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 159 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  the men? What was that bang? Were they fighting with the burglars? We were too scared to think; all we could do was wait. Ten o’clock, footsteps on the stairs. Father, pale and nervous, came inside, followed by Mr. van Daan. “Lights out, tiptoe upstairs, we’re expecting the police!” There wasn’t time to be scared. The lights were switched off, I grabbed a jacket, and we sat down upstairs. “What happened? Tell us quickly!” There was no one to tell us; the men had gone back downstairs. The four of them didn’t come back up until ten past ten. Two of them kept watch at Peter’s open window. The door to the landing was locked, the book- case shut. We draped a sweater over our night-light, and then they told us what had happened: Peter was on the landing when he heard two loud bangs. He went downstairs and saw that a large panel was missing from the left half of the warehouse door. He dashed upstairs, alerted the “Home Guard,” and the four of them went downstairs. When they entered the warehouse, the burglars were going about their business. Without thinking, Mr. van Daan yelled “Police!” Hur- ried footsteps outside; the burglars had fled. The board was put back in the door so the police wouldn’t notice the gap, but then a swift kick from outside sent it flying to the floor. The men were amazed at the burglars’ audacity. Both Peter and Mr. van Daan felt a murderous rage come over them. Mr. van Daan slammed an ax against the floor, and all was quiet again. Once more the panel was re- placed, and once more the attempt was foiled. Outside, a man and a woman shone a glaring flashlight through the opening, lighting up the entire warehouse. “What the . . .” mumbled one of the men, but now their roles had been reversed. Instead of policemen, they were now burglars. All four of them raced upstairs. Dussel and Mr. van Daan snatched up Dussel’s books, Peter opened the doors and windows in the kitchen and private office, hurled the phone to the ground, and the four of them finally ended up behind the bookcase. END OF PART ONE

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  We’ve all become more frightened since the van Hoeven business. Once again you hear “shh” from all I sides, and we’re doing everything more quietly. The police forced the door there; they could just as easily do that here too! What will we do if we’re ever . . no, I mustn’t write that down. But the question won’t let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I’ve ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. I had to go downstairs alone at eight this evening to use the bathroom. There was no one down there, since they were all listening to the radio. I wanted to be brave, but it was hard. I always feel safer upstairs than in that huge, silent house; when I’m alone with those mysterious muffied sounds from upstairs and the honking of horns in the street, I have to hurry and remind myself where I am to keep from getting the shivers. Miep has been acting much nicer toward us since her talk with Father. But I haven’t told you about that yet. Miep came up one afternoon all flushed and asked Father straight out if we thought they too were infected with the current anti-Semitism. Father was stunned and quickly talked her out of the idea, but some of Miep’s suspicion has lingered on. They’re doing more errands for us now and showing more of an interest in our troubles, though we certainly shouldn’t bother them with our woes. Oh, they’re such good, noble people! I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for. . . everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we’ll know whether we are to be the victors or the vanquished. Yours, Anne M. Frank WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 1944

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Because no priest would perform the ceremony for an excommunicate, in March 1229 Frederick defiantly crowned himself King of Jerusalem in the Holy Sepulcher Church. The Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire proudly declared that this ceremony had made him God’s vicar on earth, and that it was the emperor, not the pope, who stood “between God and mankind and was chosen to rule the entire world.” 87 By now a Crusade’s political impact at home seemed more important than what was happening in the Middle East. Christians lost Jerusalem again in 1244, when the marauding Khwarazmian Turks in flight from the Mongol armies rampaged through the holy city, a portent of a terrifying threat to both Christendom and Islamdom. Between 1190 and 1258, Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes had overrun northern China, Korea, Tibet, Central Asia, Anatolia, Russia, and eastern Europe. Any ruler who failed to submit immediately saw his cities laid waste and his subjects massacred. In 1257 Hulugu, Genghis Khan’s son, crossed the Tigris, seized Baghdad, and strangled the last Abbasid caliph; then he destroyed Aleppo and occupied Damascus, which surrendered and was spared destruction. At first King Louis IX of France and Pope Innocent IV hoped to convert the Mongols to Christianity and let them destroy Islam. Instead the Muslims would save the Crusaders’ coastal state and, possibly, Western Christendom from the Mongols. Finally, the Mongol rulers who established states in the Middle East would convert to Islam. In 1250 a group of disaffected Mamluks took over Saladin’s Ayyubid Empire in a military coup. Ten years later the brilliant Mamluk commander Baibars defeated the Mongol army at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee. But the Mongols had conquered vast swaths of Muslim territory in Mesopotamia, the