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.

Page 154 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Aliquanto denique viae permenso spatio pervenimus ad nemus quoddam proceris arboribus consitum et pratentibus virectis amoenum, ubi placuit illis ductori- bus nostris refectui paululum conquiescere corporaque sua diverse laniata sedulo recurare. Ergo passim | prostrati solo primum fatigatos animos recuperare ac 374 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII the inhabiters of the town stood upon their roofs and the hills hard by, throwing great stones upon our heads, so that we could not tell whether it were best for us to avoid the gaping mouths of the dogs at hand, or the peril of the stones afar. Amongst whom there was one that hurled a great flint upon the head of a woman which sat upon my back; who cried out piteously, desiring her husband, the shepherd, to help her. Then he (coming to wipe off the blood from his wife) began to complain in this sort, calling upon God’s name: “ Alas, masters, what mean you to trouble us poor labouring men and wayfarers and so cruelly to overcome us? What think you to gain by us? What mean you to revenge yourselves upon us, that do you no harm? You dwell not in caves or dens, you are no people barbarous that you should delight in effusion of human blood.” At these words the tempest of stones did cease, and the storm of the dogs was called back and vanished away. Then one (standing on the top of a great cypress-tree) spake unto us, saying: “Think you not, masters, that we do this to the intent to rifle or take away any of your goods, but for the safeguard ot ourselves and family from a like slaughter at your hands; now in God’s name you may depart away.” So we went forward, some wounded with stones, some bitten with dogs, but generally there was none which escaped free. When we had gone a good part of our way we came to a certain wood environed with great trees, and compassed about with pleasant meadows, where the shepherds, our guides, appointed to continue a certain space for rest, to cure their divers wounds and sores. Then they sat down on the ground to refresh their weary minds, and afterwards they 375 LUCIUS APULEIUS dehinc vulneribus medelas varias adhibere festinant: hie eruorem praeterfluentis aquae rore deluere, ille spongeis inacidatis tumores comprimere, alius fasciolis hiantes vincire plagas. Ad istum modum saluti suae quisque consulebat.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  5 qua primos impetus reduxerat, transabiit. Et nos quidem cuncti pavore deterriti et alioquin innoxiis venationibus consueti, tunc etiam inermes atque im- muniti, tegumentis frondis vel arboribus latenter ab- scondimus ; Thrasyllus vero nanctus fraudium oppor- tunum decipulum sic Tlepolemum captiose compellat : *Quid stupore confusi vel etiam cassa formidine similes. humilitati servorum istorum, vel in modum pavoris feminei deiecti tam opimam praedam mediis mánibus amittimus ? Quin equos inscendimus ? Quin ocius indipiscimur? En cape venabulum, et ego sumo lanceam ; nec tantillum morati protinus insiliunt equos ex summo studio bestiam insequentes. Nec tamen illa genuini vigoris oblita retorquet im- petum et incendio feritatis ardescens dente compulso quem primum insiliat cunctabunda rimatur. Sed prior Tlepolemus iaculum, quod. gerebat, insuper dorsum bestiae contorsit : at Thrasyllus ferae quidem pepercit sed equi, quo vehebatur Tlepolemus, pos- tremos poplites lancea feriens amputat. Quadrupes reccidens, qua sanguis effluxerat, toto tergo supinatus 350 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII no goat, nor timid deer, nor hind, most gentle of all beasts, but an horrible and dangerous wild boar, such as no one had seen before, thick with muscles and brawn, witha filthy and hairy hide, his bristles rising along his pelt, foaming at the mouth, grinding his teeth, looking direfully with fiery eyes, and rushing like lightning as he charged with his furious jaws. The dogs that first set upon him he tare and rent with his tusks, and rifled them ap and hurled them away on every side, and then he ran quite through the nets that had checked his first charges and escaped away. When we saw the fury of this beast, we were all greatly stricken with fear, and because we never accustomed to chase such dreadful boars, and further because we were unarmed and without weapons, we got and hid ourselves under bushes and trees. «Then Thrasyllus, having found opportunity to work his treason, said to Tlepolemus: ‘ What, stand we here amazed ? Why shew we ourselves like these slaves of ours, or why leave we so worthy a prey to go forth from our very hands, despairing like some timid woman? Let us mount upon our horses and pursue him incontinently: take you a hunting javelin, and I will take a spear’; and by and by they leaped upon their horses and followed the beast earnestly. But he, forgetting not his natural strength, returned against them burning with the fire of his wild nature, and gnashing his teeth, pried with his eyes on whom he might first assail with his tusks: and Tlepolemus struck the ~ beast first on the back with his javelin. But Thra- syllus attacked not the beast, but came behind and cut the hamstrings of the hinder legs of Tlepolemus’ horse, in such sort that he fell down in much. blood 351

