Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Hours (1998)

  Clarissa glances over at the glass doors that lead to the modest garden. She and Laura Brown are reflected, imperfectly, in the black glass. Clarissa thinks of Richard on the windowsill; Richard letting go; not jumping, really, but sliding as if from a rock into water. What must it have been like, the moment he had irrevocably done it; the moment he was out of his dark apartment and released into air? What must it have been like to see the alley below, with its blue and brown garbage cans, its spray of amber glass, come rushing up? Was it—could it possibly have been—a pleasure of some kind to crumple onto the pavement and feel (did he momentarily feel?) the skull crack open, all its impulses, its little lights, spilled out? There can’t, Clarissa thinks, have been much pain. There would have been the idea of pain, its first shock, and then—whatever came next. “I’m going to go see,” she says to Laura. “I’ll be back in a minute.” “All right,” Laura says. Clarissa stands, a bit unsteadily, and goes into the kitchen. Sally and Julia have taken the food from the refrigerator and piled it on the counters. There are spirals of grilled chicken breast, flecked black, touched with brilliant yellow, impaled on wooden picks, arranged around a bowl of peanut sauce. There are miniature onion tarts. There are steamed shrimp, and glistening bright-red squares of rare tuna with dabs of wasabi. There are dark triangles of grilled eggplant, and round sand wiches on brown bread, and endive leaves touched at their stem ends with discrete smears of goat cheese and chopped walnuts. There are shallow bowls full of raw vegetables. And there is, in its earthenware dish, the crab casserole Clarissa made herself, for Richard, because it was his favorite. “My god,” Clarissa says. “Look at all this.” “We were expecting fifty people,” Sally says. They stand for a moment, the three of them, before the plates heaped with food. The food feels pristine, untouchable; it could be a display of relics. It seems, briefly, to Clarissa, that the food—that most perishable of entities—will remain here after she and the others have disappeared; after all of them, even Julia, have died. Clarissa imagines the food still here, still fresh somehow, untouched, as she and the others leave these rooms, one by one, forever. Sally takes Clarissa’s head in her hands. She kisses Clarissa’s forehead firmly and competently, in a way that reminds Clarissa of putting a stamp on a letter. “Let’s feed everybody and go to bed,” she says softly, close to Clarissa’s ear. “It’s time for this day to be over.” Clarissa squeezes Sally’s shoulder. She would say, “I love you,” but of course Sally knows. Sally returns the pressure on Clarissa’s upper arm. “Yes,” Clarissa says. “It’s time.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  country at heart thought the loss of Amadour still more grievous. It became known to the Countess of Aranda, in whose house poor Aventurada lay dangerously ill. The countess, who had great misgivings as to the tender feelings which Amadour entertained for her daughter, but concealed or tried to suppress them, in considera- tion of the virtues which she recognized in him, called her daughter aside to communicate this painful intelli- gence to her. Florida, who could dissemble well, said it was a great loss for their whole house, and that, above all, she pitied his poor wife, who, to make the matter worse, was on her sick bed ; but seeing that her mother wept much, she let fall a few tears to keep her company, for fear that the feint should be discovered by being overdone. The countess often talked with her again on the subject, but could never draw from her any indica- tion on which she could form a definite conclusion. I will say nothing of the pilgrimages, prayers, orisons, and fasts which Florida regularly performed for Amadour's safety. Immediately on his reaching Tunis, he sent an express to Florida to acquaint her that he was in good health, and full of hope that he should see her again, which was a great consolation to her. In return, she corresponded with him so diligently that Amadour had not leisure to grow impatient. At this period the countess received orders to repair to Saragossa, where the king was. The young Duke of Cardona was there, and bestirred himself so effectually with the king and the queen that they begged the count- ess to conclude the marriage between him and Florida. The countess, who neither could nor would refuse their majesties anything, consented to it the more willingly as she believed that her daughter would at those years have no other will than hers. All being settled, she told her 86 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE iNanel la

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  That evening the husband, being at his window, saw the prince come in and enter his wife's chamber, which was beneath his own. The prince saw him too, but did not turn back for all that. On saying farewell to her whom he was but beginning to love, the only reason he alleged for this change in him was the king's command. After many tears and lamentations, which lasted nearly until one o'clock in the morning, the lady said to him at parting, " I thank God, my lord, for the grace he confers upon me in depriving me of your friendship, since it is so little and so weak that you take it up and lay it down at the commands of men. As for me, I did not consult either mistress, or husband, or myself, whether I should love you or not. Your engaging manners and your good looks won my heart ; but since yours is less amorous than timid, you cannot love perfectly, and the friend who is not true and staunch to the uttermost is not the friend for me to love thoroughly, as I had resolved to love you ; farewell, then, my lord, you whose timidity does not de- serve a love so frank and so sincere as mine." The prince went away with tears in his eyes, and looking back, he again saw the husband, who had watched him in and out. Next day the prince told him why he had gone to see his wife, and acquainted him with the commands laid upon him by the king, whereat the gen- 10 1^5 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE iNaveU%