Iranian mountains, the Syr-Oxus Basin, and the Volga region, where they established four large states. Mongol violence was not caused by religious intolerance: they acknowledged the validity of all faiths and usually built on local traditions once a region had been subjugated; so by the early fourteenth century, the Mongol rulers of all four states had converted to Islam. The Mongol aristocracy, however, still followed the Yasa, Genghis Khan’s military code. Many of their Muslim subjects were dazzled by their brilliant courts and were fascinated by their new rulers. But so much Muslim scholarship and culture had been lost in the devastation that some jurists decreed that the “gates of ijtihad [independent reasoning]” had closed. This was an extreme version of the conservative tendency of agrarian civilization, which lacked the economic resources to implement innovation on a large scale, valued social order over originality, and felt that culture was so hard won that it was more important to conserve what had already been achieved. This narrowing of horizons was not inspired by an inherent dynamic of Islam but was a reaction to the shocking Mongol assault. Other Muslims would respond to the Mongol conquests very differently.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Red King was shot dead by an arrow,—nobody knows whether by a hunter or by an assassin, Aug. 2, 1100, while hunting in the New Forest. "Cut off without shrift, without repentance, he found a tomb in the Old Minster of Winchester; but the voice of clergy and people, like the voice of one man, pronounced, by a common impulse, the sentence which Rome had feared to pronounce. He received the more unique brand of popular excommunication. No bell was tolled, no prayer was said, no alms were given for the soul of the one baptized and anointed ruler, whose eternal damnation was taken for granted by all men as a thing about which there could be no doubt."111 § 24. Anselm and Henry I. At the death of the Red King, one archbishopric, four bishoprics, and eleven abbeys were without pastors. Henry I., his younger brother, surnamed Beauclerc, ascended the throne (1100–1135). He connected the Norman blood with the imperial house of Germany by the marriage of his daughter Matilda to Henry V. After the emperor’s death, Matilda was privately married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou (1128), and became the mother of Henry II., the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty. King Henry I. is favorably known by his strict administration of justice. He reconciled the clergy by recalling Anselm from exile, but soon renewed the investiture controversy. He instituted bishops and abbots, and summoned Anselm to consecrate them, which he steadfastly refused to do. He sent him into a second exile (1103–1106).112 The queen, Maud the Good, who had an extraordinary veneration for the archbishop, strove to mediate between him and her husband, and urged Anselm to return, even at the sacrifice of a little earthly power, reminding him that Paul circumcised Timothy, and went to the temple to conciliate the Jewish brethren. Pascal II. excommunicated the bishops who had accepted investiture from Henry. But the king was not inclined to maintain a hostile attitude to Anselm. They had an interview in Normandy and appealed to the pope, who confirmed the previous investitures of the king on condition of his surrendering the right of investiture in future to the Church. This decision was ratified at Bec, Aug. 26, 1106. The king promised to restore to Anselm the profits of the see during his absence, to abstain from the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys, and to remit all fines to the clergy. He retained the right of sending to vacant sees a congé d’élire, or notice to elect, which carried with it the right of nomination. Anselm now proceeded to consecrate bishops, among them Roger of Salisbury, who was first preferred to Henry’s notice because he "began prayers quickly and closed them speedily."113

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  A desperate but futile assault was made on the fifth day. Boiling pitch and oil were used, with showers of stones and other missiles, to keep the Crusaders at bay. The siege then took the usual course in such cases. Ladders, scaling towers, and other engines of war were constructed, but the wood had to be procured at a distance, from Shechem. The trees around Jerusalem, cut down by Titus twelve centuries before, had never been replaced. The city was invested on three sides by Raymund of Toulouse, Godfrey, Tancred, Robert of Normandy, and other chiefs. The suffering due to the summer heat and the lack of water was intense. The valley and the hills were strewn with dead horses, whose putrefying carcasses made life in the camp almost unbearable. In vain did the Crusaders with bare feet, the priests at their head, march in procession around the walls, hoping to see them fall as the walls of Jericho had fallen before Joshua.370 Help at last came with the arrival of a Genoese fleet in the harbor of Joppa, which brought workmen and supplies of tools and food. Friday, the day of the crucifixion, was chosen for the final assault. A great tower surmounted by a golden cross was dragged alongside of the walls and the drawbridge let down. At a critical moment, as the later story went, a soldier of brilliant aspect371 was seen on the Mount of Olives, and Godfrey, encouraging the besiegers, exclaimed: "It is St. George the martyr. He has come to our help." According to most of the accounts, Letold of Tournay372 was the first to scale the walls. It was noticed that the moment of this crowning feat was three o’clock, the hour of the Saviour’s death. The scenes of carnage which followed belong to the many dark pages of Jerusalem’s history and showed how, in the quality of mercy, the crusading knight was far below the ideal of Christian perfection. The streets were choked with the bodies of the slain. The Jews were burnt with their synagogues. The greatest slaughter was in the temple enclosure. With an exaggeration which can hardly be credited, but without a twinge of regret or a syllable of excuse, it is related that the blood of the massacred in the temple area reached to the very knees and bridles of the horses.373 "Such a slaughter of the pagans had never been seen or heard of. The number none but God knew."374