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  daemon, a city of Greece, is not far hence: go thou thither and enquire for Taenarus, which is hidden in waste places, whereas thou shalt find a hole, the breathing-place of Hell, and through the open gate is seen a pathless way: hereby if thou enter across that threshold, thou shalt come by a straight passage even to the palace of Pluto. But take heed that thou go not with empty hands through that place of darkness: but carry two sops sodden in the flour of barley and honey in thy hands, and two halfpence in thy mouth ; and when thou hast passed a good part of that deadly way thou shalt see a lame ass carrying of wood, and a lame fellow driving him, who will desire thee to give him up certain sticks that fall down from his burden, but pass thou on silently and do nothing. By and by thou shalt come unto the dead river, whereas Charon is ferryman, who will first have his fare paid him before he will carry the souls over the river in his patched boat. Hereby you may see that avarice reigneth even amongst the dead ; neither Charon nor Pluto will do anything for nought: for if ifit be a poor man that is near to die, and lacketh money in his hand, none will allow bim to give up the ghost. Wherefore deliver to the foul old man one of the halfpence which thou bearest for thy passage, but make him receive it with his own hand out of thy mouth. And it shall come to pass as thou sittest in the boat, thou shalt see an old man swimming on the top of the river holding up his deadly hands, and desiring theé to receive him into the bark ; but have no regard to his piteous cry, for it is not lawful to do so. When thou art past over the flood thou shalt espy certain old women weaving who will desire thee to help them, but beware thou do not consent unto them in any case, for these and like baits and traps 275 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  prolapsus deruissem, cum deberet egregius agaso manum porrigere, capistro suspendere, cauda sub- levare, certe partem tanti oneris, quoad resurgerem saltem, detrahere, nullum quidem defesso mihi fere- bat auxilium, sed occipiens a capite, immo vero et ipsis auribus, totum me compilabat, ceciditque! fusti grandissimo, donec fomenti vice ipsae me plagae sus- citarent Idem mihi talem etiam excogitavit perni- ciem : spinas acerrumas et punctu venenato viriosas in faseem tortili nodo eonstrietas caudae meae pen- silem deligavit cruciatum, ut incessu meo commotae incitataeque funestis aculeis infeste me convulnera- rent. Ego igitur ancipiti malo laborabam : nam cum me cursu proripueram fugiens acerbissimos incursus, vehementiore nisu spinarum feriebar; si dolori par- cens paululum restitissem, plagis compellebar ad cursum. Nee quicquam videbatur aliud. excogitare puer ille nequissimus quam ut me quoquo modo per- ditum iret, idque iurans etiam nonnunquam commina- batur. Et plane fuit quod eius detestabilem mali- tiam ad peiores conatus stimularet: nam quadam die, nimia eius insolentia expugnata patientia mea, calees in eum validas extuleram. Denique tale faci- nus in me comminiscitur: stuppae sarincae me satis onustum probeque funiculis constrictum producit in viam deque proxima villula spirantem carbunculum furatus, oneris in ipso meditullio reponit. lamque fomento tenui calescens et enutritus ignis surgebat in flammas et totum me funestus ardor invaserat, nec 1 After compilabat the MSS have cidit, which is no word and does not make sense. Ceciditque will construe, though the sudden change from imperfect to perfect is awkward. 328 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Given the perspective of history, it’s clear that Bennett and I owed our being in Heidelberg (and in fact our marriage) to the hoodwinking of the American public by the government, which was later revealed in the Pentagon Papers. In other words, we got married as a direct result of Bennett’s being drafted—and he was drafted as a direct result of the Vietnam troop buildup of 1965-66, which was a direct result of the hoodwinking of the American public by the government. But who knew that at the time? We suspected it, but we had no proof. We had ironic headlines promising that the buildup was to “end the war and bring a lasting peace.” We had good one-liners like: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it….” We had activists as articulate as any who came along later. But we had no proof in black and white on the front page of The Times. So Bennett, a child psychiatrist with half his analytic training done, was drafted at the age of thirty-one. We had known each other three months. We had come to each other from other unhappy love affairs—and on my part a disastrous first marriage. We were sick of being single; we were terrified of being alone; we were happy together in bed; we were frightened of the future; we were married one day before Bennett had to leave for Fort Sam Houston. From the first, the marriage was strange. We’d both expected rescue. And there we were both clawing at each other and drowning together. Things turned hostile in a matter of days. We quickly went from verbal assaults to utter silence, punctuated by lovemaking that kept on, amazingly enough, being good. Neither of us quite knew what we had gotten into, or why. Before we came to Heidelberg, the setting for the first two months of our marriage was as strange as our reason for getting married. There we were, two terrified, transplanted Manhattanites, plunked down in San Antonio, Texas. Bennett was shorn of his hair, stuffed into army greens, forced to sit through hour after hour of army propaganda on how to be an army doctor—something he detested with his whole heart.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Will Abelard the Gelding go? Will Sin-bad the Sailor go? Will Tinbad the Tailor go? Will Jinbad the Jailor go? Will Norman Mailer go? Will Whinbad the Whaler go? Will Finbad the Failer go? Will Rinbad the Railer go? Will Joyce go? Will James go? Will Dante go or has he been already? Will Homer go? Will Yeats go? Will Hardy go with a hard-on? Will Rabelais go with the Rabble? Will Villon go vilely? Will Raleigh go royally? Will Mozart go lightly? Will Mahler go heavily? Will El Greco go in a clap of lightning? Will the lightbulbs go?” I turned and looked at him. He was waving his arms wildly and jumping up and down. “The lightbulbs will go to heaven!” he shouted. “They will! They will!” “You’re driving me crazy!” I yelled in utter exasperation. “You’ll go to heaven!” he screamed, and then he grabbed my hand and started leading me toward the window. “Let’s go to heaven! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He threw open the window and leaned out. “Stop it!” I screamed hysterically. “I can’t stand this anymore!” and with that I began to shake him. He must have gotten really frightened because he put his hands around my throat and started choking me. “Shut up,” he yelled. “The police will come!” But I wasn’t screaming anymore. He tightened his grip. I started to black out. Why he let me go before he killed me, I’m not sure. Perhaps it was plain dumb luck on my part. I don’t know how to account for it. All I know is that when he finally let go, I was shaking all over and gasping for breath (and I remember later finding big blue bruises on my neck). I ran into the hall closet and sat there in the dark biting my knees and sobbing. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I gasped. And then somehow I collected myself and called my family doctor. He was in East Hampton. I called my mother’s psychiatrist. He was in Fire Island. I called my current psychiatrist. He was in Wellfleet. I called a friend of my sister Randy’s who was a psychiatric social worker. She told me to send for the police or a doctor—any doctor. Brian was psychotic, she said, and possibly dangerous. I was not to stay alone with him. A Sunday in June and if you want to get sick, you’d better do it at a beach resort. No doctor to be found. I finally reached the guy who was pinch-hitting for my internist. He would be over right away, he said. Five hours later, he arrived. During all that time Brian was astonishingly subdued. He sat in the living room listening to Bach, seemingly in a trance. I sat in the bedroom trying to absorb what had happened. We pretended to ignore each other. The calm after the storm. At least Brian’s problem had a name now. It was the next best thing to a cure.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Had Charlotte been Valeria, I would have known how to handle the situation; and “handle” is the word I want. In the good old days, by merely twisting fat Valechka’s brittle wrist (the one she had fallen upon from a bicycle) I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlotte frightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passion for me was all wrong. I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me she had set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her. The only ace I held was her ignorance of my monstrous love for her Lo. She had been annoyed by Lo’s liking me; but my feelings she could not divine. To Valeria I might have said: “Look here, you fat fool, c’est moi qui décide what is good for Dolores Humbert.” To Charlotte, I could not even say (with ingratiating calm): “Excuse me, my dear, I disagree. Let us give the child one more chance. Let me be her private tutor for a year or so. You once told me yourself—” In fact, I could not say anything at all to Charlotte about the child without giving myself away. Oh, you cannot imagine (as I had never imagined) what these women of principle are! Charlotte, who did not notice the falsity of all the everyday conventions and rules of behavior, and foods, and books, and people she doted upon, would distinguish at once a false intonation in anything I might say with a view to keeping Lo near. She was like a musician who may be an odious vulgarian in ordinary life, devoid of tact and taste; but who will hear a false note in music with diabolical accuracy of judgment. To break Charlotte’s will, I would have to break her heart. If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too. If I said: “Either I have my way with Lolita, and you help me to keep the matter quiet, or we part at once,” she would have turned as pale as a woman of clouded glass and slowly replied: “All right, whatever you add or retract, this is the end.” And the end it would be.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  On this or that hotel court I would drill Lo, and try to relive the days when in a hot gale, a daze of dust, and queer lassitude, I fed ball after ball to gay, innocent, elegant Annabel (gleam of bracelet, pleated white skirt, black velvet hair band). With every word of persistent advice I would only augment Lo’s sullen fury. To our games, oddly enough, she preferred—at least, before we reached California—formless pat ball approximations—more ball hunting than actual play —with a wispy, weak, wonderfully pretty in an ange gauche way coeval. A helpful spectator, I would go up to that other child, and inhale her faint musky fragrance as I touched her forearm and held her knobby wrist, and push this way or that her cool thigh to show her the back-hand stance. In the meantime, Lo, bending forward, would let her sunny-brown curls hang forward as she stuck her racket, like a cripple’s stick, into the ground and emitted a tremendous ugh of disgust at my intrusion. I would leave them to their game and look on, comparing their bodies in motion, a silk scarf round my throat; this was in south Arizona, I think—and the days had a lazy lining of warmth, and awkward Lo would slash at the ball and miss it, and curse, and send a simulacrum of a serve into the net, and show the wet glistening young down of her armpit as she brandished her racket in despair, and her even more insipid partner would dutifully rush out after every ball, and retrieve none; but both were enjoying themselves beautifully, and in clear ringing tones kept the exact score of their ineptitudes all the time. One day, I remember, I offered to bring them cold drinks from the hotel, and went up the gravel path, and came back with two tall glasses of pineapple juice, soda and ice; and then a sudden void within my chest made me stop as I saw that the tennis court was deserted. I stooped to set down the glasses on a bench and for some reason, with a kind of icy vividness, saw Charlotte’s face in death, and I glanced around, and noticed Lo in white shorts receding through the speckled shadow of a garden path in the company of a tall man who carried two tennis rackets.