Guilt

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 Story of O (1954)

  René freed O's hands, lifted her up, and lay her down beneath the blanket on the bed. The man got up, René escorted him to the door. In a flash, O saw herself released, reduced to nothing, accursed. She had moaned beneath the lips of the stranger as never her lover had made her moan, cried out under the impact of a stranger's member as never her lover had made her cry out. She felt debased and guilty. She could not blame him if he were to leave her. But no, the door was closing again, he was staying with her, he was coming back, lying down beside her beneath the cover, he was slipping into her moist, hot belly and, still holding her in this embrace, he said to her: "I love you. When I'll also have given you to the valets, I'll come in one night and have you flogged till you bleed." The sun had broken through the mist and flooded the room. But only the midday bell woke them up. O was at a loss what to do. Her lover was there, as close, as tenderly relaxed and surrendered as he was in the bed in that low-ceilinged room to which, almost every night since they had begun living together, he came to sleep with her. It was a big, mahogany, English-style four-Oposter bed, without the awning, and the posters at the head were taller than those at the foot. He always slept on her left, and whenever he awoke, even were it in the middle of the night, his hands inevitably reached down for her legs. This is why she never wore anything but a nightgown or, if she had on pajamas, never put on the bottoms. He did so now; she took that hand and kissed it, without ever daring to ask him for anything. But he spoke. Holding her by the collar, with two fingers slipped in between the neck and collar, he told her it was his intention that henceforth she should be shared by him and those of his choosing, and by those whom he did not know who were connected to the society of the chateau, shared as she had been the previous evening. That she was dependent

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  This isn’t just a trick of semantics, but an important part of helping team members understand that this is a constructive discussion about a change in behavior that will help the employee learn and grow versus an indictment of their overall worth. Another good way in these discussions to help perfectionists accept needed improvements to their work, without putting them on the defensive, is asking them to propose solutions—asking what they would do differently in the future to keep their projects on task or make faster decisions. Now, even with these methods, perfectionists may get their hackles up when receiving feedback, and they might deflect what they see as blame onto others on the team or even their manager (you). This is not acceptable, of course, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a knee-jerk impulse. People who get defensive may have had negative experiences in their past that make them wary of being seen as inadequate. For us, as leaders, signaling that we care about employees’ feelings can make them feel more secure and tone down the rhetoric, which can help them be less likely to criticize in the future. In Chapter 6 , we introduce a methodology that can help deliver feedback more directly: Issue, Value, Solution. Instead of saying something such as “You are too negative,” you might talk about an issue you have witnessed, e.g., “I want to speak with you about your call with ABC Corp on Thursday.” You then relate this to a core value you are trying to live in the team: “One of our values is creating a positive environment for each other and our clients, and as such we attempt to be friendly on every call.” And finally, together, you come up with a solution to move forward. If this approach still solicits a defensive response, then a manager should cut the discussion short and move it to another day. A simple “Why don’t you think about it and we’ll meet again next week to discuss” may allow their defensiveness to tone down and your feedback to sink in.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do. With a sense of weariness and uncleanliness from the night spent in the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him, not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its meaning ran: 'If it's a trick, then calm contempt and departure. If truth, do what is proper.' The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in slippers. 'How is your mistress?' 'A successful confinement yesterday.' Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death. 'And how is she?' Korney in his morning apron ran downstairs.. 'Very ill,' he answered. 'There was a consultation yesterday, and the doctor's here now.' 'Take my things,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some relief at the news that there was still hope of her death, he went into the hall. On the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexey Alexandrovitch noticed it and asked— 'Who is here?' 'The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky.' Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms. In the drawing-room there was no one; at the sound of his steps there came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac ribbons. She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity given by the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him towards the bedroom. 'Thank God you've come! She keeps on about you and nothing but you,' she said. 'Make haste with the ice!' the doctor's peremptory voice said from the bedroom. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir. At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor's voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Can they have finished ploughing?' he wondered. 'Come, really though,' said the elder brother, with a frown on his handsome, clever face, 'there's a limit to everything. It's very well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything conventional—I know all about that; but really, what you're saying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning. How can you think it a matter of no importance whether the peasant, whom you love as you assert,…' 'I never did assert it,' thought Konstantin Levin. —'dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless in the hands of every village clerk, while you have at your disposal a means of helping them, and don't help them because to your mind it's of no importance.' And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it. Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And this mortified him and hurt his feelings. 'It's both,' he said resolutely; 'I don't see that it was possible . . .' 'What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to provide medical aid?' 'Impossible, as it seems to me. . . . For the three thousand square miles of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and the work in the fields, I don't see how it is possible to provide medical aid all over. And besides, I don't believe in medicine.' 'Oh, well, that's unfair. . . . I can quote to you thousands of instances. . . . But the schools, anyway.' 'Why have schools?' 'What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of education? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing for everyone.' Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and so he got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of his indifference to public business. 'Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of, and schools to which I shall never send my children, to which even the peasants don't want to send their children, and to which I've no very firm faith that they ought to send them?' said he. Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected view of the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack. He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again, and turned to his brother smiling.