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 3: Further, no one does a work of mercy on some one’s behalf unless it profit him. Now burying the dead is reckoned among the works of mercy, therefore Augustine says (De Cura pro Mort. iii): “Tobias, as attested by the angel, is declared to have found favor with God by burying the dead.” Therefore such like burial observances profit the dead. Objection 4: Further, it is unbecoming to assert that the devotion of the faithful is fruitless. Now some, out of devotion, arrange for their burial in some religious locality. Therefore the burial service profits the dead. Objection 5: Further, God is more inclined to pity than to condemn. Now burial in a sacred place is hurtful to some if they be unworthy: wherefore Gregory says (Dial. iv): “If those who are burdened with grievous sins are buried in the church this will lead to their more severe condemnation rather than to their release.” Much more, therefore, should we say that the burial service profits the good. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Cura pro Mort. iii): “Whatever service is done the body is no aid to salvation, but an office of humanity.” Further, Augustine says (De Cura pro Mort. iii; De Civ. Dei i): “The funereal equipment, the disposition of the grace, the solemnity of the obsequies are a comfort to the living rather than a help to the dead.” Further, Our Lord said (Lk. 12:4): “Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” Now after death the bodies of the saints can be hindered from being buried, as we read of having been done to certain martyrs at Lyons in Gaul (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. v, 1). Therefore the dead take no harm if their bodies remain unburied: and consequently the burial service does not profit them. I answer that, We have recourse to burial for the sake of both the living and the dead. For the sake of the living, lest their eyes be revolted by the disfigurement of the corpse, and their bodies be infected by the stench, and this as regards the body. But it profits the living also spiritually inasmuch as our belief in the resurrection is confirmed thereby. It profits the dead in so far as one bears the dead in mind and prays for them through looking on their burial place, wherefore a “monument” takes its name from remembrance, for a monument is something that recalls the mind [monens mentem], as Augustine observes (De Civ. Dei i; De Cura pro Mort. iv). It was, however, a pagan error that burial was profitable to the dead by procuring rest for his soul: for they believed that the soul could not be at rest until the body was buried, which is altogether ridiculous and absurd.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  The mild masquerade in which I indolently joined has left such trifling impressions upon my mind that it would be tedious to continue in this strain. The story of my college years in England is really the story of my trying to become a Russian writer. I had the feeling that Cambridge and all its famed features—venerable elms, blazoned windows, loquacious tower clocks—were of no consequence in themselves but existed merely to frame and support my rich nostalgia. Emotionally, I was in the position of a man who, having just lost a fond kinswoman, realized—too late—that through some laziness of the routine-drugged human soul, he had neither troubled to know her as fully as she deserved, nor had shown her in full the marks of his not quite conscious then, but now unrelieved, affection. As with smarting eyes I meditated by the fire in my Cambridge room, all the potent banality of embers, solitude and distant chimes pressed against me, contorting the very folds of my face as an airman’s face is disfigured by the fantastic speed of his flight. And I thought of all I had missed in my country, of the things I would not have omitted to note and treasure, had I suspected before that my life was to veer in such a violent way.

• From The Hours (1998)

  Clarissa imagines the food still here, still fresh somehow, untouched, as she and the others leave these rooms, one by one, forever. Sally takes Clarissa’s head in her hands. She kisses Clarissa’s forehead firmly and competently, in a way that reminds Clarissa of putting a stamp on a letter. “Let’s feed everybody and go to bed,” she says softly, close to Clarissa’s ear. “It’s time for this day to be over.” Clarissa squeezes Sally’s shoulder. She would say, “I love you,” but of course Sally knows. Sally returns the pressure on Clarissa’s upper arm. “Yes,” Clarissa says. “It’s time.” It seems, at that moment, that Richard begins truly to leave the world. To Clarissa it is an almost physical sensation, a gentle but irreversible pulling-away, like a blade of grass being drawn out of the ground. Soon Clarissa will sleep, soon everyone who knew him will be asleep, and they’ll all wake up tomorrow morning to find that he’s joined the realm of the dead. She wonders if tomorrow morning will mark not only the end of Richard’s earthly life but the beginning of the end of his poetry, too. There are, after all, so many books. Some of them, a handful, are good, and of that handful, only a few survive. It’s possible that the citizens of the future, people not yet born, will want to read Richard’s elegies, his beautifully cadenced laments, his rigorously unsentimental offerings of love and fury, but it’s far more likely that his books will vanish along with almost everything else. Clarissa, the figure in a novel, will vanish, as will Laura Brown, the lost mother, the martyr and fiend. Yes, Clarissa thinks, it’s time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so. Here, then, is the party, still laid; here are the flowers, still fresh; everything ready for the guests, who have turned out to be only four. Forgive us, Richard. It is, in fact, a party, after all.

