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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Having a child is one of our grand aspirations. In a way we reproduce, be it biologically or through the other ways we create a family, so as not to die. We carve a place in the cycle of life and become inscribed in the course of history. We extend ourselves beyond mortality by leaving something, some one, behind: a representative of our union. In this way, having a child speaks of desire. It is a pure, life-affirming act. How cruel to see it erode the force that brought it into being. There is no question that children make the erotic connection more difficult to sustain. There are the demands for routine without which family life cannot function, but which undermine sexual spontaneity. There is the undeniable stress on the couple’s resources: less time, money, and energy to spend on each other. There is the sexual invisibility of the American mother, which is so deeply rooted in our psyche that men and women alike conspire to deny maternal sexuality. There are the many ways we shut ourselves down sexually in the family, acting under the assumption that we need to keep sex hidden from children in order to protect them. For many parents, the idea of a secret garden inspires everything from acute guilt and anxiety to the more benign gradations of embarrassment. We are afraid that our adult sexuality will somehow damage our kids, that it’s inappropriate or dangerous. But whom are we protecting? Children who see their primary caregivers at ease expressing their affection (discreetly, within appropriate boundaries) are more likely to embrace sexuality with the healthy combination of respect, responsibility, and curiosity it deserves. By censoring our sexuality, curbing our desires, or renouncing them altogether, we hand our inhibitions intact to the next generation. There are so many reasons to give up on sex that those who don’t are champions in their own right. The brave and determined couples who maintain an erotic connection are, above all, the couples who value it. When they sense that desire is in crisis, they become industrious, and make intentional, diligent attempts to resuscitate it. They know that it is not children who extinguish the flame of desire; it is adults who fail to keep the spark alive. 9 Of Flesh and FantasyIn the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man’s thoughts. —Louis Aragon

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  When the queen discovered that her squid was gone, she was enraged. But once her anger receded, she knew what she needed to do. So the queen sat down and wrote the squid a letter. “My dearest creature,” she wrote. “Before I begin, I must ask you to keep an open mind and an open heart about the following missive. “I love you, and I will always love you. The fact that you refuse to come to my chambers, even just as a companion and not as a lover, stills my heart. You seem to believe that the fact that our love has ended means we can never be in proximity to each other, and I beg you to reconsider. I have loved many creatures in my lifetime—a goat, a honeybee, an owl—and despite the fact that our love did not endure, I still see them regularly. We are still friends. Just because I have found happiness in the companionship of a bear does not mean that our time together meant nothing. “I am sorry that things did not work out between us. I have, as I hope you would agree, behaved honorably and beyond reproach. I am filled with grief and sorrow that you do not believe in amicable partings. I would have thought that you—intelligent creature that you are—would know better. “The truth is that you have been with me during a very difficult period of my life, and I am sorry that I have not been on my best behavior. But such is love! What we have will transcend this messy business, and we will be in each other’s lives forever. Does that not please you? None of this jealousy or betrayal; just a friendship based on mutual trust. I hope one day we can meet each other in some neutral space, our pain limned with understanding, with all of this behind us. I faithfully await your reply.” When the squid did not reply, the queen wrote another letter:

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  De Waal’s views are based on many decades of observing aggression in primate societies. He noticed that after fights between two chimps, other chimpanzees would appear to console the loser—a behavior requiring both the capacity for empathy and a significant level of self-awareness. De Waal also describes female chimpanzees poignantly removing stones from the hands of males readying to fight so as to head off the brawl or at least to prevent them from inflicting mortal harm. Such “reconciliation” efforts may preserve group solidarity, thus diminishing vulnerability from outside attackers. Human morality organizes around questions of right, wrong and justice. According to de Waal and others,111 it originates with concern for others and in understanding and respecting social rules. This is seen in a multitude of mammalian groups. The orchestration of such premoral behaviors requires a highly sophisticated level of emotional and social functioning. Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University, has extended these notions and regards the brain as having genetically shaped mechanisms whose function is the acquisition of moral rules based in complex feeling states.112 In the face of such robust observations, the social sciences often appear to manifest their distaste for the human-as-animal supposition, most notably by sanitizing their terminology around the concepts of instinctual behavior. In fact, the word instinct is rarely found in modern psychological literature. Rather it is purged and replaced with terms such as drives, motivations and needs. While instincts are still routinely drawn upon to explain animal behaviors, we have somehow lost sight of how many human behavior patterns (though modifiable) are primal, automatic, universal and predictable. For example, as the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground, instinctually driven people ran until their feet were bleeding. They ran for their lives like their ancestors who were chased by the predatory cats on the ancient Serengeti. They then regrouped, seeking the safety of their dens and communities, as they walked in an orderly fashion, over bridges leading to each of the five boroughs. When we collapse in grief at the death of a loved one, we share this innate response to loss with the other highly developed mammals. Jane Goodall’s description of the matriarch Flo’s death and the subsequent self-starvation of her young male offspring in the tree above her corpse is one such example.‡ Yet another comparable instance of a grief response comes to mind with the listless pets we frequently return to after what seemed to us a short weekend away from home. Road rage and sexual fixations are disturbing manifestations of other instincts—in these cases, instincts gone awry. Grief, anger, fear, disgust, lust, mating, nurturing of young and even love (as well as all the action patterns that go with them) are universals among humans. All bear a remarkable resemblance to similar behaviors in mammals.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  There, I thought. A dream is starting. My eyes were closed. I felt myself begin to drift. And then, as though she’d timed it, as though she’d heard my thoughts, Reva was banging on my door. I opened my eyes. Slivers of white, snowy light striped the bare floor. It felt like the crack of dawn. “Hello? It’s me, Reva.” Had I slept at all? “Let me in.” I got up slowly and made my way down the hall. “I’m sleeping,” I hissed through the door. I squinted into the peephole: Reva looked bedraggled and deranged. “Can I come in?” she asked. “I really need to talk.” “Can I just call you later? What time is it?” “One fifteen. I tried calling,” she said. “Here, the doorman sent up your mail. I need to talk. It’s serious.” Maybe Reva had been involved somehow in my Infermiterol escapade downtown. Maybe she had some privileged information about what I’d done. Did I care? I did, a little. I unlocked the door and let her in. She wore, as I’d imagined, her mother’s huge beaver coat. “Nice sweater,” she said, slicking past me into the apartment, a whiff of cold and mothballs. “Gray is in for spring.” “It’s still January, right?” I asked, still paralyzed in the hallway. I waited for Reva to confirm but she just dumped the armful of mail on the dining table, then took off her coat and draped it over the back of the sofa next to my fox fur. Two pelts. I thought of Ping Xi’s dead dogs again. A memory arose from one of my last days at Ducat: a rich gay Brazilian petting the stuffed poodle and telling Natasha he wanted “a coat just like this, with a hood.” My head hurt. “I’m thirsty,” I said, but it came out like I was just clearing my throat. “Huh?” The floor shifted slightly beneath my feet. I felt my way into the living room, my hand skimming the cool wall. Reva had made herself comfortable in the armchair already. I steadied myself, hands free, before staggering toward the sofa. “Well, it’s over,” Reva said, “It’s officially over.” “What is?” “With Ken!” Her bottom lip trembled. She crooked her finger under her nose, held her breath, then got up and came toward me, cornering me against the end of the sofa. I couldn’t move. I felt slightly ill watching her face turn red from lack of oxygen, holding in her sobs, then realized that I was holding my breath, too. I gasped, and Reva, mistaking this for an exclamation of compassionate woe, put her arms around me. She smelled like shampoo and perfume. She smelled like tequila. She smelled vaguely of French fries. She held me and shook and cried and snotted for a good minute. “You’re so skinny,” she said, between her sniffles. “No fair.” “I need to sit down,” I told her. “Get off.” She let me go.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  He that should be the husband of this maiden, but especially her brother, advertised of her cruel death, came to the place where she was slain, and after great lamentation and weeping they caused her to be buried honourably. The young man,her brother, taking in il] part the miserable death of his sister, and especially the unnatural source whence it came, as it was convenient he should, conceived so great dolour within his mind, and was stricken with so pestilent fury of bitter anguish, that he fell into the burning passions of a dangerous ague ; whereby he seemed in such necessity that he needed to have some speedy remedy to save his life. The woman that slew the maiden, having lost the name of wife together with her faith, went to a certain traitorous physician, who could number many such triumphs as the work of his hands, and promised him fifty pieces of gold if he would sell her a present poison that she might buy the death of her husband out of hand. This done, in presence of her husband she feigned that it was necessary for him to receive a certain kind of drink, which the masters and doctors of physic do call a sacred potion, to the intent he might purge colour and scour the interior parts of his body. But 517 26 LUCIUS APULEIUS subditur alia Proserpinae sacra Saluti, Iamque praesente familia et nonnullis amicis et affinibus aegroto medicus poculum probe temperatum manu sua porrigebat Sed audax illa mulier, ut simul et conscium sceleris amoliretur et quam desponderat pecuniam lucraretur, coram detento calice, “Non prius," inquit * Medicorum optime, non prius caris- simo mihi marito trades istam potionem, quam de ea bonam partem hauseris ipse. Unde enim scio an noxium in ea lateat venenum ? Quae res utique te, tam prudentem tamque doctum virum, nequaquam offendet, si religiosa uxor circa salutem mariti sol- licita necessariam affero pietatem." Qua mira de- speratione truculentae feminae repente perturbatus medicus, excussusque toto consilio et ob angustiam temporis spatio cogitandi privatus, antequam trepi- datione aliqua vel cunctatione ipsa. daret malae conscientiae suspicionem, indidem de potione gus- tavit ampliter : quam fidem secutus adolescens etiam, sumpto calice, quod offerebatur hausit, Ad istum modum praesenti transacto negotio medicus quam celerrime domum remeabat salutifera potione pestem praecedentis veneni festinans extinguere: nec eum obstinatione sacrilega, qua semel coeperat, truculenta mulier ungue latius a se discedere passa est, ** Prius- 518 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He mourned his mourning. The rigid expression he wore on his face was a kind of death mask. So many people he had loved (but also hated) had died, and he wore this mask in penance. Why should he be alive when they were dead? So he made his life resemble death. And his death was my death too. I learned to keep myself alive by writing. That was the winter I began to write in earnest. I began to write as if it were my only hope for survival, for escape. I had always written, after a fashion. I had always worshipped authors. I used to kiss their pictures on the backs of books when I finished reading. I regarded anything printed as a holy relic and authors as creatures of superhuman knowledge and wit. Pearl Buck, Tolstoy, or Carolyn Keene, the author of Nancy Drew. I made none of the snotty divisions you learn to make later. I could happily go from Through the Looking Glass to a horror comic, from Great Expectations or The Secret Garden to Mad Magazine. Growing up in my chaotic household, I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, “the absentminded professor.” They screamed at me, but I couldn’t hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe. Bennett’s grandfather—that courageous old man who came from China at the age of twenty, who was converted to Christianity by a missionary who promised to teach him English (and never did), who preached the gospel to Chinese laborers in mining camps of the Northwest, who finally ended his days keeping a gift shop on Pell Street—and never in all his 99 or 100 years learned to speak more than a few words of intelligible English, much less write it—launched me on my career as a writer by dying. Sometimes death is the beginning of things. While Bennett mourned in silence through the long winter, I wrote. I threw out all my college poems, even the ones that had been published. I threw out all my false starts at stories and novels. I wanted to make myself anew, to make a new life for myself by writing. I immersed myself in the work of other writers. I used to send for books from Foyle’s in London or ask my friends or parents to send them from New York. I would study one contemporary poet or novelist at a time, reading and rereading their books, studying how they had changed from book to book, imitating a different author’s style every few months. The whole time I was terrified and regarded myself as a failure.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He felt the little rough patches of psoriasis. He felt the ancient wedding ring embedded in skin. ‘Dad, sit down.’ ‘Sit down? How can I sit down ?’ ‘Just . . .’ said Howard, pressing him back softly into his chair and taking the sofa for himself. ‘Just, sit down.’ ‘Are the family with you?’ Howard shook his head. Harold assumed his vanquished position, hands in lap, head bowed, eyes closed. ‘Who’s that woman?’ asked Howard. ‘That’s not the nurse, surely. Who are those notes for?’ Harold sighed profoundly. ‘You didn’t bring the family. Well . . . there it is. They didn’t want to come, I’m sure . . .’ ‘Harry, that woman in there – who is that?’  on beauty and being wrong ‘Carol?’ repeated Harold, his face the usual mix of perplexity and persecution. ‘But that’s Carol.’ ‘Right. And who’s Carol?’ ‘She’s just a lady who comes by. What does it matter?’ Howard sighed and sat down on the green sofa. The moment his head connected with the velvet he felt like he’d been sitting here with Harry these forty years, the both of them still tied up in the terrible incommunicable grief of Joan’s death. For they fell into the same patterns at once, as if Howard had never gone to university (against Harry’s advice), never left this piss-poor country, never married outside his colour and nation. He’d never gone anywhere or done anything. He was still a butcher’s son and it was still just the two of them, still making do, squabbling in a railway cottage in Dalston. Two Englishmen stranded together with nothing in common except a dead woman they had both loved. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Carol ,’ said Harry anxiously. ‘You’re here! I want to talk about that! You’re here .’ ‘I’m just asking you who she is !’ Now Harold was exasperated. He was a little deaf and when troubled his voice could suddenly get very loud, without his realizing it. ‘She’s church-GOING. Pops round few times a week for tea. Just looks in, SEE IF I’M ALL RIGHT. Nice woman. Now, but how are you ?’ he said, adopting an anxiously jovial smile. ‘That’s what we’re all wanting to know, aren’t we? How’s New York?’ Howard clenched his jaw. ‘We pay for a nurse, Harry.’ ‘What, son?’ ‘I said we pay for a nurse . Why do you let these bloody people in? They’re just bloody proselytizers.’ Harold rubbed his hand over his forehead. It took almost nothing to work him into a state of physical and mental panic, the kind normal people suffer when they can’t find their child and then a policeman comes to the door. ‘Prosler-what? What are you SAYING?’ ‘Christian nutters – pushing their crap on you.’ ‘But she doesn’t mean anything by it!