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Life was becoming even more aggressive than before. In the republics, there was infighting and civil strife. The monarchies were efficient and centralized only because they could coerce their subjects. Armies professed allegiance to the king alone, instead of to the tribe as a whole, so he could impose order with his personal fighting machine, and use it to conquer neighboring territory. This new royal power gave greater stability to the region, but many were disturbed that the kings could force their will upon the people in this way. The economy was fueled by greed, and bankers and merchants, locked in ceaseless competition, preyed on one another. How did this ruthless society measure up to the ideal of ahimsa, which had become so crucial in north India? Life seemed even more violent and terrifying than when cattle rustling had been the backbone of the economy. Vedic religion appeared increasingly out of touch with contemporary reality. Merchants were constantly on the road, and could not keep the sacred fires burning or observe the traditional household rites. Animal sacrifice may have made sense when stock breeding had been the main occupation, but now that agriculture and trade had taken its place, cattle were becoming scarce and sacrifice seemed wasteful and cruel—too reminiscent of the violence of public life. People needed a different religious solution.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  70 The centerpiece of the festival was a procession through the city, which finished on the Acropolis at the eastern end of Athena’s new temple. There the city presented the goddess with a fresh saffron robe for her cult statue, embroidered with scenes of her battle with the Cyclops, which symbolized the triumph of civilization over chaos. All citizens were represented in the procession: the young ephebes (the adolescent boys who were becoming full citizens), hoplites, girls in yellow chitons, old men, craftsmen, resident aliens, delegates from other poleis, and the sacrificial victims. Athens was on display, to itself and to the rest of the Greek world, in a dazzlingly proud assertion of identity. But Greeks were beginning to long for a more personal religious experience. One of the new buildings constructed by Peisistratos was a cult hall at the city of Eleusis, some twenty miles west of Athens, where, it was said, the goddess Demeter had stayed while searching for Persephone. The Eleusinian mystery cult now became an integral part of the religious life of Athenians. 71 It was an initiation, in which participants experienced a transformed state of mind. Because the rites were shrouded in secrecy, we have only an incomplete idea of what went on, but it seems that the initiates ( mystai ) followed in the footsteps of Demeter; they shared her suffering—her grief, desperation, fear, and rage—at the loss of her daughter. By participating in her pain and, finally, the joy of her reunion with Persephone, some of them found that, having looked into the heart of darkness, they did not fear death in the same way again. Preparations began in Athens. The mystai fasted for two days; they stood in the sea and sacrificed a piglet in honor of Persephone; and then in a huge throng they set off on foot for Eleusis. By this time they were weakened by their fast and apprehensive, because they had no idea what was going to happen to them. The epoptai, who had been initiated the previous year, made the journey with them; their behavior was threatening and aggressive. The crowds called rhythmically and hypnotically upon Dionysus, god of transformation, driving themselves into a frenzy of excitement, so that when the mystai finally arrived in Eleusis, they were exhausted, frightened, and elated. By this time, the sun was setting; torches were lit, and in the unearthly, flickering light, the mystai were herded to and fro through the streets, until they lost their bearings and were thoroughly disoriented. Then they plunged into the pitch-darkness of the initiation hall. After this the picture becomes very confused. Animals were sacrificed; there was a terrifying, “unspeakable” event, which may have involved the sacrifice of a child who was reprieved only at the eleventh hour. There was a “revelation”; something was lifted out of a sacred basket.