Fear

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 Divine Comedy (1950)

  But as Malebolge all hangs towards the entrance of the lowest well, the site of every valley imports that one side rises and the other descends; we, however, came at length to the point from which the last stone breaks off. The breath was so exhausted from my lungs, when I was up, that I could no farther; nay, seated me at my first arrival. “Now it behoves thee thus to free thyself from sloth,” said the Master: “for sitting on down, or under coverlet, men come not into fame; without which whoso consumes his life, leaves such vestige of himself on earth, as smoke in air or foam in water; and therefore rise! conquer thy panting with the soul, that conquers every battle, if with its heavy body it sinks not down. A longer ladder must be climbed: to have quitted these is not enough; if thou understandest me, now act so that it may profit thee.” I then rose, showing myself better furnished with breath than I felt, and said: “Go on; for I am strong and confident.” We took our way up the cliff, which was rugged, narrow, and difficult, and greatly steeper than the former. Speaking I went, that I might not seem faint; whereat a voice came from the other fosse, unsuitable for forming words. I know not what it said, though I already was on the ridge of the arch which crosses there; but he who spake seemed moved to anger. I had turned myself downwards; but my living eyes could not reach the bottom for the darkness; wherefore I: “Master, see that thou get to the other belt, and let us dismount the wall: for as I hear from hence and do not understand, so I see down and distinguish nothing.” “Other answer I give thee not,” he said, “than the deed: for a fit request should be followed with the work in silence.” We went down the bridge, at the head where it joins with the eighth bank; and then the chasm was manifest to me: and I saw within it a fearful throng of serpents, and of so strange a look, that even now the recollection scares my blood. Let Libya boast no longer with its sand; for, though it engenders chelydri, jaculi and pareæ, and cenchres with amphisbæna, plagues so numerous or so dire it never showed, with all Ethiopia, nor with the land that lies by the Red Sea. 3 Amid this cruel and most dismal swarm were people running, naked and terrified, without hope of lurking hole or heliotrope. 4 They had their hands tied behind with serpents; these through their loins fixed the tail and the head, and were coiled in knots before. And lo! at one, who was near our shore, sprang up a serpent, which transfixed him there where the neck is bound upon the shoulders.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Not having been satisfied with beating his opponent, but having humiliated him as well, he hurled himself at him to destroy the one who lying in the dust or on his feet still hated him. Treacherously, Robert managed to pull his knife. One of the women screamed, and all the windows in the street flung open. l11ere appeared a number of women with their hair 1l4 I JEAN GENET down, in petticoats, their breasts almost showing, leaning, hanging right out over the elbow-rests on the balustrades of their balconies. They did not have the presence of mind to tear themselves away from the spectacle long enough to run to the tap and get a bucketful of water to pour over these males, as one does over a pair of coupling dogs who have become stuck together in their ardor. Dede himself was afraid now, yet he pulied himself together and told the dockers who were about to intervene in the fight: "Just leave 'em alone. Heii, they're grown men. And they're brothers, as well. They ought to know their own business." Querelle let go of Robert. He was in mortal danger. For the first time in his life, the murderer himself was threatened, and within himself he felt the weight of a cramping numbness which he did his best to overcome. He, too, whipped out his knife, and with his back to the wall, ready to pounce, he held it open in his hand. "Seems they're brothers! Stop them!" But the people of the street, watching from their balconies, were not able to hear a more moving dialogue : "I'm crossing a stream covered with lace . . . Help me, I'm approaching your side . . ." "That'll be hard, dear brother; you resist too much . . ." "What is it you're saying? I can hardly hear you.'' "Jump up, onto my smile. Hang onto it. Forget your pain. Jump." . · "Don't lose heart. Try." The trumpets blared. "They're going to kill each other!" "Come on, you men, stop them!" The women wailed. The brothers watched each other, knives in hand, their bodies very erect, almost peaceful, as if they intended to march toward each other, ceremoniously, to exchange, with raised arm, that Florentine oath which can only be 125 I QUERELLE sworn with a dagger in the other hand. Or perhaps they were about to cut each other's flesh, in order to then sew, or graft, themselves together forever. A police patrol appeared at the end of the street. "The cops! Break it up!" That was Mario, talking gruffiy and rapidly and hurling himself at Quere11e who · tried to push him aside; but Robert, after taking one look in the direction of the patrol, closed his knife and put it away. He was shaking. A little embarrassed and out of breath, he then turned to Dede-for a go-between still seemed necessary-and said : "Tell him to get outta here."