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

  This depends on the law’s theory of the human mind. Whatever the goal, punishment must be enacted so that the defendant’s humanity is preserved, while the victim’s humanity is honored, even if the defendant commits an unspeakable act. To do otherwise puts the legal system itself in jeopardy. ... Why is it that you can sue someone for breaking your leg but not for breaking your heart? The law considers emotional damage to be less serious than physical damage and less deserving of punishment. Think about how ironic this is. The law protects the integrity of your anatomical body but not the integrity of your mind, even though your body is just a container for the organ that makes you who you are—your brain. Emotional harm is not considered real unless accompanied by physical harm. Mind and body are separate. (Let’s all raise a glass to René Descartes here.) If there is one thing you can take away from this book, it is that the boundaries between mental and physical are porous. chapter 10 explained a bit about the ways in which emotional harm from chronic stress, parental emotional abuse and neglect, and other psychological ills can ultimately cause physical illness and injury. And we’ve seen how stress and proinflammatory cytokines lead to numerous health problems, including brain atrophy, and increase the likelihood of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, depression, and a host of other illnesses. 59 But that’s not the whole story. Emotional harm can shorten your life. Inside your body, you have little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes like protective caps. They’re called telomeres. All living things have telomeres—humans, fruit flies, amoebas, even the plants in your garden. Every time one of your cells divides, its telomeres get a little shorter (although they can be repaired by an enzyme called telomerase). So generally their size slowly decreases, and at some point, when they are too short, you die. This is normal aging. But guess what else causes your telomeres to get smaller? Stress does. Children who experience early adversity have shorter telomeres. In other words, emotional harm can do more serious damage, last longer, and cause more future harm than breaking a bone. This means the legal system might be misguided when it comes to understanding and gauging the degree of lasting injury that can come from emotional harm. 60 As another example, consider chronic pain. The law treats chronic pain by and large as “emotional” because there’s no observable tissue damage. In these cases, the law usually concludes that the suffering is not real enough to merit compensation. People who suffer from chronic pain are often diagnosed as mentally ill, and even more so if they opt for an invasive operation to try and reduce their “illusory” suffering.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She just wanted to check out, and often did. She went to Europe for months on end. She fell in love at least once a week. She went from broken engagement to broken engagement. When she finally married my stepfather it was painful trying to balance his need for her with her responsibilities to write (and drink). She was paralyzed by the pressure to deliver more world-changing books, and she struggled to maintain her equilibrium in the face of an unending series of vile, misogynist attacks and actual stalkers, including the man who parked his car at the head of our driveway in Connecticut and listened to messages from God coming from a radio with no batteries. Back then, neither my mother nor the police in Weston, Connecticut, knew how to handle stalkers. Erica Jong was very much trapped in a world of her own creation. Mom is in her early eighties now and has dementia. She is both on this planet and very much not. What little jewelry she had sits in my safe. Her legacy sits on my desk and on the hard drive of my computer. I thought I would be a great literary executor because I know how publishing works, but the truth is that being my mother’s literary executor is just excruciating. I thought writing this foreword would be fun, easy work, but it’s like performing root canal surgery on myself. Writing about our lives together brings me back to those years when I needed her and didn’t yet know that we would never connect in the way I needed. Now my mother sits in a room waiting for me to visit her, but she’s not in there anymore—or not the mother I once knew. Now she’s like some beautiful little doll. There is no winning the past. No number of forewords will make me at peace with the years between Fear of Flying and now. Writing about her and her legacy just makes me even more uncomfortable than I was before. This foreword should be a celebration of her work, of my mother’s place in the pantheon of second-wave feminists, but I fear it’s not. Perhaps this is just my own personal failure, but my mother used to butcher that Ernest Hemingway quote about sitting at the typewriter and opening a vein. Here’s every nepo baby’s open secret—no matter how hard we work, no matter how good our work might be, the tormenting gift of celebrity and notoriety passed down from our parents nullifies everything we do. Some of us admit this.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She’s just a nice woman!  On Beauty Besides, I didn’t like the nurse! She was a harpy – mean and bony. Bit feminist, you know. She wasn’t nice to me, son. She was unhinged . . .’ A few tears, here. Wiping them sloppily with the sleeve of his cardigan. ‘But I stopped the service – last year I stopped it. Your Kiki did it for me. It’s in me little book. You ain’t paying for it. There’s no . . . no . . . bugger, WHAT IS THE NAME OF IT? Debit . . . my mind goes . . . debit . . .’ ‘ Direct debit ,’ supplied Howard, raising his own voice and hating himself now. ‘It’s not the bloody money, is it, Dad? It’s about a standard of care.’ ‘I care for meself !’ And then, under his breath, ‘ I bloody have to . . .’ So how long was that? Eight minutes? Harry on the edge of his seat, pleading, and always pleading with the wrong words. Howard already incensed, looking at the rose in the ceiling. A stranger could come in now and think them both completely insane. And neither man would be able to give an account of why what had just happened had happened, or at least no account that would be shorter than sitting down with the stranger and taking them through an oral history – with slides – of the past fifty-seven years, day by day. They didn’t mean it to be like this. But it was like this. Both had other intentions. Howard had knocked on the door eight minutes ago filled with hope, his heart loosened by music, his mind stunned and opened by the appalling proximity of death. He was a big malleable ball of potential change, waiting on the doorstep. Eight minutes ago. But once inside, everything was the same as it had always been. He didn’t mean to be so aggressive, or to raise his voice or to pick fights. He meant to be kind and tolerant. Equally, four years ago, Harry surely hadn’t meant to tell his only son that you couldn’t expect black people to develop mentally like white people do. He had meant to say: I love you, I love my grandchildren, please stay another day. ‘Here you are,’ sang Carol, and put two unappetizing milky teas before the Belseys. ‘No, I won’t stay. I’ll be going.’ Harold wiped yet another tear away. ‘Carol, don’t go! This is my son. Howard, I’ve told you about him.’  on beauty and being wrong ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Carol, but she did not look charmed and now Howard regretted having spoken so loudly. ‘Dr Howard Belsey.’ ‘Doctor!’ cried Carol, without smiling. She crossed her arms across her chest, waiting to be impressed. ‘No, no . . . not medical,’ clarified Harold and looked defeated. ‘He didn’t have the patience for medical.’ ‘Oh, well,’ said Carol, ‘we can’t all save lives.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  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]). The transcendence of solipsism is a central concern in Nabokov. He recommends no escape, and there is an unmistakable moral resonance in his treatment of the theme: it is only at the outset of Lolita that Humbert can say that he had Lolita “safely solipsized.” The coldly unromantic scrutiny which his exiles endure is often overlooked by critics. In Pnin the gentle, addlepated professor is seen in a new light in the final chapter, when the narrator assumes control and makes it clear that he is inheriting Pnin’s job but not, he would hope, his existence. John Shade asks us to pity “the exile, the old man / Dying in a motel,” and we do; but in the Commentary, Kinbote says that a “king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is guilty of [a regicide].” “The past [is] the past,” Lolita tells Humbert toward the end of that novel, when he asks her to relive what had always been inexorably lost. As a book about the spell exerted by the past, Lolita is Nabokov’s own parodic answer to his previous book, the first edition of Speak, Memory. Mnemosyne is now seen as a black muse, nostalgia as a grotesque cul-de-sac. Lolita is the last book one would offer as “autobiographical,” but even in its totally created form it connects with the deepest reaches of Nabokov’s soul. Like the poet Fyodor in The Gift, Nabokov could say that while he keeps everything “on the very brink of parody ... there must be on the other hand an abyss of seriousness, and I must make my way along this narrow ridge between my own truth and a caricature of it”. An autobiographic theme submitted to the imagination thus takes on a new life: frozen in art, halted in space, now timeless, it can be lived with.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  sed exequias suas. Ac dum maesti parentes et tanto malo perciti nefarium facinus perficere cunctantur, ipsa illa filia talibus eos adhortatur vocibus : * Quid infelicem senectam fletu diutino cruciatis? Quid spiritum vestrum, qui magis meus est, crebris eiula- tibus fatigatis? Quid lacrimis inefficacibus ora mihi veneranda foedatis? Quid laceratis in vestris oculis mea lumina? Quid canitiem scinditis? Quid pec- tora, quid ubera sancta tunditis? Haec erunt vobis egregiae formositatis meae praeclara praemia? In- vidiae nefariae letali plaga percussi sero sentitis. Cum gentes et populi celebrarent nos divinis honori- bus, eum novam me Venerem ore consono nuncu- parent, tune dolere, tunc flere, tunc me iam quasi peremptam lugere debuistis: iam sentio, iam video solo me nomine Veneris perisse. Ducite me, et cui sors addixit scopulo sistite : festino felices istas nup- tias obire, festino generosum illum maritum meum videre. Quid differo? Quid detrecto venientem 35 qui totius orbis exitio natus est?’ Sic profata virgo conticuit ingressuque iam valido pompae populi pro- sequentis sese miscuit. Itur ad constitutum scopu- lum montis ardui, cuius in summo cacumine statutam puellam cuncti deserunt, taedasque nuptiales, quibus praeluxerant, ibidem lacrimis suis extinctas relin- quentes deiectis capitibus domuitionem parant, et miseri quidem parentes eius tanta clade defessi clausae domus abstrusi tenebris perpetuae nocti sese 196 | ! THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IV

