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 315 of 529 · 20 per page

• 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.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  After all the group described, I saw two aged men, unlike in raiment, but like in bearing, and venerable and grave: one showed him to be of the familiars of that highest Hippocrates whom nature made for the creatures she holds most dear; the other showed the contrary care, with a sword glittering and sharp, such that on this side the stream it made me afeard.19 Then saw I four20 of lowly semblance; and behind all an old man solitary, coming in a trance, with visage keen.21 And these seven were arrayed as the first company; but of lilies around their heads no garland had they, Rather of roses and of other red flowers; one who viewed from short distance would have sworn that all were aflame above the eyes.22 And when the car was opposite to me, a thunder clap was heard; and those worthy folk seemed to have their further march forbidden, and halted there with the first ensigns.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “Christ—it’s like ice,” he said. He ought to know the symptoms by now since he’s held my hand on lots of other flights. My fingers (and toes) turn to ice, my stomach leaps upward into my rib cage, the temperature in the tip of my nose drops to the same level as the temperature in my fingers, my nipples stand up and salute the inside of my bra (or in this case, dress—since I’m not wearing a bra), and for one screaming minute my heart and the engines correspond as we attempt to prove again that the laws of aerodynamics are not the flimsy superstitions which, in my heart of hearts, I know they are. Never mind the diabolical information to passengers, I happen to be convinced that only my own concentration (and that of my mother—who always seems to expect her children to die in a plane crash) keeps this bird aloft. I congratulate myself on every successful takeoff, but not too enthusiastically because it’s also part of my personal religion that the minute you grow overconfident and really relax about the flight, the plane crashes instantly. Constant vigilance, that’s my motto. A mood of cautious optimism should prevail. But actually my mood is better described as cautious pessimism. OK, I tell myself, we seem to be off the ground and into the clouds but the danger isn’t past. This is, in fact, the most perilous patch of air. Right here over Jamaica Bay where the plane banks and turns and the “No Smoking” sign goes off. This may well be where we go screaming down in thousands of flaming pieces. So I keep concentrating very hard, helping the pilot (a reassuringly midwestern voice named Donnelly) fly the 250-passenger motherfucker. Thank God for his crew cut and middle-America diction. New Yorker that I am, I would never trust a pilot with a New York accent.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Money, as usual, was a precipitating factor. After three months at Mount Sinai, the Blue Cross coverage ran out and Brian had to be transferred. Either he had to go to a state hospital (something which terrified us both) or to a private hospital (where fees were about $2,000 a month). We were up against a money-green wall. His parents stepped in then, not to help but to harass. If I’d let him go to California, they’d pay the cost of private treatment. Otherwise, not a penny. I lived with this ultimatum for a while and then finally decided I had no choice. In September we made the pilgrimage to California. We “lit out for the territory” not by covered wagon, but by 707, and we had my father and a shrink in tow. The airline would not fly Brian home without an attendant psychiatrist—which also meant that the four of us had to travel first class, munching macadamia nuts in between Libriums. It was a memorable flight. Brian was so agitated that I forgot my own fear of flying. My father was popping Libriums by the minute and admonishing me to be brave, and the shrink (a sweet-faced twenty-six-year-old resident who identified with us to the point of total incompetence) was jittery and needed my constant reassurance. Mother Isadora—I took care of all of them. All the gods, the daddies, who had failed. At the Linda Bella Clinic in La Jolla, the illusion of voluntarism was rigidly maintained. All the nurses wore Bermuda shorts, and the doctors wore sport shirts and corduroy pants and golfing hats. The patients were in similarly casual attire and wandered around in a setting which resembled a deluxe motel, complete with swimming pool and Ping-Pong tables. Everyone on the staff was determinedly cheerful and tried to pretend that Linda Bella was a kind of spa, rather than the place you went when nobody knew what to do with you at home anymore. The doctors advised against long parting scenes. Brian and I saw each other for the last time in the deserted O.T. room where he was viciously pounding a piece of clay into one of the tabletops. “You’re not part of me anymore,” he said. “You used to be part of me.” I was thinking how painful it was to be part of him, and how I had almost come to the point of forgetting who I was, but I couldn’t say that. “I’ll be back,” I said. “Why?” he snapped. “Because I love you.” “If you loved me, you wouldn’t have brought me here.” “That’s not true, Brian, the doctors said—” “You know the doctors don’t know anything about God. They’re not supposed to. But I thought you knew. You’re like all the rest. How many pieces of silver did you sell me for?” “I only want you to get better,” I said feebly. “Better than what? And if I were better, how would they know—sick as they are.