• From The Hours (1998)

  She comes to rest, eventually, against one of the pilings of the bridge at Southease. The current presses her, worries her, but she is firmly positioned at the base of the squat, square column, with her back to the river and her face against the stone. She curls there with one arm folded against her chest and the other afloat over the rise of her hip. Some distance above her is the bright, rippled surface. The sky reflects unsteadily there, white and heavy with clouds, traversed by the black cutout shapes of rooks. Cars and trucks rumble over the bridge. A small boy, no older than three, crossing the bridge with his mother, stops at the rail, crouches, and pushes the stick he’s been carrying between the slats of the railing so it will fall into the water. His mother urges him along but he insists on staying awhile, watching the stick as the current takes it. Here they are, on a day early in the Second World War: the boy and his mother on the bridge, the stick floating over the water’s surface, and Virginia’s body at the river’s bottom, as if she is dreaming of the surface, the stick, the boy and his mother, the sky and the rooks. An olive-drab truck rolls across the bridge, loaded with soldiers in uniform, who wave to the boy who has just thrown the stick. He waves back. He demands that his mother pick him up so he can see the soldiers better; so he will be more visible to them. All this enters the bridge, resounds through its wood and stone, and enters Virginia’s body. Her face, pressed sideways to the piling, absorbs it all: the truck and the soldiers, the mother and the child. Mrs. Dalloway There are still the flowers to buy. Clarissa feigns exasperation (though she loves doing errands like this), leaves Sally cleaning the bathroom, and runs out, promising to be back in half an hour. It is New York City. It is the end of the twentieth century.

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

  And he paced up and down, always with restless and brooding eyes, while Tony marveled that her brother, who for some incomprehensible reason seemed ashamed when she mourned her father aloud, should repeat the sounds of his death very loudly with a kind of dreadful thoughtfulness , which he had asked Line, the girl, with great difficulty... Christian hadn't embellished himself at all. He was gaunt and pale. The skin was tight all over his skull, the large, humped nose protruded sharply and fleshlessly between the cheekbones, and the hair on his head was noticeably thinner. His neck was thin and too long, and his skinny legs showed a strong outward curve. Incidentally, it was his stay in London that seemed to have had the most lasting influence on him, and since he had also been in Valparaiso with the most Englishmen, there was something about his whole appearance English accepted, which suited her well. There was something of it in the easy cut and woolly, durable fabric of his suit, in the broad and solid elegance of his boots, and in the way his reddish-blond, strong mustache with a slightly sour expression hanging over his mouth. Indeed, even his hands, which were that dull and porous white that the heat produces, with their round, short-trimmed, clean nails, for some reason made an English impression. "Tell me..." he asked abruptly, "do you know that feeling... it's hard to describe... when you swallow a hard bite and it hurts all the way down your back?" At the same time, his whole nose was wrinkled in tight little wrinkles again. 'Yes,' said Tony, 'that's quite common. Take a sip of water..." "So?" he replied, unsatisfied. "No, I don't think we mean the same thing." And an uneasy seriousness moved back and forth on his face... He was the first to advocate a free mood in the house that was averted from mourning. He hadn't forgotten the art of imitating the late Marcellus Stengel and often spoke in his language for hours. At the table he asked about the Stadttheater ... whether there was a good troupe there, what was being played ... "I don't know," said Tom, with an intonation that was overly indifferent so as not to be impatient. "I don't care now." Christian, however, completely ignored this and started talking about the theater... »I can't even say how much I like being in the theater! Just the word ›theater‹ makes me happy … I don't know if any of you know this feeling? I could sit still for hours and look at the closed curtain... I'm as happy as a child when we come in here to give Christmas presents... Just the tuning of the orchestra instruments! I would go to the theater just for that to hear!... I especially like the love scenes... Some lovers know how to hold their lover's head between both hands like that... The actors in general...

• From The Hours (1998)

  Clarissa touches Louis’s shoulder, and it seems that they will both rise, without speaking, go upstairs to the bedroom, and undress together. It seems they will go to the bedroom and undress not like lovers but like gladiators who’ve survived the arena, who find themselves bloody and harmed but miraculously alive when all the others have died. They will wince as they unstrap their breastplates and shin guards. They will look at each other with tenderness and reverence; they will gently embrace as New York clatters outside the casement window; as Richard sits in his chair listening to voices and Sally has her lunch uptown with Oliver St. Ives. Louis puts his glass down, lifts it, sets it down again. He taps his foot on the carpet, three times. “It’s a little complicated, though,” he says. “You see, I’ve fallen in love.” “Really?” “His name is Hunter. Hunter Craydon.” “Hunter Craydon. Well.” “He was a student of mine last year,” Louis says. Clarissa leans back, sighs impatiently. This would be the fourth, at least of the ones she knows about. She would like to grab Louis and say, You have to age better than this. I can’t stand to see you make so much of yourself and then offer it all to some boy just because he happens to be pretty and young. “He may be the most gifted student I’ve ever taught,” Louis says. “He does the most remarkable performance pieces about growing up white and gay in South Africa. Incredibly powerful.” “Well,” Clarissa says. She can think of nothing else to say. She feels sorry for Louis, and deeply impatient, and yet, she thinks, Louis is in love. He is in love with a young man. He is fifty-three and still has all that ahead of him, the sex and the ridiculous arguments, the anguish. “He’s amazing,” Louis says. To his complete surprise, he begins to weep. The tears start simply enough, as a heat at the back of his eyes and a furring of his vision. These spasms of emotion take him constantly. A song can do it; even the sight of an old dog. They pass. They usually pass. This time, though, tears start falling from his eyes almost before he knows it will happen, and for a moment a compartment of his being (the same compartment that counts steps, sips, claps) says to itself, He’s crying, how strange. Louis leans forward, puts his face in his hands. He sobs. The truth is that he does not love Hunter and Hunter does not love him. They are having an affair; only an affair. He fails to think of him for hours at a time. Hunter has other boyfriends, a whole future planned, and when he’s moved on, Louis has to admit, privately, that he won’t much miss Hunter’s shrill laugh, his chipped front tooth, his petulant silences. There is so little love in the world.