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  weep, so far was he stricken into dolour, but pre- sently taking the knife wherewith he had but now divided the cheese and other meat for his guests, he cut his own throat with many blows like his most unhappy son, in such sort that he fell head foremost upon the board and washed away with the streams of his blood in most miserable manner those pro- digious drops which had before fallen thereon. Hereby was my master the gardener deprived of his hope, and pitying very greatly the evil fortune of the house, which in a brief moment of time had thus fallen in ruins, and getting instead of his dinner the watery tears of his eyes, and clapping oft-times together his empty hands, mounted upon my back, and so we went homeward the same way as we came. Yet was our return not free from harm: for as we passed by the way we met with a tall soldier (for so his habit and countenance declared) which was a legionary, who with proud and arrogant words spake to my master in this sort: “Whither lead you this ass unladen?” My master, still somewhat astonished and fearful at the strange sights which he saw before, and ignorant of the Latin tongue, rode on and spake never a word. The soldier, unable to refrain his proper insolence and offended at his silence as it were an insult, struck him with a vine- stick which he held on the shoulders, and thrust him from my back. Then my master gently made answer that he knew not his tongue and so under- stood not what he said ; whereat the soldier angrily. demanded again, but in Greek, whither he rode with his ass: “ Marry," quoth he, * To the next city." « But I,” quoth the soldier, Have need of his help, to carry the trusses of our captain with the other beasts from yonder castle"; and therewithal he 463 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  xesecto, ursae magnificum despoliavit latronem. Sic etiam Thrasyleon nobis perivit sed a gloria non peri- vit. Confestim itaque constrictis sarcinis illis, quas nobis servaverant fideles mortui, Plataeae terminos concito gradu deserentes, istud apud nostros animos identidem reputabamus, merito nullam fidem in vita nostra repperiri, quod ad manes iam et mortuos odio perfidiae nostrae demigrarit. Sic onere vecturae simul et asperitate viae toti fatigati, tribus comitum desideratis, istas quas videtis praedas adveximus." 22 Postistum sermonis terminum poculis aureis memo- riae defunctorum commilitonum vine mero libant, dehine canticis quibusdam Marti deo blanditi paulu- lum conquiescunt. Enim nobis anus illa recens hor- deum affatim et sine ulla mensura largita est, ut equus quidem meus tanta copia et quidem solus potitus saliares se cenasse cenas? crederet : ego vero, qui numquam alias hordeum cibatus ni minutatum et diutina coquitatione iurulentum semper eserim,? rimatus angulum quo panes reliquiae totius multi- tudinis congestae fuerant, fauces diutina fame saucias et araneantes valenter exerceo. Et ecce nocte pro- mota latrones expergiti castra commovent instruc- tique varie, partim gladiis armati, partim 4^ in Lemures reformati, concito se gradu proripiunt. Nec me tamen instanter ac fortiter manducantem 1 Vulcanius’ emendation for the MSS’ aspere. 2 Luetjohann's emendation, slightly changed by van der Vliet. The best MS has sales secenas, with a lacuna of about five letters after the last word. 3 The whole of this passage is very corruptin the MSS, The 176 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IV skin from the hardy and venturous thief. In this manner there was lost to us also our captain Thrasy- leon, but there was not lost to him his fame and honour. When all this was done, we packed up our treasure which the faithful dead in the sepulchre had kept for us, and we got us out of the bounds of Plataea, thinking always with ourselves that there was no fidelity to be found amongst the living; and no wonder, for that it hath passed over to the ghosts and the dead in hatred of our deceitfulness. And so, being wearied with the weight of our burdens, and very tired with our rough travel, having thus lost three of our soldiers, we are come home with this present prey that you see."

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Alas what a pittifull sight it was to see our poore Thrasileon thus environed and compassed with so many dogs that tare and rent him miserably. Then I impatient of so great a misery, ranne in among the prease of people, and ayding him with my words as much as I might, exhorted them all in this manner: O great and extreame mischance, what a pretious and excellent beast have we lost. But my words did nothing prevaile, for there came out a tall man with a speare in his hand, that thrust him cleane through, and afterwards many that stood by drew out their swords, and so they killed him. But verily our good Captaine Thrasileon, the honour of our comfort, received his death so patiently, that he would not bewray the league betweene us, either by crying, howling, or any other meanes, but being torn with dogs and wounded with weapons, did yeeld forth a dolefull cry, more like unto a beast than a man. And taking his present fortune in good part, with courage and glory enough did finish his life, with such a terror unto the assembly, that no person was hardy until it was day, as to touch him, though hee were starke dead: but at last there came a Butcher more valiant than the rest, who opening the panch of the beast, slit out an hardy and ventrous theefe. In this manner we lost our Captain Thrasileon, but he left not his fame and honour. When this was done wee packed up our treasure, which we committed to the sepulchre to keepe, and got out of the bounds of Platea, thus thinking with our selves, that there was more fidelity amongst the dead than amongst the living, by reason that our preyes were so surely kept in the sepulchre. So being wearied with the weight of our burthens, and well nigh tyred with long travell, having lost three of our soldiers, we are come home with these present cheats. Thus when they had spoken in memory of their slaine companions, they tooke cups of gold, and sung hymns unto the god mars, and layd them downe to sleep. Then the old woman gave us fresh barley without measure, insomuch that my horse fed so abundantly that he might well thinke hee was at some banquet that day. But I that was accustomed to eat bran and flower, thought that but a sower kinde of meate. Wherfore espying a corner where lay loaves of bread for all the house I got me thither and filled my hungry guts therewith. THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER How the Theeves stole away a Gentlewoman, and brought her to their den.