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  During the Warring States period, Mozi was more widely revered than Confucius, because he spoke directly to the terror and violence of his time. As he watched the whole of China mobilizing for war, it seemed that human beings were about to erase themselves from the face of the earth. If they could not curb their selfishness and greed, they would destroy one another. The only way they could survive was by cultivating a boundless sympathy that did not depend upon emotional identification but on the reasoned, practical understanding that even their enemies had the same needs, desires, and fears as themselves. Toward the end of the fifth century, a kshatriya from the republic of Sakka, in the foothills of the Himalayas, shaved his head and beard, put on the saffron robe of the renouncer, and set out on the road to Magadha. His name was Siddhatta Gotama, and he was twenty-nine years old. Later he recalled that his parents wept bitterly when he left home. We are also told that before leaving he stole into his wife’s bedroom while she was asleep to take one last look at her and their newborn son, as though he did not trust his resolve should she beg him to stay.70 He had begun to find his father’s elegant house constricting: a miasma of petty duties weighed him down. When he looked at human life, Gotama could see only the grim cycle of suffering, which began with the trauma of birth and proceeded inexorably to “aging, illness, death, sorrow and corruption,” only to start again with the next life cycle. But like the other renouncers, Gotama was convinced that these painful states must have their positive counterparts. “Suppose,” he said, “I start looking for the unborn, unaging, deathless, sorrowless, incorrupt and supreme freedom from all this bondage?”71 He called this blissful liberation nibbana*4 (“blowing out”), because the passions and desires that tied him down would be extinguished like a flame. He had a long, arduous quest ahead, but he never lost hope in a form of existence—attainable in this life—that was not contingent, flawed, and transient. “There is something that has not come to birth in the usual way, which has neither been created and which remains undamaged,” he insisted. “If it did not exist, it would be impossible to find a way out.”72

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  But Lord Mazda had opted for goodness and had created the Holy Immortals and human beings as his allies. Now every single man, woman, and child had to make the same choice between asha and druj. 19 For generations, the Aryans had worshiped Indra and the other daevas, but now Zoroaster concluded that the daevas must have decided to fight alongside the Hostile Spirit. 20 The cattle raiders were their earthly counterparts. The unprecedented violence in the steppes had caused Zoroaster to divide the ancient Aryan pantheon into two warring groups. Good men and women must no longer offer sacrifice to Indra and the daevas; they must not invite them into the sacred precinct. Instead, they must commit themselves entirely to Lord Mazda, his Holy Immortals, and the other ahuras, who alone could bring peace, justice, and security. The daevas and the cattle raiders, their evil henchmen, must all be defeated and destroyed. 21 The whole of life had now become a battlefield in which everybody had a role. Even women and servants could make a valuable contribution. The old purity laws, which had regulated the conduct of the ritual, were now given a new significance. Lord Mazda had created a completely clean and perfect world for his followers, but the Hostile Spirit had invaded the earth and filled it with sin, violence, falsehood, dust, dirt, disease, death, and decay. Good men and women must, therefore, keep their immediate environment free from dirt and pollution. By separating the pure from the impure, good from evil, they would liberate the world for Lord Mazda. 22 They must pray five times a day. Winter was the season when the daevas were in the ascendant, so during this time all virtuous people must counter their influence by meditating on the menace of druj. They must rise up during the night, when wicked spirits prowled the earth, and throw incense into the fire to strengthen Agni in the war against evil. 23 But no battle could last forever. In the old, peaceful world, life had seemed cyclical: the seasons had followed one another, day succeeded night, and harvest followed the planting. But Zoroaster could no longer believe in these natural rhythms. The world was rushing forward toward a cataclysm. He and his followers were living in the “bounded time” of raging cosmic conflict, but soon they would witness the final triumph of good and the annihilation of the forces of darkness. After a terrible battle, Lord Mazda and the Immortals would descend to the world of men and women and offer sacrifice. There would be a great judgment. The wicked would be wiped off the face of the earth, and a blazing river would flow into hell and incinerate the Hostile Spirit. Then the cosmos would be restored to its original perfection. Mountains and valleys would be leveled into a great plain, where gods and humans could live side by side, worshiping Lord Mazda forever. There would be no more death.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Hence the institution of herem (“holy war”) was crucial to Israelite society. If his tribe was attacked, the judge summoned other clans to the militia of Yahweh. The central cult object of Israel was a palladium called the Ark of the Covenant, symbol of the treaty that bound the am Yahweh together, which was carried into battle. When the troops set out, the judge called upon Yahweh to accompany the Ark: Arise, Yahweh, may your enemies be scattered And those who hate you run For their lives before you. 97 Living constantly poised against attack, and ready for war, the beleaguered people developed an embattled cult. Even though the people of Israel felt so separate from their neighbors, the biblical record suggests that until the sixth century Israel’s religion was not in fact very different from that of the other local peoples. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had worshiped El, the High God of Canaan, and later generations merged El’s cult with that of Yahweh. 98 Yahweh himself referred to this process when he explained to Moses that at the beginning of Israel’s history the patriarchs had always called him El, and that only now was he revealing his real name, Yahweh. 