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 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.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  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 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.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Then one night in Gaza, despite the presence of all the Philistines in that city, he tore up the entrance gates and carried them on his back. He took them to the top of a hill, where everyone could see them. Oh noble Sampson, fine and courageous warrior, you would have been without equal in the world if you had not whispered your secret to your wife. Sampson never drank wine or strong liquor. He never cut his hair or shaved himself. What was the reason? He had been told by a divine messenger that all of his strength lay in his hair. He ruled Israel for twenty years. Yet bitter tears would fall down Sampson’s cheeks. One woman would lead him to destruction. He had told Delilah where his strength lay. She sold the secret to his enemies and, while he slept in her arms one night, she took a pair of shears and cut off all his hair. When his enemies burst in upon them, they were able to bind Sampson before putting out his eyes. When he still had his hair, there was no one in the world who could defeat him. After he was blinded and shorn, he was consigned to a cavernous prison where he was forced to labour at a mill with slaves. Sampson was the strongest of humankind. He was a fearless judge, a wise and noble man. Yet his fate was to weep out of blind eyes, bitterly mourning his wretchedness. Let me tell you the final chapter of this sad story. His enemies celebrated with a great feast and called Sampson before them to play the part of a jester; the setting was a hall of marble pillars. Here Sampson stood his ground, and took his revenge upon them all. He took hold of two pillars and shook them so violently that the whole building collapsed. He was killed, but so were those who had enslaved him. The leaders of the country, and three thousand of their followers, were among the dead who lay among the ruins of the hall. I will say no more about Sampson. But remember the moral of this tale. Husbands must never tell their secrets to their wives. Their lives might depend on it. Hercules Let us praise famous men, and principal among them mighty Hercules. In his lifetime he was the flower of might. He killed and skinned a lion. He overthrew the Centaurs, part human and part horse. He slew the Harpies, winged spirits of death. He stole the golden apples of the Hesperides. He drove back Cerberus, the hound of hell.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pero de vez en cuando, aparecía en mi cabeza cuando hacía dip de taco para Danni durante un largo turno del sábado, o escuchaba una canción o cuando veía mi impermeable aún con manchas de lodo de cuando jugamos. Ni siquiera he encendido ninguna vela, porque no sé qué desear cuando tenga que apagarlas. El desear sentir lo que sentía cuando estaba con él, vuelve a darle poder sobre mí, pero en el fondo, es lo que todavía quiero. Sentirme bien una vez más. Solo que ahora tendrá que ser con alguien más. —Entonces… —Danni empuja otro banco—. ¿Tus clases de otoño no inician pronto? Salgo del juego gratis, evitando su mirada. —Sí. Espera a que diga más, pero no estoy segura de qué decir. Mi apoyo financiero llegó, así que mis clases ya están pagadas y tengo lo suficiente para conseguir un departamento cuando regrese a casa, pero se siente casi como dar un paso hacia atrás. Él llamó cuando me fui, pero después de unos días dejó de hacerlo, y no he escuchado nada desde entonces. Odio admitirlo, pero me pregunto demasiado qué está haciendo, si está viendo a alguien más, si me extraña… Si voy a casa, puede que me encuentre con él. ¿Cómo será? Estoy orgullosa de mí por mantenerme alejada, pero aun así me siento avergonzada porque siga en mi cabeza, permaneciendo todo el tiempo. Todavía no lo supero, y hasta que pueda soplar una vela y tenga algo mejor que desear, no creo que mi cabeza se encuentre en el lugar adecuado para regresar todavía. Tengo miedo. —Sabes que puedes quedarte por siempre —dice Danni—. De verdad. Mi universidad no es mala. Puedes transferirte. —Gracias —le digo—. Pero necesito regresar. Sé que tengo que hacerlo. Solo que no he querido pensar al respecto. —No quieres verlo. Me encuentro con sus ojos, sus lentes con borde negro cayendo por su nariz, de nuevo. —No quiero ser quien era cuando me fui —aclaro. —No lo eres. —Recarga su codo sobre el mostrador, descansando la barbilla en su mano—. Tienes permitido estar herida. Pero no le permitiste derrumbarte — señala—. Eso es lo que nos hace fuertes. No lo has llamado, y nos hemos divertido. No arruinó tu verano, porque no se lo permitiste. Sí. Nos emborrachamos en el estanque, cantando mala música mientras conducíamos por el pueblo en su Pontiac Sunbird convertible del ’92, y tuvimos unas fiestas de piscina donde me reí un poco. —Y no es como si me hubiera rastreado tampoco, entonces… —le digo—. Supongo que ambos sabíamos que era tiempo prestado. Era solo una aventura. Él tenía razón. Una aventura. Una buena historia que me divertirá mirando en retrospectiva cuando ya no lo ame, y pueda apreciarlo por el sexo que fue. Siento sus ojos sobre mí, porque sabe que estoy mintiéndome a mí misma, pero como una amiga, me permite zambullirme en mi engaño. A veces se necesitan mentiras para sobrevivir, porque la verdad lastima demasiado.