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way. 'Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!' Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. 'And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad her having been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a governess!' (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) 'But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already … it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?' There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till night-time; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily life. 'Then we shall see,' Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting up he put on a grey dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried his full frame so easily.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible, one thing she might desire,' he went on, 'that is the cessation of your relations and all memories associated with them. To my thinking, in your position what's essential is the formation of a new attitude to one another. And that can only rest on a basis of freedom on both sides.' 'Divorce,' Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of aversion. 'Yes, I imagine that divorce—yes, divorce,' Stepan Arkadyevitch repeated; reddening. 'That is from every point of view the most rational course for married people who find themselves in the position you are in. What can be done if married people find that life is impossible for them together? That may always happen.' Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes. 'There's only one point to be considered: is either of the parties desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from constraint. Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to Stepan Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over thousands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed to him utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew by this time, seemed to him now out of the question, because the sense of his own dignity and respect for religion forbade his taking upon himself a fictitious charge of adultery, and still more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by him, to be caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared to him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds. What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him with his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position as a stepson and his education would not be good. Keep him with him? He knew that would be an art of vengeance on his part, and that he did not want. But apart from this, what more than all made divorce seem impossible to Alexey Alexandrovitch was, that by consenting to a divorce he would be completely ruining Anna. The saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow, that in deciding on a divorce he was thinking of himself, and not considering that by this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk into his heart.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  That union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature brings its own chastisement.' 'I don't understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am, unluckily,' she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair, feeling for the remaining hairpins. 'Anna, for God's sake don't speak like that!' he said gently. 'Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you.' For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died away; but the word love threw her into revolt again. She thought: 'Love? Can he love? If he hadn't heard there was such a thing as love, he would never have used the word. He doesn't even know what love is.' 'Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don't understand,' she said. 'Define what it is you find . . . ' 'Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words "seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that they are called forth by my mistaken impression. In that case, I beg you to forgive me. But if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest foundation for them, then I beg you to think a little, and if your heart prompts you, to speak out to me . . . . ' Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly unlike what he had prepared. 'I have nothing to say. And besides,' she said hurriedly, with difficulty repressing a smile, 'it's really time to be in bed.' Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying more, went into the bedroom. When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna got into her bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to her again. She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was silent. She waited for a long while without moving, and had forgotten about him. She thought of that other; she pictured him, and felt how her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him. Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first instant Alexey Alexandrovitch seemed as it were appalled at his own snoring, and ceased; but after an interval of two breathings the snore sounded again, with a new tranquil rhythm. 'It's late, it's late,' she whispered with a smile. A long while she lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost fancied she could herself see in the darkness. X F ROM that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for his wife. Nothing special happened.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was peace and love in his heart. But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did not last long, and soon there was re-established once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch's soul the peace and the elevation by virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember. XXVI 'W ELL . Kapitonitch?' said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-humoured from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his overcoat to the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the little person from the height of his long figure. 'Well, has the bandaged clerk been today? Did papa see him?' 'He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced him,' said the hall-porter with a good-humoured wink. 'Here, I'll take it off.' 'Seryozha!' said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner rooms. 'Take it off yourself.' But Seryozha, though he heard his tutor's feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall-porter's belt, and gazing into his face. 'Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?' The hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his face tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favour of Alexey Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the hall-porter. Seryozha had come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively beg the hall-porter to announce him, saying that he and his children had death staring them in the face. Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall, took great interest in him. 'Well, was he very glad?' he asked. 'Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away.' 'And has anything been left?' asked Seryozha, after a pause. 'Come, sir,' said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head he whispered, 'Something from the countess.' Seryozha understood at once that what the hall-porter was speaking of was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday. 'What do you say? Where?' 'Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!' 'How big? Like this?' 'Rather smaller, but a fine thing.' 'A book.' 'No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,' said the porter, hearing the tutor's steps approaching, and carefully taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off, he signed with his head towards the tutor.