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 In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Actually, I think I’ll bring her a sandwich.” She prepared a plate for Rusty and carried it down the hall. It was a small apartment, with two bedrooms and one bath. The door to the smaller bedroom was open. Miri caught a glimpse of Rusty’s brown skirt. She was sitting on the bed with a group of women. “Mom…” Rusty looked up. “I made you a plate.” “Thanks, honey. Come and sit.” Miri sat next to Rusty on the small bed, wishing she could lie down with her head on Rusty’s lap, close her eyes and sleep. VisitationIt took days to find the remains of the Sewing Machine Man and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Galanos, who’d lived in one of the houses that had been destroyed. They’d been listed as missing and presumed dead. When they finally were able to identify them Christina didn’t want to go to the church or the funeral home. She didn’t want to see the son, who was staying with friends. But she had no choice. “We’re going,” her mother said. “Fix yourself up.” They waited on line to express their condolences. First Christina’s grandparents Yaya and Papou, then her parents, then Athena and finally, Christina. “I’m very sorry,” she said to the son, who looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Do I know you?” he asked Christina. “Christina Demetrious,” she said. “My family knows…” She hesitated, then changed what she was going to say to, “My family knew your parents.” “Thank you, Christina.” That was it? She was free to move on now? Instead, she said, “My sister, Athena…you went to school with her.” “Thank you, Athena,” he said, confusing her sister’s name with hers. He didn’t know what he was saying or what anyone was saying to him. By then the next person on line was grabbing his hand and blubbering about what good people his parents were. He’s in shock, Christina thought. Everyone is in shock. Maybe she was, too. She thought about telling him she’d been there, about how she’d seen the plane before it crashed. And then the flames…but why would he want to hear that? Athena reached in and pulled her away. “What were you telling him?” “Nothing.” “It looked like more than nothing.” “Why do you care?” “Just don’t go saying too much.” “What would be too much?” Athena didn’t answer her question. Instead, she said, “You didn’t even want to come, remember?” “I thought I was supposed to be nice.” “Okay. So you were nice.” “I don’t think anyone told him about me,” Christina said. “That I’m the girl he’s supposed to marry.” “Oh, so now you want to marry him?” “I didn’t say that. I just have the feeling no one mentioned Mama’s plans to marry me off to him.” “I never knew you were in such a hurry to get married.” “I’m not.” She felt like shouting at Athena, who was turning everything around. Where was Dopey when she needed him?