• From The Hours (1998)

  “You’ve read the poems?” “I have. And the novel.” She knows, then. She knows all about Clarissa, and she knows that she herself, Laura Brown, is the ghost and goddess in a small body of private myths made public (if “public” isn’t a term too grand for the small, stubborn band of poetry readers who remain). She knows she has been worshipped and despised; she knows she has obsessed a man who might, conceivably, prove to be a significant artist. Here she sits, freckled, in a floral print dress. She says calmly, of her son, that he was a wonderful writer. “Yes,” Clarissa says helplessly. “He was a wonderful writer.” What else can she say? “You were never his editor, were you?” “No. We were too close. It would have been too complicated.” “Yes. I understand.” “Editors need a certain objectivity.” “Of course they do.” Clarissa feels as if she’s suffocating. How can this be so difficult? Why is it so impossible to speak plainly to Laura Brown, to ask the important questions? What are the important questions? Clarissa says, “I took the best care of him I could.” Laura nods. She says, “I wish I could have done better.” “I wish the same thing myself.” Laura reaches over and takes Clarissa’s hand. Under the soft, loose skin of Laura’s hand, palpably, are the spines and knobs of bones, the cords of veins. Laura says, “We did the best we could, dear. That’s all anyone can do, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is,” Clarissa says. So Laura Brown, the woman who tried to die and failed at it, the woman who fled her family, is alive when all the others, all those who struggled to survive in her wake, have passed away. She is alive now, after her ex-husband has been carried off by liver cancer, after her daughter has been killed by a drunk driver. She is alive after Richard has jumped from a window onto a bed of broken glass. Clarissa holds the old woman’s hand. What else can she do? Clarissa says, “I wonder if Julia has remembered your tea.” “I’m sure she has, dear.”

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

  Christian arrived; he came from Hamburg, where, as he said, he had had business, and he only stayed in the sick-room for a short time; then he left it by stroking his forehead, letting his eyes wander and saying: "That's terrible... That's terrible... I can't do it anymore." Pastor Pringsheim also appeared, gave Sister Leandra a cold look and prayed in a modulating voice at the Consul's bedside. And then came the brief recovery, the flare-up, a drop in fever, a deceptive return of strength, a cessation of pain, a few clear and hopeful utterances that brought tears of joy to the eyes of those around... "Children, we're keeping them, you should see, we're keeping them in spite of everything!" said Thomas Buddenbrook. "We'll have her with us for Christmas and we won't let her get upset about it like usual..." But the very next night, shortly after Gerda and her husband had gone to bed, Mrs. Permaneder called them to Mengstrasse because the patient was dying. The wind blew into the cold rain that was falling, pounding against the window panes. When the senator and his wife entered the room, which was lit by the candles from two candelabras that were burning on the table, the two doctors were already there. Christian too had been taken down from his room and was sitting somewhere, turning his back on the four-poster bed and bent low, supported in both hands. They were expecting the patient's brother, Consul Justus Kröger, who had also been sent for. Frau Permaneder and Erika Weinschenk were sobbing softly at the foot of the bed. Nurse Leandra and Mamsell Severin had nothing more to do and looked sadly into the face of the dying. The Consul lay on her back, propped up by several pillows, and both her hands, those beautiful hands with dull blue veins, which were now so thin, so emaciated, hastily and incessantly stroked the quilt with trembling haste. Her head, covered with a white nightcap, turned incessantly from side to side with frightening rhythm. Her mouth, whose lips seemed to be drawn in, gaped open and shut at each agonized attempt to breathe, and her sunken eyes darted about for help, only to linger here and there with a staggering expression of envy on one of the persons present who was dressed were and could breathe, to whom life belonged and who could do no more than make the sacrifice of love, which consisted keep your eyes on this picture. And the night advanced without a change having taken place. "How long can it last?" asked Thomas Buddenbrook softly and pulled old Doctor Grabow to the back of the room while Doctor Langhals was in the process of injecting the patient. Frau Permaneder, handkerchief to her mouth, also came up. "Quite vaguely, dear Senator," answered Doctor Grabow. 'Your mother can be redeemed in five minutes and she can live for hours... I can't tell you anything. It's what's called sticky flow...

