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 Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  the front porch. Inside were three rooms, each about ten feet by ten feet, facing onto the front porch. The house had no bathroom, but underneath it, behind one of the cinder- block pillars, was a closet-sized room with a toilet on a cement floor. The toilet wasn’t hooked up to any sewer or septic system. It just sat atop a hole about six feet deep. There was no running water indoors. A water spigot rose a few inches above the ground near the toilet, so you could get a bucket and tote water upstairs. While the house was wired for electricity, Dad confessed that we could not at the moment afford to have it turned on. On the upside, Dad said, the house had cost only a thousand dollars, and the owner had waived the down payment. We were supposed to pay him fifty dollars a month. If we could make the payments on time, we’d own the place outright in under two years. “Hard to believe that one day this will all be ours,” said Lori. She was developing what Mom called a bit of a sarcastic streak. “Count your blessings,” Mom said. “There are people in Ethiopia who would kill for a place like this.” She pointed out that the house did have some attractive features. For example, in the living room was a cast-iron potbellied coal stove for heating and cooking. It was big and handsome, with heavy bear-claw feet, and she was certain it was valuable, if you took it to a place where people appreciated antiques. But since the house had no chimney, the stovepipe vented out a back window. Someone had replaced the glass in the upper part of the window with plywood, and wrapped tinfoil around the opening to keep the coal smoke from leaking into the room. The tinfoil had not done its job too well, and the ceiling was black with soot. Someone— probably the same someone—had also made the mistake of trying to clean the ceiling in a few spots, but had ended up only smudging and smearing the soot, creating whitish patches that made you realize how black the rest of the ceiling was. “The house itself isn’t much,” Dad apologized, “but we won’t be living in it long.” The important thing, the reason he and Mom had decided to acquire this particular piece of property, was that it came with plenty of land to build our new house. He planned to get to work on it right away. He intended to follow the blueprints for the Glass Castle, but he had to do some serious reconfiguring and increase the size of the solar cells to take into account that since we were on the north face of the mountain, and enclosed by hills on both sides, we’d hardly ever get any sun.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  23 AFTER NATHAN DIED nothing was the same. She felt more like an outsider in her family than she ever had. Tawny sat stony-faced in the living room. “His suffering has ended,” she repeated over and over, like a mantra. “He’s with the Lord now.” Her father lay on Nathan’s bed, shutting her out, leaving her alone with her feelings, alone with her grief. “Come back to the Vineyard with me,” Caitlin said. Vix shook her head. “It’s just for a week, just until Labor Day. It’d be good for you.” As much as Vix wanted to see Bru, have him hold her, comfort her, she felt guilty for making love while Nathan lay dying. And it crossed her mind that this could be her punishment for enjoying sex, for defying her mother. She tried to push those thoughts away. What kind of god would punish her by taking Nathan’s life just because she was having sex with someone she loved? “I can’t leave my family,” she told Caitlin. “Not now.” Only weeks ago Vix had been convinced her friendship with Caitlin was over. How childish that seemed to her now. If a friend is someone you can depend on when life gets tough, then Caitlin was her friend, traveling home with her, holding her hand at the funeral, even staying behind at the house afterward to clean up the kitchen once those who had come to pay their respects had left. She started a letter to Bru, but the words wouldn’t come. So she asked Caitlin to give him her message. “Tell him about Nathan and explain ...” “Why you couldn’t come back?” “Yes ... and also ...” “That you miss him?” Vix nodded. “What about love ... should I tell him you love him?”