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  LUCIUS APULEIUS animam. Sed intervallo revalescente paulatim spi- ritu, ferinos mugitus iterans et iam scaenam pessimi Thrasylli perspiciens, ad limam consilii desiderium petitoris distulit. Tunc inter moras umbra illa misere trucidati Tlepolemi sanie cruentam et pallore deformem attollens faciem quietem pudicam inter- pellat uxoris : * Mi coniux (quod tibi prorsus ab alio dici non licebit) etsi pectori tuo iam perimitur nostri memoria, vel acerbae mortis meae casus foedus caritatis intercidit, quovis alio felicius maritare, modo ne in Thrasylli manum sacrilegam convenias, neve sermonem conferas nec mensam accumbas nec toro acquiescas. Fuge mei percussoris cruentam dex- teram: noli parrieidio nuptias auspicari. ^ Vulnera illa, quorum sanguinem tuae lacrimae proluerunt, non sunt tota dentium vulnera: lancea mali Thra- syli me tibi fecit alienum ': et addidit cetera omnemque scaenam sceleris illuminavit. At illa, ut primum maesta quieverat toro faciem impressa, etiam nunc dormiens lacrimis emanantibus genas cohumidat et velut quodam tormento inquieta quieti excussa, luctu redintegrato prolixum eiulat,! discissaque in- terula decora brachia saevientibus palmulis conver- berat. Nec tamen cum quoquam participatis noc- 1 The end of ch. 7 and the beginning of ch.8, as well as the end of ch. 8 and the beginning of ch. 9, have suffered by a bad tear in the parchment of the best MS. In both passages the text is a little uncertain. 358 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII end, when her spirits were revived and that she returned to herself crying and shrieking like some beast, remembering all that had passed with the wicked Thrasyllus, she demanded respite to de- liberate and to take advice on the matter. “In the mean season of delay the shape of Tlepolemus that was slain so miserably appeared to Charite as she chastely slept, with a pale and bloody face, saying: ‘O my sweet wife (a name which no other person shall say but I), even if the memory of me in thy heart groweth dim, or the remembrance faileth of my pitiful death, in so much that our bond of love hath been severed, marry happily with any other person, so that you marry not with the traitor Thrasyllus; have no conference with him, eat not with him, lie not with him ; avoid the bloody hand of mine enemy, let not thy marriage be begun with parricide.1 For those wounds, the blood whereof thy tears did wash away, were not all the wounds of the teeth of the boar, but the spear of wicked Thrasyllus parted me from thee.’ Thus spoke Tlepolemus unto his loving wife, and declared the whole residue of the damnable fact. But Charite lay as she had first fallen asleep, with her face buried in her pillow; now she wetted her cheeks with her welling tears: and now aroused as by some new anguish, she began to cry aloud as if she renewed her dolour, to tear her garments, and to beat her comely arms with her furious hands: howbeit she revealed the vision which she saw to

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  8 Inter haee quaedam mulier per medium theatrum laerimosa et flebilis, atra veste contecta, parvulüm quendam sinu tolerans decurrit, ac pone eam anus alia pannis horridis obsita paribusque maesta fletibus, ramos oleagineos utraeque quatientes, quae circum- 110 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK III esteemed mine innocency above all the treasure of the world, can find no reasonable cause why, having justly punished these evil robbers, I should now be accused and condemned to die; since there is none that can affirm that there has been at any time either grudge or hatred between us, or that we were aught but men mere strangers and of no acquaintance; and last of all, no man can prove that I committed that deed for any lucre or gain." When I had ended my words in this sort, behold I wept again piteously, and holding up my hands, I prayed all the people by their common mercy and for the love of their poor infants and children to shew me some pity and favour. And when I believed their hearts somewhat relented and moved by my lamentable tears, Í called upon the eyes of the sun and of Justice to witness that I was not guilty of the crime, and so to the divine providence I committed my present estate; but lifting up somewhat mine eyes again, I perceived that all the people laughed with exceeding laughter, and especially my good friend and host Milo. Then thought I with my- self: “Alas! where is faith, where is conscience ? Behold for the safeguard of mine host and his family I am a slayer of men, and brought to the bar as a murderer. Yet is he not contented with coming not to comfort and help me, but likewise laugheth with all his heart at my destruction." ! When this was a-doing, out came a woman weeping into the middle of the theatre arrayed in mourning vesture, and bearing a child in her arms. And after her came an old woman in ragged robes crying and howling likewise : and these brought with them olive-boughs, and going about the bier whereon lay the three slain bodies all covered up, with loud 111 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Incontinently came Thrasillus, the detestable demander of sodaine pleasure, and wearied the closed eares of Charites with talke of marriage, but she gently refused his communication, and coloring the