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  twirl around all day and eat Fruit Roll-Ups. Zillions of puppies ... that’s what they got up in heaven. The softest dogs you’ve ever seen. And no poop. I don’t know what happens to the poop but it’s not in heaven. Because heaven’s clean. All those fluffy white clouds. And these zillions of puppies just jumping from cloud to cloud and you get to run and chase them all day. Abby called Vix. “What can I do to help? Would you like something delivered to the editing room ... something besides pizza?” Abby kept her in touch, kept them all in touch. Daniel was doing well in his second year at Yale Law, but not as well as he’d thought. Gus was finishing his master’s in journalism at Columbia and had been offered a job in Albuquerque, of all places. Sharkey was turning into a brilliant scientist. And Caitlin, as she already knew, was a latter-day Zelda Fitzgerald with castanets. “Should we start making plans for graduation?” Abby asked. “Are your parents coming? Can we throw a party or do you and Bru have other plans?” She couldn’t begin to think about graduation. She was consumed by her thesis. She discovered creative energies she didn’t even know she had. She’d fall into bed exhausted after midnight and be up at six to start again. She had to keep up with her regular courses, too. Just because it was senior year she wasn’t off the hook. This was Harvard, after all. And a Harvard degree stood for something. Just ask any graduate. Bru said, “I’ll be glad when it’s done. I don’t like anything that keeps us apart.” He asked her to talk sexy to him over the phone. “Tell me what you want me to do to you. Tell me what you’d do to me.” So she told him. Natalie Ponzo talked up Five Minutes in Heaven. It was suggested she send a copy to WGBH. She had an interview with the producers of Nova who offered a summer internship but not a real job. She thanked them and sent a copy to Jocelyn, who was working at an industrial film production house in New York. Jocelyn showed the tape around but cautioned Vix against taking a job with her company. It was a job leading nowhere, she’d discovered. She had to waitress weekends to make ends meet. She’d already given notice. As of June 15 she was out of there to work nights as a word processor while she waited to hear from NYU film school, which meant more student loans, which she’d be

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Epilogue Summer 1996 A YEAR LATER they gather on the Vineyard to dedicate a wildflower meadow overlooking the sea to Caitlin. It’s magic hour, just before sunset, when the light is so extraordinary it makes Vix believe in the possibility of heaven. They’re a small group—Abby and Lamb with Maizie; Sharkey with Wren, who’s pregnant, and her little girl, Natasha; Bru and Star and their babies; Von and Patti and their trio; Trisha and Arthur. Daniel, who has flown in from Chicago, is staying with Gus and Vix in the little house they’ve rented for the week in West Tisbury. She and Gus have been talking about moving to the island full time if only they can figure out a way to support themselves doing what they want. Daniel is still single, still waiting for the perfect woman to show up. Abby has asked him to please turn off his cellular phone during the dedication. Phoebe sent regrets. She’d be out of the country. Dorset can’t make it either, but promises to think of them from her home in Mendocino, where she moved following Grandmother’s death, just shy of her ninety- ninth birthday. Abby starts off by reading from Shelley. Wren, who is so shy she makes Sharkey seem gregarious, surprises all of them by singing the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” in a clear, beautiful soprano. Sharkey loses it halfway through the song. Lamb embraces him, his own face streaked with tears, the two men comforting one another. Didn’t she know how much she was loved? Didn’t she care? Vix wonders if somewhere in Tuscany a handsome man who also loved her is grieving. Or was he another of Caitlin’s fantasies? Vix planned on reading the essay she’d written for her college application—Caitlin Somers, the Most Influential Person in My Life—but realizes at the last minute she can’t, so Gus reads it for her while Vix

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  he was talking about Nathan, until he asked, “Are you happy?” For a minute she considered letting down her guard, telling him how uncertain she was about life and love and everything in between. Then she thought better of it, given what Lanie had told her about Tawny and him. “So that’s where you come from,” Bru said on the morning they left. “Yes, that’s where I come from.” As soon as she said it, she started to cry. She heard Tawny’s voice warning her, Save your tears for something important, Victoria. But this was important, wasn’t it? Besides, she couldn’t stop. She’d be eating a burger in some joint on the highway and it would start out of nowhere, tears flooding her eyes, a lump in her throat making it impossible to swallow. Or she’d be brushing her teeth before bed in some motel and catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, just as her face contorted and the tears began. She