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  A month or so later I had the opportunity to write a three-minute essay for a radio show on anything I wanted, and I asked Brice’s parents if it would feel like an invasion of privacy if I wrote about their son. They said no, just the opposite. So I sat down with my index cards, and I looked through the one-inch picture frame, and started writing: Sam saw his first dead person last month. Two friends of ours had a baby who died, and we went to spend the morning with them and the body of their son. He was five months old and weighed eight pounds, down from the ten he weighed at birth. He wore a white baptismal gown, and lay in a big basket on top of his crib, covered with flower petals from the waist down, white as a rose. There were flowers and shrines everywhere, statues of the Buddha and pictures of his Holiness the Dalai Lama (because his mother is a Buddhist) and of Jesus (because his father is a Christian). Brice looked like a small, concerned angel from someplace snowy. None of us, including Sam, could take our eyes off him. He looked like God . “You what?” my relatives asked when I mentioned this. “You took Sam to see what?” as in, What will you take him to see next? Brain surgery? I couldn’t explain why I thought it was right, except that I was taught to be terrified of sickness and death (especially early death and also, ironically, aging) and I believe this greatly compromised my life. Of course I want better for Sam . Lots of my friends have died of cancer and AIDS. But Brice was the first dead person Sam ever saw. Sam didn’t seem scared. Maybe it was because Brice looked so beautiful in death. He was an old pro at it: he had died during delivery and was resuscitated seven minutes later, and so was born a second time, but it turned out that he had been gone too long. His eyes were deep gray, and always open, and he never cried or, for that matter, smiled, or even blinked . Brice’s mother’s Buddhist friends called him Cloud Boy because he was suspended between heaven and earth, not quite here, not quite there. His father’s Christian friends did much of the cooking. Everyone held him and rocked him. Sam and I spent a lot of time reading to him, mostly Dr. Seuss . “He’s a good baby,” Sam assured Brice’s parents one day.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The conceptualization of bisexuality in terms of dispositions, feminine and masculine, which have heterosexual aims as their intentional correlates, suggests that for Freud bisexuality is the coincidence of two heterosexual desires within a single psyche. The masculine disposition is, in effect, never oriented toward the father as an object of sexual love, and neither is the feminine disposition oriented toward the mother (the young girl may be so oriented, but this is before she has renounced that “masculine” side of her dispositional nature). In repudiating the mother as an object of sexual love, the girl of necessity repudiates her masculinity and, paradoxically, “fixes” her femininity as a consequence. Hence, within Freud’s thesis of primary bisexuality, there is no homosexuality, and only opposites attract. But what is the proof Freud gives us for the existence of such dispositions? If there is no way to distinguish between the femininity acquired through internalizations and that which is strictly dispositional, then what is to preclude the conclusion that all gender-specific affinities are the consequence of internalizations? On what basis are dispositional sexualities and identities ascribed to individuals, and what meaning can we give to “femininity” and “masculinity” at the outset? Taking the problematic of internalization as a point of departure, let us consider the status of internalized identifications in the formation of gender and, secondarily, the relation between an internalized gender affinity and the self-punishing melancholia of internalized identifications. In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud interprets the self-critical attitudes of the melancholic to be the result of the internalization of a lost object of love. Precisely because that object is lost, even though the relationship remains ambivalent and unresolved, the object is “brought inside” the ego where the quarrel magically resumes as an interior dialogue between two parts of the psyche. In “Mourning and Melancholia,” the lost object is set up within the ego as a critical voice or agency, and the anger originally felt for the object is reversed so that the internalized object now berates the ego: If one listens patiently to the many and various self-accusations of the melancholic, one cannot in the end avoid the impression that often the most violent of them are hardly applicable to the patient himself, but that with insignificant modifications they do fit someone else, some person whom the patient loves, has loved or ought to love.... the self-reproaches are reproaches against a loved object which have been shifted onto the patient’s own ego. (169) The melancholic refuses the loss of the object, and internalization becomes a strategy of magically resuscitating the lost object, not only because the loss is painful, but because the ambivalence felt toward the object requires that the object be retained until differences are settled. In this early essay, Freud understands grief to be the withdrawal of libidinal cathexis from the object and the successful transferral of that cathexis onto a fresh object.

