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 Divine Comedy (1950)

  but that they returned upward in less, and, arrived there, with the others wheeled round to us, like a troop that hastes with loosened rein. “This people that presses on to us is many, and they come to entreat thee,” said the poet; “but go thou ever on and, while going, listen.” “O soul, that goest to be glad with those members which thou wast born with,” they came crying, “arrest a while thy step. Look if e’er thou sawest any one of us, so that thou mayst bear tidings of him yonder: ah, wherefore goest thou? ah, wherefore stayest thou not? We were all slain by violence and sinners up to the last hour: then light from heaven made us ware so that, repenting and pardoning, we came forth from life reconciled with God, who penetrates us with desire to behold him.” And I: “How much soever I gaze in your faces, I recognize none; but if aught I can do may please you, ye spirits born for bliss, speak ye; and I will do it for the sake of that peace, which, following the steps of such a guide, makes me pursue it from world to world.” And one3 began: “Each of us trusts in thy good offices without thine oath, if only want of power cut not off the will. Wherefore I, who merely speak before the others, pray thee, if e’er thou see that country which lies between Romagna and that of Charles, that thou be gracious to me of thy prayers in Fano, so that holy orison be made for me, that I may purge away my heavy offences. Thence sprang I; but the deep wounds whence flowed the blood wherein my life was set, were dealt me in the bosom of the Antenori, there where I thought to be most secure. He of Este had it done, who held me in wrath far beyond what justice would. But if I had fled towards La Mira, when I was surprised at Oriaco, I should yet be yonder where men breathe. I ran to the marshes, and the reeds and the mire entangled me so, that I fell; and there saw I a pool growing on the ground from my veins.” Then said another: “Prithee,—and so be that desire satisfied which draws thee up the lofty mount—with kindly pity help my desire. I was of Montefeltro, I am Buonconte;4 Giovanna, or any other hath no care for me; wherefore I go among these, with downcast brow.” And I to him: “What violence or what chance made thee stray so far from Campaldino, that thy burial place ne er was known?” “Oh,” answered he, “at Casentino’s foot a stream crosses, which is named Archiano, and rises in the Apennines above the Hermitage. There where its name is lost, did I arrive, pierced in the throat, flying on foot, and bloodying the plain.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I cannot … starling: a quotation from Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). On a visit to Paris, Yorick the narrator takes lightly the infamous Bastille. But his attention is drawn to a caged talking starling: “ ‘I can’t get out,’ said the starling.” He is unable to free the bird, whose constant refrain moves him deeply. It becomes a symbol of all enslavement and confinement, and, returning to his room, he imagines at length a solitary captive in the Bastille. He next explains how the starling was given to him and subsequently changed hands countless times; the reader has perhaps seen the bird, suggests Yorick. From that time, he adds, he has borne the starling as the crest to his coat of arms, which he includes in the text. It bears an uncaged bird (see the Penguin English Library edition [1967], pp. 94-100). The starling that had learned only those “four simple words” is most important because it partakes of Lolita’s origin, and its lament is at the book’s center. Lolita’s initial inspiration, writes Nabokov, was “prompted by a newspaper story about an ape [in the Paris zoo] who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage” (p. 311). H.H., the “aging ape” writing from prison, whose impossible love metaphorically connects him with that imprisoned animal, learns the language, in his fashion, and records his “imprisonment.” His narrative is the “picture” of the bars of the poor creature’s cage—and an orchestration of the starling’s four simple words. vair: gray; the pale color of miniver fur. Soleil Vert: French; Green Sun. L’autre soir … de ta vie?: “The other night, a cold air [italics mine—A.A.] from the opera forced me to take to my bed; / Broken note—he who puts his trust in it is quite foolish! / It is snowing, the decor collapses, Lolita! / Lolita, what have I done with your life?” The four lines are a splendid parody and pastiche of various kinds of French verse. The alexandrine verse of line one (see Ne manque … Qu’il t’y) scans perfectly in French. The air froid is an untranslatable pun (air: melody; draft or wind). Line two is a traditional saying, originating with Virgil, though it is in fact drawn here from Le Roi s’amuse (1832), a play by Victor Hugo: Souvent femme varie, Bien fol est qui s’y fie! Une femme souvent N’est qu’une plume au vent.