• From Querelle (1953)

  199 I QUERELLE first his words were only a musical phrase, timid, hardly break ing th rough the silence and the fog, merely a lovely vibration in those two elements; but then it grew stronger, without losing its clarity and simplicity of a catch phrase invented by some ingenious orator trying to bewitch Death itself. Querelle re peated it: " ... can't defend myself. No way." One. Two. Three. Four. Four seconds floating down th e river of silence. "You can do what you want, I don't have a blade. If you get me with that, it's all over. Nothing I can do ... " :r..1ario didn't move. He felt like a master of fear and of life, it was up to him, to allow it to go on, or to cut it. He was on top of his policeman's calling. He took no great pleasure in his power, for he never paid much attention to what went on inside him and had no desire to explore it. He didn't move because he did not know what move to make. Above all, he was spellbound by this instant of victory, which he would have to destroy for, and by, some other moment, perhaps one that would be of a lesser intensity, would provide him with less pleasure, but would be irreversible .as well. Once that came to pass, there would no longer be any choice. Within himself, Mario felt choice hanging in the balance. At last he stood in the center of freedom. He was ready to ... except that he couldn't remain in this position for long. To shift h�s weight, to stretch th is or th at muscle would already be to make a choice, that is to say, to limit himself again. Therefore he had to retain his present state as long as his muscles did not ti re too quickly. "I just wa nted you to explain what you meant, I never wanted to ... " The voice was beautiful. Querelle found himself in the same spot, that center of freedom, and he realized the danger in Mario's hesitation. It communicated itself to him and gave him the necessary stage fright that inspired his performance, made it look perilous and risky, but also made him invincible. The stage

• From Querelle (1953)

  250 I JEAN GENET The length of that remark was just about right for Gil's capability at that moment. His voice was in danger of breaking. The fear of the guillotine, donnant for a long time, suddenly caused a strange phenomenon: it made all the blood in his body run back to his heart. "Yup. They're looking for you again. But don't get the jitters. And don't think I'll leave you in the lurch." Gil tried to understand, but vaguely and inconclusively, what all the business about the revolver was about, and then he saw Querelle putting it in the pocket of his peacoat. The notion that an act of treachery was being consummated flashed into his mind, while at the same time he felt profoundly relieved to be rid of an object that would force him to act, probably even to murder. Stretching out his hand he said: "Will you let me keep it?" "Look, it's this way. Let me explain. Don't get me wrong now, I'm not saying that they'll get you, I'm sure they won't. But you never know. And if they did, it would be better for you, if you weren't carrying a gun." Querelle's private reasoning went as follows: if he starts shooting at the cops, the cops'll shoot right back. They'll either kill him, or they'll take him alive. If they arrest him, theill find out, either from a Gil weakened by his wounds, or by conduct ing an intensive investigation, that this revolver used to belong to Lieutenant Seblon, and then what else could that poor sod do but put the finger on his steward. In trying to follow the movements in our protagonists' souls, we are also trying to cast some light on our own. Feel free to notice that the attitude we would have liked to adopt-with a view to, or perhaps, with a foreknowledge of the desired end of the story-has led us to the discovery of a given psychological world that supports the idea of freedom of choice; but as soon as the progression of the story teq u.ires one or the other of its main characters to pronounce a judgment, to take thought, we are immediately confronted by the arbitrary : the character escapes from its author, becoming

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My pleasure when challenged for the colours of Chawker’s hatband and came out with the symmetrical ‘plum-straw-plum-light-blue-plum-straw-plum’ was so obvious that the prefect, Stanbridge, tweaked my ears, & made me falter, though not fatally, in reciting the Seven Birthplaces of Homer. What I was much slower to learn were the notions that weren’t written down, the notions people got into their heads. It wasn’t long before Stanbridge and other, less senior men in the dormitory, started brocking me. ‘Oh, he’s quite a little tweake, isn’t he?’ Stanbridge would say sarcastically, sitting on my bed & patting me with a hand whose gentleness was suddenly disguised with mocking roughness. I was frightened in the near dark. I didn’t know what a tweake was—all I could think of was how Stanbridge tweaked my ears. There was a suppressed excitement in the other men, who gathered around, taking their lead from Stanbridge, emboldened to knowing sarcasm by their numbers. ‘You are a tweake, aren’t you, Nantwich?’ said Morgan, a fat, ugly, Welsh quirister, reviled by the others but being allowed, too, into the menacing conspiracy around me. ‘Tell us the truth.’ He spoke in a false, loving way, stroking my hair. The truth of the matter was I did not know what was going on, but my heart knocked in my breast and I felt sick. I longed for the morning—chapel, & being in my toys again, especially for the discipline and concealment of chapel and books. This torture, which was mental more than physical, went on for some time. Then one night Stanbridge had been to the public house and came in very late. Talk had died out, and it felt as if most people were asleep. He came over to my bed & put his hand down under the blankets. I shrank away, but he reached for me, and felt me fiercely. He was a wiry, humourless, red-headed boy. Then he got into the bed too, though he was fully clothed, & still had his shoes on: their hard leather soles scraped my feet. He was very heavy & strict, though he had some sense of the danger, & kept on saying ‘Sh’ to me, though I had not dared to say a word. He made me bite on a handkerchief while he buggered me. I cannot remember much about it except that I cried and cried, in a soundless, wretched way, & the hot pain of it, & an agonised guilt, as if it had all been my fault, about blood on the sheets—though no one ever said anything about it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “You guess that I have something I want to say to you,” he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. “I am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of Anna’s.” He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his head, which was growing bald. Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely stared at him with dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing eyes and stern expression scared her. The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to speak of to her flashed into her brain. “He is going to beg me to come to stay with them with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set that will receive Anna in Moscow.... Or isn’t it Vassenka Veslovsky and his relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was to blame?” All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to her. “You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,” he said; “do help me.” Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel. “You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna’s former friends—I don’t count Princess Varvara—but I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?” he asked, looking round at her. “Oh, yes,” answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade, “but....” “No,” he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. “No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna’s position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.” “I understand,” said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. “But just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,” she said. “Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.” “In the world it is hell!” he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. “You can’t imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Petersburg in that fortnight ... and I beg you to believe it.” “Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna ... nor you miss society....” “Society!” he said contemptuously, “how could I miss society?”