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  Scope: This lecture focuses on one of the most famous sections in the Confessions, a section that is also full of surprises. To set the scene of his mother’s death, Augustine tells the story of her life. Because attitudes toward women have changed a great deal since the time of Augustine, his description of her life opens up a window on the world of late antiquity, especially in terms of domestic life. We learn something of the relations between men and women during this time, as well as some of the circumstances that were unique to Monica, including the fact that she was “addicted” to wine in her youth. But Augustine carefully crafts this narrative to prepare the reader for the scenes surrounding her death. Of particular importance is the meditation that Augustine and his mother share immediately before her death on the joys of heaven. This passage is often seen as one of the key texts in the history of Christian mysticism in the West and is, therefore, worth a close look. Augustine’s reaction to his mother’s death is also important: Because it takes place after his conversion and baptism, it provides an interesting and important contrast with the death of his friend that we discussed in Book IV and shows how Augustine has carefully shaped the narrative so that events play off each other. Outline I. The death of Augustine’s mother, Monica, is one of the most famous sections of the Confessions, but it is also a section that is full of surprises. II. To prepare us for her death, Augustine fills in some of the details of her life, details that were not given to us earlier in the narrative. A. We learn the rather surprising story of her “fondness” for wine in her youth. 1. This becomes yet another way for Augustine to talk about addiction to a vice. 2. Monica fell into this vice despite the strong warning of one of her servants. ©2004 The Teaching Company. 55

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  A. Because it is an attempt to describe the infinite, it is a particularly important document in the history of the Christian mystical tradition. B. It is one of the most beautiful passages in the Confessions. 1. The entire description consists of one long sentence. 2. In the attempt to go beyond language, the images are, paradoxically, physical ones. 3. The passage describes the process of going beyond itself by not thinking of itself. 4. It is an important discussion of the nature of time and timelessness and, therefore, prepares us for the more extended discussion of memory and time in Books X and XI. IV. After this meditation, Monica tells her son that she is ready for death. A. She had previously wanted to be buried alongside her husband. B. Now she realizes that this is unimportant. V. Augustine describes his reaction to her death. A. He doesn’t cry, but he describes his own pain at her death by explaining how close he has become to her. B. Augustine wishes us to compare his response to her death to his response to the death of his friend, earlier in the Confessions. Suggested Readings: Cooper, chapter 9. TeSelle, pp. 59–89. Questions to Consider: 1. What are some of the most surprising aspects of the life of Augustine’s mother, as described in Book IX? 2. How do the stories of Augustine’s father and mother remind us of the gap between domestic life in Augustine’s time and in our own? 3. How does Augustine use the death of his mother to illustrate his own spiritual life at this point in his life? ©2004 The Teaching Company. 57 Lecture Nineteen Book X—Augustine the Bishop

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  In such cases women feel more sorrow than I can relate; when their husbands are taken from them they are consumed in grief, or become so sick that they must surely die. The people of Athens, too, were distraught. Infinite were the tears of old and young, lamenting the fate of Arcite. The death of Hector himself, when his fresh corpse was carried back into Troy, could not have caused more sorrow. There was nothing but pity and grief. The women scratched their cheeks, and rent their hair, in mourning. ‘Why did you die?’ one of them cried out. ‘You had gold enough. And you had Emily.’ There was only one man who could comfort Theseus himself. His old father, Aegaeus, had seen the vicissitudes of the world and had witnessed the sudden changes from joy to woe, from woe to happiness. ‘There is no man who has died on earth without having first lived. And so there is no one alive who will not at some point die. This world is nothing but a thoroughfare of woe, down which we all pass as pilgrims -’ ‘So are we all here.’ The Franklin had interrupted the Knight’s tale. ‘The whole world is an inn,’ our Host said. ‘And the end of the journey is always the same.’ ‘God give us grace and a good death.’ This was the Reeve, crossing himself. ‘Amen to that,’ the Knight replied. And then he continued with his story. As Aegaeus told Theseus, death is an end to every worldly disappointment. He said much more in a similar vein, and in the same way he encouraged the people of Athens to take heart. So Theseus was comforted by his words, and busied himself in finding the best place for the tomb of Arcite to be raised in honour of the fallen knight. He finally came to the conclusion that the most appropriate site would be the wooded grove in which Palamon and Arcite had fought their duel for the hand of Emily. In this place, ever green and ever fresh, Arcite had professed his love and uttered his heart’s complaints. So in this grove, where all the fires of love had been kindled, Theseus would light the fire of Arcite’s funeral pyre. Fire would put out fire. So he commanded that his men cut down the ancient oaks and lay them in a row; then he ordered that the trees should be piled up so that they might burn more easily. His officers swiftly obeyed his commands. Then Theseus bid them to prepare a bier, which he covered with the richest cloth of gold that he possessed. He dressed the body of Arcite in the same

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  A. Because it is an attempt to describe the infinite, it is a particularly important document in the history of the Christian mystical tradition. B. It is one of the most beautiful passages in the Confessions. 1. The entire description consists of one long sentence. 2. In the attempt to go beyond language, the images are, paradoxically, physical ones. 3. The passage describes the process of going beyond itself by not thinking of itself. 4. It is an important discussion of the nature of time and timelessness and, therefore, prepares us for the more extended discussion of memory and time in Books X and XI. IV. After this meditation, Monica tells her son that she is ready for death. A. She had previously wanted to be buried alongside her husband. B. Now she realizes that this is unimportant. V. Augustine describes his reaction to her death. A. He doesn’t cry, but he describes his own pain at her death by explaining how close he has become to her. B. Augustine wishes us to compare his response to her death to his response to the death of his friend, earlier in the Confessions. Suggested Readings: Cooper, chapter 9. TeSelle, pp. 59–89. Questions to Consider: 1. What are some of the most surprising aspects of the life of Augustine’s mother, as described in Book IX? 2. How do the stories of Augustine’s father and mother remind us of the gap between domestic life in Augustine’s time and in our own? 3. How does Augustine use the death of his mother to illustrate his own spiritual life at this point in his life? ©2004 The Teaching Company. 57

