my head in her hands, pushed it away and looked at me with surprise. “You are a strange boy”, she said musingly. The next holiday I spent at the Vicarage. I gave her a little French love-letter I had copied from a book in the school library and I was delighted when she read it and nodded at me, smiling, and tucked it away in her bodice: “near her heart” I said to myself, but I had no chance even of a kiss for Edwards always hung about. But late one afternoon he was called away by his mother for something, and my opportunity came.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “What’s the matter!” I asked. “Matter!” he repeated scornfully, “I don’t believe there’s a place in the hull God d—d town big enough to show our double-crown Bills! Not one: not a place. And I meant to spend ten thousand dollars here in advertising the great Hatherly Minstrels, the best show on earth: they’ll be here for a hull fortnight and by God, you won’t take my money: you don’t want money in this dead-and-alive hole!” The fellow amused me: he was so convinced and outspoken that I took to him. As luck would have it I had been at the University till late that day and had not gone to the Gregory’s for dinner: I was healthily hungry: I asked Mr. Dingwall whether he had dined? “No, Sir”, was his reply, “Can one dine in this place?” “I guess so”, I replied, “if you’ll do me the honor of being my guest, I’ll take you to a good porterhouse steak at least” and I took him across to the Eldridge House, a short distance away, leaving a young friend, Will Thomson, a doctor’s son whom I knew, in my place. I gave Dingwall the best dinner I could and drew him out: he was, indeed, “a live wire” as he phrased it and suddenly inspired by his optimism the idea came to me that if he would deposit the ten thousand dollars he had talked of, I could put up hoardings on all the vacant lots in Massachusetts Street and make a good thing out of exhibiting the bills of the various travelling shows that visited Lawrence. It wasn’t the first time I had been asked to help advertise this or that entertainment. I put forward my idea timidly, yet Dingwall took it up at once: “if you can find good security, or a good surety”, he said, “I’ll leave five thousand dollars with you: I’ve no right to, but I like you and I’ll risk it.” I took him across to Mr. Rankin, the banker, who listened to me benevolently and finally said: “Yes”, he’d go surety that I’d exhibit a thousand bills for a fortnight all down the chief street on hoardings to be erected at once, on condition that Mr. Dingwall paid five thousand dollars in advance, and he gave Mr. Dingwall a letter to that effect and then told me pleasantly he held five thousand and some odd dollars at my service.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  chamber; a lesson which he failed neither to remember nor to practise. To prevent any suspicion on the king's part, he made a pretence of a journey to obtain leave of absence for some days, and actually took his departure from the court, but quitted his retinue at the first stage, and returned at night to receive the favours which the countess had promised him. She fulfilled her promise, and he was so satisfied with his reception that he was content to remain seven or eight days shut up in a garde- robe, living on nothing but aphrodisiacs. During the time he was thus confined, one of his comrades, named Duracier, came to make love to the countess. She went through the same ceremonies with this second wooer as with the first ; spoke to him at first sternly and haughtily, softened to him only by de- grees ; and on the day she let the first prisoner go, she put the second into his place. Whilst he was there a third came, named Valbenon, and had the same treat, ment as his two predecessors. After these three came two or three others, who also had part in that sweet cap- tivity ; and so it went on for a long while, the intrigue being so nicely conducted that not one of the whole number knew anything of the adventures of the rest. They heard plenty of talk, indeed, of the passion of every one of them for the countess, but there was not one of them but believed himself to be the only favoured lover, and laughed in his sleeve at his disap- pointed rivals. One day, all these gentlemen being met together at an entertainment, at which they made very good cheer, they began to talk about their adventures, and the prisons in which they had been during the wars, Val- benon, who was not the man to keep a secret which flattered his vanity, said to the others, " I know in what He returned at night to meet the Counters. Photographed from Life. Copyright, 1902, by D. Trenor. Fifth day \ QVEEN OF NAVA RRE. 4I5 prisons you have been ; but as for me, I have been in one for sake of which I will speak well of prisons in general as long as I live, for I don't believe there is a pleasure in the world equal to that of being a prisoner." Astillon. who had been the first prisoner, at once suspected what prison he meant. " Under what gaoler," he asked, " were you so well treated, that you were so fond of your prison ? " " Be the gaoler who he may," replied Valbenon, " the prison was so agreeable that I was very loth to leave it so soon, for I never was better treated or more com fortable than there."