• From Querelle (1953)

  198 I JEAN GENET I . the clenched fist, the bent arm such sudden lightness, make the enemy appear · almost careless and certain of himself, his body like an accordion deflated without visible motion-and not inflated again-to sustain the last long note, in his eyes a look of irrevocably desperate calm. Querelle could not see the knife, yet he saw nothing else, it became a weapon of mon u mental proportions, by virtue of its invisibility and its potential for the outcome of the fight (which would be two men dead). The knife was not dangerous by virtue of its sharpness: it was the harbinger of nocturnal death. The blade was white, milky, of a somewhat fluid consistency. Its very existence signified murder, and thus it horrified Querelle. Thus, he was frightened by the idea of that knife. He opened his mouth and experienced the wonderful, redeeming shame of hearing himself stammer: "Y-you don't want to cut me with that ... " Mario didn't budge. Querelle neither. The thought of blood that was contained in his words, and the hope contained in them, made his O\vn blood circulate a little freer again. He was hesitant to make a move. He feared, so closely linked he felt himself to Mario by a great number of threads, that a single movement (and the gentlest one might release the most fatal mec hanism, as it is clear that all fat ality depends on a most tenuou s equilibrium) might set Mario off. They now stood in the middle of a low cloud of fog in which the knife nestled, invisible but certain. Querelle was completely unarmed. With a . voice suddenly gentle, deep, and of a profoundly moving qual ity, he said to the Prince of the Night and the nea!by Trees: "Listen, Mario, I'm here all alone with you. I can't defend myself ... " He had spoken Mario's name in a loud voice, and already Querelle felt himself to be bound to him in great gentleness, by an emotion comparable t o the one we may experience on hearing the excited voice of a young boy penetrate the thin partition of a hotel room at night, saying: "You dirty bastard, listen, I'm only seventeen!" He put all his ho pe s in Mario. At

• From Querelle (1953)

  At times the long and pointed reverie was cut across by some clear and pra�tical thought: "There really aren't any stains on me?" or "Supposing there's someone up there on the road . . . ," but then a quick smile appeared on his face and drove his fear away. Yet he was not able to pride himself too much on that smile's power to dissipate the gloom : the smile might also bring on the fear, first to one's teeth bared by receding lips, giving birth to a monster whose snout would take on exactly the shape of one's smile, and then that monster would grow inside one, to envelop and inhabit you, ending up being far more dangerous just because of its very nature of a phantom begotten of a smile in the dark. Querelle wasn't smiling much now. Tree and fog protected him against night and retribution. He returned to the courtroom. Sovereign at the foot of the tree, he made his imaginary double go through the stances of fear, rebellion, confidence and terror, shudders, blenchings. Recollections of what he had read came to his aid. He knew there ought 66 I JEAN GENET to be an .. incident" in the courtroom. His lawyer rose to speak. Querelle wanted to lose consciousness for a moment, to take refuge in the droning in his ears. He felt he ought to delay the closing scene. Finally, the Court reconvened. Querelle felt himself grow pale . .. The Court pronounces the death sentence." Everything around him disappeared. He himself and the trees shrunk, and he was astonished to find that he was wan and weak with this new tum of events, just as startled as we are when we learn that Weidmann was not a giant who could tower above the tops of cedar trees, but a rather timid youngman of waxen and pimply complexion, standing only 1.70 meters tall among the husky police officers. Ail Querelle was conscious of was his terrible misfortune of being certifiably alive, and of the loud buzzing in his ears. Quereiie shivered. His shoulders were getting a little cold, as were his thighs and feet. He was standing at the base of the tree, beret in hand, packe·t of opium under his arm, protected by the thick cloth uniform and the stiff collar of his peacoat. He put on his beret. In some indefinite way he sensed that all was not yet finished. He still had to accomplish the last formality: his own execution. 44Gotta do it, I guess!" Saying "sensed," we intend to convey the kind of premonition one celebrated murderer, a short while after his apparently totally unexpected arrest, meant when he told the judge: "I sensed that I was about to be nabbed . . . " Querelle shook