• From The Case for God (2009)

  [image file=image_rsrc4US.jpg] FaithEarly in the year 70, the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem. Judaea had long been restive under Roman occupation, and in 66 the rumbling discontent had exploded in outright revolt. The leaders of the Jewish war did not command universal support: many Jews believed it utterly foolhardy to take on the might of Rome. But a radical party of Zealots had overpowered the moderates, convinced that Rome was in decline and that the Jews had a good chance of success. For three years, however, the brilliant Roman general Vespasian had systematically defeated the pockets of resistance in Galilee in northern Palestine until in 70 he was made emperor and returned to Rome, leaving his son Titus in charge of the Jewish war. By May Titus had broken through the northern wall of Jerusalem, but still the Jews would not give up. When Titus’s army finally fought their way into the inner courts of the magnificent temple built by Herod the Great (c. 73–4 BCE), they found six thousand Zealots ready to fight to the death, deeming it an honor to die in defense of their temple. They fought with extraordinary courage, but when the building caught fire, a terrible cry of horror arose. Some flung themselves on the swords of the Romans; others hurled themselves into the flames. Once the temple had gone, the Jews gave up; they did not even bother to defend the rest of the city or try to recover it from other nearby fortresses. Most of the survivors simply stood numbly, helplessly watching Titus’s officers efficiently demolish what was left of the buildings. The Jews had lost their temple once before, but this time it would not be rebuilt.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Answer me.’ The eldest of all the ladies then fainted; she looked so pale that even Theseus took pity on her. But she recovered from her swoon gracefully, stood upright, and answered him. ‘My good lord,’ she said, ‘upon whom Dame Fortune has smiled, we do not grieve at your victories or lament your success. Far from it. But we do beseech your mercy and your aid. Have shame on our woe and our distress. Shed some tears of compassion upon us, poor women that we are. Show us your kindness. We do perhaps deserve your consideration. There is not one of us that was not previously a duchess or a queen. Now we are miserable, worn down by grief. Dame Fortune has thrown us aside. Well, it is the wheel. There is no joy that may not turn to sorrow. That is why we have been waiting for you here, in the temple of the goddess of pity, for the last two weeks. Please help us, noble duke. Give us your strength.’ ‘Who are you, ma dame?’ ‘Wretched woman that I now am, I was once the wife of the king known as Capaneus. He was one of the seven who stormed the city of Thebes. But there at the gate of the city he died, struck down by the thunderbolt of Zeus. It was the most cursed day of my life. You may know my name. Evadne. All of these women with me, flowing in tears, also lost husbands at the siege of Thebes. Yet the old man Creon, now alas king of Thebes, is filled with anger and evil. No, he is not king. He is tyrant of Thebes. With malice in his heart, this tyrant has defiled the bodies of our dead husbands. He has stripped them and piled them in a heap. He will not allow the corpses to be burned or buried. Instead they have become the prey of dogs and other scavengers.’ At that the women set up another wail and beat their breasts. ‘Have mercy on us,’ one of them cried out. ‘We wretched women beg for succour. Let our sorrow enter your heart.’ The noble lord Theseus dismounted. His heart was indeed filled with grief at the bitterness of their woes. To see women of such high rank reduced to this level of suffering and indignity - well, he feared that his heart might break. To leave the dead unburied was pure blasphemy. So great then was the respect given to the conventions of war. He embraced them all, one by one, and did his best to comfort them. Then he swore an oath, as a knight good and true - ‘Just as you,’ our Host interjected. The Knight pretended not to hear the remark.

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  B. Augustine looks back on this friendship and realizes that it was not of the highest type because it was not rooted in a common quest for God. C. Augustine also remembers that it was a warm and sweet relationship, based on the common interests of the two men. IV. Augustine’s friend became ill and died. A. While the friend was ill, he was baptized without his consent. B. Later, when his friend recovered somewhat, Augustine teased him about his baptism. C. Surprisingly, his friend responded to Augustine with a new confidence and forbade him to talk disrespectfully about his Christian initiation. D. At the time, Augustine had no understanding of why his friend responded as he did. E. Not long afterward, Augustine’s friend died. V. Augustine responded to the death of his friend with great anguish and suffering. A. He could hardly stand to be in places that he had visited with his friend. B. Augustine did not consider that his friend came into the presence of God upon death. C. He simply wept and could not be consoled. VI. Reflecting on the death of his friend from a distance of about 20 years, Augustine realized that his response was inappropriate and ultimately selfish. A. He felt more attachment to his response to his friend’s death than to the friend himself. B. He had developed this relationship as if it were an immortal one, thus mistaking a temporal relationship for an eternal one. 1. He loved his friend without regard to his human condition. 