99 But the Israelites never forgot El. For a long time, Yahweh’s shrine was a tent, like the tabernacle in which Canaanite El presided over his divine assembly of gods. In Canaan, El eventually met the fate of most High Gods, and by the fourteenth century his cult was in decline. He was replaced by the dynamic storm god Baal, a divine warrior, who rode on the clouds of heaven in his chariot, fought battles with other gods, and brought the life-giving rains. In the early days, Yahweh’s cult was very similar to Baal’s, and some of Baal’s hymns were even adapted for use in Yahweh’s temple in Jerusalem. Middle Eastern religion was strongly agonistic, dominated by stories of wars, hand-to-hand combat, and fearful battles among the gods. In Babylon, the warrior god Marduk had slaughtered Tiamat, the primal ocean, split her carcass in two like a giant shellfish, and created heaven and earth. Each year this battle was reenacted in the temple of Esagila during the new year ceremony to keep the world in existence for another year. In Syria, Baal fought Lotan, a seven-headed sea dragon, who is called Leviathan in the Bible. He also fought Yam, the primordial sea, symbol of chaos, and Mot, god of drought, death, and sterility. To celebrate his victory, Baal built himself a palace on Mount Sapan, his holy mountain. Until the sixth century, the Israelites also imagined Yahweh fighting sea dragons like Leviathan to create the world and save his people.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  At eleven o’clock Jan was back and joined us at the table, and gradually everyone began to relax. Jan had the following story to tell: Mr. Sleegers was asleep, but his wife told Jan that her husband had discovered the hole in the door while making his rounds. He called in a policeman, and the two of them searched the building. Mr. Sleegers, in his capacity as night watchman, patrols the area every night on his bike, accompanied by his two dogs. His wife said he would come on Tuesday and tell Mr. Kugler the rest. No one at the police station seemed to know anything about the break-in, but they made a note to come first thing Tuesday morning to have a look. On the way back Jan happened to run into Mr. van Hoeven, the man who supplies us with potatoes, and told him of the break-in. “I know,” Mr. van Hoeven calmly replied. “Last night when my wife and I were walking past your building, I saw a gap in the door. My wife wanted to walk on, but I peeked inside with a flashlight, and that’s when the burglars must have run off. To be on the safe side, I didn’t call the police. I thought it wouldn’t be wise in your case. I don’t know anything, but I have my suspicions.” Jan thanked him and went on. Mr. van Hoeven obviously suspects we’re here, because he always delivers the potatoes at lunchtime. A decent man! It was one o’clock by the time Jan left and we’d done the dishes. All eight of us went to bed. I woke up at quarter to three and saw that Mr. Dussel was already up. My face rumpled with sleep, I happened to run into Peter in the bathroom, just after he’d come downstairs. We agreed to meet in the office. I freshened up a bit and went down. “After all this, do you still dare go to the front attic?” he asked. I nodded, grabbed my pillow, with a cloth wrapped around it, and we went up together. The weather was gorgeous, and even though the air-raid sirens soon began to wail, we stayed where we were. Peter put his arm around my shoulder, I put mine around his, and we sat quietly like this until four o’clock, when Margot came to get us for coffee. We ate our bread, drank our lemonade and joked (we were finally able to again), and for the rest everything was back to normal. That evening I thanked Peter because he’d been the bravest of us all. None of us have ever been in such danger as we were that night. God was truly

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  “We’ll have to cook on the wood stove. Filter the water and boil it. We should clean some big jugs and fill them with water. We can also store water in the three kettles we use for canning, and in the washtub.” “Besides, we still have about two hundred and thirty pounds of winter potatoes in the spice storeroom.” All day long that’s all I hear. Invasion, invasion, nothing but invasion. Arguments about going hungry, dying, bombs, fire extinguishers, sleeping bags, identity cards, poison gas, etc., etc. Not exactly cheerful. A good example of the explicit warnings of the male contingent is the following conversation with Jan: Annex: “We’re afraid that when the Germans retreat, they’ll take the entire population with them.” Jan: “That’s impossible. They haven’t got enough trains.” Annex: “Trains? Do you really think they’d put civilians on trains? Absolutely not. Everyone would have to hoof it.” (Or, as Dussel always says, per pedes apostolorum.) Jan: “I can’t believe that. You’re always looking on the dark side. What reason would they have to round up all the civilians and take them along?” Annex: “Don’t you remember Goebbels saying that if the Germans have to go, they’ll slam the doors to all the occupied territories behind them?” Jan: “They’ve said a lot of things.” Annex: “Do you think the Germans are too noble or humane to do it? Their reasoning is: if we go under, we’ll drag everyone else down with us.” Jan: “You can say what you like, I just don’t believe." Annex: “It’s always the same old story. No one wants to see the danger until it’s staring them in the face.” Jan: “But you don’t know anything for sure. You’re just making an assumption.” Annex: “Because we’ve already been through it all ourselves, First in Germany and then here. What do you think’s happening in Russia?”