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  A few are even citing the 360 million deaf people in the world—or the million in this country—and studying sign language as a language requirement. Will we get to the point that learning sign language is a part of literacy? That knowing both an audible and a physical language is routine? Thanks to those Gallaudet students, I can imagine it. • On campuses that offer courses in hospitality training or hotel management, visitors often stay in a hotel that is the practice lab for students. I’m having coffee in the lobby of one in the Midwest when a tall, rangy, fair-haired young man in cowboy boots asks if he can sit down. Because he seems so shy—and because he says he has long admired both me and a particular professional baseball player—I’m surprised. Never before have I been so paired. As we talk about his hopes of starting a country inn, I have the odd and overwhelming feeling that I’m talking to another woman. He is a cowboy, very taciturn and masculine, yet I can’t shake the feeling. When I finally get up the courage to say so, he says, “Of course, that’s because I was raised as a girl.” Then he tells me this story. I tell you from memory. It isn’t the kind of story that you can forget. I grew up in a family that lived outside of town, in a big old house in the desert. There were three generations of us. I knew my grandfather was also my father, and he was also my mother’s father, but I didn’t know there was anything wrong with that. What I did know and hated was that, whenever we stopped for gas and didn’t have enough money, my mother or some other relative would send me into the gas station to do a blowjob for the guy who worked there. I don’t remember when this started, I was maybe four or five, but I had learned to do this sexual service for my grandfather. He used to say that I should have been his granddaughter. Maybe he felt strange about doing this with a boy—my mother began dressing me in girl’s clothes and calling me a girl’s name. When I went to school, I wore boy clothes, but I didn’t have friends. I learned right away that ours was the family other families told their kids not to play with. As soon as I was old enough to run away, I lied about my age, and joined the Navy. I felt safer than I ever had at home. Getting out was the first thing that saved me. By the time I came back home and rented a room in town, there was a women’s center where groups talked about a lot of things, including sexual abuse in childhood. I had no idea this had happened to anyone else.

• From Querelle (1953)

  The foggy weather did not trouble him. He noticed the marshy stench prevailing in the area. The outstretched arms of pestilence enfolded him. He kept on going. For a moment he was afraid a couple of lovers might have come down here among the trees, but this time of the year that seemed quite unlikely. Leaves and grass were damp, and the gaps between the branches interlaced with cobwebs moistened his face with their droplets as he passed through them. For a few seconds, to the astonished eyes of the assassin, the forest appeared most enchanted and lovely, vaulted and girded by hanging creeper plants gilded by a mysterious sun hanging in a sky both dim and clear and of an immensely distant blue, the womb of every dawn. Finally Querelle found himself by the trunk of a huge tree. He went up to it, cautiously walked around it, then leant against it, turning his back to the place of murder where the corpse lay waiting. He took off his beret and held it in the way we have described. Above him, he knew, a tangle of black, branches and twigs was penetrating and holding the fog. And from within him rose, up to his waking consciousness, all the details of the charges against him. In the hush of an overheated room brimming with eyes and ears and fiery mouths, Querelle clearly heard the deep and droning and by its very banality most vengeful voice of the Presiding Judge: "You have brutally slaughtered an accomplice of yours. The motives for this deed are only too evident . . ." ( Here the Judge's voice and the Judge himself blurred. Querelle refused to see those motives, to disentangle, to find them in himself. He relaxed his attention to the proceedings and pressed himself 65 I QUERELLE more closely against the tree. The entire magnificence of the ceremonial appeared in his mind's eye, and he saw the Public Prosecutor rising to his feet.) 'We demand the head of this man! Blood calls for blood!" Querelle was standing in the box. Braced against the hee he extracted further details of this trial in which his head was at stake. He felt good. Intertwining its branches above him, the hee protected him. From far off, he could hear frogs croaking away, but on the whole everything was so calm that the anguish in court suddenly became enhanced by the anguish of loneliness and silence. As the crime itself was the point of departure (total silence, the silence unto death desired by Querelle) , they had spun around him (or, rather, it had issued from himself, this tenuous and immaterial extension of death ) a thread of silence, to bind him captive. He concentrated more intensely on his vision. He made it more precise. He was there, yet he was not. He was assisting with the projection of that guilty man into the Criminal Court. He was both watching and directing the show.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And behold, almost at the commencement of the steep, a Leopard,6 light and very nimble, which was covered with spotted hair. And it went not from before my face; nay, so impeded my way, that I had often turned to go back. The time was at the beginning of the morning; and the sun was mounting up with those stars,7 which were with him when Divine Love first moved those fair things: so that the hour of time and the sweet season caused me to have good hope of that animal with the gay skin; yet not so, but that I feared at the sight, which appeared to me, of a Lion.8 He seemed coming upon me with head erect, and furious hunger; so that the air seemed to have fear thereat; and a She-wolf,9 that looked full of all cravings in her leanness; and has ere now made many live in sorrow. She brought such heaviness upon me with the terror of her aspect, that I lost the hope of ascending. And as one who is eager in gaining, and, when the time arrives that makes him lose, weeps and afflicts himself in all his thoughts: such that restless beast made me, which coming against me, by little and little drove me back to where the Sun is silent. Whilst I was rushing downwards, there appeared before my eyes one10 who seemed hoarse from long silence. When I saw him in the great desert, I cried: “Have pity on me, whate’er thou be, whether shade or veritable man!” He answered me: “Not man, a man I once was; and my parents were Lombards, and both of Mantua by country. I was born sub Julio,11 though it was late; and lived at Rome under the good Augustus, in the time of the false and lying Gods. A poet I was; and sang of that just son of Anchises, who came from Troy after proud Ilium was burnt.12 But thou, why returnest thou to such disquiet? why ascendest not the delectable mountain, which is the beginning and the cause of all gladness?” “Art thou then that Virgil, and that fountain which pours abroad so rich a stream of speech?” I answered him, with bashful front. “O glory, and light of other poets! May the long zeal avail me, and the great love, that made me search thy volume. Thou art my master and my author; thou alone art he from whom I took the good style that hath done me honour. See the beast from which I turned back; help me from her, thou famous sage; for she makes my veins and pulses tremble.” “Thou must take another road,” he answered, when he saw me weeping, “if thou desirest to escape from this wild place: because this beast, for which thou criest, lets not men pass her way; but so entangles that she slays them;