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  where my grandma lived. I got to sit on her hospital bed. Then she died. I didn’t see her dead. Only sleeping.” She was quiet for a minute, then she popped back up. “Do you know this song?” She twisted her hands upside down, making goggles for her eyes with her thumb and second finger. She started to sing. Into the air, Junior Birdman Into the air upside down Into the air, Junior Birdman Keep your noses off the ground. “Where’d you learn that?” Miri asked. “Natalie learned it at summer camp and taught it to me.” By the time Miri figured out how to make the mask with her hands, the plane was on the move, picking up speed. Faster, faster, faster, until they were airborne. Into the air, Junior Birdman. They were flying. She was flying. She thought it would feel different, more like the ride at the amusement park that pins you against the wall with centrifugal force. That ride was both thrilling and terrifying but so was this one. Once they’d leveled off she pretended she was on a train, except when she looked out the window all she saw was sky with a bank of fluffy clouds under the plane. Somewhere there’s heaven, she sang to herself. Because if there was a heaven, wouldn’t this be it? Separated from earth by white fluffy clouds. She half expected to see angels wearing flowing white gowns playing harps. She half expected to see Penny, tapping on the window of the plane to get her attention. If only she believed in heaven. “What?” Fern asked. “Nothing. I was just singing to myself.” “What song?” “Just some song I know.” “Teach it to me.” Somewhere there’s music How faint the tune Somewhere there’s heaven How high the moon

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  here, as we learned as schoolchildren. We have been and always will be a proud revolutionary city, a welcoming city to immigrants from all over the world, where your parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents settled. Today I welcome all of you and ask that you bow your heads in remembrance of those we lost, both on the ground and from the air. One hundred sixteen died in that fifty-eight-day period, senselessly, needlessly, randomly. It could have been any of us.” Already, Miri feels herself choking up. Three clergymen take turns reading out the names of the dead, beginning with the first crash. Miri waits for the familiar names. Ruby Granik, twenty-two, Estelle Sapphire, fifty-nine. Then the second crash. Kathy Stein, eighteen. Penny Foster, seven. She lets out a small, unexpected cry when Penny’s name is read. Henry reaches for her hand. Christina passes her a packet of Kleenex. She wipes her eyes, glad she didn’t use mascara, and blows her nose. When all the names have been read, a children’s chorus sings a medley—“April Showers,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “Keep on Smiling.” Someone with style has orchestrated this day of events. After, they form a circle and toss flowers into the center. Most of them have daffodils or tulips but Miri special-ordered a dozen sunflowers through a local florist. Penny loved sunflowers, was always drawing pictures of the sunflowers in the print hanging over her family’s fireplace. Then they join hands and close their eyes for a silent prayer. The ceremony lasts just half an hour. Their personal remarks are to be saved for the luncheon to follow at the Elizabeth Carteret hotel. The mayor makes an announcement that the lunch will be hosted by Natalie Renso, who will be signing books following the program. Miri looks around the circle but can’t find Natalie. She thought Natalie might show up to honor Ruby. Instead, she spots Gaby Wenders, the stewardess, in her old uniform. She must be in good shape, Miri thinks, to fit into that uniform thirty-five years later. And next to Gaby, the boy who rescued her, the boy who saved her life. Miri half expects to see the boy he was then. The boy she loved. Instead, she sees a grown man. Still, her knees grow weak. For god’s sake, she thinks, trying to remember what her yoga teacher has taught her about breathing in stressful situations. He makes the first move, walking briskly across the field to where she is standing. “Miri,” he says. “Jesus...Miri...” He wraps his arms around her. Now

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  then melted trickles down through itself, if but the land that loseth shade do breathe, so that it seems fire melting the candle,13 so without tears or sighs was I before the song of those who ever accord their notes after the melodies of the eternal spheres.14 But when I heard in their sweet harmonies their compassion on me, more than if they had said “Lady, why dost thou so shame him?” The ice which had closed about my heart became breath and water, and with anguish through mouth and eyes issued from my breast. She, standing yet fixed on the said side of the car, then turned her words15 to the pitying angels thus: “Ye watch in the everlasting day, so that nor night nor sleep stealeth from you one step which the world may take along its ways; wherefore my answer is with greater care, that he who yon side doth weep may understand me, so that sin and sorrow be of one measure. Not only by operation of the mighty spheres that direct each seed to some end, according as the stars are its companions,16 but by the bounty of graces divine, which have for their rain vapours so high that our eyes reach not nigh them,17 this man was such in his new life18 potentially, that every good talent would have made wondrous increase in him. But so much the more rank and wild the ground becomes with evil seed and untilled, the more it hath of good strength of soil. Some time I sustained him with my countenance; showing my youthful eyes to him I led him with me turned to the right goal.19 So soon as I was on the threshold of my second age, and I changed life, he forsook me, and gave him to others.20 When I was risen from flesh to spirit, and beauty and virtue were increased within me, I was less precious and less pleasing to him; and he did turn his steps by a way not true, pursuing false visions of good, that pay back no promise entire.21 Nor did it avail me to gain inspirations, with which in dream and otherwise, I called him back; so little recked he of them.22 so low sank he, that all means for his salvation were already short, save showing him the lost people. For this I visited the portal of the dead, and to him who has guided him up hither, weeping my prayers were borne.23 God’s high decree would be broken, if Lethe were passed, and such viands were tasted, without some scot of penitence that may shed tears.