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

  Also, in studies that measure facial EMG, there are as many studies that find sex differences as those that don’t (Barrett and Bliss-Moreau 2009b). [back] 19. the sex of the defendant: Kahan and Nussbaum 1996. [back] 20. are supposed to be aggressors: Tiedens 2001. they’re supposed to be afraid: This belief exists even though all mammals attack during threat; see heam.info/attack-1 . and perhaps even their jobs: Brescoll and Uhlmann 2008; Tiedens 2001. be really competent and powerful: Hillary Clinton is another example; see heam.info/clinton-1 . [back] 21. who kill their intimate partners: Percy et al. 2010; Miller 2010. [back] 22. passive, and helpless: Morrison 2006; Moore 1994. See also “Developments in the Law” 1993, citing court opinions that portray battered women as “helpless, passive or psychologically disturbed” (1592). [back] 23. of second-degree murder: Moore 1994. manslaughter, a lesser charge: African American women are in a catch-22; see heam.info/defense-1 . [back] 24. the rapist a heavier sentence: Schuster and Propen 2010, in Bandes, forthcoming. just having a bad day: Barrett and Bliss-Moreau 2009b. [back] 25. relief and happiness go unmentioned: Abrams and Keren 2009. people of the same sex: Calhoun 1999. [back] 26. in and out of court: For example, laws related to the “war on crime” put in place by Richard Nixon created a culture of fear against certain ethnic groups in the United States (Simon 2007). the target of inconsistent rulings: Abrams and Keren 2009, 2032. [back] 27. and her crime was possible: Feresin 2011. [back] 28. findings in their defense strategy: For a review, see Edersheim et al. 2012. [back] 29. neurons in the human brain: Graziano 2016. [back] 30. to pain to math skills: As shown by a meta-analysis of almost six thousand brain-imaging experiments; see heam.info/meta-1 . and impulsivity in some instances: This is called the “reverse inference problem”; see heam.info/rev-1 . [back] 31. aggression, let alone murder: For more on brain region size and free will, see heam.info/size-1 . and cause severe personality changes: Burns and Swerdlow 2003; Mobbs et al. 2007. [back] 32. automatically releases someone from responsibility: The same argument could serve as a reason to keep Albertani locked up; see heam.info/albertani-1 . [back] 33. “he has no regrets”: McKelvey 2015. “he is devoid of”: Stevenson 2015. [back] 34. sex, or ethnicity: Haney 2005, 189–209; Lynch and Haney 2011. See also heam.info/empathy-1 . So much for the idea of being judged by a jury of your peers (which is enshrined in the Magna Carta and the U.S. Bill of Rights). [back] 35. the “Chechen wolf”: Wikipedia, s.v. “Chechen Wolf,” last modified March 18, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_wolf . [back] 36. painful to shame your family: Nisbett and Cohen 1996. [back] 37. leading to his death sentence: Imagine if a defendant in a murder case smiled through the proceedings; see heam.info/trial-1 . [back] 38. as evidence from the trial: Keefe 2015.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She feels the convulsions of the orgasm suck violently around her fingers. Her hand falls to her side and then she sinks into a dead sleep. She dreams she is back in the apartment where she grew up, but this time it was planned by a dream architect. The halls leading to three-walled bedrooms meander like ancient riverbeds and the kitchen pantry is a wind tunnel hung with cabinets too high to reach. The pipes fret like old men gargling; the floorboards breathe. In her bedroom, the frosted doorway glass is full of faces crying their anguish to the moon with O-shaped mouths. A long syllable of moonlight slides forward silvering the floor, then shatters with the sound of breaking glass. The faces in the door are wolfish. Blood stiffens in the corners of their mouths. The maid’s bathroom has a claw-footed tub where a child can imagine herself drowning. Four brass lanterns hang from the living-room ceiling. It is fathoms high and covered with tarnished gold leaf. Above the living room is a balcony with turned railing posts just wide enough apart for a child to ease through and begin floating through the air. One flight farther up and she is in the studio which smells of turpentine. The ceiling points up like a witch’s hat. A spiked iron chandelier hangs dead center from a black chain. It swings slightly in the wind which hisses between the trapezoidal northern window and the trapezoidal southern window. Beethoven’s plaster death mask hangs on the wall. His domed lids are shut. She climbs up on a chair and runs her fingers across them. The black soot streaks the plaster. Now she has left her fingerprints on Beethoven’s eyes. Something dreadful will surely happen. On the table is a skull. Beside it is a candlestick. This is a still life her grandfather has set up. Are there such things as still lives? On the easel is a half-finished painting of the skull and candlestick. Which is more still? The skull? Or the still life of the skull? Which stillness will last longer? In the corner of the room is a closet. Her husband’s green army jacket hangs there, empty. The sleeves flap in the wind. Is he dead? She is terribly frightened. She runs through the studio trapdoor and down the steps. Suddenly she falls, knowing she is going to die when she hits bottom. She struggles to scream and in the struggle wakes herself up. She is surprised to find herself in Paris rather than her parents’ house. He still lies beside her as if dead. She looks at his sleeping face, the long mouth with its curled-up corners, the sketchy eyebrows like Chinese calligraphy, and she thinks that next year this time they will not be together or else they will have a baby who does not look like her. “Merry Christmas,” he says, opening his eyes. They make love hopefully.