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  She then looked at me, straight on, and I saw my face reflected in the brown surface of her eyes. I wanted to tell her that Josh was using her, tell her about all the things he said when she wasn’t around, how she was fun even if she is sloppy seconds, how he loves to screw her in the ass, how, when she went to the bathroom, he’d told Aaron he’d better have his ear checked for VD, tell her something. But I didn’t have the heart, or the guts. I just sat there, looking back at her. And she looked at me, carefully, and then drew a quick breath. “Holy fuck. You really do know what I mean, don’t you?” MY OLD ROOMMATE LOVED TO MASTURBATE. HE DID IT AT least once a day, often two or three times. Our two-bedroom apartment was small enough that I could hear every rattle of his bed, every shake of his wrist, every word. “Fuck!” he’d cry out at all hours of the night. Or, “Hell yeah.” “That’s right.” “Now, bitch. Now.” He quickly started taking advantage of my job at a local video store that carried a wide variety of porn. I soon learned to distinguish the sounds of his bed sliding under his weight from the sounds of the couch banging against the living room wall. And as loud as he turned up the TV, he made sure his narration was even louder. Often he would eat a bag of fast-food burgers, turn on his latest rental, and chug Bud Light after Bud Light, pointing his can at the girls’ breasts and laughing, his mouth full of half-chewed meat. One evening, I looked up from my American history notes and saw him, beer on the TV tray, hamburger in one hand and the other hand in his pants. He ground the meat with his teeth, his eyes growing wider and wider. I moved toward my room and, as I passed the TV, he pulled his penis through his open zipper and continued stroking. He grinned at me. “You like that, don’t you?” The yellow stubble above his lip was stained with ketchup and small bits of meat fell from his mouth onto his stomach as he talked. I kept walking to my room. “Come on, don’t you wanna watch?” I slammed my door and heard him yelling. “I want you to watch!” That night, I woke just as my door swung open. He rushed in, his white T-shirt stained with beer. At first I didn’t realize he was naked from the waist down. I leaned up in my bed and he shoved me down hard. I tried to get up again and, again, he shoved me down. He punched me, in the shoulder, then the leg, growling and spitting with each punch. “This is my cock! Fucker! This is my cock!”

• From Querelle (1953)

  163 I QUERELLE ent to plants or objects-but had he ever confronted them? now he understood them intuitively. The taste of everything is isolated by some singularity, first recognized by the eye, then communicated to the palate: hay is hay primarily because of that characteristic yellowish·gray powder the sense of taste first expects and then experiences. It is the same with any vegetable species. The eye may allow some confusion, but the mouth won't stand for it, and thus Querelle was slowly pr oceeding through a universe of sa vors, of recognitions within recogni tions. One evening he ran into Roger. It didn't take the sailor long to know who the boy was, and to succeed in penetrating t o Gil's hiding place. THE GLORY OF QUEREI.I.E One ear pressed against the inside of his coffin, Querelle listens to the drums and pipes performing, for him alone, the offices for the dead. He wraps himself in prudence, waits for the angel to strike. Crouching in the midst of the black velvet of grasses, arums, ferns, in the living night of his own south seas, he keeps his eyes wide open. Over his face, so gentle, open, offered up like a precious thing, the desire to murder has passed its soft tongue, without causing Querelle to shudder. Only his blond curls are in motion. Sometimes the watchdog, awake between his legs, raises itself onto its front paws, pressing against its master's body and finally blending into the muscles of his shoulders, hiding, waking, growling there. Querelle knows that he is in mortal danger. He also knows that the beast is protecting him. He says: ,.With one bite I'll open up his throat ... ," without exactly knowing whether he is speaking of the watchdog's throat, or of the white throat of a peeing infant. 0 0 0