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Of my sowing such straw I reap. O human folk, why set the heart there where exclusion of partnership is necessary?5 This is Rinier; this is the glory and the honour of the House of Calboli, where none since hath made himself heir of his worth.6 And not only his blood between the Po and the mountains, and the seashore and the Reno, is stripped of the good required of truth and chivalry, for inside these boundaries is choked with poisonous growths, so that tardily now would they be rooted out by cultivation. Where is the good Lizio, and Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro and Guido di Carpigna? O ye Romagnols turned to bastards! When in Bologna shall a Fabbro take root again? when in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco, noble scion of a lowly plant? Marvel thou not, Tuscan, if I weep, when I remember with Guido da Prata, Ugolin d’ Azzo who lived among us, Federico Tignoso and his fellowship, the House of Traversaro, and the Anastagi (the one race and the other now without heirs), the ladies and the knights, the toils and the sports of which love and courtesy enamoured us, there where hearts are grown so wicked. O Brettinoro, why dost thou not flee away, since thy household is gone forth, and much people in order not to be guilty? Well doth Bagnacaval that beareth no more sons, and ill doth Castrocaro, and Conio worse, that yet troubleth to beget such Counts; the Pagani will do well when their Demon shall go away; but not indeed that unsullied witness may ever remain of them. O Ugolin de’ Fantolin, thy name is safe, since no more expectation is there of one who may blacken it by degenerating. But now go thy way, Tuscan, for now it delights me fat more to weep than to talk, so hath our discourse wrung my spirit.” We knew that those dear souls heard us going; therefore by their silence they made us confident of the way. After we were left alone journeying on, a voice, that seemed like lightning when it cleaves the air, smote against us, saying: “Everyone that findeth me shall slay me”;7 and fled like a thunderclap which peals away if suddenly the cloud bursts. When from it our hearing had truce, lo the second, with such loud crash that ’twas like thunder that follows quickly: “I am Aglauros who was turned to stone”;8 and then to press me close to the Poet, I made a step back, and not forward. Now was the air quiet on every side, and he said to me: “That was the hard bit which ought to hold man within his bounds. But ye take the bait, so that the old adversary’s hook draws you to him, and therefore little avails bridle or lure.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.” This sense—that previous generations of women had been victims of “misplaced artistic aggression,” victimizing their daughters in turn—was foundational to the feminist movement. Gloria Steinem wrote about it in her famous essay “Ruth’s Song (Because She Could Not Sing It).” Ruth was Steinem’s mother, once a headstrong and ambitious young journalist who, through most of Gloria’s childhood, was painfully agoraphobic and addicted to tranquilizers. Gloria took care of Ruth, and it was only as an adult that she began to wonder about her mom’s sad transformation. “She had been a spirited, adventurous young woman who struggled out of a working-class family and into college, who found work she loved and continued to do, even after she was married and my older sister was there to be cared for,” Steinem writes. Ruth quit her newspaper job after a nervous breakdown, which Steinem attributes to the simultaneous pressures of working, parenting, supporting her husband’s dream of opening a lakeside resort, and doing housework. Immediately, the scope of Ruth’s life shriveled. “The family must have watched this energetic, fun-loving, book-loving woman turn into someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate enough to read a book,” Steinem writes. Steinem says her mother succumbed not only to the tragedy of her stifled creativity, but to the cultural forces that kept her from doing anything to regain it. Divorce and poverty, both of which Ruth had lived through, held her back and shoved her down with shame. Ruth had no strong female role models to pull her back up. She had admired her mother-in-law, Gloria’s grandmother, who had been a suffragist, but at home she still deferred to the men in the family, treating her husband and her boys like the entitled kings of the castle. Circumstances doomed Ruth, and everyone, not just Gloria, lost out. “The world still missed a unique person named Ruth,” Steinem concludes. “Though she longed to live in New York and Europe, she became a woman who was afraid to take a bus across town.” Activists hoped that experiences like Ruth’s would subside with the work of feminism. In her essay, Steinem suggests that asking the question at all—what really happened to Ruth? —is an important start. But such questioning also grooved lines between mothers and daughters. Judy’s mother, Essie, for instance, wasn’t thrilled at the way moms came off in many of Blume’s novels. “My mother used to say, ‘I’m very proud of you, but please leave mothers out of your books, everyone thinks it’s me,’ ” Blume said at the Arlington Public Library event. Judy patiently told her that wasn’t possible.