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  3I have hunted butterflies in various climes and disguises: as a pretty boy in knickerbockers and sailor cap; as a lanky cosmopolitan expatriate in flannel bags and beret; as a fat hatless old man in shorts. Most of my cabinets have shared the fate of our Vyra house. Those in our town house and the small addendum I left in the Yalta Museum have been destroyed, no doubt, by carpet beetles and other pests. A collection of South European stuff that I started in exile vanished in Paris during World War Two. All my American captures from 1940 to 1960 (several thousands of specimens including great rarities and types) are in the Mus. of Comp. Zoology, the Am. Nat. Hist. Mus., and the Cornell Univ. Mus. of Entomology, where they are safer than they would be in Tomsk or Atomsk. Incredibly happy memories, quite comparable, in fact, to those of my Russian boyhood, are associated with my research work at the MCZ, Cambridge, Mass. (1941–1948). No less happy have been the many collecting trips taken almost every summer, during twenty years, through most of the states of my adopted country. In Jackson Hole and in the Grand Canyon, on the mountain slopes above Telluride, Colo., and on a celebrated pine barren near Albany, N.Y., dwell, and will dwell, in generations more numerous than editions, the butterflies I have described as new. Several of my finds have been dealt with by other workers; some have been named after me. One of these, Nabokov’s Pug (Eupithecia nabokovi McDunnough), which I boxed one night in 1943 on a picture window of James Laughlin’s Alta Lodge in Utah, fits most philosophically into the thematic spiral that began in a wood on the Oredezh around 1910—or perhaps even earlier, on that Nova Zemblan river a century and a half ago. Few things indeed have I known in the way of emotion or appetite, ambition or achievement, that could surpass in richness and strength the excitement of entomological exploration. From the very first it had a great many intertwinkling facets. One of them was the acute desire to be alone, since any companion, no matter how quiet, interfered with the concentrated enjoyment of my mania. Its gratification admitted of no compromise or exception. Already when I was ten, tutors and governesses knew that the morning was mine and cautiously kept away. In this connection, I remember the visit of a schoolmate, a boy of whom I was very fond and with whom I had excellent fun. He arrived one summer night—in 1913, I think—from a town some twenty-five miles away. His father had recently perished in an accident, the family was ruined and the stouthearted lad, not being able to afford the price of a railway ticket, had bicycled all those miles to spend a few days with me.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "I have a vivid recollection of the delight I felt in watching the different scenes we passed through, observing the various phases of nature, both animate and inanimate; though we did not, owing to my infirmity, engage in conversation. It was during those delightful rides, some two or three years before my initiation into the rudiments of written language, that I began to ask myself the question: How came the world into being? When this question occurred to my mind, I set myself to thinking it over a long time. My curiosity was awakened as to what was the origin of human life in its first appearance upon the earth, and of vegetable life as well, and also the cause of the existence of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. "I remember at one time when my eye fell upon a very large old stump which we happened to pass in one of our rides, I asked myself, 'Is it possible that the first man that ever came into the world rose out of that stump? But that stump is only a remnant of a once noble magnificent tree, and how came that tree? Why, it came only by beginning to grow out of the ground just like those little trees now coming up.' And I dismissed from my mind, as an absurd idea, the connection between the origin of man and a decaying old stump. . . . "I have no recollection of what it was that first suggested to me the question as to the origin of things. I had before this time gained ideas of the descent from parent to child, of the propagation of animals, and of the production of plants from seeds. The question that occurred to my mind was: whence came the first man, the first animal, and the first plant, at the remotest distance of time, before which there was no man, no animal, no plant; since I knew they all had a beginning and an end. "It is impossible to state the exact order in which these different questions arose, i.e., about men, animals, plants, the earth, sun, moon, etc.