2. His sweet friendship with this young man had been seriously flawed. C. In the final analysis, Augustine was mourning for himself, not for his friend. ©2004 The Teaching Company. 31 D. Even as Augustine is seeking eternal wisdom, his life is still dragged down by the condition and habit of selfishness that had been with him since the first day of his life. VII. Augustine ends this episode by reflecting on the nature of friendship. VIII. Augustine reports that in his quest for eternal wisdom, he turned to a book of Aristotle, Ten Categories. A. He tells us that the book clarified his understanding of substances. B. However, Aristotle did little to help Augustine find eternal wisdom. C. Augustine’s judgment on Aristotle would be the position of most theologians in the West until the 12th and 13th centuries. Suggested Readings: Cooper, chapter 4. O’Connell, St. Augustine’s Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul, chapter 6. A Reader’s Companion, chapter 4. Questions to Consider: 1. How can we see the disconnect between Augustine’s pursuit of wisdom and the way he is living his life? 2. What was the meaning of the response of Augustine’s friend when Augustine kidded him about his baptism? 3. How do Augustine’s interests in astrology and the writings of Aristotle demonstrate that education is not easy and that there is no straight movement toward wisdom? 32 ©2004 The Teaching Company.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Later, Freud makes clear that the process of internalizing and sustaining lost loves is crucial to the formation of the ego and its “object-choice.” In The Ego and the Id, Freud refers to this process of internalization described in “Mourning and Melancholia” and remarks: we succeeded in explaining the painful disorder of melancholia by supposing that [in those suffering from it] an object which was lost has been set up again inside the ego—that is, that an object-cathexis has been replaced by an identification. At that time, however, we did not appreciate the full significance of this process and did not know how common and how typical it is. Since then we have come to understand that this kind of substitution has a great share in determining the form taken by the ego and that it makes an essential contribution towards building up what is called its “character.” (18) As this chapter on “The Ego and the Super-Ego (Ego-Ideal)” proceeds, however, it is not merely “character” that is being described, but the acquisition of gender identity as well. In claiming that “it may be that this identification is the sole condition under which the id can give up its objects,” Freud suggests that the internalizing strategy of melancholia does not oppose the work of mourning, but may be the only way in which the ego can survive the loss of its essential emotional ties to others. Freud goes on to claim that “the character of the ego is a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains the history of those object-choices” (19). This process of internalizing lost loves becomes pertinent to gender formation when we realize that the incest taboo, among other functions, initiates a loss of a love-object for the ego and that this ego recuperates from this loss through the internalization of the tabooed object of desire. In the case of a prohibited heterosexual union, it is the object which is denied, but not the modality of desire, so that the desire is deflected from that object onto other objects of the opposite sex. But in the case of a prohibited homosexual union, it is clear that both the desire and the object require renunciation and so become subject to the internalizing strategies of melancholia. Hence, “the young boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him” (21). In the first formation of the boy-father identification, Freud speculates that the identification takes place without the prior object cathexis (21), meaning that the identification is not the consequence of a love lost or prohibited of the son for the father. Later, however, Freud does postulate primary bisexuality as a complicating factor in the process of character and gender formation. With the postulation of a bisexual set of libidinal dispositions, there is no reason to deny an original sexual love of the son for the father, and yet Freud implicitly does.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘But there is a saying, as old as it is true, that “An honest man and a thief do not think alike.” When this tercelet, this false bird, realized that he had snared me and had captured my loving heart, he fell down on his knees in gratitude. He was as faithless as a tiger. He vowed that he had never been so happy. He said that he was more joyful than Jason or Paris of Troy. Jason? Why do I mention him? This bird was more like Lamech, who, according to the old books, was the first bigamist. No man since the beginning of the world - no human being living or dead - could match the tricks of this tercelet. He was the supreme counterfeiter. No other fraudster was fit to unbuckle his sandals! He was the prince of perjury. You should have seen the way he offered his thanks to me a thousand times. He was perfect in the part. The wisest woman would have fallen for it. The mask fitted his face. The paint was laid on thick. In looks and in words he was all charm. I loved him for the love he bore me, and for his true and honest heart. If anything troubled or upset him, I felt it so strongly that I might have died. So in time I became the supple instrument of his will; his will was the stronger, and I obeyed him in everything - within the bounds of reason and of modesty, of course. I never loved a bird more, or half as much, as I loved him. I never will again. ‘So for a year or two I was convinced of his goodness. But nothing lasts for ever. Fortune turns the wheel. Eventually the time came when he was obliged to leave the land in which I lived. Of course I was distraught. I cannot describe my feelings. I can tell you one thing, though. I knew the pains of death. I was acquainted with grief, now that my love could no longer stay by my side.