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Things are more or less back to normal here. Our coupon men have been released from prison, thank goodness! Miep’s been back since yesterday, but today it was her husband’s turn to take to his bed-chills and fever, the usual flu symptoms. Bep is better, though she still has a cough, and Mr. Kleiman will have to stay home for a long time. Yesterday a plane crashed nearby. The crew was able to parachute out in time. It crashed on top of a school, but luckily there were no children inside. There was a small fire and a couple of people were killed. As the airmen made their descent, the Germans sprayed them with bullets. The Amsterdammers who saw it seethed with rage at such a dastardly deed. We-by which I mean the ladies-were also scared out of our wits. Brrr, I hate the sound of gunfire. Now about myself. I was with Peter yesterday and, somehow, I honestly don’t know how, we wound up talking about sex. I’d made up my mind a long time ago to ask him a few things. He knows everything; when I said that Margot and I weren’t very well informed, he was amazed. I told him a lot about Margot and me and Mother and Father and said that lately I didn’t dare ask them anything. He offered to enlighten me, and I gratefully accepted: he described how contraceptives work, and I asked him very boldly how boys could tell they were grown up. He had to think about that one; he said he’d tell me tonight. I told him what had happened to Jacque, and said that girls are defenseless against strong boys. “Well, you don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said. When I came back that evening, he told me how it is with boys. Slightly embarrassing, but still awfully nice to be able to discuss it with him. Neither he nor I had ever imagined we’d be able to talk so openly to a girl or a boy, respectively, about such intimate matters. I think I know everything now. He told me a lot about what he called Prasentivmitteln* [* Should be Praservativmitteln: prophylactics] in German. That night in the bathroom Margot and I were talking about Bram and Trees, two friends of hers. This morning I was in for a nasty surprise: after breakfast Peter beckoned me

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Polynices, who had invaded his native polis, was guilty of hubris, while Eteocles seemed to embody the restraint and self-control that should characterize a true citizen: he loathes the ancient, irrational religion of the chorus of frightened women, who rush periodically onto the stage in ones and twos, asking disconnected questions and uttering witless and incomprehensible ritual cries. Yet Eteocles himself, the man of logos, falls prey to the pollution that his father, Oedipus, had unleashed, and that had contaminated the whole family. 96 At the end of the play, this miasma finally drove the two brothers to kill each other outside the walls of Thebes. Aeschylus had depicted a torn society, painfully caught between two irreconcilable worlds. Like Eteocles and the philosophers, some citizens looked down on the old religion, but could not entirely shake it off. It still held sway in the deeper, less rational regions of their minds. At the end of the play, the Erinyes, the ancient chthonian Furies, triumphed over the modern forces of logos. Athenians might regard themselves as rational men of the polis, in charge of their own destiny, but they still felt that they could be overtaken by a divinely inspired pollution that had a life of its own. Would Athenian hubris in Naxos produce fresh miasma and bring their city to ruin? The Greek mind was straining in two directions, and Aeschylus did not propose an easy solution. In their final lament, the chorus was split, half siding with Polynices, the others attending the funeral of Eteocles. In 461 a group of young Athenians led by Ephialtes and his friend Pericles mounted a concerted attack on the elders in the Assembly, which then deprived the Areopagus Council of all its powers. Their slogan was demokratia (“government by the people”). The coup completely overturned the political order. The Areopagus was replaced by the Council of Five Hundred and decisions were henceforth made by all citizens in the Popular Assembly. But the new democracy was not entirely benign. Debates were often rude and aggressive. The courts were made up of citizens, who were both judge and jury. There was no rule of law, and a trial was essentially a battle between the accused and his accusers. The Oresteia, a trilogy written by Aeschylus shortly afterward, shows how deeply Athens had been shaken by this revolution.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  brought the waste- basket to the next room, where Margot, Mrs. van Daan and I gratefully made use of it. Mother finally gave in. There was a great demand for paper, and luckily I had some in my pocket. The wastebasket stank, everything went on in a whisper, and we were exhausted. It was midnight. “Lie down on the floor and go to sleep!” Margot and I were each given a pillow and a blanket. Margot lay down near the food cupboard, and I made my bed between the table legs. The smell wasn’t quite so bad when you were lying on the floor, but Mrs. van Daan quietly went and got some powdered bleach and draped a dish towel over the potty as a further precaution. Talk, whispers, fear, stench, farting and people continually going to the bathroom; try sleeping through that! By two-thirty, however, I was so tired I dozed off and didn’t hear a thing until three-thirty. I woke up when Mrs. van D. lay her head on my feet. “For heaven’s sake, give me something to put on!” I said. I was handed some clothes, but don’t ask what: a pair of wool slacks over my pajamas, a red sweater and a black skirt, white under-stockings and tattered knee-socks. Mrs. van D. sat back down on the chair, and Mr. van D. lay down with his head on my feet. From three- thirty onward I was engrossed in thought, and still shiver- ing so much that Mr. van Daan couldn’t sleep. I was preparing myself for the return of the police. We’d tell them we were in hiding; if they were good people, we’d be safe, and if they were Nazi sympathizers, we could try to bribe them! “We should hide the radio!” moaned Mrs. van D. “Sure, in the stove,” answered Mr. van D. “If they find us, they might as well find the radio!” “Then they’ll also find Anne’s diary,” added Father. “So burn it,” suggested the most terrified of the group.