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  He usually stayed in the "Klub" or in the Ratskeller to have breakfast, was seen somewhere in the streets at 4 o'clock every morning, and often went on business trips to Hamburg. Above all, however, he was an avid theater lover, never missed a performance and took a personal interest in the performing staff. Demoiselle Meyer-de la Grange was the last of the young artists he had decorated with diamonds in recent years... He usually stayed in the "Klub" or in the Ratskeller to have breakfast, was seen somewhere in the streets at 4 o'clock every morning, and often went on business trips to Hamburg. Above all, however, he was an avid theater lover, never missed a performance and took a personal interest in the performing staff. Demoiselle Meyer-de la Grange was the last of the young artists he had decorated with diamonds in recent years... To get to the point, the young lady as Walter Tell - she also wore her diamond brooch in this role - looked completely very lovingly and acted so touchingly that tears came to the eyes of the pupil Buddenbrook from inner enthusiasm, indeed that he allowed himself to be carried away to a course of action which can only result from an overly strong feeling. During a break he bought a bouquet in the flower shop across the street for 1 mark 8½ shillings, with which this fourteen-year-old boy with his big nose and small deep-set eyes marched his way to the stage and, since no one stopped him, in front of a cloakroom door on Miss Meyer- de la Grange, who was in talks with Consul Peter Döhlmann. The Consul almost fell against the wall laughing when he saw Christian approaching with the bouquet; the new suitier, however, made his best compliment to Walter Tell, handed him the flowers, "Miss, how beautifully you played!" "Now look at this Krischan Buddenbrook!" screamed Consul Dohlmann with his broad accent. But Miss Meyer-de la Grange raised her pretty eyebrows and asked: "Son of Consul Buddenbrook?" Then she stroked her new suitor's cheek with much benevolence. This was the fact that Peter Döhlmann reported on the same evening in the "Klub", which became known in the city with incredible speed and even came to the attention of the school director, who in turn made it the subject of a conversation with Consul Buddenbrook. How did he take it? He was less angry than overwhelmed and defeated... When he informed the consul he was sitting in the landscape room almost broken. »This is our son, this is how he develops…« "Jean, my God, your father would have laughed at that... And tell my parents about it on Thursday, Papa will have a great time..." Here the consul protested. "Ha! Yes! I'm sure he'll enjoy himself, Bethsy! He will be glad that his frivolous Blood and its impious tendencies live on not only in Justus, the... Suitier, but obviously also in one of his grandsons...

• From The Hours (1998)

  What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run. She, Clarissa Vaughan, an ordinary person (at this age, why bother trying to deny it?), has flowers to buy and a party to give. As Clarissa steps down from the vestibule her shoe makes gritty contact with the red-brown, mica-studded stone of the first stair. She is fifty-two, just fifty-two, and in almost unnaturally good health. She feels every bit as good as she did that day in Wellfleet, at the age of eighteen, stepping out through the glass doors into a day very much like this one, fresh and almost painfully clear, rampant with growth. There were dragonflies zigzagging among the cattails. There was a grassy smell sharpened by pine sap. Richard came out behind her, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, “Why, hello, Mrs. Dalloway.” The name Mrs. Dalloway had been Richard’s idea—a conceit tossed off one drunken dormitory night as he assured her that Vaughan was not the proper name for her. She should, he’d said, be named after a great figure in literature, and while she’d argued for Isabel Archer or Anna Karenina, Richard had insisted that Mrs. Dalloway was the singular and obvious choice. There was the matter of her existing first name, a sign too obvious to ignore, and, more important, the larger question of fate. She, Clarissa, was clearly not destined to make a disastrous marriage or fall under the wheels of a train. She was destined to charm, to prosper. So Mrs. Dalloway it was and would be. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Mrs. Dalloway said that morning to Richard. He answered, “Beauty is a whore, I like money better.” He preferred wit. Clarissa, being the youngest, the only woman, felt she could afford a certain sentimentality. If it was late June, she and Richard would have been lovers. It would have been almost a full month since Richard left Louis’s bed (Louis the farm-boy fantasy, the living embodiment of lazy-eyed carnality) and came into hers. “Well, I happen to like beauty,” she’d said. She’d lifted his hand from her shoulder, bit down on the tip of his index finger, a little harder than she’d meant to. She was eighteen, renamed. She could do what she liked.