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “Into this bottom of the dreary shell, does any ever descend from the first degree, whose only punishment is hope cut off?”2 This question I made, and he replied to me: “Rarely it occurs that any of us makes this journey on which I go. It is true, that once before I was down here, conjured by that fell Erichtho,3 who recalled the shadows to their bodies. My flesh had been but short time divested of me, when she made me enter within that wall, to draw out a spirit from the Circle of Judas. That is the lowest place, and the most dark, and farthest from the Heaven, which encircles all; well do I know the way: so reassure thyself. This marsh, which breathes the mighty stench, all round begirds the doleful city, where we cannot now enter without anger.” And more he said, but I have it not in memory: for my eye had drawn me wholly to the high tower with glowing summit, where all at once had risen up three Hellish Furies, stained with blood; who had the limbs and attitude of women, and were girt with greenest hydras; for hair, they had tittle serpents and cerastes, wherewith their horrid temples were bound. And he, knowing well the handmaids of the Queen4 of everlasting lamentation, said to me: “Mark the fierce Erinnyes!5 This is Megæra on the left hand; she, that weeps upon the right, is Alecto; Tisiphone is in the middle”; and therewith he was silent. With her claws each was rending her breast; they were smiting themselves with their palms, and crying so loudly, that I pressed close to the Poet for fear. “Let Medusa come, that we may change him into stone,”6 they all said, looking downwards; “badly did we avenge the assault of Theseus.”7 “Turn thee backwards, and keep thy eyes closed: for if the Gorgon show herself, and thou shouldst see her, there would be no returning up again.” Thus said the Master, and he himself turned me, and trusted not to my hands, but closed me also with his own. O ye, who have sane intellects, mark the doctrine, which conceals itself beneath the veil of the strange verses!8 And now there came, upon the turbid waves, a crash of fearful sound, at which the shores both trembled; a sound as of a wind, impetuous for the adverse heats, which smites the forest without any stay; shatters off the boughs, beats down, and sweeps away; dusty in front, it goes superb, and makes the wild beasts and the shepherds flee. He loosed my eyes, and said: “Now turn thy nerve of vision on that ancient foam, there where the smoke is harshest.” As frogs, before their enemy the serpent, run all asunder through the water, till each squats upon the bottom: so I saw more than a thousand ruined spirits flee before one, who passed the Stygian ferry with soles unwet.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Thus also, on the utmost limit of that seventh circle, all alone I went to where the woeful folk were seated. Through the eyes their grief was bursting forth; on this side, on that, they with their hands kept warding off, sometimes the flames, sometimes the burning soil. Not otherwise the dogs in summer do, now with snout, now with paw, when they are bitten by fleas, or flies, or breezes. After I had set my eyes upon the visages of several on whom the dolorous fire falls, I knew not any of them; but I observed that from the neck of each there hung a pouch, which had a certain colour and a certain impress, and thereon it seems their eye is feasting. And as I came amongst them looking, on a yellow purse I saw azure, that had the semblance and gesture of a lion.3 Then, my look continuing its course, I saw another of them, red as blood, display a goose more white than butter.4 And one5 who, with a sow azure and pregnant, had his argent sacklet stamped, said to me: “What art thou doing in this pit? Get thee gone; and, as thou art still alive, know that my neighbour Vitaliano6 shall sit here at my left side. With these Florentines am I, a Paduan; many a time they din my ears, shouting: ‘Let the sovereign cavalier7 come, who will bring the pouch with three goats!’ ” Then he writhed his mouth, and thrust his tongue out, like an ox that licks his nose. And I, dreading lest longer stay might anger him who had admonished me to stay short time, turned back from those forwearied souls. I found my Guide, who had already mounted on the haunch of the dreadful animal; and he said to me: “Now be stout and bold! Now by such stairs must we descend; mount thou in front: for I wish to be in the middle, that the tail may not do hurt to thee.” As one who has the shivering of the quartan so near, that he has his nails already pale and trembles all, still keeping the shade, such I became when these words were uttered; but his threats excited in me shame, which makes a servant brave in presence of a worthy master. I placed myself on those huge shoulders; I wished to say, only the voice came not as I thought: “See that thou embrace me.” But he, who at other times assisted me in other difficulties, soon as I mounted, clasped me with his arms, and held me up; then he said: “Geryon, now move thee! be thy circles large, and gradual thy descent: think of the unusual burden that thou hast.” As the bark goes from its station backwards, backwards, so the monster took himself from thence; and when he felt himself quite loose,

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] ALTHOUGH THEIR sudden flight was scattering them o’er the plain, turned to the mount where justice probes us, I drew me close to my faithful comrade; and how should I have sped without him? who would have brought me up the mountain? Gnawed he seemed to me by self-reproach. O noble conscience and clear, how sharp a sting is a little fault to thee! When his feet had lost that haste which mars the dignity of every act, my mind, that erewhile was centred within, widened its scope as in eager search, and I set my face to the hillside which rises highest heavenward from the waters. The sun, that behind us was flaming red, was broken in front of me in the figure in which it had its beams stayed by me. I turned me aside from fear of being forsaken, when I saw only before me the earth darkened. And my Comfort began to say to me, turning full round: “Why dost