wept for Nathan, for Lanie, for her father, and maybe for herself. She no longer knew her family, and they certainly didn’t know her. At first Bru was sympathetic. He held her that first night, until she was able to fall asleep. But the following night, when he began to stroke her thigh and she didn’t respond, he turned away, hurt. He didn’t get it. He thought it had to do with him. The next time the tears began they were in the truck, just crossing into Virginia. “Here we go again ...” he said, pulling off at a rest stop. He jammed on the brakes. “You want anything?” She shook her head. He was gone for a long time. When he came back he handed her a cranapple juice and a bag of pretzels. “Whatever it is, get over it, Victoria ... just get over it, okay?” By the time they got to Boston and she was still at it he was angry. “I don’t know you anymore.” “Maybe you never did.” “Yeah, right ... but either way this is getting ...” He turned away from her. “I think we need a break.” If he expected her to argue he was mistaken. She nodded her head calmly and just like that, with no discussion, no questions, no anything, they separated.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Daughter,’ he said. ‘Dearest Virginia. You must suffer one of two fates. You must choose between death and eternal shame. I wish that I had never been born! You have not deserved this. What have you done to warrant the knife or the blade? Oh dear daughter, ender of my life, I have tried to bring you up in peace and tenderness. You have never once been out of my thoughts. You were my first joy, but now you must be my last woe. You are a gem of chastity. Now, dearest one, you must suffer your death in patience. That is my sentence on you. I do it out of love for you, Virginia, not out of hate or anger. But you must die. I must cut off your head to save you from a far more terrible fate. I curse the day when that false judge, Appius, first saw you!’ Then he explained to her what had happened in the courtroom. I need not repeat it. ‘Oh dear father, have mercy!’ These were the first words of Virginia as she wrapped her arms about his neck. Then she burst into tears. ‘Dear father, shall I die? Is there no solution? No remedy?’ ‘None, dearest daughter. There is no escape.’ ‘Then give me time, at least, to lament my fate. Jeptha gave his daughter time to mourn before he killed her. God knows that she had committed no sin. Her fault was to be the first one to greet her father after he had returned victorious from war. He had vowed that, if he triumphed, he would slay the first person to come through the doors of his house. It was his own child.’ Virginia then fainted on to the floor. When she had recovered, she looked up at her father. ‘I thank God,’ she said, ‘that at least I will die a virgin. Kill me before I am polluted. In the name of God, do it now.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Henceforth the tiny Kingdom of Judah would become the pawn of the great powers of Egypt and Babylon, and their foreign policy veered erratically in favor of one or the other. Some of the Israelites insisted that because Yahweh was their God, Judah could not be defeated and urged their rulers to assert their independence. But the prophet Jeremiah and others tried to force them to face facts—to no avail. Twelve years after Josiah’s untimely death, a tragedy of far greater magnitude occurred. Judah rebelled against Babylonian supremacy, and in 597 Jerusalem was brought to its knees by King Nebuchadnezzar, who deported the elite—the king, the nobility, scribes, priests, the military, and artisans—to Babylonia and installed a puppet king in the Holy City. Eleven years later, in 586, after another senseless revolt, Jerusalem was destroyed and Yahweh’s temple, his objective correlative on earth, was burned to the ground. The Deuteronomists had made violence an option in the Judeo-Christian religion. It would always be possible to make these scriptures endorse intolerant policies. But the Deuteronomists did not have the last word because other biblical writers worked hard to counter this idolatrous tendency. When the redactors had put the JE document together, they used E’s more transcendent image of Elohim to modify J’s unabashedly anthropomorphic vision of Yahweh. In E’s account of the first meeting between Moses and the God who speaks to him from the burning bush, Yahweh reveals his name: “Ehyeh asher ehyeh”: “I am what I am.”45 Later Jews and Christians would interpret this to mean that God was being itself, He Who Is. But E did not yet think in these metaphysical terms. In his narrative, God may have been saying something far simpler. Ehyeh asher eyheh is a Hebrew idiom that expresses deliberate vagueness. The remark “they went where they went,” for example, means “I have no idea where they went.” So when Moses asked God who he was, Yahweh in effect replied: “Never mind who I am!” There must be no discussion of God’s nature, and no attempt to manipulate God, as the pagans did when they called on their deities by name. Eventually Jews would refuse to pronounce the name Yahweh, as a tacit admission that any attempt to express the divine reality would be so limiting as to be almost blasphemous.