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She’d like to smash Dopey over her sister’s head. “I have to sit down,” Athena said. She was pregnant again and starting to show. “I thought you were in love with Jack McKittrick,” Athena said, tugging at her skirt. “So it’s good to know you’re keeping an open mind.” Christina was taken aback. “You know about Jack?” she asked Athena. “Everyone knows about you and Jack McKittrick.” “Mama?” “You better hope she doesn’t. But I’m warning you, Christina, you’re skating on thin ice.” ShivaSteve went to Kathy Stein’s house in Perth Amboy, where her family would be sitting shiva for seven days. Phil was already there, reciting the prayer for the dead with the other men. They had more than enough for a minyan without Steve and he was glad. He didn’t know the Kaddish. He’d never been in a position of having to recite it. Kathy’s mother couldn’t speak. She looked half dead. Her skin was gray, her eyes rimmed in red, her hair wild. Kathy’s younger sister couldn’t stop crying. She was surrounded by girlfriends, all of them crying, too. A group of boys stood around looking uncomfortable. A nightmare, Steve heard over and over. Yeah, it was a nightmare, all right. But you wake up from a nightmare, and this time there was no relief because when you woke up, the nightmare was still with you. Steve didn’t want to be there. He hoped Phil wouldn’t stay long. Phil’s mother was in the kitchen, helping with the platters of food that had been sent to the house, all wrapped in golden cellophane and tied with curly ribbon. Sandwiches, baskets of fruits, coffee cakes lined up in a row, like at a bakery. Surprisingly, Steve found himself hungry. He helped himself to a Sloppy Joe, potato salad, a pickle, then went back for more. He stuffed himself on coffee cake, slices of cantaloupe and pineapple, a couple of chocolate candies. He wandered through the house, stopping to look at a tinted photo of Kathy on the piano, her bright eyes looking directly at him. Happy New Year, Steve. He would kiss that photo if no one were watching. Those sweet, warm lips, cold now, buried in the ground. Except he wasn’t sure how much of a body was left to bury. Maybe just that arm with the charm bracelet. Her uncle had identified her by that bracelet, a high school graduation present from her parents. Jeez. He had to shake off these thoughts before he made himself puke. He could already feel the Sloppy Joe trying to decide whether to stay down or come back up. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00021.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00021.jpg] SECRETARY PATTERSON TO LIE IN STATEJAN. 24 (UPI) — The body of former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, who died Tuesday in a plane crash, will lie in state today in the 107th Regiment Armory at 66th Street and Park Avenue in New York. He once served in the regiment.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  One of the women, who’d fallen asleep in front of the television, had to be prodded awake. As she waddled past us on tiny, high-heeled slippers, the soles engulfed by her fleshy feet, she rubbed her eyes, protruded her lower lip and made a fretting sound. So massive and quivering were her breasts and hips under the slip that the garment seemed to be the body of a vaudeville horse which at least two people were inhabiting. At the same time her physical grandeur did nothing to diminish the impression she gave of being a little girl, an impression heightened by the sass with which she planted a fist in her hip and asked nastily, “Seen enough?” We nodded. She said defiantly, “Good. I goan back to mah TV shows.” The other black woman, the one who’d been knitting, kept her glasses on and the embryonic maroon sweater in her hand as she sleepwalked past, counting stitches, never looking up. Hers was also an ample, indoor body of seraglio proportions but her face seemed older, thinner—in fact, she was a dead ringer for our white dietician at school, if a ringer is a racehorse entered under a false name and posing as another, less successful one. (Horse, dog, inchworm—nature takes her revenge on stories from which she’s been excluded by smuggling herself into them under the guise of imagery.) “Well?” the white woman said. “Is that it?” Chuck asked. She smiled a not especially pleasant smile and said, “There’s always me,” with an edge to the always to suggest how long she’d been in harness, how weary of the road she’d become. “I’ll take you,” Chuck said. His voice didn’t crack, he didn’t soften the blow of his words with a giggle, nor did he drop his eyes. He knew exactly what he wanted. “Yeah, me too,” each of us said in turn on a descending scale of confidence ending with my whisper. “Then come on,” she said, walking away from us and unzipping her dress in a single gesture. She paused at her bedroom door and glanced back. The dress had somehow evaporated into just a wisp of teal-blue smoke in her hand as she tossed it aside. There she stood, door open and behind her a shaded floor lamp dangling fringe; her naked body looked pale as a night moth and as powdery. Her pubic hair had been shaved into a black rectangle. Her legs were ropy. She went in and disappeared from sight. The sound of running water could be heard and a cat’s paw of steam stretched out into the bedroom to bat at a ball of cold air. A cricket chanted in the radiator. (Teal, moth, cat, cricket—the chorus of animals chirps and twitters, ready for its entrance into the enfeebled, cicatrized world.)