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  office. “There’s been a burglary” flashed through his mind. But just to make sure, he went downstairs to the front door, checked the lock and found everything closed. “Bep and Peter must just have been very careless this evening,” Mr. van. D. concluded. He remained for a while in Mr. Kugler’s office, switched off the lamp and went upstairs without worrying much about the open doors or the messy office. Early this morning Peter knocked at our door to tell us that the front door was wide open and that the projector and Mr. Kugler’s new briefcase had disappeared from the closet. Peter was instructed to lock the door. Mr. van Daan told us his discoveries of the night before, and we were extremely worried. The only explanation is that the burglar must have had a duplicate key, since there were no signs of a forced entry. He must have sneaked in early in the evening, shut the door behind him, hidden himself when he heard Mr. van Daan, fled with the loot after Mr. van Daan went upstairs and, in his hurry, not bothered to shut the door. Who could have our key? Why didn’t the burglar go to the warehouse? Was it one of our own warehouse employees, and will he turn us in, now that he’s heard Mr. van Daan and maybe even seen him? It’s really scary, since we don’t know whether the burglar will take it into his head to try and get in again. Or was he so startled when he heard someone else in the building that he’ll stay away? Yours, Anne P.S. We’d be delighted if you could hunt up a good detective for us. Obviously, there’s one condotion: he must be relied upon not to mform on people in hiding. THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 1944

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  What had caused the separation of men and gods? Hesiod tied up these loose ends, making use of Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern mythology. He told the traditional story in a way that made the horrible struggle of the theogony—the emergence of the gods from primal formlessness—represent a striving for greater clarity, order, and definition. This had begun when the bottomless abyss of Chaos was replaced by the more solid realities of Gaia and Uranus; it ended with the victory of the Olympians over those Titans who had opposed the rule of law. Hesiod wanted these frightening stories of divine fathers and sons murdering and mutilating one another to warn the Greeks of the dangers of the current internecine strife in the poleis. In his hands, the just and regulated regime established by Zeus was in pointed contrast to the unnatural chaos that had gone before. Hesiod’s Theogony also raised questions that would later preoccupy the Greek philosophers: What were the origins of the cosmos? How did order come to prevail over chaos? How could the many derive from the one? How could the formless relate to what was defined? Hesiod also fixed the place of human beings in the divine scheme, by telling the story of the Titan Prometheus. 54 During the Golden Age, gods and human beings had lived on equal terms and had regularly feasted together. But at the end of the Golden Age, the gods began to recede from the world of men; now the only way for humans to maintain contact with the Olympians was the ritual of animal sacrifice, when gods and men consumed their allotted portions of the victim. But Prometheus thought that the arrangement was unfair and wanted to help humans to improve their lot. After one of these sacrifices, he tried to trick Zeus into accepting the inedible bones of the victim, so that men could enjoy the meat. But Zeus saw through the ruse: gods did not need food; they could sustain themselves on the smoke that rose when the victim’s bones were burned on the altar. Sacrifice, therefore, revealed the gods’ superiority to mortals, who could survive only by eating the flesh of dead animals. Angered by Prometheus’s crafty stratagem, Zeus decided to penalize humans by depriving them of the fire they needed to cook their food. Yet again, Prometheus defied him, stole the fire, and gave it back to humanity. Zeus took his revenge by chaining Prometheus to a pillar, and this time he punished humans by sending them a woman who had been put together by the divine craftsman Hephaestus. In the Golden Age, there had been no division between the sexes; humans had not been defined by gender. Pandora, the first woman, was a “beautiful evil.” She carried a jar that she opened “and scattered pains and sufferings among men.” Men were fatally paired with womankind, who brought sickness, old age, and suffering into their world.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  He felt that he had no choice. “The lion roars; who can help feeling afraid?” he said; “the Lord Yahweh speaks; who can refuse to prophesy?” 4 The Hebrew prophets were not mystics. They did not experience enlightenment within, at the end of a long, disciplined quest that they had initiated themselves. Amos’s experience was quite different from the illumination that would, as we shall see, characterize the Axial Age in India or China. He felt possessed by a power that seemed to come from outside; it dislocated the normal patterns of his conscious life, so that he was no longer in command. Yahweh had taken the place of his controlling, purposeful ego and had hurled Amos into a completely different world. 5 The Hebrew prophets would experience the divine as a rupture, an uprooting, and a shattering blow; their religious experience was often accompanied by strain and distress. At this time, the religion of Israel and Judah was highly visual. Psalmists were consumed with the desire to see Yahweh, “to gaze at you in the Temple and to see your power and glory.” 6 When Amos arrived in the north, he had a vision of Yahweh in the temple of Bethel, one of the royal shrines of Israel. He had beheld Yahweh standing beside the altar, commanding the members of his divine council to destroy the temple and the people of Israel: “‘Strike the capitals,’ he commanded, ‘and let the roof tumble down! I mean to break their heads, every one, and all who remain I will put to the sword; not one shall get away, not one escape!’” 