thou again distrust? believest thou not me with thee and that I do guide thee? It is already evening1 there, where the body buried lies within which I made shadow: Naples possesses it, and from Brindisi ’tis taken.2 Now, if before me no shadow falls, marvel not more than at the heavenly spheres, that one doth not obstruct the light from the other. To suffer torments, heat and frost, bodies such as these that power disposes, which wills not that its workings be revealed to us. Mad is he who hopes that our reason may compass that infinitude which one substances in three persons fills. Be ye content, O human race, with the quia!3 For if ye had been able to see the whole, no need was there for Mary to give birth;4 and ye have seen such sages desire fruitlessly, whose desire had else been satisfied, which is given them for eternal grief. I speak of Aristotle and of Plato, and of many others.” And here he bent his brow, and said no more, and remained troubled. We reached meanwhile the mountain’s foot: there found we the cliff so steep that vainly there would legs be nimble. ’Twixt Lerici and Turbia,5 the way most desolate, most solitary, is a stairway easy and free, compared with that. “Now who knows on which hand the scarp doth slope,” said my Master, halting his steps, “so that he may climb who wingless goes?” And while he held his visage low, searching in thought anent the way, and I was looking up about the rocks, on the left hand appeared to me a throng of souls, who moved their feet towards us, and yet seemed not to advance, so slow they came. “Master,” said I, “lift up thine eyes, behold there one who will give us counsel; if of thyself thou mayest have it not.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “Rafel mai amech zabi almi,”6 began to shout the savage mouth, for which no sweeter psalmody was fit. And towards him my Guide: “Stupid soul! keep to thy horn; and vent thyself with that, when rage or other passion touches thee. Search on thy neck, and thou wilt find the belt that holds it tied, O soul confused, and see the horn itself that girdles thy huge breast.” Then he said to me: “He accuses himself; this is Nimrod, through whose ill thought one language is not still used in the world. Let us leave him standing, and not speak in vain: for every language is to him as to others his which no one understands.” We therefore journeyed on, turning to the left; and, a crossbow-shot off, we found the next far more fierce and large. Who and what the master could be that girt him thus, I cannot tell; but he had his right arm pinioned down behind, and the other before, with a chain which held him clasped from the neck downwards, and on the uncovered part went round to the fifth turn. “This proud spirit willed to try his power against high Jove,” said my Guide: “whence he has such reward. Ephialtes7 is his name; and he made the great endeavours, when the giants made the Gods afraid; the arms he agitated then, he never moves.” And I to him: “If it were possible, I should wish my eyes might have experience of the immense Briareus.”8 Whereat he answered: “Thou shalt see Antæus9 near at hand, who speaks, and is unfettered. who will put us into the bottom of all guilt. He whom thou desirest to see is far beyond; and is tied and shaped like this one, save that he seems in aspect more ferocious.” No mighty earthquake ever shook a tower so violently, as Ephialtes forthwith shook himself. Then more than ever I dreaded death; and nothing else was wanted for it but the fear, had I not seen his bands. We then proceeded farther on, and reached Antæus, who full five ells, besides the head, forth issued from the cavern. “O thou! who in the fateful valley, which made Scipio heir of glory when Hannibal retreated with his hosts, didst take of old a thousand lions for thy prey; and through whom, hadst thou been at the high war of thy brethren, it seem yet to be believed. that the sons of earth had conquered; set us down—and be not shy to do it—where the cold locks up Cocytus. Do not make us go to Tityos nor Typhon; this man can give of that which here is longed for: therefore bend thee, and curl not thy lip in scorn. He can yet restore thy fame on earth: for he lives, and still awaits long life, so Grace before the time call him not unto herself.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Then was his pride so fallen, that he let the hook drop at his feet, and said to the others: “Now strike him not!” And my Guide to me: “O thou that sittest cowering, cowering amongst the great splinters of the bridge, securely now return to me!” Whereat I moved, and quickly came to him; and the Devils all pressed forward, so that I feared they might not hold the compact. And thus once I saw the footmen, who marched out under treaty from Caprona,7 fear at seeing themselves among so many enemies. I chew near my Guide with my whole body, and turned not away my eyes from the look of them, which was not good. They lowered their drag-hooks, and kept saying to one another: “Shall I touch him on the rump?” and answering: “Yes, see thou nick it for him.” But that Demon, who was speaking with my Guide, turned instant round, and said: “Quiet, quiet, Scarmiglione!” Then he said to us: “To go farther by this cliff will not be possible: for the sixth arch lies all in fragments at the bottom; and if it please you still to go onward, go along this ridge: near at hand is another cliff which forms a path. Yesterday, five hours later than this hour,8 completed a thousand two hundred and sixty-six years since the way here was broken. Thitherward I send some of these my men, to look if anyone be out airing himself; go with them, for they will not be treacherous.” “Draw forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,” he then began to say, “and thou, Cagnazzo; and let Barbariccia lead the ten. Let Libicocco come besides, and Draghignazzo, tusked Ciriatto, and Graffiacane, and Farfarello, and furious Rubicante. Search around the boiling glue; be these two safe as far as the other crag, which all unbroken goes across the dens.” “Oh me! Master, what is this that I see?” said I; “ah, without escort let us go alone, if thou knowest the way; for as to me, I seek it not! If thou beest so wary, as thou art wont, dost thou not see how they grind their teeth, and with their brows threaten mischief to us?” And he to me: “I would not have thee be afraid; let them grind on at their will: for they do it at the boiled wretches.” By the sinister bank they turned; but first each of them had pressed his tongue between the teeth toward their Captain, as a signal; and he of his rump had made a trumpet.