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  There was no sign that it was hit by a plane. It could have been any kind of explosion. Except for the piece of the tail. Not that Miri could see it, but everyone said it was there. Somewhere. “They say she had to choose between her children,” a woman said to her companion. “She couldn’t save them both. Can you imagine?” Was she talking about Mrs. Foster or someone else? Miri didn’t want to think of Mrs. Foster trying to decide—eeny, meeny, miney, moe… Suddenly Mason was behind her, his hands on her shoulders. “Hey…” She whipped around. She’d thought he was at work. “I have a friend who lived in that house,” he said quietly. “The one that’s gone now.” Miri and Suzanne both looked at him. “Polina,” he said. “She works at Janet. She has a little boy. Sometimes she kept Fred overnight.” “Are they okay?” He shrugged. “They lost all their stuff. They have no place to live but they weren’t home when the plane crashed, so I guess you could say they’re okay.” Miri didn’t know how to reply except to squeeze his hand to acknowledge his feelings. She wondered if Polina knew the Fosters. “If only Penny and Betsy hadn’t been home,” Suzanne said. “If only Mrs. Foster had taken them someplace, to the library, maybe, or to a friend’s house to play, a friend who lived in another neighborhood. If only…” “If onlys don’t work,” Mason said. A policeman moved through the crowd. “Go on now,” he told them. “Time to get home.” —THEY TOOK the bus back, got off at Suzanne’s corner then walked to Miri’s, where she kissed Mason goodnight at the front door, hiding Fred inside her jacket. Upstairs, Henry was sitting at Rusty’s kitchen table, mopping up what was left of Irene’s vegetable soup with a thick slice of bread. “I shouldn’t have let you go,” Rusty said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” “It was an accident,” Henry assured her. “A tragic accident.” “Twice in a row?” “I know it doesn’t make sense,” Henry said, “but I’m asking you to believe me.” He got up from the table and wrapped his arms around her. “Terrible things can happen, Miri. I’m so sorry about those little girls.” Miri dissolved when he said that, and when she did, Fred whimpered in sympathy. She unzipped her jacket. Fred cocked his head and looked around. “He can’t stay at the Steins’,” she told Rusty. “Phil’s cousin was on that plane. And he can’t stay with Mason’s friend Polina, because she lived in the house the plane slammed into.” She didn’t wait for Rusty to give her permission. She grabbed a copy of the Daily Post from the pile on the table, went to her room and closed the door. It didn’t take long for Rusty to knock. “Miri…” The door opened. “It’s okay for Fred to stay tonight.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  No one had told Miri about this. Rusty had been asked not to attend the funeral. She’d understood. She was pregnant again, anyway, and as sick as the last time. Daisy went with Dr. O to the funeral, as much to look after Dr. O as to mourn Steve. “If only I’d been able to convince him to go to Lehigh with me,” Phil said. “Neither of us could stand the idea of Syracuse after my cousin’s death. You remember Kathy?” “I do, and her green velvet New Year’s Eve dress.” “It was an awful time.” “Yes.” “But Steve went and enlisted the second he graduated.” He shakes his head. “Maybe to prove something to his parents. Who knows? He was enraged by the divorce. Shipped out to Korea after basic training.” “He walked into enemy fire, didn’t he?” They didn’t talk a lot about Steve’s death but Miri knows Dr. O blamed himself. “Tossed a grenade into a bunker on Pork Chop Hill,” Phil said, “blew himself up along with the enemy. And you know, the war was basically over by then. But they kept fighting over that stupid hill, as if it mattered, as if it would make a difference. Such a fucking waste, excuse my language.” “Dr. O’s never gotten over it. I doubt you ever get over a child’s death. He and Rusty named my second brother Stuart. It would have been too hard to have another son named Steven.” It’s bittersweet, chatting with Phil, then Gaby, who takes Miri aside and asks if it’s true about Longy. “Was he really a mobster?” “I’m afraid so,” Miri says. “He sent me a basket of flowers after the crash. He was such a gentleman.” “Yes,” Miri says, then adds, with a straight face, “and he was good to his mother.” She doesn’t mean to be the last to leave. Or does she? Before she reaches the door, Mason says, “Sit awhile, Miri. Talk to me.” He brings her a glass of wine. She sinks into the sofa, tucks her feet under her. She’s more relaxed now. “Hungry?” Mason asks. She shakes her head. Looks right at him for the first time. “Do you ever think about how young we were? My kids are older than we were.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Every afternoon I’d stumble home exhausted to my room, but once there my real work would begin, which was to imagine Helen in my arms, Helen beside me laughing, Helen looking up at me through the lace suspended from the orange-blossom chaplet, Helen with other boys, kissing them, unzipping her shorts and stepping out of them, pushing her hair back out of her serious, avid eyes. She was a puppet I could place in one playlet after another, but once I’d invoked her she became independent, tortured me, smiled right through me at another boy, her approaching lover. Her exertions with other men fascinated me, and the longer I suffered, the more outrageous were the humiliations I had other men inflict on her. I became ill with mononucleosis, ironically the “kissing disease” that afflicted so many teenagers in those days. I was kept out of school for several months. Most of the time I slept, feverish and content: exempted. Just to cross the room required all my energy. Whether or not to drink another glass of ginger ale could absorb my attention for an hour. That my grief had been superseded by illness relieved me; I was no longer willfully self-destructive. I was simply ill. Love was forbidden—my doctor had told me I mustn’t kiss anyone. Tommy called me from time to time but I felt he and I had nothing in common now—after all, he was just a boy, whereas I’d become a very old man. ONE We’re going for a midnight boat ride. It’s a cold, clear summer night and four of us—the two boys, my dad and I—are descending the stairs that zigzag down the hill from the house to the dock. Old Boy, my dad’s dog, knows where we’re headed; he rushes down the slope beside us, looks back, snorts and tears up a bit of grass as he twirls in a circle. “What is it, Old Boy, what is it?” my father says, smiling faintly, delighted to be providing excitement for the dog, whom he always called his best friend. I was bundled up, a sweater and a Windbreaker over today’s sunburn. My father stopped to examine the bottom two steps just above the footpath that traveled from cottage to cottage on our side of the lake. This afternoon he had put in the new steps: fresh boards placed vertically to retain the sand and dirt, each braced by four wooden stakes pounded into the ground. Soon the steps would sag and sprawl and need to be redone. Whenever I came back from a swim or a trip in the outboard down to the village grocery store, I passed him crouched over his eternal steps or saw him up on a ladder painting the house, or heard his power saw arguing with itself in the garage, still higher up the hill on the road.