matter, with passing craft in the middest of his earnest desires gan say, Thrasillus you shall understand that yet the face of your brother and my husband, is alwayes before mine eies, I smell yet the Cinamon sent of his pretious body, I yet feele Lepolemus alive in my heart: wherefore you shall do well if you grant to me miserable woman, necessarie time to bewaile his death, that after the residue of a few months, the whole yeare may be expired, which thing toucheth as well my shame as your wholsome profit, lest peradventure by your speed and quicke marriage we should justly raise and provoke the spirit of my husband to worke our destruction. Howbeit, Thrasillus was not contented with this promise, but more and more came upon her: Insomuch, that she was enforced to speake to him in this manner: My friend Thrasillus, if thou be so contented untill the whole yeare be compleate and finished, behold here is my bodie, take thy pleasure, but in such sort and so secret that no servant of the house may perceive it. Then Thrasillus trusting to the false promises of the woman, and preferring his inordinate pleasure above all things in the world, was joyfull in his heart and looked for night, when as he might have his purpose. But come thou about midnight (quoth Charites) disguised without companie, and doe but hisse at my chamber doore, and my nourse shall attend and let thee in. This counsell pleased Thrasillus marveilously, who (suspecting no harme) did alwaies looke for night, and the houre assigned by Charites.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And the children know it, which is how they manage to raise their children, and why they will not be persuaded-by their children's murderers, after all-to cease having children. But I was haunted, too, by the fact that it is Dr. Manette's testimony, written in prison, and recuperated by Ernest De farge upon the storming of the Bastille, which dooms his son in-l aw to death. The Defarges seize and hide this document in order to use it against the son-in-law at the latter's trial: at which trial, Dr. Manette is chief witness for the defense-or, in other words, in fact, his son-in-l aw's only hope. Manette wrote his testimony in agony and silence, never expecting to sec his daughter again, and unable, of course, to imagine that his daughter would marry one of the descendants of the house which had condemned him to a living death. His testimony ends: them and their descendant s, to the last of their race, I ... denounce them to Heaven and to earth. His son in-law is the descendant of the "race" which had imprisoned him, and the "last" of that race, denounced by him, is Aesh of his flesh, his granddaughter. Which connected for me, hor ribly, with the testimony of Madame Defarge, sister of the murdered boy: that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead and that summons to answer for CHAPTER ONE 491 all those things descends to me! Her husband reluctantly agrees that this is so, whereupon Madame Dcfargc says, Then tell wind and fire where to stop, bttt don't tell me! I understood that: I had seen it in the face, heard it in the voice of many a black man or woman, sweeping the pavement, wrestling with the garbage cans, men and women whose chil dren were dying faster than those MGM extras dropping from the drawbridge. If I love you, I love yott, and I don't give a damn. Yott my nigger, nigger, if you don 't get no bigger. I will cut yottr dick off, I will cut yottr balls out. I ain' t got to do nothing bttt stay black and die and I'm black already! Honey. Don't be like that. Honey. Don't do me like that. We in this shit together, and yott need me and I need yott, now ain't that so?

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I saw Jim Brown at a distance, but he didn't sec me. I leaned up on the car, making frantic signals, and, finally, someone on the church steps did see me and came to the car and sort of lif ted me over. I talked to Jim Brown fi>r a minute, and then somebody led me into the church and I sat down. TO BE BAP TIZED 449 The church was packed, of course, incredibly so. Far in the front, I saw Harry Bel atonte sitting next to Caretta King. I had interviewed Caretta years ago, when I was doing a profile on her husba nd. We had got on very well; she had a nice, free laugh. Ralph David Abernathy sat in the pulpit. I remembered him from years ago, sitting in his shirtsleeves in the house in Montgomery, big, black, and cheerful, pouring some cool soft drink, and, later, getting me settled in a nearby hotel. In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt---c overed in black, looking like a lost ten-year-old girl-and Sidney Poirier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a te n sion indescribable-as though something, perhaps the heav ens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still . The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church ser vice I've ever sat through in my lite, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep tor Martin; tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep, I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep fix, if one was to weep--so many of us, cut down, so soon . Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Rev erend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved-"once more," said Ralph David, "f or Martin and tor me," and he sat down. The long, dark sister, whose name I do not remember, rose, very beautiful in her robes, and in her covered grief, and be gan to sing. It was a song I knew: "My Heavenly Father Watches Over Me." The song rang out as it might have over dark fields, long ago; she was singing of a covenant a people had made, long ago, with lif e, and with that larger life which ends in revelation and which moves in love . He guides the eagle through the pathless air.