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  I would have peace with God on the brink of my life; and my debts were not yet reduced by penitence, had it not been that Peter the Combseller11 remembered me in his holy prayers, who in his charity did grieve for me. But who art thou that goest asking of our state, and bearest thine eyes unsewn, as I believe, and breathing dost speak?” “Mine eyes,” said I, “from me here shall yet be taken; but for short time, for small is the offence they did through being turned in envy. Greater far is the fear wherewith my soul is suspended, of the torment below, for even now the burden down there weighs upon me.”12 And she to me: “Who then hath led thee up here among us, if thou thinkest to return below?” And I: “He who is with me and saith no word; and I am living, and therefore do thou ask of me, spirit elect, if thou wouldst that yonder I lift yet for thee my mortal feet.” “Oh this is so new a thing to hear,” she answered, “that ’tis a great token that God loveth thee; therefore profit me sometimes with thy prayers. And I beseech thee by all thou most desirest, if e’er thou tread the land of Tuscany, that thou restore my fame among my kinsfolk. Thou wilt see them among that vain people who put their trust in Talamone, and will lose there more hopes than in finding the Diana; but the admirals shall lose most there.”13 1. The expression “so far as here counts for a mile” (that is to say, “if you think of walking a mile, you will get the right impression”), is an indication which should be carefully noted, that we must not expect to be able to arrive at any consistent representation by exact matter-of-fact measurements in Hell and Purgatory. Dante was well acquainted with the approximate size of the earth (Conv. iii. 5 and elsewhere), and cannot represent himself, for example, as having literally climbed from the centre to the circumference in something under 24 hours. He is content to avoid all glaring errors of principle, and to make the several scenes realizable (cf. Inf. xxx, note 5).

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  and Night, in the place where we were, had made two of the steps wherewith she climbs, and the third was already down-stooping its wings;1 when I, who with me had somewhat of Adam, vanquished by sleep, sank down on the grass where already all we five were seated. At the hour when the swallow begins her sad lays nigh unto the morn, perchance in memory of her former woes,2 and when our mind, more of a wanderer from the flesh and less prisoned by thoughts, in its visions is almost prophetic; in a dream methought I saw an eagle3 poised in the sky, with plumes of gold, with wings outspread, and intent to swoop. And meseemed to be there where his own people were abandoned by Ganymede, when he was snatched to the high consistory. I thought within me: “Haply he strikes only here through custom, and perchance scorneth to bear aught upward from other place in his talons.” Then meseemed that, having wheeled awhile, terrible as lightning, he descended and snatched me up far as the fiery sphere. There it seemed that he and I did burn, and the visionary flame so scorched that needs was my slumber broken. Not otherwise Achilles4 startled, turning his awakened eyes around, and knowing not where he might be, when his mother carried him away sleeping in her arms from Chiron to Scyros, there whence the Greeks afterwards made him depart, than I startled, soon as sleep fled from my face, and I grew pale even as a man who freezes with terror. Alone beside me was my Comfort, and the sun was already more than two hours high,5 and mine eyes were turned to the sea. “Have no fear,” said my Lord, “make thee secure, for we are at a good spot: hold not back, but put out all thy strength. Thou art now arrived at Purgatory; see there the rampart that compasseth it around; see the entrance there where it seems cleft. Erewhile, in the dawn which precedes the day, when thy soul was sleeping within thee upon the flowers wherewith down below is adorned, came a lady and said: ‘I am Lucy,6 let me take this man who sleepeth, so will I prosper him on his way.’ Sordello remained and the other noble forms. She took thee, and as day was bright, came on upward, and I followed in her track. Here she placed thee, and first her fair eyes did show to me that open entrance; then she and sleep together went away.” As doth a man who in dread is reassured, and who changes his fear to comfort after the truth is revealed to him, I changed me; and when my Leader saw me freed from care, he moved up by the rampart, and I following, towards the height. Reader, well thou seest how I exalt my subject, therefore marvel thou not if with greater art I sustain it.