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

  Old Doctor Grabow appeared in person, shook everyone's hand with a long, mild face, looked at the sick man with a shake of his head and did exactly what Doctor Langhals had already done... The news had spread throughout the city at lightning speed. The bell kept ringing downstairs in the porch, and questions about the senator's health reached the bedroom. It was unchanged, unchanged... everyone got the same answer. The two doctors thought that a merciful nurse had to be brought in for the night in any case. Sister Leandra was sent for and she came. There was not a trace of surprise or terror on her face as she entered. This time, too, she quietly laid aside her leather satchel, her cap, and her cloak and went to her work with gentle and kind movements. Little Johann sat hour after hour on his pouffe, looked at everything and listened to the gurgling sounds. He should have gone to private arithmetic lessons, but he understood that these were events before which the worsted skirts had to be silent. He also thought of his schoolwork only briefly and with mockery... Sometimes, when Frau Permaneder came up to him and hugged him, he shed tears; but mostly he blinked dry-eyed with a repulsed and brooding expression, breathing irregularly and cautiously as if expecting the scent, the strange and yet so strangely familiar scent... Around four o'clock Frau Permaneder made a decision. She got Doctor Longneck to follow her into the next room, crossed her arms and laid her head back, trying to keep her chin on her chest anyway. 'Herr Doktor,' she said, 'one thing is in your power, and I beg you! Pour clear wine on me, do it! I am a woman hardened by life... I have learned to endure the truth, believe me!... Will my brother be alive tomorrow? Speak openly!« And Doctor Langhals averted his beautiful eyes, looked at his fingernails and spoke of human impotence and of the impossibility of deciding whether Frau Permaneder's brother would survive the night or be called away in the next minute... "Then I know what I have to do," she said, went out and sent to Pastor Pringsheim. He appeared in half his regalia, without a ruff, but in a long robe, gave Sister Leandra a cold look and sat down on the bedside chair, which was pushed towards him. He asked the patient to recognize him and to listen to him a little; but since this attempt was unsuccessful, he turned directly to God, addressed him in stylized Franconian and spoke to him in a modulating voice in sometimes dark, sometimes suddenly accented sounds, meanwhile dark fanaticism and mild transfiguration alternated on his face ... While he rolling the R on the palate in a strangely bold and nimble way, little Johann got the clear idea that he must have just had coffee and butter rolls.

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

  Another consequence of this death was that the consul's brother-in-law Justus, tired of his constant business failures, liquidated and retired as soon as he had the remainder of his inheritance in his hands. Justus Kröger, the suitier, the cheerful son of the à la mode cavalier, was not a very happy man. With his courtesy and his cheerful easygoingness, he had never been able to achieve a secure, solid and unquestionable position in the merchant world; he had forfeited a significant part of his parental inheritance in advance, and recently there was the fact that Jakob, his eldest son , caused him severe grief. The young man, who seemed to have chosen immoral company in big Hamburg, had cost his father an inordinate amount of Kurantmark over the years, and then, When Consul Kröger refused to do more, his wife, a weak and tender woman, secretly sent further sums of money to the easy-going son, sad disagreements arose between the couple. To top it all off, almost at the same time that B. Grünlich stopped making payments, he was in Hamburg, where Jakob Kröger was with Messrs. Dalbeck & Comp. was working, something else, something weird had happened... An assault, dishonesty had taken place... No one spoke of it and no questions were asked of Justus Kröger; but it was said that Jacob had found a position as a traveler in New York and was about to go to sea. Once, before his journey, he was seen in the town, whither he had probably come, in addition to the travel money which his father sent him, In short, it had come to the point that Consul Justus, as if he had only one heir, spoke exclusively of "my son" ... by which he meant Jürgen, who, although never guilty of a crime, appeared to be overly mentally limited. He had graduated from high school with great difficulty and had been in Jena for some time, where he devoted himself to jurisprudence, apparently without much joy or success. Johann Buddenbrook felt most painfully the little honorable development of his wife's family and looked forward to his own children with all the more anxious expectation. He was entitled to have the fullest confidence in the efficiency and seriousness of his eldest son; but as for Christian, Mr. Richardson had written that the young man, while mastering the English language with decided ability, did not always show sufficient interest in business, and was too fond of the distractions of the metropolis, for example for the theatre, to the day. Christian himself showed in his letters a lively need to travel and eagerly asked permission to take a job "over there", that is, in South America, perhaps in Chile. »But that is adventurous«, fourth year to complete his mercantile knowledge with Mr. Richardson. A few more letters were then exchanged about his plans, and in the summer of 1851 Christian Buddenbrook did indeed sail to Valparaiso, where he had secured a position.