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Rabbi Yohanan and his colleagues belonged to the more flexible strand of the Pharisee movement. His teachers had been disciples of the great Hillel (c. 80 BCE—30 CE), who had emphasized the importance of the spirit rather than the letter of Mosaic law. In a famous Talmudic story, it was said that Hillel had formulated a Jewish version of Confucius’s Golden Rule. One day, a pagan had approached Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if Hillel could teach him the entire Torah standing on one leg. Hillel replied: “What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary. Go learn it.”3 It was a provocative and daring piece of exegesis. Hillel did not mention any of the doctrines that seemed central to Judaism—the unity of God, the creation of the world, the Exodus, Sinai, the 613 commandments of the Torah, or the Promised Land. The essence of Jewish teaching was the disciplined refusal to inflict pain on other human beings: everything else was only “commentary.” Rabbi Yohanan had absorbed this lesson. Shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, when he and his companions had occasion to walk past the ruined temple buildings, Rabbi Joshua had been unable to contain his grief: “Woe is it that the place, where the sins of Israel find atonement, is laid waste.” But Rabbi Yohanan replied calmly, “Grieve not, we have an atonement equal to the Temple, the doing of loving deeds, as it is said, ‘ I desire love and not sacrifice.’ “4 Kindness would replace the temple ritual; compassion, one of the pillars on which the world depended, was the new priestly task. Compassion was also the key to the interpretation of scripture. As Hillel had pointed out, everything in the Torah was simply a “commentary”—a mere gloss—on the Golden Rule. Scholars had a mandate to reveal the core of compassion that lay at the heart of all the legislation and narratives of the Bible—even if this meant twisting the original meaning of the text. In this spirit, Rabbi Akiva, Yohanan’s successor, insisted that the chief principle of the Torah was “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”5 Only one of the rabbis disagreed, preferring the simple sentence “This is the roll of Adam’s descendants,” because it revealed the unity of the entire human race.6

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  She turned around and for the last time looked back at the land. ‘Farewell,’ she called. ‘And farewell, cruel husband!’ Then she rose up and walked along the shore towards the ship. She was caressing the child, as she went, and comforting him. Then at last she took her leave. She blessed herself and, with the child in her arms, stepped aboard the ship. The ship was well stocked with provisions, and other necessary things for the long voyage ahead of her. God be thanked. And, dear God, grant her the winds and tides to steer her safely home. She must now make her way across the wild ocean. PART THREE Aella returned to the castle soon after her sad departure. He wanted to see, of course, his wife and newborn son. Where were they? The governor felt the cold creep into his heart. He told the king exactly what had occurred in his absence. He showed him the forged letter with the royal seal upon it. ‘I did no more and no less than you asked, sir. You commanded me on pain of death. What else was I to do?’ The messenger was summoned and put to the torture. He revealed every detail of his journey - where he had ridden, where he had supped, where he had spent the night. It all became plain. It did not take much enquiry or investigation to discover the guilty party in this wicked affair. I do not know how they discovered that the queen mother had herself written those poisonous letters, but her fate was sealed soon after. All the chroniclers agree that Aella killed his own mother, blaming her for bringing dishonour and shame to his family. So ended the career of Donegild, a woman steeped in evil. No one can adequately impart the grief that Aella suffered over the fate of his young wife and newborn son. I will leave it to one side, and return instead to the plight of Constance floating on the sea. By the will of Christ she spent five long years upon the waves, in pain and in woe, before finally she caught sight of land. She came close to on a beach beneath a pagan castle - I do not have the name of it by me - where the sea delivered Constance and Maurice on to dry ground. Almighty God, I beseech you, preserve the fair maid and her child. Once more she has fallen into the hands of heathens, who might wish to kill her. Who can tell? There came down from the castle a procession of people, eager to take a look at Constance and the foreign ship. But then, at nightfall, a steward of the castle came down secretly to the ship and told her that he would lie with her whether she liked it or not. God damn him for a rapist and a rogue.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘I know all about wailing and lamenting,’ said the Merchant. ‘I am acquainted with grief. Many married men can tell the same story, I am sure of it. I have learned by experience. I have the worst wife in the world, you see. If she were married to the devil, she would get the better of him. I won’t bore you with all the details of her malice. Suffice to say that she is a complete bitch. There could not be a greater difference between her cruelty and the patience of Griselda. If I were free again, I would never fall into the same trap. A burned husband fears the fire. You know I am telling the truth. It may not be the case for all husbands. God forbid. But it is true of the majority. ‘I have been married only for two months, I admit, but I have been tormented every day by my wife. No bachelor could possibly understand the pain I have endured. Even if he were knifed, or whipped, he would not suffer half as much as I have done. She is a wicked woman.’ Harry Bailey clapped him on the back. ‘Well, sir Merchant,’ he said, ‘since you are such an expert on the woes of marriage, tell us all about them.’ ‘Willingly, sir. But I will say no more about my own plight. I am too depressed about it.’ And, heaving a sigh, he began his story. [image file=images/ackr_9781101155639_oeb_008_r1.jpg] The Merchant’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Marchantes Tale Once upon a time there dwelled in Lombardy a worthy knight. He lived in Pavia, where he was prosperous and well respected. He had in fact been a bachelor for sixty years, but he enjoyed himself with any number of women. He was highly sexed, I believe, as are many unmarried men. His name was January. When he had just passed his sixtieth year he either went mad or he repented of his sinfulness. He decided to get married, in other words. He went around looking for a likely wife, beseeching the Lord God all the time that he might for once experience the bliss that lies in married life. I am not making this up. He was determined to live under that holy bond, that gracious union, that blessed state in which God determined that the first man and woman should dwell. ‘No other life,’ he announced, ‘is worth anything. Wedlock is so pure. Wedlock is so easy. Wedlock is paradise on earth.’ So said this wise and worthy knight.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So on his deathbed he sent for Emily, and for Palamon, and whispered to them his dying words. ‘The woeful spirit in my heart cannot begin to tell my grief to you, sweet lady, whom I love most. I am about to die. Now that my life is over I bequeath to you above all others, lady, the service of my spirit. What is this woe? What are the pains so strong that I have suffered for you? And for so long? What is this death that comes for me? Alas, Emily, from whom I must depart for ever! You are the queen of my heart, my wife, my sweetheart, and the ender of my life. What is this life? What do men know of it? We are in love and then we are in the cold grave; there we lie alone, without any company. Farewell my sweet enemy, my Emily! Yet before I leave you take me softly in your arms, for love of God, and listen to what I say. My dear cousin, Palamon, is with us. For a long time there was strife and anger between us. We fought each other for the right to claim you. But I pray to Jupiter now to give me the power to portray him properly; to depict, that is to say, his truth and honour; to celebrate his wisdom and humility; to applaud his nobility of character; to describe his noble lineage, and his devotion to all the knightly virtues. He is a servant, too, in the cause of love. So by the great gods I recommend him to you, Emily, to be your lover and your husband. There is no one on earth more worthy. He will serve you for the rest of his life. If you do decide to marry, do not forget this gentle man.’ At this point the speech of Arcite began to fail. The cold of death had travelled from his feet to his chest; his limbs grew weak and pale from loss of vital strength. Only his intellect remained. But that, too, was dimmed when his heart grew feeble and felt the approach of death. His eyes began to close, and his breath was weak. Yet still he gazed at Emily. His last words were ‘Have pity, Emily!’ And then his soul changed house. I do not know where it travelled. I have never been to that distant country. I am not a theologian. I can say nothing. And why should I repeat the speculations of those who profess to know? There is nothing about souls in the volume where I found this old story. Arcite is dead. That is all I can tell you. May his god, Mars, guide his spirit.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The two sons of Cenobia were always dressed in regal garments, as the legal heirs of their father. Their names were Hermanno and Thymalao. But in fact Cenobia ruled. Yet there came a time when sweet Fortune turned sourly against her. The queen was not mistress of her destiny. She was doomed to fall from sovereign power and to experience sorrow and disgrace. This is how it happened. When the emperor Aurelianus donned the imperial purple at Rome, he decided to take vengeance upon the queen of Palmyra for all the insults the empire had suffered at her hands. So he marched with his legions into her lands. She fled from him, but eventually he caught up with her and captured her. He put her in chains, together with her two sons, and rode back with them to Rome in triumph. He carried with him her chariot of gold, richly jewelled, and ordered that it should be driven in his victory procession so that every Roman might see it. Then Cenobia herself was led before the people, wearing her crown but pinioned with chains of gold. This is the wheel of Fortune. The noble queen, once the terror and the wonder of the world, was now on display to the mob. She who had led her troops in mighty battles, and who had conquered castles