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Although Speak, Memory clearly illuminates the self-parodic content of Nabokov’s fiction, no one has fully recognized the aesthetic implications of these transmutations or the extent to which Nabokov consciously projected his own life in his fiction. To be sure, this is dangerous talk, easily misunderstood. Of course Nabokov did not write the kind of thinly disguised transcription of personal experience which too often passes for fiction. But it is crucial to an understanding of his art to realize how often his novels are improvisations on an autobiographic theme, and in Speak, Memory Nabokov good-naturedly anticipates his critics: “The future specialist in such dull literary lore as auto-plagiarism will like to collate a protagonist’s experience in my novel The Gift with the original event.” Further on he comments on his habit of bestowing “treasured items” from his past on his characters. But it is more than mere “items” that Nabokov has transmogrified in the “artificial world” of his novels, as a dull specialist discovers by comparing Chapters Eleven and Thirteen of Speak, Memory with The Gift, or, since it is Nabokov’s overriding subject, by comparing the attitudes toward exile expressed in Speak, Memory with the treatment it is given in his fiction. The reader of his memoir learns that Nabokov’s great-grandfather explored and mapped Nova Zembla (where Nabokov’s River is named after him), and in Pale Fire Kinbote believes himself to be the exiled king of Zembla. His is both a fantastic vision of Nabokov’s opulent past as entertained by a madman and the vision of a poet’s irreparable loss, expressed otherwise by Nabokov in 1945: “Beyond the seas where I have lost a sceptre, / I hear the neighing of my dappled nouns” (“An Evening of Russian Poetry”). Nabokov’s avatars do not grieve for “lost banknotes.” Their circumstances, though exacerbated by adversity, are not exclusive to the émigré. Exile is a correlative for all human loss, and Nabokov records with infinite tenderness the constrictions the heart must suffer; even in his most parodic novels, such as Lolita, he makes audible through all the playfulness a cry of pain. “Pity,” says John Shade, “is the password.” Nabokov’s are emotional and spiritual exiles, turned back upon themselves, trapped by their obsessive memories and desires in a solipsistic “prison of mirrors” where they cannot distinguish the glass from themselves (to use another prison trope, drawn from the story “The Assistant Producer” [1943], in Nabokov’s Dozen [1958]).

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  You won’t get a brisket like my mother’s anyplace else in the world.” “I already know,” Mason said, holding out his plate. “Sure, I’ll have seconds.” Irene was pleased he liked her food. When she brought out a chocolate cake for dessert, frosted with white buttercream and decorated with red hearts, Mason licked his chops. “Boy-oh-boy, I can’t believe you baked that!” Miri couldn’t decide if he was stuffing himself to impress her family or if he was really that hungry. Later, they gathered around the television set that Uncle Henry recently brought home to Irene. He’d moved the old set, with rabbit ears, upstairs to Rusty’s living room. “That’s some television set,” Ben Sapphire said, when he saw the twenty-inch Motorola. Henry tuned in to You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx. If they stayed late enough they’d get to see Dragnet, the new police show. Just the facts, ma’am. “Did you know, Naomi,” Ben Sapphire said to Miss Rheingold, “Henry is making quite a name for himself. He’s getting offers from big papers around the country. And newsmagazines, too.” “I had no idea, Henry,” Miss Rheingold said. “You must be an ace reporter.” “He is,” Leah said proudly. “His paper just gave him a big bonus. They don’t want to lose him.” Everyone looked over at Henry. Ben Sapphire held up his glass of brandy and proposed a toast. “To our Ace. You’re going places, Henry.” “Are you thinking of moving to another paper?” Miss Rheingold asked. “I’m considering my options but I can’t help feeling a twinge of guilt at finding success at the expense of tragedy.” “Come on, Henry,” Ben Sapphire said, “that’s what reporting is all about. You make a name for yourself reporting wars, bad politics, tragedy. Not the social section.” Miri didn’t want to think about tragedy tonight. But it always came back to that, didn’t it? SteveHe’d swiped a photo of Kathy from her house when he’d been there for shiva. Just a little photo. Probably no one would notice it was gone. He bought a Valentine’s Day card for her and signed it, Love Steve. Then he scrawled, Hope it’s nice wherever you are, at the bottom. Maybe he was going cuckoo like his sister. But he didn’t really believe that. He was just pissed off. He took the story he’d torn from the newspaper out of his desk drawer, the story about how Kathy was going home to see a boy she’d met over the holidays. A boy she really liked. He folded it and slipped it inside the Valentine’s Day card. He laid her photo on his pillow and kissed it. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Kathy.” Then he went downstairs to the finished basement and grabbed a bottle of Scotch from the bar. Scotch, his father’s drink of choice—he liked it on the rocks. His mother was more of a whiskey-sour drinker. One was more than enough for her.