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Anyway, I don’t want to marry him.” “You should have thought of that sooner,” Irene told Rusty, one of the only unkind remarks he’d ever heard from his mother. Irene shipped Rusty off to Aunt Ida’s in Santa Monica, California, where Rusty supposedly met and married a boy who was going overseas. When Max had the second stroke Rusty took the next train back and Irene didn’t try to stop her. She needed all the help she could get. He remembered the murky stories Irene concocted to explain to anyone who had the guts to ask how Rusty happened to be pregnant, or later, how Rusty happened to have a baby, or even what happened to the boy. When Rusty balked, Irene told her, Too bad. He loved his sister, he admired her, he took her side, but he didn’t think this was fair to Miri. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00008.jpg] CONTROLLERS SAW SMOKE FROM ILL-FATED PLANEBy Henry AmmermanDEC. 18 — The Miami Airlines C-46 that crashed here on Sunday was a doomed flight. It had been turned over to maintenance personnel just one hour before its scheduled departure that morning. They worked furiously behind the scenes as passengers fretted in the departure lounge. The flight was delayed five hours. It was not long enough. As the aircraft climbed, air controllers saw smoke trailing from the right engine. They called the pilot and authorized him to return on any runway. He never answered that call, but witnesses saw the landing gear lowered. The pilot struggled to turn in the fatal moments before the flames and a collapsed wing deprived him of control. Parts of the plane rained down on residential neighbor hoods. Home owners on Verona Avenue, a mile from the crash, found pieces of aluminum and belting material in their yards. Joseph O. Fluet has been placed in charge of investigating the disaster for the Civil Aeronautics Board. He has put out a call for any found parts to be turned in to the police. 4 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriSome parents suggested it might be seen as inappropriate to hold a Christmas pageant this year. Others asked what could be more appropriate than celebrating the birth of Jesus and the spirit of the holiday season. The principal decided the show must go on. It would be performed twice—once in the afternoon for the kids at school and the parents who didn’t work, and again that night, for working parents and friends. That’s when Rusty would come. Miri marched in the choir. She loved the green choir robe with the white collar, and carrying the slim pencil flashlight that looked like a candle. The sound of their voices singing together gave her goose bumps it was so beautiful.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Today I welcome all of you and ask that you bow your heads in remembrance of those we lost, both on the ground and from the air. One hundred sixteen died in that fifty-eight-day period, senselessly, needlessly, randomly. It could have been any of us.” Already, Miri feels herself choking up. Three clergymen take turns reading out the names of the dead, beginning with the first crash. Miri waits for the familiar names. Ruby Granik, twenty-two, Estelle Sapphire, fifty-nine. Then the second crash. Kathy Stein, eighteen. Penny Foster, seven. She lets out a small, unexpected cry when Penny’s name is read. Henry reaches for her hand. Christina passes her a packet of Kleenex. She wipes her eyes, glad she didn’t use mascara, and blows her nose. When all the names have been read, a children’s chorus sings a medley—“April Showers,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “Keep on Smiling.” Someone with style has orchestrated this day of events. After, they form a circle and toss flowers into the center. Most of them have daffodils or tulips but Miri special-ordered a dozen sunflowers through a local florist. Penny loved sunflowers, was always drawing pictures of the sunflowers in the print hanging over her family’s fireplace. Then they join hands and close their eyes for a silent prayer. The ceremony lasts just half an hour. Their personal remarks are to be saved for the luncheon to follow at the Elizabeth Carteret hotel. The mayor makes an announcement that the lunch will be hosted by Natalie Renso, who will be signing books following the program. Miri looks around the circle but can’t find Natalie. She thought Natalie might show up to honor Ruby. Instead, she spots Gaby Wenders, the stewardess, in her old uniform. She must be in good shape, Miri thinks, to fit into that uniform thirty-five years later. And next to Gaby, the boy who rescued her, the boy who saved her life. Miri half expects to see the boy he was then. The boy she loved. Instead, she sees a grown man. Still, her knees grow weak. For god’s sake, she thinks, trying to remember what her yoga teacher has taught her about breathing in stressful situations. He makes the first move, walking briskly across the field to where she is standing. “Miri,” he says. “Jesus …Miri…” He wraps his arms around her. Now she can’t breathe at all. When he lets go, she pushes her sunglasses up so she can get a look at him. Did she hope he wouldn’t be attractive? He grabs her hand. “I’m so glad to see you.” “I’m glad to see you, too.” The voice that comes out doesn’t sound like hers. “Can I give you a ride to the lunch?” he asks. Christina and Jack have a car, so do Henry and Leah, but Miri says, “Sure,” and walks with Mason around the block to his red Mazda RX-7. She almost laughs because Andy drives the same car.