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Irigaray’s argument that in Freud’s work the structures of melancholy and of developed femininity are very similar refers to the denial of both object and aim that constitutes the “double wave” of repression characteristic of a fully developed femininity. For Irigaray, it is the recognition of castration that initiates the young girl into “a ‘loss’ that radically escapes any representation.” 40 Melancholia is thus a psychoanalytic norm for women, one that rests upon her ostensible desire to have the penis, a desire which, conveniently, can no longer be felt or known. Irigaray’s reading, full of mocking citations, is right to debunk the developmental claims regarding sexuality and femininity that clearly pervade Freud’s text. As she also shows, there are possible readings of that theory that exceed, invert, and displace Freud’s stated aims. Consider that the refusal of the homosexual cathexis, desire and aim together, a refusal both compelled by social taboo and appropriated through developmental stages, results in a melancholic structure which effectively encloses that aim and object within the corporeal space or “crypt” established through an abiding denial. If the heterosexual denial of homosexuality results in melancholia and if melancholia operates through incorporation, then the disavowed homosexual love is preserved through the cultivation of an oppositionally defined gender identity. In other words, disavowed male homosexuality culminates in a heightened or consolidated masculinity, one which maintains the feminine as the unthinkable and unnameable. The acknowledgment of heterosexual desire, however, leads to a displacement from an original to a secondary object, precisely the kind of libidinal detachment and reattachment that Freud affirms as the character of normal grief. Clearly, a homosexual for whom heterosexual desire is unthinkable may well maintain that heterosexuality through a melancholic structure of incorporation, an identification and embodiment of the love that is neither acknowledged nor grieved. But here it becomes clear that the heterosexual refusal to acknowledge the primary homosexual attachment is culturally enforced by a prohibition on homosexuality which is in no way paralleled in the case of the melancholic homosexual. In other words, heterosexual melancholy is culturally instituted and maintained as the price of stable gender identities related through oppositional desires. But what language of surface and depth adequately expresses this incorporating effect of melancholy? A preliminary answer to this question is possible within the psychoanalytic discourse, but a fuller understanding will lead in the last chapter to a consideration of gender as an enactment that performatively constitutes the appearance of its own interior fixity. At this point, however, the contention that incorporation is a fantasy suggests that the incorporation of an identification is a fantasy of literalization or a literalizing fantasy. 41 Precisely by virtue of its melancholic structure, this literalization of the body conceals its genealogy and offers itself under the category of “natural fact.” What does it mean to sustain a literalizing fantasy?

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  Scope: While Augustine is engaged in studies and a rather carefree life, a dear friend dies. Augustine was puzzled and even put off by the friend’s baptism just before he died. Most of all, Augustine became severely depressed and morose, avoiding places where he used to meet his friend. At the time, Augustine thought that he was mourning for his friend, but by the time he writes the Confessions, he realizes the selfishness of his grief. He was mourning, not his friend’s fate, but his own loss; this is another manifestation of the selfishness he was born with, a selfishness nurtured by teachers and parents. Augustine realizes both the goodness of friendship and how it can become another manifestation of concern for self rather than a genuine union of two souls. Toward the end of Book IV, Augustine describes his encounter with the writings of Aristotle and reports that this experience failed to move him forward in his journey toward God. Outline I. Augustine reminds readers of how his career and personal life are developing as he undertakes a quest for wisdom. A. He has become a professional teacher of rhetoric. As he looks back at his early adulthood, he sees himself as a seller of eloquence and argumentation. B. Augustine took a mistress. 1. He makes clear that he was faithful to her. 2. He considers what a great difference there is between the relationship one has with a mistress and with a wife. II. Augustine even briefly is interested in astrology. In seeking immediate “solutions” to the complex questions he is now asking, he dabbles in astrology because it certainly offers simple answers to complex questions, such as why people do bad things—because it is in the stars. III. Augustine developed a strong friendship with an unnamed young man. A. This relationship was much closer to a true friendship than his teen friends with whom he stole pears. ©2004 The Teaching Company. 30

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  CHAPTER 51 1 T he tragic deaths of Barbara and Jamie cast a gloom over every one who had known them, but especially over Mary and Stephen. Again and again Stephen blamed herself for having left Jamie on that fatal evening; if she had only insisted upon staying, the tragedy might never have happened, she might somehow have been able to impart to the girl the courage and strength to go on living. But great as the shock undoubtedly was to Stephen, to Mary it was even greater, for together with her very natural grief, was a new and quite unexpected emotion, the emotion of fear. She was suddenly afraid, and now this fear looked out of her eyes and crept into her voice when she spoke of Jamie. ‘To end in that way, to have killed herself; Stephen, it’s so awful that such things can happen—they were like you and me.’ And then she would go over every sorrowful detail of Barbara’s last illness, every detail of their finding of Jamie’s body. ‘Did it hurt, do you think, when she shot herself? When you shot that wounded horse at the front, he twitched such a lot, I shall never forget it —and Jamie was all alone that night, there was no one there to help in her pain. It’s all so ghastly; supposing it hurt her!’ Useless for Stephen to quote the doctor who had said that death had been instantaneous; Mary was obsessed by the horror of the thing, and not only its physical horror either, but by the mental and spiritual suffering that must have strengthened the will to destruction. ‘Such despair,’ she would say, ‘such utter despair . . . and that was the end of all their loving. I can’t bear it!’ And then she would hide her face against Stephen’s strong and protective shoulder. Oh, yes, there was now little room for doubt, the whole business was preying badly on Mary. Sometimes strange, amorous moods would seize her, in which she must kiss Stephen rather wildly: ‘Don’t let go of me, darling—never let go. I’m afraid; I think it’s because of what’s happened.’ Her kisses would awaken a swift response, and so in these days that were shadowed by death, they clung very desperately to life with the passion they had felt when first they were lovers, as though only by constantly feeding that flame could they hope to ward off some unseen disaster. 2 At this time of shock, anxiety and strain, Stephen turned to Valérie Seymour as many another had done before her. This woman’s great calm in the midst of storm was not only soothing but helpful to Stephen, so that now she often went to the flat on the Quai Voltaire; often went there alone, since Mary would seldom accompany her—for some reason she resented Valérie Seymour.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The Jews who migrated to the Ottoman Empire had an entirely different experience. Their exile, a spiritual as well as a physical dislocation, had inflicted a deep psychic wound; everything seemed to be in the wrong place.6 Some Spanish Jews settled in Safed in Palestine, where they met Isaac Luria (1534–72), a frail northern European Jew who had developed a form of Kabbalah that spoke directly to their predicament. Kabbalists had always felt at liberty to interpret the first chapters of Genesis allegorically, transforming them into an esoteric account of the inner life of God. In this tradition, Luria had created an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the orderly cosmogony of Genesis and that began with an act of kenosis. Because God was omnipresent, there was no space for the world, no place where God was not. So En Sof, the inscrutable and unknowable Godhead, as it were, shrank into itself in a voluntary zimzum (“withdrawal”), a self-diminishment that made itself less. The creation continued in a series of cosmic accidents, primal explosions, and false starts, which seemed a more accurate depiction of the arbitrary world that Jews now inhabited. Sparks of divine light had fallen into the Godless abyss created by zimzum. Everything was exiled from its rightful place, and the Shekhinah wandered through the world, yearning to be reunited with the Godhead.7 Nobody understood this strange story literally; like any creation myth, it was primarily therapeutic, speaking figuratively of a timeless rather than a historical reality. It became authoritative because it was such a telling description of the exiles’ experience, at the same time showing them that their tragedy was not unique but was in tune with fundamental laws of existence. Instead of being outcasts, Jews were central actors in the process that would redeem the universe, because their careful observance of Torah could end this universal displacement and effect the “restoration” (tikkun) of the Shekhinah to the Godhead, the Jews to the Promised Land, and the rest of the world to its rightful state.8 By 1650, Lurianic Kabbalah had become a mass movement in the Jewish world from Poland to Iran, the only Jewish theology at this time to win such wide acceptance.9

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Their exile, a spiritual as well as a physical dislocation, had inflicted a deep psychic wound; everything seemed to be in the wrong place. 6 Some Spanish Jews settled in Safed in Palestine, where they met Isaac Luria (1534–72), a frail northern European Jew who had developed a form of Kabbalah that spoke directly to their predicament. Kabbalists had always felt at liberty to interpret the first chapters of Genesis allegorically, transforming them into an esoteric account of the inner life of God. In this tradition, Luria had created an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the orderly cosmogony of Genesis and that began with an act of kenosis. Because God was omnipresent, there was no space for the world, no place where God was not. So En Sof, the inscrutable and unknowable Godhead, as it were, shrank into itself in a voluntary zimzum (“withdrawal”), a self-diminishment that made itself less. The creation continued in a series of cosmic accidents, primal explosions, and false starts, which seemed a more accurate depiction of the arbitrary world that Jews now inhabited. Sparks of divine light had fallen into the Godless abyss created by zimzum. Everything was exiled from its rightful place, and the Shekhinah wandered through the world, yearning to be reunited with the Godhead. 7 Nobody understood this strange story literally; like any creation myth, it was primarily therapeutic, speaking figuratively of a timeless rather than a historical reality. It became authoritative because it was such a telling description of the exiles’ experience, at the same time showing them that their tragedy was not unique but was in tune with fundamental laws of existence. Instead of being outcasts, Jews were central actors in the process that would redeem the universe, because their careful observance of Torah could end this universal displacement and effect the “restoration” (tikkun) of the Shekhinah to the Godhead, the Jews to the Promised Land, and the rest of the world to its rightful state. 8 By 1650, Lurianic Kabbalah had become a mass movement in the Jewish world from Poland to Iran, the only Jewish theology at this time to win such wide acceptance. 