and cities, was brought low. She had once borne a sceptre, but now she carried a distaff with which to wind wool. Peter, king of Spain Oh worthy Peter, noble king, the glory of Spain! Fortune raised you so high. But now you are remembered only for your miserable death. Your own brother chased you from your realm. And then you were betrayed by your enemies and led into his tent, where he killed you with his own hands. He took over your kingdom and your possessions. He was as black as an eagle in a snow-white field. Peter, king of Cyprus Oh noble Peter, worthy king, who won by your mastery the great city of Alexandria. You vanquished many heathens in the course of your career! You were so triumphant that some of your own subjects envied you. They killed you in your bed for no other reason than your nobility. Thus does Dame Fortune turn the wheel, and bring men from glory to distress. Bernabo of Lombardy I sing of you, Bernabo Visconti, lord of Milan, scourge of Lombardy, lover of ease and delight. Why should I not recount your misfortunes? You were raised high, only to be brought down by your brother’s son. Your nephew cast you into prison, and there you died. I do not know the reason. I do not know the killer. Ugolino, count of Pisa

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  As the bird spoke the princess was bathed in tears; she was weeping so piteously that the falcon bid her to be still and stop her sobbing. Then with a sigh she began her tale. ‘I was born - God curse the day - and brought up on a rock of grey marble. I was raised so tenderly that nothing in the world ailed me. I knew nothing of adversity until the time when I first sailed high into the air. Close to me dwelled a tercelet, the male of my species. He seemed noble and honourable, but in fact he was filled with treachery and falseness. He seemed so cheerful and so humble that he fooled everyone; he was always so eager to please. Who could have known that it was all an act? As we birds say, he had dyed his feathers. He was like the snake who conceals himself beneath sweet-smelling flowers, the easier to bite and wound. He was the hypocrite of love, all smiles and bows, obeying all the rules and customs of courtly romance. A tomb is raised out of shining white marble, nicely carved, but there is a rotting corpse within; so did this hypocrite display himself on every occasion. He was all front. Only the devil knew his true purpose. He was always crying on my feathers. He was always bewailing the miserable life of a lover. He courted me year after year until, finally, I relented. My heart was too soft. I was too gullible. I knew nothing of his malice, of course, and in fact I was afraid that he might die of love. So I made him utter a solemn oath. I would grant him my love on condition that my honour and good name were not tarnished; I wished to be blameless, both in private and in public. So I gave him all my heart, and all my hopes. I thought that he deserved them. When he agreed on oath to respect me, then I took him as my own true love.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Vigils always finished at dawn with a meditation on the end of humanity’s estrangement from the divine. Kabbalists practiced disciplines of concentration (kawwanoth) that evoked from the farthest reaches of the psyche a wonder and delight that they had not known they possessed. Compassion was a crucial Lurianic virtue, and there were severe penances for faults that injured others: Jews who had suffered so much themselves must not increase the sum of grief in the world. 10 After the disaster of 1492, many Jews had retreated from the falsafah that had been so popular in Spain and found that the new mythos and its rituals enabled them to make contact with the deeper roots of their grief and to discover a source of healing. 11 But in the new world that was coming into being in Europe, this type of creative mythos would soon be a thing of the past. Other European countries were in the throes of the same transformation as Spain, even though at this early stage few were aware of its magnitude. By the sixteenth century, the people of the West had started to create an entirely new and unprecedented type of civilization that depended on a radical change in the economic base of society. Instead of relying, like every premodern economy, on a surplus of agricultural produce with which they could trade in order to fund their cultural achievements, the modern economy rested on the technological replication of resources and the constant reinvestment of capital, which provided a source of wealth that could be renewed indefinitely. This freed it from many of the constraints of premodern societies, where the economy could not expand beyond a certain point and eventually outran its resources. Consequently, these agrarian societies tended to be conservative, because they simply could not afford the constant replication of the infrastructure that has come to characterize modernity. Original thought was not encouraged, because it could lead to frustration and social unrest, since fresh ideas could rarely be implemented and projects that required too large a financial outlay were usually shelved. It seemed preferable, therefore, to concentrate on preserving what had already been achieved. 