• From The Hours (1998)

  It is a party for the not-yet-dead; for the relatively undamaged; for those who for mysterious reasons have the fortune to be alive. It is, in fact, great good fortune. Julia says, “Do you think I should make a plate for Richard’s mother?” “No,” Clarissa says. “I’ll go get her.” She returns to the living room, to Laura Brown. Laura smiles wanly at Clarissa—who could possibly know what she thinks or feels? Here she is, then; the woman of wrath and sorrow, of pathos, of dazzling charm; the woman in love with death; the victim and torturer who haunted Richard’s work. Here, right here in this room, is the beloved; the traitor. Here is an old woman, a retired librarian from Toronto, wearing old woman’s shoes. And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her. “Come in, Mrs. Brown,” she says. “Everything’s ready.” Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa fills a vase with a dozen of the yellow roses. She takes it into the living room, puts it on the coffee table, steps back, and tries it several inches to the left. She will give Richard the best party she can manage. She will try to create something temporal, even trivial, but perfect in its way. She will see to it that he is surrounded by people who genuinely respect and admire him (why did she ask Walter Hardy, how could she be so weak?); she will make sure he doesn’t get overtired. It is her tribute, her gift. What more can she offer him? She is on her way back to the kitchen when the intercom buzzes. Who would this be? A delivery she’s forgotten about, probably, or the caterer dropping something off. She presses the button for the speaker. “Who is it?” she says. “Louis. It’s Louis.” “Louis? Really?” Clarissa buzzes him in. Of course it’s Louis. No one else, certainly no New Yorker, would just ring the bell without calling first. No one does that. She opens the door and goes out into the hall with a great and almost dizzying sense of anticipation, a feeling so strong and so peculiar, so unknown under any other circumstances, that she decided some time ago to simply name it after Louis. It’s that Louis feeling, and through it run traces of devotion and guilt, attraction, a distinct element of stage fright, and a pure untarnished hope, as if every time Louis appears he might, finally, be bringing a piece of news so good it’s impossible to anticipate its extent or even its precise nature.