9 Without the special rituals devised by Luria, this myth would have remained a senseless fiction. Weeping and rubbing their faces in the dust, Kabbalists made night vigils in order to confront their sorrow; they lay awake all night, calling out to God in their abandonment, and took long hikes in the Galilean countryside to act out their sense of homelessness. But there was no wallowing: Kabbalists were required to work through their pain in a disciplined, stylized manner until it gave way to a measure of joy.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  On March 31, the monarchs signed the Edict of Expulsion that forced the Jews of al-Andalus to choose between baptism and deportation; in 1499, the Muslim inhabitants of Spain would be given the same choice. Many of the Spanish Jews were so attached to their homeland that they converted to Christianity, but about eighty thousand crossed the border into Portugal and another fifty thousand fled to the new Ottoman Empire. 2 Modernity had its own intransigence. Some would find the modern age liberating and enthralling; but for others it would be experienced as coercive, invasive, and destructive. Ferdinand and Isabella were creating the kind of absolute government that was essential to the economy of early modern Europe. They could no longer tolerate such autonomous, self-governing institutions as the guild, the corporation, or the Jewish community, so the victory of Granada was followed by an act of ethnic cleansing. As part of their unification of kingdoms that had hitherto been independent and had their own unique ethos, Ferdinand and Isabella had established the Spanish Inquisition in 1483. Its aim was to enforce ideological conformity as a base for the new Spanish identity. In a pattern that would be repeated in later secular states, inquisitors sought out dissidents and forced them to abjure their “heresy,” a word deriving from the Greek airesis , “to go one’s own way.” The Spanish Inquisition was not an archaic attempt to preserve a bygone religious world; it was a modernizing institution devised by the monarchs to create national unity. 3 Its chief victims were the Jewish and Muslim conversos, who had opted for baptism rather than deportation and were suspected of backsliding. Many conversos became committed Catholics, but there were rumors of an underground movement of dissidents who practiced their old faith in secret. The inquisitors were instructed to torture anybody who lit candles on Friday night or refused to eat pork, in order to force them to recant and to name other renegades. Not surprisingly, some of these “new Christians” were not only alienated from Catholicism but became skeptical about religion itself. The Jews who had fled to Portugal were tougher; they had preferred exile rather than abjuring their faith. Initially, they were welcomed by King João II, but when Manuel I succeeded to the throne in 1495, Ferdinand and Isabella, his parents-in-law, forced him to baptize all the Jews in Portugal. Manuel compromised by granting them immunity from the Inquisition for fifty years. Known as Marranos (“pigs”), a term of abuse that Portuguese Jews adopted as a badge of pride, they had time to organize a successful Jewish underground. For generations, closet Jews tried to practice their faith to the best of their ability, but they labored under huge difficulties. Cut off from the rest of the Jewish world, they had no access to Jewish literature and no synagogues and were able to perform only a few of the major rituals.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  material. He put white gloves upon his hands, crowned him with a laurel of myrtle, and placed a bright sword in the hands of the fallen warrior. He laid him, face uncovered, on the bier. Then he broke down and wept. At first light he ordered that the bier be taken into the hall of the palace, so that all the people might have a chance of paying respect to Arcite. It quickly became a place of grief and loud lamentation. Here came the woeful Theban, Palamon, with dishevelled beard and uncut hair; his clothes of mourning were sprinkled with his tears. He was followed by Emily, the most sorrowful of the company, who could not stop weeping. Arcite had been of royal lineage, and deserved a funeral suiting his rank and high blood; so Theseus commanded his officers to lead out three horses, equipped with trappings of glittering steel and mantled with the heraldic arms of the dead hero. Upon these three great white horses there rode three horsemen. The first of them carried the shield of Arcite, the second bore aloft the spear, and the third held up the Turkish bow fashioned out of pure gold. They rode solemnly, and with sorrowful countenance, towards the wooded grove. Behind them marched at slow pace the most noble of all the Athenian warriors, carrying the bier on their shoulders, their eyes red with weeping. They made their way down the main street of the city that had been covered in black cloth, and with black drapes hanging from the windows. At their right hand walked Aegaeus, and on their left hand Theseus; father and son were carrying vessels of the purest gold, filled with milk and honey, blood and wine. Palamon followed them, surrounded by a great company, and after him came Emily. She carried with her, according to custom, the covered flame of the funeral service. There had been much labour and preparation for this funeral; the pyre itself reached up so high that its green summit seemed to touch the heavens, while its base was as broad as twenty fathoms. It was made up of branches, and of straw, piled up thickly. The boughs came from the oak and the fir, the birch and the aspen, the elder and the ilex, the poplar and the willow, the elm and the plane, the ash and the box, the lime and the laurel. Is there any tree I have forgot to mention? Oh yes. There was also wood from the maple and the thorn, the beech and the hazel, and of course the mournful willow. I have not time now to describe how they were all cut down. I can tell you this. All the gods of the wood ran up and down, in despair at losing their homes. The nymphs, the fauns, the hamadryads, used to repose among the trees in peace and safety. Now, like the birds and animals, they fled for fear after their wood had gone.