12 Now, however, Western people were gradually acquiring the confidence to look to the future instead of the past. Where the older cultures had taught men and women to remain within carefully defined limits, pioneers such as Columbus were encouraging them to venture beyond the confines of the known world, where they discovered that, thanks to their modern technology, they not only survived but prospered. By the sixteenth century, therefore, a complex process was at work in Europe that was slowly changing the way people thought and experienced the world. Inventions were occurring simultaneously in many different fields; none seemed particularly momentous at the time, but their cumulative effect would be decisive.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I was usually alone. I had only one friend: a wild-eyed girl who sometimes would climb the mountain with me. We were both 17, and I felt in her the same wordless unhappiness I felt within myself. We would walk and climb for hours without speaking. For a brief time I liked her intensely—without ever telling her. Yet I was beginning to feel, too, a remoteness toward people—more and more a craving for attention which I could not reciprocate: one-sided, as if the need in me was so hungry that it couldnt share or give back in kind. Perhaps sensing this—one afternoon in a boarded-up cabin at the base of the mountain—she maneuvered, successfully, to make me. But the discovery of sex with her, releasing as it had been merely turned me strangely further within myself. Mutually, we withdrew from each other. And it was somewhere about that time that the narcissistic pattern of my life began. From my father’s inexplicable hatred of me and my mother’s blind carnivorous love, I fled to the Mirror. I would stand before it, thinking: I have only Me!... I became obsessed with age. At 17, I dreaded growing old. Old age is something that must never happen to me. The image of myself in the mirror must never fade into someone I cant look at. And even after a series of after-school jobs, my feeling of isolation from others only increased. Then the army came, and for months I hadnt spoken to my father. (We would sit at the table eating silently, ignoring each other.) And when I left, that terrible morning, I kissed my mother. And briefly I looked at my father. His eyes were watering. Mutely he held out the ruby-ring which once, long ago, he had given me and then taken back. And I took it wordlessly. And in that instant I wanted to hold him— because he was crying, because he did feel something for me, because, I was sure, he was overwhelmed at that moment by the Loss I felt too. I wanted to hold him then as I had wanted to so many, many times as a child, and if I could have spoken, I know I would have said at last: “I love you.” But that sense of loss choked me—and I walked out without speaking to him.... Only a few weeks later, in Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky, I received a telegram that he was very sick. And I came back to El Paso. I felt certain that this time it would be different. I reached our house, in the government projects we had moved into from that house with the winged cockroaches, and I got in with the key I had kept. There is no one home. I called my brother. My father was dead.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I hang up the telephone and I know that now Forever I will have no father, that he had been unfound, that as long as he had been alive there was a chance, and that we would be, Always now, strangers, and that is when I knew what Death really is—not in the physical discovery of the Nothingness which the death of my dog Winnie had brought me (in the decayed body which would turn into dirt, rejected by Heaven) but in the knowledge that my Father was gone, for me —that there was no way to reach him now—that his Death would exist only for me, who am living. And throughout the days that followed—and will follow forever—I will discover him in my memories, and hopelessly—through the infinite miles that separate life from death—try to understand his torture: in searching out the shape of my own. The army passed like something unreal, and I returned to my Mother and her hungry love. And left her, standing that morning by the kitchen door crying, as she always would be in my mind, and I was on my way now to Chicago, briefly—from where I would go to freedom: New York!—embarking on that journey through nightcities and nightlives—looking for I dont know what—perhaps some substitute for salvation. MR. KING: Between Two Lions 1 34TH STREET IN New York City hurries urgently from river to river, and on that street, east, is the soul-squashing building where a few days later (not yet) I will add to the shadows in that cavern of halls, rooms, community kitchens, yellow-mirrored bathrooms (and whatever light entered the maze from outside squeezed in reluctantly through grimecoated windows at the ends of each hall), and at one corner was the Armory like an Errol Flynn movie, and on the next Lexington Avenue rushes determinedly past bars and stores and checkertabled Italian restaurants; and everywhere, gray steel buildings stab the sky—and beyond the Armory, past technicolor Kress’s, is the goodbye Greyhound station, where I arrived from Chicago one weepy day in September, welcomed by banner headlines warning of a female hurricane—and I think suddenly for the first time: My God! Im on an island!