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

  There was talk of Gerda's trip, of the train she intended to take, and the sale of the villa and furniture, which the broker Gosch had taken over. Because Gerda didn't take anything with her and left as she had come. Then Mrs. Permaneder came to speak of life, took it from its most important side and made reflections on the past and the future, although there was almost nothing to be said about the future. 'Yes, if I'm dead, Erika can move away for my sake too,' she said, 'but I can't live anywhere else, and as long as I'm alive we want to stick together here, we few people who are left... Once in the Week you come to dinner with me... And then we read in the family papers -' She touched the folder in front of her. 'Yes, Gerda, I'll take it on with thanks. - That's settled... Do you hear Thilda?... Although actually it could just as well be you who invites us, because basically you are no worse off than we are. Yes, that's how it works. You struggle and struggle and struggle... and you've been sitting and patiently awaiting it all. But that's why you're a camel, Thilda, don't blame me..." "Oh, Tony?" said Klothilde, smiling. "I'm sorry I can't say goodbye to Christian," said Gerda, and so the conversation turned to Christian. There was little prospect that he should ever emerge from the institution in which he was confined, although his condition was not so bad that he could not have gone about at liberty. But his wife was too comfortable with her current condition, as Frau Permaneder claimed, she was in league with the doctor, and Christian would probably end his days in the institution. Then there was a pause. Quietly and hesitantly, the conversation turned to recent events, and when little Johann's name was mentioned, the room fell silent again, and only the rustling of the rain in front of the house could be heard louder. It was like a heavy secret about Hanno's last illness, which must have been extremely terrible. They didn't look at each other while they talked about it in hushed tones, in hints and half-words. And then you recalled that last episode... the visit of this ragged little count who had almost forced his way to the sickroom... Hanno had smiled when he heard his voice, although he didn't recognize anyone else, and Kai had kissed both his hands incessantly. "He kissed his hands?" the ladies asked Buddenbrook. "Yes, many times." Everyone thought about this for a while. Suddenly Mrs. Permaneder burst into tears. "I loved him so much," she sobbed... "You don't know how much I loved him... more than all of you... yes, forgive Gerda, you're the mother... Oh, he was an angel..." "Now he is an angel," corrected Sesemi. "Hanno, little Hanno," Frau Permaneder continued, and the tears flowed down the downy, matted skin of her cheeks...

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

  He renounced his claims, all the more since he was disposed to retire from all business and settle down with his inheritance and what else he had left, for the linen business gave him little pleasure and went like that moderate that he will not make up his mind to put more into it ... "The defiance of his father has brought him no blessing!" thought the Consul with an inward, pious look; and Gotthold probably thought the same thing. that he would not make up his mind to put more into it... "The defiance of his father has brought him no blessing!" thought the Consul with an inward, pious look; and Gotthold probably thought the same thing. that he would not make up his mind to put more into it... "The defiance of his father has brought him no blessing!" thought the Consul with an inward, pious look; and Gotthold probably thought the same thing. In Mengstrasse, however, he accompanied his brother up to the breakfast room, where the two gentlemen were, after the long Standing shivering in the spring air in their tailcoats, drinking old cognac together. And when Gotthold had then exchanged a few polite and serious words with his sister-in-law and had stroked the children's heads, he went away to appear at the Krögers' garden house the next "Children's Day"... He was already beginning to liquidate. Fifth Chapter One thing pained the consul: namely, that the father had not been able to live to see his eldest grandson enter the business, which took place around Easter of the same year. Thomas was sixteen when he left school. He had grown a lot lately and had been wearing temperance since his confirmation, when Pastor Kölling used strong expressions to describe him. had recommended, very manly clothes that made him appear even taller. Around his neck hung the long gold watch chain which his grandfather had promised him, and on which hung a medallion with the family coat of arms, that melancholy coat of arms showing an irregularly hatched area, a flat moorland with a solitary and bare willow on the bank . The even older signet ring with a green stone, which the well-to-do tailor in Rostock had probably already worn, had passed to the consul along with the large Bible. Thomas's resemblance to his grandfather had developed as strongly as Christian's to his father; especially his round and firm chin and the finely cut, straight nose were those of the old man. His side-parted hair, which receded in two indentations from the narrow and conspicuously veined temples, was dark blond, and in contrast to this the long eyelashes and the eyebrows, one of which he liked to raise a little, appeared unusually light and colorless. His movements, his speech, as well as his laugh, which revealed his rather defective teeth, were calm and intelligent. He approached his profession with seriousness and zeal...