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And therewithall he tooke his sheepe and drave them away as fast as he might possible. This answere made our shepheards greatly to feare, that they thought of nothing else, but to enquire what Country they were in: Howbeit they saw no manner of person of whom they might demand. At length as they were thus in doubt, they perceived another old man with a staffe in his hand very weary with travell, who approaching nigh to our company, began to weepe and complaine saying: Alas masters I pray you succour me miserable caitife, and restore my nephew to me againe, that by following a sparrow that flew before him, is fallen into a ditch hereby, and verily I thinke he is in danger of death. As for me, I am not able to helpe him out by reason of mine old age, but you that are so valiant and lusty may easily helpe me herein, and deliver me my boy, my heire and guide of my life. These words made us all to pity him. And then the youngest and stoutest of our company, who alone escaped best the late skirmish of Dogges and stones, rose up and demanded in what ditch the boy was fallen: Mary (quod he) yonder, and pointed with his finger, and brought him to a great thicket of bushes and thornes where they both entred in. In the meane season, after we cured our wounds, we tooke up our packs, purposing to depart away. And because we would not goe away without the young man our fellow: The shepheards whistled and called for him, but when he gave no answer, they sent one out of their company to seeke him out, who after a while returned againe with a pale face and sorrowfull newes, saying that he saw a terrible Dragon eating and devouring their companion: and as for the old man, hee could see him in no place. When they heard this, (remembring likewise the words of the first old man that shaked his head, and drave away his sheep) they ran away beating us before them, to fly from this desart and pestilent Country. THE THIRTY-FIFTH CHAPTER How a woman killed her selfe and her child, because her husband haunted harlots.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  In my naïveté I imagined that all poor people, black and white, liked each other and that here, through Fountain Square, I would feel my way back to the street, that smell of burning honey, that blood as red as mine and that steady, colorless flare in the glass chimney … These hillbillies on the square with their drawling and spitting, their thin arms and big raw hands, nails ragged, tattoos a fresher blue than their eyes set in long sallow faces, each eye a pale blue ringed by nearly invisible lashes—I wove these men freely into the cloth of the powerful poor, a long bolt lost in the dark that I was now pulling through a line of light. I opened a book and pretended to read under the weak streetlamps, though my attention wandered away from sight to sound. “Freddy, bring back a beer!” someone shouted. Some other men laughed. No one I knew kept his nickname beyond twelve, at least not with his contemporaries, but I could hear these guys calling each other Freddy and Bobby, and I found that heartening, as though they wanted to stay, if only among themselves, as chummy as a gang of boys. While they worked to become as brutal as soon enough they would be, I tried to find them softer than they’d ever been. Boots approached me. I heard them before I saw them. They stopped, every tan scar on the orange hide in focus beyond the page I held that was running with streaks of print. “Curiosity killed the damn pussy, you know,” a man said. I looked up at a face sprouting brunet sideburns that swerved inward like cheese knives toward his mouth and stopped just below his ginger mustaches. The eyes, small and black, had been moistened genially by the beers he’d drunk and the pleasure he was taking in his own joke. “ Mighty curious, ain’t you?” he asked. “Ain’t you!” he insisted, making a great show of the leisurely, avuncular way he settled close beside me, sighing, and wrapped a bare arm—a pale, cool, sweaty, late-night August arm—around my thin shoulders. “Shit,” he hissed. Then he slowly drew a breath like ornamental cigarette smoke up his nose, and chuckled again. “I’d say you got Sabbath eyes, son.” “I do?” I squeaked in a pinched soprano. “I don’t know what you mean,” I added, only to demonstrate my newly acquired baritone, as penetrating as an oboe; the effect on the man seemed the right one: sociable. “Yessir, Sabbath eyes,” he said with a downshift into a rural languor and rhetorical fanciness I associated with my storytelling paternal grandfather in Texas. “I say Sabbath ’cause you done worked all week and now you’s resting them eyeballs on what you done made—or might could make. The good things of the earth.” Suddenly he grew stern. “Why you here, boy? I seed you here cocking your hade and spying up like a biddy hen. Why you watching, boy?

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] AS WHEN he shoots forth his first beams there where his Creator shed his blood, while Ebro falls beneath the lofty Scales, and Ganges’ waves by noonday heat are scorched, so stood the sun;1 wherefore the day was passing away when God’s glad angel2 appeared to us. Outside the flames on the bank he was standing and singing “Beati mundo corde”3 in a voice more piercing far than ours. Then: “No farther may ye go, O hallowed souls, if first the fire bite not; enter therein and to the singing beyond be not deaf,” he said to us when we were nigh to him; wherefore I became when I heard him, such as one who is laid in the grave. I bent forward over my clasped hands, gazing at the fire, and vividly imagining human bodies once seen burnt. The kindly escorts turned them toward me, and Virgil said to me: “My son, here may be torment but not death. Remember thee, remember thee, … and if on Geryon4 I guided thee safely, what shall I do now nearer to God? Of a surety believe, that if within the womb of these flames thou didst abide full a thousand years, they could not make thee bald of one hair; and if perchance thou thinkest that I beguile thee, get thee toward them, and get credence with thy hands on the hem of thy garments. Put away now, put away all fear; turn thee hither, and onward come securely.” And I, yet rooted, and with accusing conscience. When he saw me stand yet rooted and stubborn, troubled a little he said: “Now look, my son, ’twixt Beatrice and thee is this wall.” As at Thisbe’s name Pyramus opened his eyes at the point of death, and gazed at her, when the mulberry became red,5 so, my stubbornness being softened, I turned me to my wise Leader on hearing the name which ever springs up in my mind. Whereupon he shook his head, and said: “What? do we desire to stay this side?” then smiled as one does to a child that is won by an apple.6 Then he entered into the fire in front of me, praying Statius that he would come behind, who for a long way before had separated us. When I was within, I would have flung me into molten glass to cool me, so immeasurable there was the burning. My sweet Father, to encourage me, went on discoursing ever of Beatrice, saying: “Already I seem to behold her eyes.” A voice guided us, which was singing on the other side, and we, intent only on it, came forth, there where the ascent began. “Venite benedicti patris mei,”7 rang forth from within a light which was there, so bright that it vanquished me, and look upon it I could not. “The sun is sinking,” it added, “and the evening cometh; stay ye not but mend your pace while the west grows not dark.