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  No tears are enough to lament your fall. In you died honour and nobility. You conquered the world, and yet that empire was not large enough for you. Are there words enough to describe false fortune and the horror of poisoning? I don’t think so. Julius Caesar By dint of labour, of wisdom, and of strength, Caesar rose up from humble beginnings to the highest power. He was the conqueror of the Western world, by force or by treaty. All the nations were tributaries of Rome at the time Caesar became emperor. But then Dame Fortune’s wheel turned. Mighty Caesar fought in Thessaly against his father-in-law, Pompey the Great. Pompey had a vast force, made up of all the Eastern nations as far as the rising of the sun. Yet the valour and strength of Caesar conquered that Eastern army. Only a few soldiers, with Pompey himself, escaped from the battlefield. So Caesar became the object of awe in the East. Fortune was then his friend. May I take a moment to lament the fate of Pompey himself? He fled the battle, as I said, but one of his men proved to be a foul traitor. He cut off Pompey’s head and presented it to Caesar in order to win favour. The conqueror of the East was humiliated in death. Fortune had found another victim. Caesar returned in triumph to Rome, where wreathed in laurels he led the victory procession. Yet there were two Romans, Brutus and Cassius, who had always envied his high estate; they entered a conspiracy against Caesar, and chose a place where they could easily assassinate him with hidden knives. Caesar went in procession to the Capitol one morning, as he was wont to do, where he was surrounded by his enemies and struck many times by their blades. He lay there, dying in his own blood, but he did not groan at any of the blows against him - except, perhaps, for one or two from those once closest to him. Caesar was so proud, and so manly, that he maintained his honour even in death. He placed his toga over his waist so that no one might see his private parts. As he lay dying, and knew that his fate was drawing near, he would not be shamed. I recommend that you read this story in Lucan’s Pharsalia, or else in Suetonius. They will tell you how Dame Fortune first favoured, and then failed, the two great conquerors Caesar and Alexander. You cannot trust her smile. Keep an eye on her. Look what happened to all these heroes. Croesus Croesus, once king of Lydia and enemy of Cyrus the Great, was taken up in his pride and carried to the stake where he was to be burned to death; but then there descended a great rain from the heavens that quenched the flames. Croesus escaped, but he did not pay proper respect to Dame Fortune until he was suspended on the gallows.

• From City of Night (1963)

  At the top of the sheet was his name—and then: “RESUME,” was printed beneath it: It listed his years at Yale, his many degrees—including honorary ones. “Read it all!” he shouted at me; he trembles. “Go on!”... The list continued: foreign service appointments, honorary titles, publications in scholarly reviews, foreign publications, books he had written, citations awarded him.... I looked up from the list and saw the man who had accomplished all this: And the balloon face, pitiably tilted like a sad dog’s, is staring at me with something that could be only racking pain.... “That is me too!” he shouts at me. “I am Respected, Admired, listened to, read!—but what do you care about that? You see only the ridiculous man who made you stand by the bed with your pants down. But do you know the rest?” The transformation was sudden and incredible. His great head was thrust forward toward me, almost beseechingly, like that of a great wounded animal, the eyes almost popping from his face behind the glasses. “The angels who drained my life!” he said contemptuously. I watch his eyes in fascination, wondering if the tears that may emerge will be giant tears coming from the giant eyes in the giant face. “The angels! The voracious angels!” he shouts. “The ones who drained me—who never knew Me! —never respected Me. Love? Bought! Bought for the prospect of a trip to America, a wedding ring which I would never wear, pairs of shoes and bottles of wine— bought! Bought for $7.50 an hour! Bought!... for a hundred dollars... which was... cunningly... expected... when the word... Love... was spoken....” There were no tears, the eyes had already run dry. The malenurse rushes in. “Professor!” he calls urgently, reaching for pills, water. The Professor continues sobbing. The malenurse hugs him to him, closely, tenderly, sheltering him, rocking his head in his arms like a baby, soothing him—his lips kissing the shaved head.... The malenurse glares at me suddenly, eyes brimming with hatred. “What Did You Do To Him?” He shoots the words at me like bullets. “Leave him alone,” the Professor sighs, freeing himself from the youngman’s sheltering embrace. The malenurse marches out. “Larry—” the Professor says, the sobs slowly subsiding, “—Larry is not—... an angel....” And now, spent, he leans back in the propped-up bed. He reaches for a cigarette, shuffling through the box; he finds a black gold-banded one, puts it into his mouth; sighs calmly now: “Forgive me, child. My nerves. It’s lying here so long. I spoke rashly. We all do at times. I had no right to—... And actually,” he said sadly, “actually I dont—really like—... to kiss.... And after all—the terms—were made—at the beginning—of the interviews.... They were, in fact, made long, long ago....