• From Querelle (1953)

  As soon as he had committed the crime, Querelle had felt the hand of an imaginary policeman on his shoulder, and from the site of the slaughter all the way to this desolate place he had walked with a heavy tread, crushed by his appalling fate. After some hundred meters he abandoned the path to plunge in among the trees and brambles and down a slope to the old moat below the battlements girding the city. He had the frightened look and do\vncast mien of a guilty man under arrest, yet within him the certainty-and this joined him to the policeman, in a shameful yet friendly fashion-that he was a hero. The ground was sloping and covered with thorny shrubs. "Well, here we go," he thought. And, almost at once: "Yassir, this is it, folks. Back to the worm farm." When he reached the bottom of the moat, Querelle stopped for a moment. A light wind was stirring the dry, brittle, pointed tips of the grasses, making them rustle quietly. The strange lightness of the sound only made his situation seem more bizarre. He walked on through the fog, still heading away from the scene of the crime. The grass and the wind went on making their gentle noise, soft as the sound of air in an athlete's nostrils, or the step of an acrobat . . . Querelle, now clad in bright blue silk tights, proceeded slowly, his figure moulded by the azure garment, waist accentuated by a steel-studded leather belt. He felt the silent presence of every muscle working in unison with all the others to create· the effect of a statue carved out of turbulent silence. Two police officers walked on either side of him, invisible, triumphant and friendly, full of tenderness and cruelty toward their prey. Querelle continued a few more meters, through the fog and the whispering grasses. He was looking for a quiet place, solitary as a cell, sufficiently secluded and dignified to serve as a place of judgment. "Sure hope they don't pick up my tracks," he thought. He regretted that he had not simply turned around and walked backwards in his own footsteps, thus raising the grass he 64 I JEAN GENET had trodden down. But he perceived, quickly, the absurdity of his fear, while hoping his . steps would be so light that every blade of grass would be intelligent enough to stand up again of its own accord. But the corpse surely wouldn't be discovered until later on, in the early morning hours. Yes, it would have to wait for the working men on their way to their jobs : they are the ones who come across what criminals leave by the roadside.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O I I I Inscription over the Gate of Hell, and the impression it produces upon Dante. Virgil takes him by the hand, and leads him in. The dismal sounds make him burst into tears. His head is quite bewildered. Upon a Dark Plain, which goes round the confines, he sees a vast multitude of spirits running behind a flag in great haste and confusion, urged on by furious wasps and hornets. These are the unhappy people, who never were alive—never awakened to take any part in either good or evil, to care for anything but themselves. They are mixed with a similar class of fallen angels. After passing through the crowd of than, the Poets come to a great River, which flows round the brim of Hell; and then descends to form the other rivers, the marshes, and the ice that we shall meet with. It is the river Acheron; and on its Shore all that die under the wrath of God assemble from every country to be ferried over by the demon Charon. He makes them enter his boat by glaring on them with his burning eyes. Having seen these, and being refused a passage by Charon, Dante is suddenly stunned by a violent trembling of the ground, accompanied with wind and lightning, and falls down in a state of insensibility. “THROUGH ME is the way into the doleful city; through me the way into the eternal pain; through me the way among the people lost. Justice moved my High Maker; Divine Power made me, Wisdom Supreme, and Primal Love. 1 Before me were no things created, but eternal; 2 and eternal I endure: leave all hope, ye that enter.” These words, of colour obscure, saw I written above a gate; whereat I: “Master, their meaning to me is hard.” And he to me, as one experienced: “Here must all distrust be left; all cowardice must here be dead. We are come to the place where I told thee thou shouldst see the wretched people, who have lost the good of the intellect.” And placing his hand on mine, with a cheerful countenance that comforted me, he led me into the secret things. Here sighs, plaints, and deep wailings resounded through the starless air: it made me weep at first. Strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain, tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse, and sounds of hands amongst them, made a tumult, which turns itself unceasing in that air for ever dyed, as sand when it eddies in a whirlwind. And I, my head begirt with horror, said: “Master, what is this that I hear? and who are these that seem so overcome with pain?” And he to me: “This miserable mode the dreary souls of those sustain, who lived without blame, and without praise. They are mixed with that caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God; but were for themselves.