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  —SUZANNE, in her yellow rain slicker and white rubber boots, was waiting on the front steps of Miri’s house, a polka-dot umbrella opened over her head though it was hardly raining by the time Miri got home. “Where were you?” Suzanne asked. “At Natalie’s.” “Did you hear?” “Yes, it’s horrible.” “I know, but at least they say Betsy is still alive and so is Mrs. Foster. They’re both at Saint Elizabeth’s. My mother’s on duty this afternoon.” “What are you talking about?” “The crash. It hit the apartment building next to the Fosters’ and set their house on fire. Penny…she didn’t get out. Mrs. Foster tried, but the fire…” Miri slumped to the porch steps, her hand over her mouth. She tasted bile coming up. “Mother of god…you didn’t know?” Miri shook her head. It wasn’t possible. It had to be a mistake. But even as she thought it, wished it, she knew it was true. —“BAD THINGS HAPPEN in threes,” Irene said that night, doling out homemade vegetable soup and passing around warm bread—not that anyone was hungry, but Irene knew how to tempt them. “Stop it, Mama,” Rusty said. “You’re scaring Miri.” “Darling,” Irene said to Miri, “am I scaring you?” “No!” Miri said defiantly. But she’d never get Irene’s superstitions out of her head. Later Suzanne came by again, to go with Miri to the site of the crash, even though Rusty objected. “There’s no reason in hell for you to go there. You’ve seen one plane crash. Why do you have to see another?” “Because the Fosters lived in that house,” Miri argued. “Because a week ago we were babysitting Betsy and Penny and now Penny is dead and Betsy is burned.” Her voice caught, thinking of how Penny always folded her little eyeglasses and placed them on her bedside table before she went to sleep. And Betsy’s tiny pink toenails, newly polished, making her toes look like little shrimp. Maybe Mrs. Foster knew to worry. Maybe she’d had a sixth sense about an impending disaster. She’d heard mothers know these things instinctively. “There’s nothing to see,” Rusty told them. “Just rubble and burned buildings.” “We have to go,” Suzanne said. Rusty pursed her lips, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and reconsidered. “Just don’t be too long. I want a promise on that.” “Okay,” Miri said. “Be back before eight o’clock.” Suzanne said, “I promised my mother the same.” Rusty nodded. “And take an umbrella.” —A CHILL WIND SWEPT the open corner of South and Williamson streets. At the site, floodlights, combined with the fog and the light rain, sent up an eerie glow. Miri and Suzanne stood close. There was nothing to say. Nothing that would make sense of this. On the ground floor of the Fosters’ house there used to be a candy store, popular with the St. Mary’s kids. Now there was a burned-out shell with no roof, and piles of rubble.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  23A thousand-mile stretch of silk-smooth road separated Kasbeam, where, to the best of my belief, the red fiend had been scheduled to appear for the first time, and fateful Elphinstone which we had reached about a week before Independence Day. The journey had taken up most of June for we had seldom made more than a hundred and fifty miles per traveling day, spending the rest of the time, up to five days in one case, at various stopping places, all of them also prearranged, no doubt. It was that stretch, then, along which the fiend’s spoor should be sought; and to this I devoted myself, after several unmentionable days of dashing up and down the relentlessly radiating roads in the vicinity of Elphinstone. Imagine me, reader, with my shyness, my distaste for any ostentation, my inherent sense of the comme il faut, imagine me masking the frenzy of my grief with a trembling ingratiating smile while devising some casual pretext to flip through the hotel register: “Oh,” I would say, “I am almost positive that I stayed here once—let me look up the entries for mid-June—no, I see I’m wrong after all—what a very quaint name for a home town, Kawtagain. Thanks very much.” Or: “I had a customer staying her—I mislaid his address—may I …?” And every once in a while, especially if the operator of the place happened to be a certain type of gloomy male, personal inspection of the books was denied me. I have a memo here: between July 5 and November 18, when I returned to Beardsley for a few days, I registered, if not actually stayed, at 342 hotels, motels and tourist homes. This figure includes a few registrations between Chestnut and Beardsley, one of which yielded a shadow of the fiend (“N. Petit, Larousse, Ill.”); I had to space and time my inquiries carefully so as not to attract undue attention; and there must have been at least fifty places where I merely inquired at the desk—but that was a futile quest, and I preferred building up a foundation of verisimilitude and good will by first paying for an unneeded room. My survey showed that of the 300 or so books inspected, at least 20 provided me with a clue: the loitering fiend had stopped even more often than we, or else—he was quite capable of that—he had thrown in additional registrations in order to keep me well furnished with derisive hints. Only in one case had he actually stayed at the same motor court as we, a few paces from Lolita’s pillow. In some instances he had taken up quarters in the same or in a neighboring block; not infrequently he had lain in wait at an intermediate spot between two bespoken points. How vividly I recalled Lolita, just before our departure from Beardsley, prone on the parlor rug, studying tour books and maps, and marking laps and stops with her lipstick!