• From The Hours (1998)

  He nods gravely, judiciously. He seems unconvinced about something. She says, “We’re going to make him the best cake he’s ever seen. The very best. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?” Again, Richie nods. He waits to see what will happen next. Laura watches him through the meandering vine of cigarette smoke. She will not go upstairs, and return to her book. She will remain. She will do all that’s required, and more. Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa carries her armload of flowers out into Spring Street. She imagines Barbara still in the cool dimness on the far side of the door, continuing to live in what Clarissa can’t help thinking of now as the past (it has to do, somehow, with Barbara’s sorrow, and the racks of ribbons on the back wall) while she herself walks into the present, all this: the Chinese boy careening by on a bicycle; the number 281 written in gold on dark glass; the scattering of pigeons with feet the color of pencil erasers (a bird had flown in through the open window of her fourth-grade classroom, violent, dreadful); Spring Street; and here she is with a huge bouquet of flowers. She will stop by Richard’s apartment to see how he’s doing (it’s useless to call, he never answers), but first she goes and stands shyly, expectantly, not too close to the trailer from which the famous head emerged. A small crowd is gathered there, mostly tourists, and Clarissa positions herself beside two young girls, one with hair dyed canary yellow and the other with hair dyed platinum. Clarissa wonders if they intended to so strongly suggest the sun and the moon. Sun says to Moon, “It was Meryl Streep, definitely Meryl Streep.” Clarissa is excited, despite herself. She was right. There is a surprisingly potent satisfaction in knowing that her vision was shared by another. “No way,” says Moon. “It was Susan Sarandon.” It was not, Clarissa thinks, Susan Sarandon. It may have been Vanessa Redgrave but it was certainly not Susan Sarandon. “No,” says Sun, “it was Streep. Trust me.” “It was not Meryl Streep.” “It was. It fucking was.” Clarissa stands guiltily, holding her flowers, hoping the star

• From The Hours (1998)

  When she reaches the Quadrant (the butcher and greengrocer have already rolled up their awnings) she turns toward the rail station. She will go, she thinks, to London; she will simply go to London, like Nelly on her errand, although Virginia’s errand will be the trip itself, the half hour on the train, the disembarking at Paddington, the possibility of walking down a street into another street, and another after that. What a lark! What a plunge! It seems that she can survive, she can prosper, if she has London around her; if she disappears for a while into the enormity of it, brash and brazen now under a sky empty of threat, all the uncurtained windows (here a woman’s grave profile, there the crown of a carved chair), the traffic, men and women going lightly by in evening clothes; the smells of wax and gasoline, of perfume, as someone, somewhere (on one of these broad avenues, in one of these white, porticoed houses), plays a piano; as horns bleat and dogs bay, as the whole raucous carnival turns and turns, blazing, shimmering; as Big Ben strikes the hours, which fall in leaden circles over the partygoers and the omnibuses, over stone Queen Victoria seated before the Palace on her shelves of geraniums, over the parks that lie sunken in their shadowed solemnity behind black iron fences.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  After But Tische, unable to contain herself, pulled the Consul aside by the arm and into a window niche. 'Oh God, Tom! when you become one... when our coat of arms goes into the war room in the town hall... I'll die of joy! I'm falling down and dead, you shall see!" 'There, dear Tony! Now a little more poise and dignity, if I may ask you! You don't usually do that, do you? Am I walking around like Henning Kurz? We're still good without 'Senator'... And hopefully you'll survive, one way or the other." And the agitation, the deliberations, the battles of opinion continued. Consul Peter Döhlmann, the suitier, with his completely run-down business, which only existed in name, and his 27-year-old daughter, whose inheritance he ate for breakfast, took part in it by attending a dinner given by Thomas Buddenbrook and a similar one , which Hermann Hagenstrom put on, always called the innkeeper in question "Herr Senator" in a loud, noisy voice. But Siegismund Gosch, the old broker Gosch, went about like a roaring lion and promised to outright strangle anyone who was not willing to vote for Consul Buddenbrook. 