7 Amos brought no message of consolation: Jeroboam, who had neglected his duties to the poor, would be killed, Israel destroyed, and its people “taken into exile, far distant from its own land.” 8 Amos did not necessarily need a divine inspiration to make this prediction. He could see that Assyria was building a powerful empire and reducing the smaller kingdoms of the region to vassal states. The subject king had to swear an oath of loyalty, and disobedience was punished by deportation of the elite. The prophets of Israel were like modern political commentators. Amos could see that by throwing his lot in with this great power, Jeroboam was playing a dangerous game. A single mistake could bring the wrath of Assyria to bear upon the kingdom of Israel. He brought a shocking new message. Yahweh was no longer reflexively on the side of Israel, as he had been at the time of the exodus. He would use the king of Assyria to punish Jeroboam for his neglect of the poor. The king was informed of Amos’s preaching, and the chief priest expelled him from Bethel. But undeterred, Amos continued to preach. He had, of course, no choice, because Yahweh compelled him to speak out.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  It joined all these a-theistic disciplines with the image of the creator god. In later, classical Hinduism, this synthesis would create a new theology, which could be applied to any deity, not merely to Rudra/Shiva. The specific identity of the Lord in question was less important than the fact that he had become accessible in meditation. The yogin knew that this god existed, not because of a set of metaphysical proofs, but because he had seen him. In the very last verse of the Shvetashvatara, we find an important new word. The Upanishad explained that the liberation it described would shine forth “only in a man who has the deepest love [ bhakti ] for God and who shows the same love towards his teacher.” 76 A religious revolution was afoot. People who felt excluded from the abstruse mysticism of the Upanishads and the world-renouncing ascetics were beginning to create a spirituality that suited their way of life. They wanted to participate in the insights of the Axial Age, but needed a less abstract and more emotive religion. So they developed the notion of bhakti (“devotion”) to a deity who loved and cared for his worshipers. 77 The central act of bhakti was self-surrender: devotees stopped resisting the Lord and, conscious of their helplessness, were confident that their god would help them. The word bhakti is complex. Some scholars believe that it comes from bharij, “separation”: people became aware of a gulf between them and the divine, and yet, at the same time, the god of their choice slowly detached himself from the cosmos he created and confronted them, person to person. Other scholars believe that the word relates to bhaj— to share, participate in—as the yogin in the Shvetashvatara becomes one with Lord Rudra. At this stage bhakti was still in its infancy. A crucial text was the Bhagavad-Gita, which—some scholars believe—was written during the late third century. It developed the theology of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, taking it in a new direction that had a profound effect on the Hindu spirituality that emerged during the dark age. The Bhagavad-Gita (“The Song of the Lord”) may originally have been a separate text, but at some point it was inserted into the sixth book of the Mahabharata. It takes the form of a dialogue between Arjuna, the greatest warrior of the Pandava brothers, and his friend Krishna. The terrible war that Yudishthira, Arjuna’s eldest brother, had hoped to avoid was about to begin. Standing in his war chariot, with Krishna as his driver, Arjuna gazed in horror at the battlefield. Until this point in the story, Arjuna had been less disturbed than Yudishthira about the prospect of war, but now he was struck by the enormity of what was about to happen. The family was tragically divided against itself; the Pandavas were about to attack their kinsfolk. According to ancient teaching, a warrior who killed his relatives consigned the entire family to hell.

• From Prayers of the Social Awakening (1910)

  THOU Eternal One, we who are doomed to die lift up our souls to thee for strength, for Death has passed us in the throng of men and touched us, and we know that at some turn of our pathway he stands waiting to take us by the hand and lead us — we know not whither. We praise thee that to us he is no more an enemy but thy great angel and our friend, who alone can open for some of us the prison-house of pain and misery and set our feet in the roomy spaces of a larger life. Yet we are but children, afraid of the dark and the unknown, and we dread the parting from the life that is so sweet and from the loved ones who are so dear. Grant us of thy mercy a valiant heart, that we may tread the road with head uplifted and a smiling face. May we do our work to the last with a wholesome joy, and love our loves with an added tenderness because the days of love are short. On thee we [91] cast the heaviest burden that numbs our soul, the gnawing fear for those we love, whom we must leave imsheltered in a self- ish world. We trust in thee, for through all our years thou hast been our stay. O thou Father of the fatherless, put thy arm about our Uttle ones! And ere we go, we pray that the days may come when the djring may die imafraid, because men have ceased to prey on the weak, and the great family of the nation enfolds all with its strength and care. We thank thee that we have tasted the rich life of humanity. We bless thee for every hour of life, for all our share in the joys and strivings of our brothers, for the wisdom gained which will be part of us forever. If soon we must go, yet through thee we have Uved and our life flows on in the race. By thy grace we too have helped to shape the future and bring in the better day. If our spirit droops in loneliness, uphold us by thy companionship. When all the voices of love grow faint and drift away, thy everlasting arms will still be there. Thou art the father of our spirits; from thee [92] we have come; to thee we go. We rejoice that in the hours of our purer vision, when the pulse-throb of thine eternity is strong within us, we know that no pang of mortality can reach our imconquerable soul, and that for those who abide in thee death is but the gateway to life eternal. Into thy hands we commend our spirit. 93 r