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Pym, Roland. Born in Lundy, Mass., 1922. Received stage training at Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y. Made debut in Sunburst. Among his many appearances are Two Blocks from Here, The Girl in Green, Scrambled Husbands, The Strange Mushroom, Touch and Go, John Lovely, I Was Dreaming of You. Quilty, Clare, American dramatist. Born in Ocean City, N.J., 1911. Educated at Columbia University. Started on a commercial career but turned to playwriting. Author of The Little Nymph, The Lady Who Loved Lightning (in collaboration with Vivian Darkbloom), Dark Age, The Strange Mushroom, Fatherly Love, and others. His many plays for children are notable. Little Nymph (1940) traveled 14,000 miles and played 280 performances on the road during the winter before ending in New York. Hobbies: fast cars, photography, pets. Quine, Dolores. Born in 1882, in Dayton, Ohio. Studied for stage at American Academy. First played in Ottawa in 1900. Made New York debut in 1904 in Never Talk to Strangers. Has disappeared since in [a list of some thirty plays follows]. How the look of my dear love’s name even affixed to some old hag of an actress, still makes me rock with helpless pain! Perhaps, she might have been an actress too. Born 1935. Appeared (I notice the slip of my pen in the preceding paragraph, but please do not correct it, Clarence) in The Murdered Playwright. Quine the Swine. Guilty of killing Quilty. Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! 9Divorce proceedings delayed my voyage, and the gloom of yet another World War had settled upon the globe when, after a winter of ennui and pneumonia in Portugal, I at last reached the States. In New York I eagerly accepted the soft job fate offered me: it consisted mainly of thinking up and editing perfume ads. I welcomed its desultory character and pseudoliterary aspects, attending to it whenever I had nothing better to do. On the other hand, I was urged by a war-time university in New York to complete my comparative history of French literature for English-speaking students. The first volume took me a couple of years during which I put in seldom less than fifteen hours of work daily. As I look back on those days, I see them divided tidily into ample light and narrow shade: the light pertaining to the solace of research in palatial libraries, the shade to my excruciating desires and insomnias of which enough has been said. Knowing me by now, the reader can easily imagine how dusty and hot I got, trying to catch a glimpse of nymphets (alas, always remote) playing in Central Park, and how repulsed I was by the glitter of deodorized career girls that a gay dog in one of the offices kept unloading upon me. Let us skip all that. A dreadful breakdown sent me to a sanatorium for more than a year; I went back to my work—only to be hospitalized again.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  As I consider the word “unwilling” my lagging cognition kicks in. The familiar phrase “need to know” surfaces. The phrase “need to know” has been the problem all along. Only one person needs to know. She is of course the one person who needs to know. Let me just be in the ground. Let me just be in the ground and go to sleep. I imagine telling her. I am able to imagine telling her because I still see her. Hello, Mommies. The same way I still see her weeding the clay court on Franklin Avenue. The same way I still see her sitting on the bare floor crooning back to the eight-track. Do you wanna dance. I wanna dance. The same way I still see the stephanotis in her braid, the same way I still see the plumeria tattoo through her veil. The same way I still see the bright-red soles on her shoes as she kneels at the altar. The same way I still see her, in the darkened upstairs cabin on the evening Pan Am from Honolulu to LAX, inventing the unforeseen uptick in Bunny Rabbit’s fortunes. I know that I can no longer reach her. I know that, should I try to reach her—should I take her hand as if she were again sitting next to me in the upstairs cabin on the evening Pan Am from Honolulu to LAX, should I lull her to sleep against my shoulder, should I sing her the song about Daddy gone to get the rabbit skin to wrap his baby bunny in—she will fade from my touch. Vanish. Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her. Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes. Go back into the blue. I myself placed her ashes in the wall. I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six. I know what it is I am now experiencing. I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHORJoan Didion was born in California and lives in New York. She is the author of five novels, eight previous books of nonfiction, and a play. [image file=image_rsrc1GP.jpg] aaknopf.com [image "Penguin Random House Next Reads logo" file=image_rsrc1GR.jpg] What’s next on your reading list?Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Nabokov’s “private tragedy” is our concern, for in varying degrees it involves us all. Nabokov’s search for the language adequate to Lolita is H.H.’s search for the language that will reach Lolita; and it is a representative search, a heightened emblem of all of our attempts to communicate. “ ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ I said, and she stretched out her palm at once.” It is the almost insuperable distance between those thoughts and that palm which Nabokov has measured so accurately and so movingly in Lolita: the distance between people, the distance separating love from love-making, mirage from reality—the desperate extent of all human need and desire. “I have only words to play with,” says H.H., and only words can bridge the gulf suggested by Lolita’s palm. H.H. has failed once—“She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I use[d] for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own teeth on edge”—but it is a necessary act of love to try, and perhaps Nabokov succeeds with the reader where H.H. failed with Lolita. frac-tails: Nabokov wittily demonstrates that the “native illusionist” is now an internationalist: frac is French for “dress coat.” It is just that Nabokov (and this edition) should conclude with a joke, however small, for, from behind “the bars of the poor creature’s cage,” desperate Humbert also exults. In Gogol, Nabokov notes how “one likes to recall that the difference between the comic side of things, and their cosmic side, depends upon one sibilant” (p. 142), a juxtaposition implicit in the early title, Laughter in the Dark. The title goes two ways: it records the laughter of the cosmic joker who has made a pawn of Albinus, blinding and tormenting him, but it also summarizes Nabokov’s response to life, his course for survival. Toward the end of Lolita, the sick and despairing Humbert has finally tracked down Lolita, who is now the pregnant Mrs. Richard Schiller. He recalls how he rang the doorbell, ready to kill Dick. The bell seems to vibrate through his whole exhausted system, but suddenly Humbert takes his automatic French response to the sound and playfully twists it into verbal nonsense: “Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne. From what depth this re-nonsense?” he wonders. It sounds from the depths of Vladimir Nabokov’s profoundly humane comic vision, and the gusto of Humbert’s narration, his punning language, his abundant delight in digressions, parodies, and games all attest to a comic vision that overrides the sadness or terror of everyday life.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] AT THE TIME that Juno was incensed for Semele1 against the Theban blood, as she already more than once had shown, Athamas grew so insane, that he, seeing his wife, with two sons, go laden on either hand, cried: “Spread we the nets, that I may take the lioness and her young lions at the pass”; and then stretched out his pitiless talons, grasping the one who had the name Learchus; and whirled him, and dashed him on a rock; and she with her other burden drowned herself. And when Fortune brought low the all-daring pride of the Trojans, so that the King together with his kingdom was blotted out; Hecuba,2 sad, miserable, and captive, after she had seen Polyxena slain, and forlorn, discerned her Polydorus, on the sea-strand, she, out of her senses, barked like a dog; to such a degree had the sorrow wrung her soul. But neither Theban Furies nor Trojan were ever seen in aught so cruel—not in stinging brutes, and much less human limbs; as I saw in two shadows, pale and naked, which ran biting in the manner that a hungry swine does when he is thrust out from his sty. The one came to Capocchio, and fixed its tusks on his neckjoint, so that, dragging him, it made the solid bottom claw his belly. And the Aretine, who remained trembling, said to me: “That goblin is Gianni Schicchi;3 and, rabid, he goes thus mangling others.” “Oh!” said I to him, “so may the other not plant its teeth on thee, be pleased to tell us who it is, ere it snatch itself away.” And he to me: “That is the ancient spirit of flagitious Myrrha, who loved her father with more than rightful love. She came to sin with him disguised in alien form; even as the other who there is going away, undertook, that he might gain the Lady of the troop, to disguise himself as Buoso Donati, making a testament and giving to it a legal form.” And when the furious two, on whom I had kept my eye, were passed, I turned it to observe the other ill-born spirits. I saw one shapen like a lute,4 if he had only had his groin cut short at the part where man is forked. The heavy dropsy, which with its ill-digested humor so disproportions the limbs, that the visage corresponds not to the paunch, made him hold his lips apart, as does the hectic patient, who for thirst curls the one lip towards the chin, and the other upwards. “O ye! who are exempt from every punishment (and why I know not), in this grim world,” said he to us, “look and attend to the misery of Master Adam: when alive, I had enough of what I wished; and now, alas! I crave one little drop of water.