'Consul Buddenbrook, gentlemen... ha! what a man! I stood by his father's side when he tamed the rage of the unleashed mob with one word in '48... If there were justice on earth, his father, his father's father, should have belonged to the Senate..." Basically, however, it was not so much Consul Buddenbrook himself, whose personality set Herr Gosch on fire, but rather the young woman Consul, née Arnoldsen. Not that the agent ever exchanged a word with her. He did not belong to the circle of rich merchants, did not dine at their tables and did not exchange visits with them. But, as already mentioned, Gerda Buddenbrook had not appeared in town as soon as the sinister broker's gaze, always longing for the extraordinary, had spotted her. With a sure instinct he had recognized at once that this appearance was suitable to give his unsatisfied existence a little more content, and he had given himself up body and soul as a slave to her, who hardly knew him by name. Reserved lady, to whom no one introduced him, like the tiger the tamer: with the same grim expression, the same treacherous, humble attitude in which he took off his Jesuit hat in front of her in the street, without her expecting it ... This world of mediocrity offered no way for him to commit an act of dreadful wickedness for this woman, for which he, hunchbacked, gloomy and cold, wrapped in his cloak, would have answered with devilish indifference! Her tedious habits would not allow him to elevate this woman to an imperial throne through murder, crime, and bloody subterfuges.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He dropped the blind and turned back into the room. The telephone rang. He stared at it sourly, thinking More revelations, and picked up the receiver. His agent, Harman, shouted in his ear. “Hello there—Eric? I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning, but you’re a pretty hard man to reach. I was thinking of sending you a telegram.” “Am I hard to find? I’ve just been staying home, it seems to me, curled up with that lovely script.” “Don’t shit me, sweetheart. I know you’ve got a hard on for that play, but it’s not that big. You just haven’t been answering your phone. Listen——” “Yes?” “About your screen test—you got a pencil?” “Wait a minute.” He found a pencil on his desk, and a scrap of paper, and returned to the phone. “Go ahead, Harman.” “You’re not going to the Coast. It’s fixed up for you to do it here. You know where the Allied Studios are?” “Yes, naturally.” “Well, it’s set for Wednesday morning. Allied, at ten. Listen. Can you have lunch with me tomorrow?” “Yes. I’d love to.” “Good. I’ll fill you in on all the details. Downey’s okay?” “Right. What time?” “One o’clock. Now—you still with me?” “All ears, baby.” “Well, we finally got that meshugena of a broken-down movie star in town and the rehearsal date is definitely set for a week from tomorrow.” “Next week?” “Right.” “Wonderful. God, I’ll be so glad to be working again.” Vivaldo came out of the bathroom, seeming unutterably huge in his blank, white nakedness, and walked into the kitchen. He looked critically at the coffee pot, came back into the room, and threw himself into the bed. “You’re going to be working from now on, Eric. You’re on your way, sweetheart; you’re going to go right over the top, and, baby, I couldn’t be more delighted.” “Thanks, Harman. I certainly hope you’re right.” “I’ve been in the business longer than you’ve been in the world, Eric. I know a winner when I see one and I’ve never made a mistake, not about that. You be good now, I’ll see you tomorrow. Good-bye.” “Good-bye.” He put down the receiver, filled with a fugitive excitement. “Good news?” “That was my agent. We’re going into rehearsal next week and we’re doing my screen test Wednesday.” Then his triumph blazed up in him and he turned to Vivaldo. “Isn’t that fantastic?” Vivaldo watched him, smiling. “I think we ought to drink to that, baby.” He watched as Eric picked up the empty bottle from the floor. “Ah. Too sad.” “But I’ve got a little bourbon,” Eric said. “Crazy.” Eric poured two bourbons and lowered the flame under the coffee. “Bourbon’s really much more fitting,” he said, happily, “since that’s what they drink in the South, where I come from.” He sat on the bed again, and they touched glasses. “To your first Oscar,” said Vivaldo. Eric laughed. “That’s touching. To your Nobel prize.”