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  I’VE SEEN SO MANY COUNSELORS, THERAPISTS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, and psychiatrists since I was sexually assaulted for the first time: a hapless guidance counselor at school who dragged me in for “a talk” after an English teacher flagged some dark poetry I was writing; a series of mental health professionals at the university clinic, all of whom seemed completely unequipped for me, primarily charged with doling out condoms and spotting eating disorders; and later, an ever-changing roster of costly psychologists with varying sensitivities to the issues around and reactions to sexual assault. A cognitive behavioral therapist once admitted that she felt helpless to treat my rape trauma, that it wasn’t her area of expertise, and that I should seek help elsewhere. It was an admission that scared me, made me feel like I was too far gone to be fixed. Yet the day I met this particular counselor, she immediately seemed to be the most noticeably prepared and understanding of all the therapists I’ve had, constantly reaffirming herself as open to any strange thought, impulse, feeling, or action of mine. In some ways, my rape counseling has felt entirely divorced from the traditional therapeutic model. It’s permissive in comparison, focused on harm reduction and careful reassurances. It seems that, if something makes you feel better, it is a healthy option. Want to sleep all day? That’s okay. Drink too much? That can be a valid coping choice. Isolating yourself via a fear of the outside world? Self-preservation is important. To me, all of this is revolutionary, and it means that I can finally be honest with someone about my behavior without the fear of their disappointment. I usually walk into rape counseling assuming I am totally failing and floundering, that the people in my life deem me helpless, and she confidentially assures me I am making real, solid progress where I see absolutely none. My sessions with her are a short period of time where the expectations to be “better” are radically shifted from those of the world outside. In her office, I discover that the tiniest of steps I am taking to be emotionally free of my attacker are actually monumental for someone who suffers this hypervigilance and fear that can follow in the years after sexual assault. I feel lucky to have her, but alongside this is the knowledge that I wasn’t assaulted in a particularly violent way. I sometimes feel like maybe some more worthy victim’s space is being taken up by my twenty-year-old troubles, that I should be able to manage this by myself rather than gobbling up much-needed and sparse resources because of my inability to move on. When I raised this in counseling, she told me: “The survivor who was raped at knifepoint feels guilty she has taken up the space of a survivor who was raped at gunpoint. Everyone believes there is suffering worse than her own, that they should be strong enough to cope without me.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  «All these pleasures finished, when night ap- proached Psyche went to bed; and when she was laid, and the night far advanced, still a sweet sound came about her ears; then she greatly feared for her virginity, because she was alone; she trembled and quaked the more for that she knew not what evil might come to pass. Then came her unknown husband to her bed, and after that he had made her his very wife, he rose in the morning before day and departed. Soon after came those invisible voices, consoling the bride for that virginity she had lost, and thus she passed a great while: and so (as it naturally hap- pened) that which was first a novelty, by continual custom did at last bring her great pleasure, but specially the sound of the voices was a comfort unto her being alone and knowing nothing of her estate. During this time her father and. mother did nothing but weep and lament in their old age, and the fame of it was all blown abroad, and her two sisters, 205 LUCIUS APULEIUS cognorant, propereque maestae atque lugubres deserto Lare certatim ad parentum suorum conspectum affa- tumque perrexerant. 5 “Ka nocte ad suam Psychen sic infit maritus (namque praeter oculos et manibus et auribus is non nihil sentiebatur) : * Psyche dulcissima et cara uxor, exitiabile tibi periculum minatur fortuna saevior, quod observandum pressiore cautela censeo. Sorores, iam tuae mortis opinione turbatae tuumque vestigium requirentes, scopulum istum protinus. aderunt, quarum si quas forte lamentationes acceperis, neque re- spondeas, immo nec prospicias omnino ; ceterum mihi quidem gravissimum dolorem, tibi vero summum creabis exitium.' * Annuit et ex arbitrio mariti se facturam spo- pondit, sed eo simul cum nocte dilapso diem totum lacrimis ac plangoribus misella consumit, se nunc maxime prorsus perisse iterans, quae beati carceris eustodia saepta et humanae. conversationis colloquio viduata. nec sororibus quidem: suis de se maerentibus opem salutarem ferre ac ne videre eas quidem omnino posset; nee lavacro nee cibo nee ulla denique re- fectione recreata flens ubertim decessit ad somnum. 6 Nec mora, cum paulo maturius lectum maritus. ac- cubans, eamque etiamnunc lacrimantem complexus,sic expostulat : * Haecine mihi pollicebare, Psyche mea ? Quid iam de te tuus maritus expecto, quid spero? Et. perdia et pernox nec inter amplexus coniugales desinis eruciatum. Age iam nunc ut voles et animo tuo damnosa poscenti pareto: tantum memineris meae seriae monitionis cum coeperis sero paenitere. | 206 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK V hearing of her most miserable fortune, came with great dolour and sorrow to see and speak with their parents.