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Nec multis interiectis diebus longe peioribus me dolis petivit. Ligno enim quod gerebam in proxi- mam casulam vendito vacuum me ducens, iam se nequitiae meae proclamans imparem miserrimumque istud magisterium renuens, querelas huiusmodi con- cinnat: “ Videtis istum pigrum tardissimumque et nimis asinum ? me praeter cetera flagitia nunc nouis periculis etiam angit: ut quemque enim viatorem prospexerit, sive illa scitula mulier seu virgo nubilis seu tener puellus est, illico disturbato gestamine, nonnunquam etiam ipsis stramentis abiectis, furens incurrit et homines amator talis appetit, et humi pro- stratis illis inhians illicitas atque incognitas temptat libidines et ferinas ! aversa Venere invitat ad nuptias. Nam imaginem etiam savii mentiendo ore improbo 1 After ferinas the MSS have voluptates. This will not construe, and seems like a gloss on libidines or ferinas nuptias which has crept into the text. 330 YHE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII destruction, nor how I might save myself, and in such a burning it was not possible for me to stand still, and there was no time to advise kett:r; but fortune was favourable towards me in my misf»rtune, perhaps to reserve me for more dangers ; at least she saved me from the present death thus devised, for I espied a great hole full of muddy rain-water that fell the day before; thither I ran hastily and plunged myself therein, in such sort that I quenched the fire and was delivered both from my load and from that peril. But the vile boy turned even this his most wicked deed upon me, and declared to all the shepherds about that I willingly leaped over a fire of the neighbours and tumbled in it and set myself afire. Then he laughed upon me, saying: * How long shall we keep this fiery ass in vain ?" A few days after, this boy invented another mis- chief much worse than the former: for when he had sold all the wood which I bare to certain men dwell- ing in a village by, he led me homeward unladen. And then he cried that he was not able to rule.me, for that he was unequal to my naughtiness, and that he would not drive me to the hill any longer for wood, saying : ** Do you see this slow and dull beast, too much an ass? Now, besides all the mischiefs that he hath wrought already, he inventeth daily more and more, For when he espieth any passing by the way, whether it be a fair woman or a maid ready for marriage, or a young boy, he will throw his burden from his back, yea, and often break his very girths, and runneth fiercely upon them. And after that he hath thrown them down, he will stride over them to take his beastly pleasure upon them. More- over, he will feign as though he would kiss them with his great and wicked mouth. but he will bite their 331 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I still hear the nasal voices of those invisibles serenading her, people with names like Sammy and Jo and Eddy and Tony and Peggy and Guy and Patti and Rex, and sentimental song hits, all of them as similar to my ear as her various candies were to my palate. She believed, with a kind of celestial trust, any advertisement or advice that appeared in Movie Love or Screen Land—Starasil Starves Pimples, or “You better watch out if you’re wearing your shirttails outside your jeans, gals, because Jill says you shouldn’t.” If a roadside sign said: VISIT OUR GIFT SHOP—we had to visit it, had to buy its Indian curios, dolls, copper jewelry, cactus candy. The words “novelties and souvenirs” simply entranced her by their trochaic lilt. If some café sign proclaimed Icecold Drinks, she was automatically stirred, although all drinks everywhere were ice-cold. She it was to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster. And she attempted—unsuccessfully—to patronize only those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads. In those days, neither she nor I had thought up yet the system of monetary bribes which was to work such havoc with my nerves and her morals somewhat later. I relied on three other methods to keep my pubescent concubine in submission and passable temper. A few years before, she had spent a rainy summer under Miss Phalen’s bleary eye in a dilapidated Appalachian farmhouse that had belonged to some gnarled Haze or other in the dead past. It still stood among its rank acres of golden rod on the edge of a flowerless forest, at the end of a permanently muddy road, twenty miles from the nearest hamlet. Lo recalled that scarecrow of a house, the solitude, the soggy old pastures, the wind, the bloated wilderness, with an energy of disgust that distorted her mouth and fattened her half-revealed tongue. And it was there that I warned her she would dwell with me in exile for months and years if need be, studying under me French and Latin, unless her “present attitude” changed. Charlotte, I began to understand you! A simple child, Lo would scream no! and frantically clutch at my driving hand whenever I put a stop to her tornadoes of temper by turning in the middle of a highway with the implication that I was about to take her straight to that dark and dismal abode. The farther, however, we traveled away from it west, the less tangible that menace became, and I had to adopt other methods of persuasion.