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  "But now my daughter is to be informed!" she added, getting up and walking towards the embroidered bell pull that hung next to the glass door. "Yes, Himmi Sacrament, let's be Freid ha'm!" cried Mr. Permaneder and turned towards the door together with his armchair. The consul ordered the girl: "Please Madame Grünlich down, dear." Then she returned to the sofa, whereupon Herr Permaneder turned his chair around again. "Will ia Freid' ha'm..." he repeated absently, looking at the wallpaper, the large Sevrest inkwell on the bureau, and the furniture. Then he said several times, "It's a Kreiz!... It's just a Kreiz!..." rubbing his knees and sighing heavily for no apparent reason. This roughly filled the time up to Ms. Grünlich's appearance. She had definitely done a little toilet, put on a light waist, arranged her hairdo. Her face was fresher and prettier than ever. The tip of her tongue played mischievously in the corner of her mouth... She had hardly entered when Herr Permaneder sprang up and met her with tremendous enthusiasm. Everything about him moved. He grabbed both her hands, shook them and called out: "Yes, Frau Grünlich! Yes, hello to Eana! Yes, how did it go in the meantime? what did it all do up there? Jessas, have a foolish freedom! Are you still thinking about the city of Munich and our mountains? Oh my, if we had fun, is it valid?! Kruzi Turks no! and here we go again! Now who would have believed that..." Tony, for his part, greeted him with great vivacity, pulled out a chair, and began chatting with him about their weeks in Munich... Conversation now flowed unhindered and the consul followed her, nodding indulgently and encouragingly to Herr Permaneder, translating this or that of his phrases into written German, and then leaning back on the sofa each time, content that they understood. Herr Permaneder also had to explain to Frau Antonien again the reason for his being here, but he obviously attached so little importance to this "business" with the brewery that it seemed as if he really had no business in the city. On the other hand, he inquired with interest about the second daughter and the sons of the consul and loudly regretted the absence of Klara and Christian, since he "never had the desire" to get to know "the gonze family" ... He was extremely vague about the length of his stay in the city; but when the consul remarked: "I'm expecting my son for breakfast at any moment, Mr. Permaneder; will you give us the pleasure of having a sandwich with us...?' he accepted the invitation, even before it was spoken, with as willingness as if he had been waiting for it. The consul came. He had found the breakfast room empty and appeared in his office coat, in a hurry, a little tired and overwhelmed, to call for a quick bite to eat...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  One sees sailors with bare, tattooed necks, their hands in wide, low trouser pockets, grain-bearers with their blouses and breeches of shiny black linen, and their incomparably staid facial expressions; carters who have climbed down from their piled sacks of grain to await the outcome of the election, whip in hand; Maids with neckerchiefs, aprons and thick, striped skirts, the small white cap on the back of their heads and the large basket with handles on their bare arms; fish and vegetable women with their straw boats; even a couple of pretty gardener girls with Dutch bonnets, short skirts, and long, puckered white sleeves protruding from the brightly embroidered bodice... In between, townsfolk, local shopkeepers, Behind two workers with hard sailor beards, chewing tobacco, stands a lady who is shaking her head in great excitement turns back to be able to see between the shoulders of the two burly fellows at the town hall. She is wearing a sort of long evening coat trimmed with brown fur, which she is holding together with both hands, and her face is completely veiled in a thick brown veil. Her rubber shoes scuttled restlessly around in the snowy water... "By God, it wasn't hey, Herr Kurz," says one worker to the other. »No, you scumbag, I don't care anymore about it. All öwer Hagenström, Kistenmaker and Buddenbrook are now in agreement.« "Je, an nu is dat de Frag', wekker von de dre die annern öwer is." "Yeah, you'll do that again." »Any idea? Glad you chose Hagenstrom." »Hey, you Klaukscheeter … talk about it and the Düwel.« Then he spits his tobacco down in front of him, because the crowd doesn't allow him to throw it out in a bow, pulls his trousers up higher under the waist belt with both hands and continues: "Hagenstrom, that's such a glutton, and gets it Not even air through the nose, it's so fat hey ... No, where my Mr. Kurz dat nu wedder not daut, now I'm standing in front of Buddenbrook. That's a fixed Kierl ..." »Yeah, you'll bless that; öäwer Hagenström is all veel rieker …« “So it doesn't matter. That's out of the question." »And then Buddenbrook isn't so hellish with their cuffs and their ties and their playing snurrboart … Hest em go? Hey, there's no better beet than a bird ..." "Hey, you dömelklaas, that's not what we're talking about." "Hey, hey, you want a sister who came from two men wedder aff?" ... The lady in the evening coat trembles ... »Yeah, that's a Saak. Öäwer we don't know anything about it, and then the Kunsel can't do anything about it." No, isn't it?! thinks the lady in the veil, clasping her hands under her coat... Isn't that so? Thank god! "And then," adds the man who is standing by Buddenbrook, "and then the civil servant Överdieck Gevadder stood by his son; that wants something, wants to tell you..." Not true? thinks the lady. Yes, thank God, it worked!...