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Soone after the Baker sent one to his wife, who divorced her away in his name, but she beside her owne naturall mischiefe, (offended at this great contumely, though she had worthily deserved the same) had recourse to wicked arts and trumpery, never ceasing untill she had found out an Enchantresse, who (as it was thought) could doe what she would with her Sorcery and conjuration. The Bakers wife began to intreate her, promising that she would largely recompence her, if shee could bring one of these things to passe, eyther to make that her husband may be reconciled to her againe, or else if hee would not agree thereto, to send an ill spirit into him, to dispossesse the spirit of her husband. Then the witch with her abhominable science, began to conjure and to make her Ceremonies, to turne the heart of the Baker to his wife, but all was in vaine, wherefore considering on the one side that she could not bring her purpose to passe, and on the other side the losse of her gaine, she ran hastily to the Baker, threatning to send an evill spirit to kill him, by meane of her conjurations. But peradventure some scrupulous reader may demand me a question, how I, being an Asse, and tyed alwayes in the mill house, could know the secrets of these women: Verily I answer, notwithstanding my shape of an Asse, I had the sence and knowledge of a man, and curiously endeavoured to know out such injuries as were done to my master. About noone there came a woman into the Milhouse, very sorrowfull, raggedly attired, with bare feete, meigre, ill-favoured, and her hayre scattering upon her face: This woman tooke the Baker by the hand, and faining that she had some secret matter to tell him, went into a chamber, where they remained a good space, till all the corne was ground, when as the servants were compelled to call their master to give them more corne, but when they had called very often, and no person gave answer, they began to mistrust, insomuch that they brake open the doore: when they were come in, they could not find the woman, but onely their master hanging dead upon a rafter of the chamber, whereupon they cryed and lamented greatly, and according to the custome, when they had washed themselves, they tooke the body and buried it. The next day morrow, the daughter of the Baker, which was married but a little before to one of the next Village, came crying and beating her breast, not because she heard of the death of her father by any man, but because his lamentable spirit, with a halter about his necke appeared to her in the night, declaring the whole circumstance of his death, and how by inchantment he was descended into hell, which caused her to thinke that her father was dead.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  THE FOURTH BOOKE THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius thinking to eat Roses, was cruelly beaten by a Gardener, and chased by dogs. When noone was come, that the broyling heate of the sunne had most power, we turned into a village to certaine of the theeves acquaintance and friends, for verily their meeting and embracing together did give me, poore asse, cause to deeme the same, and they tooke the trusse from my backe, and gave them part of the Treasure which was in it, and they seemed to whisper and tell them that it was stollen goods, and after that we were unladen of our burthens, they let us loose in a medow to pasture, but myne own horse and Miloes Asse would not suffer me to feed there with them, but I must seeke my dinner in some other place.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  So have you here a guilty person, a culpable homicide, and an accused stranger, wherefore pronounce you judgement against this man beeing an alien, when as you would most severely and sharply revenge such an offence found in a known Citisen. In this sort the cruell accuser finished and ended his terrible tale. Then the Crier commanded me to speake, if I had any thing to say for my selfe, but I could in no wise utter any word at all for weeping. And on the other side I esteemed not so much his rigorous accusation, as I did consider myne owne miserable conscience. Howbeit, beeing inspired by divine Audacity, at length I gan say, Verily I know that it is an hard thing for him that is accused to have slaine three persons, to perswade you that he is innocent, although he should declare the whole truth, and confesse the matter how it was indeed, but if your honours will vouchsafe to give me audience, I will shew you, that if I am condemned to die, I have not deserved it as myne owne desert, but that I was mooved by fortune and reasonable cause to doe that fact. For returning somewhat late from supper yester night (beeing well tippled with wine, which I will not deny) and approaching nigh to my common lodging, which was in the house of one Milo a Citisen of this city, I fortuned to espy three great theeves attempting to break down his walls and gates, and to open the locks to enter in. And when they had removed the dores out of the hookes, they consulted amongst themselves, how they would handle such as they found in the house. And one of them being of more courage, and of greater stature than the rest, spake unto his fellows and sayd, Tush you are but boyes, take mens hearts unto you, and let us enter into every part of the house, and such as we find asleep let us kill, and so by that meanes we shall escape without danger. Verily ye three Judges, I confess that I drew out my sword against those three Citizens, but I thought it was the office and duty of one that beareth good will to this weale publique, so to doe, especially since they put me in great fear, and assayed to rob and spoyl my friend Milo. But when those cruell and terrible men would in no case run away, nor feare my naked sword, but boldly resist against me, I ran upon them and fought valiantly. One of them which was the captain invaded me strongly, and drew me by the haire with both his hands, and began to beat me with a great stone: but in the end I proved the hardier man, and threw him downe at my feet and killed him. I tooke likewise the second that clasped me about the legs and bit me, and slew him also. And the third that came running violently against me, after that I had strucken him under the stomacke fell downe dead. Thus when I had delivered my selfe, the house, Myne host, and all his family from this present danger, I thought that I should not onely escape unpunished, but also have some great reward of the city for my paines.