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

  And it came, in a long, black procession, the long, slow journey through the gray and damp streets, through the castle gate out, along the leafless avenue, shuddering in the cold drizzle, to the cemetery, where, while a funeral march rang out behind a half-bare bush, one followed the coffin on foot over the sodden paths to there, at the edge of the woods, where the Buddenbrooksche hereditary burial was from the Gothic name plate crowned by the large sandstone cross... The stone lid of the grave, adorned with the plastically worked family coat of arms, lay next to the black crypt surrounded by damp greenery. The place down there was prepared for the newcomer. Under the Senator's supervision there had been a bit of clearing over the past few days and what was left of old Buddenbrooks had been cleared away. Now, while the music faded away, the coffin floated on the ropes of the bearers over the walled depths; it slid down with a soft rumble, and Pastor Pringsheim, who had put on wrist warmers, began to speak again. His trained voice sounded clear, agile and pious over the open grave and the bowed or melancholy heads of the gentlemen present into the cool and still autumn air. Finally he bent over the tomb, addressed the dead woman by her full name and blessed her with the sign of the cross. When he fell silent and all the gentlemen with their black-clad hands held their cylinders in front of their faces to pray silently, a little sun came out. It was no longer raining, and the sound of the drops falling sporadically from the trees and bushes was accompanied here and there by a short, subtle, questioning bird's chirping. And then everyone went about shaking hands with the sons and brother of the dead one more time. Thomas Buddenbrook, with fine silver raindrops bedewing on the thick, dark fabric of his overcoat, stood between his brother Christian and his uncle Justus at this parade. He was beginning to get a little strong lately - the only sign of aging in his carefully groomed appearance. His cheeks, over which the pointed mustache protruded, rounded; but they were whitish pale, without blood and life. His slightly reddened eyes looked with languid courtesy into the face of every gentleman whose hand he held in his for a moment. Four Chapter Eight days later, sitting in Senator Buddenbrook's private office, on the leather chair to the side of the desk, was a small, clean-shaven old man with snow-white hair brushed low on his forehead and temples. He stooped, leaning with both hands on the white crutch of his cane, resting his protruding chin on his hands, and with his lips pressed maliciously together and the corners of his mouth turned down, he looked up at the senator with such a hideous and piercingly malicious look that that it seemed incomprehensible why he didn't prefer to avoid company with such a person.

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

  Permaneder replied hesitantly, while the siblings slowly began to walk around the front seat on the gravel path... "Tiburtius writes..." »Klara?!« asked Thomas … »Please, briefly and without any fuss!« 'Yes, Tom, she's lying down, she's in a bad way, and the doctor's afraid it's tubercles... tuberculosis of the brain... hard as it is for me to pronounce. Look here: this is the letter your husband is writing to me. This insert, which is addressed to Mother and which, he says, says the same thing, we should give her after we've prepared it a bit. And then here is this second insert: also written to Mother and by Klara herself, very uncertainly, in pencil. And Tiburtius says that she herself said that these were her last lines, because the sad thing was that she didn't bother to live. She always longed for heaven..." concluded Mrs. Permaneder and wiped her eyes. The senator walked by her side in silence, hands behind his back, head bowed low. 'You're so quiet, Tom... And you're right; what to say And this just now, when Christian is also ill in Hamburg …« Because that's how it was. Christian's "torment" in his left side had become so severe lately in London, had turned into such real pain that he had forgotten all his minor complaints about it. He hadn't been able to help himself, had written to his mother that he had to come home to be cared for by her, had given up his place in London and left. But hardly in Hamburg When he got there, he had to go to bed, the doctor had diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis and had Christian taken from the hotel to the hospital, since it was impossible to continue the journey for the time being. There he lay, dictating most sorrowful letters to his keeper... "Yes," answered the senator softly; "it seems that one thing is meant to lead to another." She put her arm around his shoulders for a moment. 'But don't be discouraged, Tom! You don't have the right to do that! You need good courage..." "Yes, by God, I need that!" "Why, Tom?... Tell me: why were you so silent the day before yesterday, Thursday, all afternoon, if I may know?" “Oh… business, my child. I didn't sell a lot of rye very cheaply... well, in short, I had to sell a large lot at a very bad price..." 'Oh, it happens, Tom! It happens today, and tomorrow you bring it back. Letting that spoil your mood…” "Wrong, Tony," he said, shaking his head. “My mood isn't below zero because I'm failing. vice versa . That is my belief, and that is why it is so.” "But what about your mood?!" she asked, startled and amazed. 'One would suppose… you should be cheerful, Tom! Klara is alive... everything will be fine with God's help! What about the rest? Here we are walking around in your garden and everything just smells like it.

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

  The Consul opened the sheets, which were stronger and rougher than the paper he had stuck in himself, and which were already beginning to turn yellow... Yes, Johann Buddenbrook must have loved this first wife, the daughter of a Bremen merchant, in a touching way, and the one short year that he had been able to spend at her side seemed to have been his best. " L'année la plus heureuse de ma vie ," it said, underlined with a wavy line, at the risk of Madame Antoinette reading it... But then Gotthold came and the child ruined Josephine … Strange remarks were made, for that matter, on rough paper. Johann Buddenbrook seemed to have honestly and bitterly hated this new creature, from the moment when its first bold movements had caused the mother horrible pain, until it was born healthy and lively, while Josephine, the bloodless head rummaged in the pillows, passed away - and never forgiving this unscrupulous intruder, who grew up strong and carefree, for having murdered his mother... The Consul did not understand that. She died, he thought, fulfilling the high duty of woman, and I would have tenderly passed on my love for her to the being to whom she gave life and which she left me when she departed ... But he, the father, has in his eldest son never sees anything but the nefarious destroyer of his happiness. Then later, The Consul leafed back and forth in the notebook. At the back he read the little stories of his own children, when Tom had had the measles and Antonie had the jaundice and Christian had gotten over the chicken pox; he read of the various trips he made with his wife to Paris, Switzerland, and Marienbad, and turned back to the parchment-like, torn, yellow-speckled leaves that old Johann Buddenbrook, father's father, had written in expansive had described flourishes. These records began with an extensive genealogy tracing the main lineage. How at the end of the 16th century a Buddenbrook, the oldest known one, lived in Parchim and his son became a councilor at Grabau. Like a more distant Buddenbrook, tailor of his trade, founded. All the dates of this ancestor were already known: when he had the tickling and when the real smallpox was faithfully recorded; when he fell from the third floor onto the kiln and survived, although a number of beams had been in the way, and when he fell into a violent fever with rage was neatly noted. And he had added to his notes many good admonitions to his descendants, of which the following sentence, carefully painted and framed in high Gothic script, stood out: "My son, take pleasure in the business of the day, but only do such that we by sleep well at night.” And then it was awkwardproven, that the old Bible printed in Wittenberg belongs to him, and that it should be passed on to his firstborn and in turn to his eldest...