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  My sister resented the interest some of the girls took in me and banned me from the meetings held beside the empty swimming pool choked with dead leaves. When I disobeyed her and toddled smilingly into the assembly, she spanked my bare legs with a hairbrush. My father, resolved that his son should hold his own, pinioned my sister’s arms behind her and ordered me to switch her on the back of her legs with a stinging branch. But I knew that soon enough he would disappear again, my mother drive off, the maids look away; I dropped the branch, howled and clattered up the stairs to my room. I think I also knew that my father preferred my sister to me and that his interest in me was only abstract, dynastic. My sister was his true son. She could ride a horse and swim a mile and she was as capable of sustained rages as he. Still better, she was as blond as his mother. My grandmother had not wanted my father; as she told him, she’d pummeled her stomach with her fists every day while she was bearing him. Nonetheless, my father somehow got born and survived to serve his mother humbly and lovingly, washing the family’s sheets in the bathtub when he was still only a child and brushing out her blond hair every night. One night, soon after my grandmother died, I stole into my father’s study and found him standing behind my sister’s chair, brushing her hair and crying. Right now I’m looking at an ancient photograph of my sister and me. I’m three and she’s seven, both of us bundled up for winter and posed against a door under an ominously black Christmas wreath. She’s much taller than I. My sister is dressed in a fashionably cut camel’s-hair coat belled out above black leggings. She’s sporting a matching hat bordered in brown piping, the front brim flipped up and the whole thing placed rakishly far back on her head. She’s smiling a thin-lipped, obviously forced smile. Her eyes, so blue they’re bottomless and white, express the pain of an unhealed convalescent, as do the shadows, like bruises below her temples—bruises forceps might have left.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  All three women nodded in silent agreement and for just a little while they made me feel like a young prince. — I looked at the clock. It was 6:30 P.M. Mr. Dill was dead by now. I was very tired, and it was time to stop all this foolishness about quitting. It was time to be brave. I turned to my computer, and there was an email inviting me to speak to students in a poor school district about remaining hopeful. The teacher told me that she had heard me speak and wanted me to be a role model for the students and inspire them to do great things. Sitting in my office, drying my tears, reflecting on my brokenness, it seemed like a laughable notion. But then I thought about those kids and the overwhelming and unfair challenges that too many children in this country have to overcome, and I started typing a message saying that I would be honored to come. On the drive home, I turned on the car radio, seeking news about Mr. Dill’s execution. I found a station airing a news report. It was a local religious station, but in their news broadcast there was no mention of the execution. I left the station on, and before long a preacher began a sermon. She started with scripture. Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in your weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. I turned off the radio station, and as I slowly made my way home I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration. I drove home broken and brokenhearted about Jimmy Dill. But I knew I would come back the next day. There was more work to do. O Chapter Sixteen The Stonecatchers’ Song of Sorrow n May 17, 2010, I was sitting in my office waiting anxiously when the U.S.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 3) She seems not to have understood His words; i. e. she saw that He meant something great, but did not see what that was. She is asked one thing, and answers another. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 15) When I believed that Thou wert the Son of God, I believed that Thou wert the resurrection, that Thou wert lifeb; and that he that believeth in Thee, though he were dead, shall live. 11:28–3228. And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. 29. And as soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him. 30. Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him. 31. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. 32. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 3) Christ’s words had the effect of stopping Martha’s grief. In her devotion to her Master she had no time to think of her afflictions: And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 16) Silently1, i. e. speaking in a low voice. For she did speak, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii) She calls her sister secretly, in order not to let the Jews know that Christ was coming. (non occ.). For had they known, they would have gone, and not been witnesses of the miracle. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 16) We may observe that the Evangelist has not said, where, or when, or how, the Lord called Mary, but for brevity’s sake has left it to be gathered from Martha’s words. THEOPHYLACT. Perhaps she thought the presence of Christ in itself a call, as if it were inexcusable, when Christ came, that she should not go out to meet Him. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxiii. 1) While the rest sat around her in her sorrow, she did not wait for the Master to come to her, but, not letting her grief detain her, rose immediately to meet Him; As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto Him. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. non occ.) So we see, if she had known of His arrival before, she would not have let Martha go without her. Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met Him.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  No matter, so long as we ac cept that our responsibility is to the newborn: the acceptance of responsibility contains the key to the necessarily evolving skill. This book is not fi nished-can never be fi nished, by me. As of this writing, I am waiting to hear the fate ofTony Maynard, whose last address was Attica. Though the cops have been buried, with much patriotic grief, the blacks are still waiting to hear who is alive or dead. Mr. Nixon has congratulated Mr. Rockefeller, who has congratulated the police: so much for that. As to the effect of all this-and so much more!