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Miri Newark Airport was still closed and wasn’t expected to open anytime soon, so on a warm summer day, Henry drove them to LaGuardia in Ben Sapphire’s Packard. Ben had given the car to Henry and Leah as a wedding present and all six of them, plus Fern on Dr. O’s lap, squeezed in for the ride. At the departure gate Miri clung to Henry, not wanting to say goodbye. “I wish you were coming with us.” “Leah and I will come to visit soon, maybe over Christmas.” It would be Henry and Leah from now on. Henry and Leah, who’d been married for a week, and were going to Atlantic City tomorrow for their honeymoon. She would never have Henry to herself again. She’d have to share him with Leah, and already Leah was making it clear she didn’t want to share Henry with anyone. “Everything will be different,” Miri told him. “Different can be good.” “I’m going to miss you so much.” “Not as much as I’m going to miss you.” He held her tight until Rusty tapped Miri’s shoulder, as if they were at a dance and Rusty was cutting in. “My turn,” Rusty said quietly, and Miri had to let go of Henry. “Be happy,” Henry told Rusty. “I’ll do my best,” Rusty said. “You be happy, too.” When it was time to say goodbye to Irene, Henry hugged her tight. “I love you, Mama.” “Not as much as I love you,” Irene told him, touching his face. By then all of them were holding back tears. “Enough with the emotional goodbyes,” Ben said. “We’re going to Las Vegas, not the moon.” The plane, a silver Constellation looking to Miri like a huge, featherless bird with fancy wings, was ready for boarding. Irene carried her white leather train case with her pills, her makeup and her good jewelry neatly packed inside. She and Miri walked across the tarmac together. “Aren’t you afraid?” Miri asked her.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK II and by and by the corpse came forth, after the last words of farewell and lamentation, which (because it was the body of one of the chiefs of the city) was carried in funeral pomp round about the market- place, according to the rite of the country there. And forthwith stepped out an old man weeping and lamenting and tearing his venerable and aged hair, and ran unto the bier and embraced it, and with deep sighs and sobs cried out in this sort: ‘O masters, [ pray you, by the duty which you owe to the public weal, take pity and mercy upon this dead corpse, who is miserably murdered, and do ven- geance on this wicked and cursed woman his wife, which hath committed this fact, for it is she and no other that hath poisoned her husband, my sister’s son, to the intent to maintain her adultery and to get his heritage.’ * [n this sort the old man complained before the face of all the people. Then they, astonished at these sayings and because the thing seemed to be true, began to be very angry and cried out: ‘Burn her, burn her,’ and they sought for stones to throw at her, and willed the boys in the street to do the same; but she, weeping in lamentable wise with feigned tears, did swear by all the gods that she was not culpable of this crime. “Then quoth the old man: ‘Let us refer the judgment of truth to the divine providence of God. Behold here is one Zatchlas, an Egyptian, who is the most principal prophesier in all this country, and who was hired of me long since to bring back the soul of this man from hell for a short season, and to revive his body from beyond the threshold of death for the trial hereof'; and therewithal he brought forth a certain young man clothed in linen 91 LUCIUS APULEIUS amiculis iniectum pedesque palmeis baxeis inductum et adusque deraso capite producit in medium. Huius diu manus deosculatus, et ipsa genua contingens, , ‘Miserere’ ait *Sacerdos, miserere, per caelestia sidera, per inferna numina, per naturalia elementa, per nocturna silentia, et adyta Coptica, et per in- crementa Nilotica, et arcana Memphitica, et sistra Phariaca, da brevem solis usuram et in aeternum conditis oculis modicam lucem infunde, Non obni- timur, nec terrae rem suam denegamus, sed ad ul- tionis solacium exiguum vitae spatium deprecamur.' * Propheta sic propitiatus herbulam quampiam ob os corporis et aliam pectori eius imponit. Tunc orientem obversus incrementa solis augusti tacitus imprecatus venerabilis scaenae facie studia praesen- tium ad miraculum tantum certatim arrexit. 29 "Immitto me turbae socium et pone ipsum lectu- lum editiorem quendam lapidem insistens cuncta curiosis oculis arbitrabar: iam tumore pectus extolli, iam salubris vena pulsari, iam spiritu corpus impleri ; et assurgit cadaver et profatur adolescens: *Quid, oro, me post Lethaea pocula iam Stygiis paludibus 92 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK II

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

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

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

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

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

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

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

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

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

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

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

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

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

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

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

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

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

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