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

  How did she get to Berlin?' 'I don't know, Tom, I don't understand yet; the telegram came ten minutes ago. But something must have happened and we must wait and see what it is. God will make everything work out for the better. Sit down, my son, and eat.” He sat down and mechanically poured himself porter into the thick, tall glass. "Everything is over," he repeated. “And then 'Antonie'. – childishness…” Then he ate and drank in silence. After a while the Consul ventured to remark, "Is it something to do with Permaneder, Tom?" He just shrugged without looking up. As he left, holding the door handle in his hand, he said: "Yes, mother, we must wait for her. Since she probably doesn't want to invade you late at night, it will probably be during the day tomorrow. For notification, please..." * The consul waited from hour to hour. She got very little rest at night, rang for Ida Jungmann, who was now sleeping next to her in the back room on the mezzanine, had sugar water prepared for her, and even sat up in bed for a long time doing some handwork. The next morning also passed in anxious tension. At second breakfast the Consul explained that if Tony came, he could only arrive from Büchen at 3.33 in the afternoon. At this time the consul was sitting by the window in the "landscape room" trying to read a book with a palm branch pressed in gold on the black leather cover. It was a day like yesterday: cold, haze and wind; behind the bare wrought-iron grille the stove crackled. The old lady trembled and looked out as soon as wagon wheels could be heard. And then, at four o'clock, when she hadn't been paying attention and had almost forgotten her daughter, there was a movement downstairs in the house... She hastily turned her upper body to the window, she wiped the dripping mist off the pane with the lace handkerchief: indeed, a droshky stopped below, and they came up the stairs! She grabbed the armrests of the chair with her hands to get up; but she thought better of it, let herself go again She fell back and only turned her head towards her daughter with an almost defensive expression. While Erika Grünlich stood by the glass door holding Ida Jungmann's hand, she came across the room with quick, almost tumbling steps. Frau Permaneder wore a fur-trimmed cloak and a long felt hat with a veil. She looked very pale and drawn, her eyes were red and her upper lip quivered like it used to when Tony cried as a child. She raised her arms, dropped them again, and then slid down to her knees by her mother, hiding her face in the old lady's folds of clothing, and sobbing bitterly.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “Yes, one more thing. I contracted an STD and, because it was one that didn’t have any noticeable side effects, I didn’t have it treated early enough. Now—I can’t have any children.” With this last revelation, Vanessa let out a sob that sounded more like a howl. From the depths of her being, she let the sorrow flow. The tears she held in for over a decade were released like a broken dam flooding the earth. FINAL THOUGHTS There is a lot to process from this chapter. Bringing darkness into the light takes enormous courage. Olivia completely understood why Vanessa had been a nearly silent member of the group for so long. Olivia would regularly invite Vanessa to share, but it wasn’t until this point in the group process that Vanessa felt safe. It takes time and patience for people to tell their stories. Typically, the darker the story, the harder it is to tell and the more resistance there is to telling it. You can see how Vanessa would be tempted to drive her husband away. And how living in isolation and meeting her own sexual needs would be so much safer for her than being vulnerable with a man. I wonder if she made an inner vow to never let another man hurt her the way she was hurt in college. It’s easy to have empathy for her when we understand her story and the trauma she went through. The amount of shame she experienced would send most of us into hiding—that’s what shame does. It screams, “Isolate, take care of yourself. Don’t let others in.” Because of the traumatic sexual assault, she became more and more isolated. And isolation leads to depression and despondency. As stated earlier, we are relational creatures by design. It took tremendous amounts of courage for Vanessa to open up and it took her six months to feel safe. We live in an instant society. We pace in front of the microwave, and want the ITM machine to work faster. We are a hurried and rushed society. But hurry up doesn’t create lasting relationships. You can tell from these women’s stories, relationship is what harmed them, but relationship is also what is healing them. This is as God designed; none of us can go it alone. Our brains will register “risk” when we are about to share. Most resist this “risk” and never open up. They hide and justify it with the thought emotions are silly and they just need to get over what happened. I think this is why Jesus said the gate is narrow and few will enter it.