-on the Black Panther leadership and on black or non-white people, in this country, and all over the world, time will give a suffi ciently authoritative answer. People, even if they are so thoughtless as to be born black, do not come into this world merely to provide mink coats and diamonds for chattering, trivial, pale matrons, or genocidal opportunities for their un sexed, unloved, and, fi nally, despicable men-oh, pioneers! There will be bloody holding actions all over the world, for years to come: but the Western party is over, and the white man's sun has set. Period. Angela Davis is still in danger. George Jackson has joined his beloved baby brother, Jon, in the royal fellowship of death. And one may say that Mrs. Georgia Jackson and the alleged mother of God have, at last, found something in common. Now, it is the Virgin, the alabaster Mary, who must embrace the despised black mother whose children are also the issue of the Holy Ghost. New York, San Francisco, Holl_vwood, Loudon, Istanbul, St. Paul de Vm ce, 1967-1971. 475 THE DEVIL FINDS WORK An Essay For PAULA-MARIA, on her birthday, and JOHN LATHAM and brother, DAVID MOSES I Con g o Square Fo r our God is a consuming fire. HebreJVs 12:29 J OAN CRAWFORD's straight, narrow, and lonely back. We are following her through the corridors of a moving train. She is looking for someone, or she is trying to escape from someone. She is eventually intercepted by, I think, Clark Gable. I am fascinated by the movement on, and of, the screen, that movement which is something like the heaving and swell ing of the sea (though I have not yet been to the sea): and which is also something like the light which moves on, and especially beneath, the water. I am about seven. I am with my mother, or my aunt. The movie is Dance, Fools, Dance. I don't remember the film.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And forthwith stepped out an old man weeping and lamenting, and ranne unto the Biere and embraced it, and with deepe sighes and sobs cried out in this sort, O masters, I pray you by the faith which you professe, and by the duty which you owe unto the weale publique, take pitty and mercy upon this dead corps, who is miserably murdered, and doe vengeance on this wicked and cursed woman his wife which hath committed this fact: for it is shee and no other which hath poysoned her husband my sisters sonne, to the intent to maintaine her whoredome, and to get his heritage. In this sort the old man complained before the face of all people. Then they (astonied at these sayings, and because the thing seemed to be true) cried out, Burne her, burne her, and they sought for stones to throw at her, and willed the boys in the street to doe the same. But shee weeping in lamentable wise, did swear by all the gods, that shee was not culpable of this crime. No quoth the old man, here is one sent by the providence of God to try out the matter, even Zachlas an Egypptian, who is the most principall Prophecier in all this countrey, and who was hired of me for money to reduce the soule of this man from hell, and to revive his body for the triall hereof. And therewithall he brought forth a certaine young man cloathed in linnen rayment, having on his feet a paire of pantofiles, and his crowne shaven, who kissed his hands and knees, saying, O priest have mercy, have mercy I pray thee by the Celestiall Planets, by the Powers infernall, by the vertue of the naturall elements, by the silences of the night, by the building of Swallows nigh unto the towne Copton, by the increase of the floud Nilus, by the secret mysteries of Memphis, and by the instruments and trumpets of the Isle Pharos, have mercy I say, and call to life this dead body, and make that his eyes which he closed and shut, may be open and see. Howbeit we meane not to strive against the law of death, neither intend we to deprive the earth of his right, but to the end this fact may be knowne, we crave but a small time and space of life. Whereat this Prophet was mooved, and took a certaine herb and layd it three times against the mouth of the dead, and he took another and laid upon his breast in like sort. Thus when hee had done hee turned himself into the East, and made certaine orisons unto the Sunne, which caused all the people to marvell greatly, and to looke for this strange miracle that should happen.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And forthwith stepped out an old man weeping and lamenting, and ranne unto the Biere and embraced it, and with deepe sighes and sobs cried out in this sort, O masters, I pray you by the faith which you professe, and by the duty which you owe unto the weale publique, take pitty and mercy upon this dead corps, who is miserably murdered, and doe vengeance on this wicked and cursed woman his wife which hath committed this fact: for it is shee and no other which hath poysoned her husband my sisters sonne, to the intent to maintaine her whoredome, and to get his heritage. In this sort the old man complained before the face of all people. Then they (astonied at these sayings, and because the thing seemed to be true) cried out, Burne her, burne her, and they sought for stones to throw at her, and willed the boys in the street to doe the same. But shee weeping in lamentable wise, did swear by all the gods, that shee was not culpable of this crime. No quoth the old man, here is one sent by the providence of God to try out the matter, even Zachlas an Egypptian, who is the most principall Prophecier in all this countrey, and who was hired of me for money to reduce the soule of this man from hell, and to revive his body for the triall hereof. And therewithall he brought forth a certaine young man cloathed in linnen rayment, having on his feet a paire of pantofiles, and his crowne shaven, who kissed his hands and knees, saying, O priest have mercy, have mercy I pray thee by the Celestiall Planets, by the Powers infernall, by the vertue of the naturall elements, by the silences of the night, by the building of Swallows nigh unto the towne Copton, by the increase of the floud Nilus, by the secret mysteries of Memphis, and by the instruments and trumpets of the Isle Pharos, have mercy I say, and call to life this dead body, and make that his eyes which he closed and shut, may be open and see. Howbeit we meane not to strive against the law of death, neither intend we to deprive the earth of his right, but to the end this fact may be knowne, we crave but a small time and space of life. Whereat this Prophet was mooved, and took a certaine herb and layd it three times against the mouth of the dead, and he took another and laid upon his breast in like sort. Thus when hee had done hee turned himself into the East, and made certaine orisons unto the Sunne, which caused all the people to marvell greatly, and to looke for this strange miracle that should happen.