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  I explained to my brother a wicked plan and persuaded him to accept it. As soon as we came back from that walk, we left Mademoiselle puffing on the steps of the vestibule and dashed indoors, giving her the impression that we were about to conceal ourselves in some remote room. Actually, we trotted on till we reached the other side of the house, and then, through a veranda, emerged into the garden again. The above-mentioned Great Dane was in the act of fussily adjusting himself to a nearby snowdrift, but while deciding which hindleg to lift, he noticed us and at once joined us at a joyful gallop. The three of us followed a fairly easy trail and after plodding through deeper snow, reached the road that led to the village. Meanwhile the sun had set. Dusk came with uncanny suddenness. My brother declared he was cold and tired, but I urged him on and finally made him ride the dog (the only member of the party to be still enjoying himself). We had gone more than two miles, and the moon was fantastically shiny, and my brother, in perfect silence, had begun to fall, every now and then, from his mount when Dmitri with a lantern overtook us and led us home. “Giddy-eh, giddy-eh?” Mademoiselle was frantically shouting from the porch. I brushed past her without a word. My brother burst into tears, and gave himself up. The Great Dane, whose name was Turka, returned to his interrupted affairs in connection with serviceable and informative snowdrifts around the house.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  When, on such journeys as these, the train changed its pace to a dignified amble and all but grazed housefronts and shop signs, as we passed through some big German town, I used to feel a twofold excitement, which terminal stations could not provide. I saw a city, with its toylike trams, linden trees and brick walls, enter the compartment, hobnob with the mirrors, and fill to the brim the windows on the corridor side. This informal contact between train and city was one part of the thrill. The other was putting myself in the place of some passer-by who, I imagined, was moved as I would be moved myself to see the long, romantic, auburn cars, with their intervestibular connecting curtains as black as bat wings and their metal lettering copper-bright in the low sun, unhurriedly negotiate an iron bridge across an everyday thoroughfare and then turn, with all windows suddenly ablaze, around a last block of houses. There were drawbacks to those optical amalgamations. The wide-windowed dining car, a vista of chaste bottles of mineral water, miter-folded napkins, and dummy chocolate bars (whose wrappers—Cailler, Kohler, and so forth—enclosed nothing but wood), would be perceived at first as a cool haven beyond a consecution of reeling blue corridors; but as the meal progressed toward its fatal last course, and more and more dreadfully one equilibrist with a full tray would back against our table to let another equilibrist pass with another full tray, I would keep catching the car in the act of being recklessly sheathed, lurching waiters and all, in the landscape, while the landscape itself went through a complex system of motion, the daytime moon stubbornly keeping abreast of one’s plate, the distant meadows opening fanwise, the near trees sweeping up on invisible swings toward the track, a parallel rail line all at once committing suicide by anastomosis, a bank of nictitating grass rising, rising, rising, until the little witness of mixed velocities was made to disgorge his portion of omelette aux confitures de fraises. It was at night, however, that the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Européens lived up to the magic of its name. From my bed under my brother’s bunk (Was he asleep? Was he there at all?), in the semidarkness of our compartment, I watched things, and parts of things, and shadows, and sections of shadows cautiously moving about and getting nowhere. The woodwork gently creaked and crackled. Near the door that led to the toilet, a dim garment on a peg and, higher up, the tassel of the blue, bivalved nightlight swung rhythmically. It was hard to correlate those halting approaches, that hooded stealth, with the headlong rush of the outside night, which I knew was rushing by, spark-streaked, illegible.