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his own fault. 'Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it's all my fault—all my fault, though I'm not to blame. That's the point of the whole situation,' he reflected. 'Oh, oh, oh!' he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel. Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and good-humoured, from the theatre, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand. She, his Dolly, for ever fussing and worrying over household details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation. 'What's this? this?' she asked, pointing to the letter. And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife's words. There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of re maining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humoured, and therefore idiotic smile. This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband. 'It's that idiotic smile that's to blame for it all,' thought Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'But what's to be done? What's to be done?' he said to himself in despair, and found no answer. II S TEPAN A RKADYEVITCH was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theatre with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them. When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief. It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts. XXIII D OLLY was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired for the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she had stopped: 'Afterwards, by ourselves, we'll talk about everything. I've got so much I want to tell you,' she said. Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about. She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that everything had been said already. 'Well, what of Kitty?' she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently at Dolly. 'Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn't she angry with me?' 'Angry? Oh no!' said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling. 'But she hates me, despises me?' 'Oh no! But you know that sort of thing isn't forgiven. 'Yes, yes,' said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window. 'But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What's the meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it possibly have happened that you didn't become the wife of Stiva?' 'Really I don't know. But this is what I want you to tell me . ..' 'Yes, yes, but we've not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He's a very nice man, they say.' 'He's much more than very nice. I don't know a better man.' 'Ah, how glad I am! I'm so glad! Much more than very nice,' she repeated. Dolly smiled. 'But tell me about yourself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget—his wife. 'Ah, yes!' He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed expression. 'To go, or not to go!' he said to himself; and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature. 'It must be some time, though: it can't go on like this,' he said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ash-tray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing-room, and opened the other door into his wife's bedroom. IV D ARYA A LEXANDROVNA , in a dressing-jacket, and with her now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her husband's steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in these last three days—to sort out the children's things and her own, so as to take them to her mother's—and again she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying to herself, 'that things cannot go on like this, that she must take some step' to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this was impossible; it was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  On page 531, in describing the 'reasonable type' of decision, it was said that it usually came when the right conception of the case was found. Where, however, the right conception is an anti-impulsive one, the whole intellectual ingenuity of the man usually goes to work to crowd it out of sight, and to find names for the moment may sound sanctified, and sloth or passion may reign unchecked. How many excuses does the drunkard find when each new temptation comes! It is a new brand of liquor which the interests of intellectual culture in such matters oblige him to test; moreover it is poured out and it is sin to waste it; or others are drinking and it would be churlishness to refuse; or it is but to enable him to sleep, or just to get through this job of work; or it isn't drinking, it is because he feels so cold; or it is Christmas-day; or it is a means of stimulating him to make a more powerful resolution in favor of abstinence than any he has hitherto made; or it is just this once, and once doesn't count, etc., etc., ad libitum —it is, in fact, anything you like except being a drunkard. That is the conception that will not stay before the poor soul's attention. But if he once gets able to pick out that way of conceiving, from all the other possible ways of conceiving, from all the other possible ways of conceiving the various opportunities which occur, if through thick and thin he holds to it that this is being a drunkard and is nothing else, he is not likely to remain one long. The effort by which he succeeds in keeping the right name unwaveringly present to his mind proves to be his saving moral act.[510]

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  There was no early tradition that Yahweh’s teachings had been written down. In J and E, Moses had passed on Yahweh’s commands by word of mouth, and the people had responded verbally: “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.” 102 J and E did not mention the Ten Commandments; originally the stone tablets—“written with the finger of God” 103 —probably contained the divinely revealed plans for the tabernacle where Yahweh had dwelt with his people during the years in the wilderness. 104 It was only later that the Deuteronomist writers added to the JE narrative, explaining that Moses “wrote down all the words of Yahweh” and “took the scroll of the covenant [sefer torah] and read it in the hearing of the people.” 105 Now Shaphan claimed that this was the very scroll that Hilkiah had discovered in the temple. For centuries this precious document had been lost, and its teachings had never been implemented. Now that the sefer torah had been discovered, Yahweh’s people could make a new start. This was not a cynical forgery, however. At this time, it was customary for people who wished to impart a new religious teaching to attribute their words to a great figure in the past. The Deuteronomists believed that they were speaking for Moses at a time of grave national crisis. The world had changed drastically since the time of the exodus, and the religion of Yahweh was in danger. In 722, the northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed, and thousands of its citizens had disappeared without trace. The kingdom of Judah had narrowly escaped extermination in the days of King Hezekiah. Only Yahweh—not the gods whose cult Manasseh had revived—could save his people. Many of the prophets had urged the people to worship Yahweh alone, and now at last Judah had a king who could revive the glories of the past. This was what Moses would say to Josiah and his people, if he were delivering a “second law” today. As soon as he had heard the words on the scroll, Josiah tore his garments in great distress. “Great indeed must be the anger of Yahweh blazing out against us,” he cried, “because our ancestors did not obey what this book says by practising everything written within it.” 106 The switch from the oral transmission of religion to a written text was a shock. Here—as elsewhere in the Bible—it evoked a sense of dismay, guilt, and inadequacy. 107 Religious truth sounded completely different when presented in this way. Everything was clear, cut-and-dried—very different from the more elusive “knowledge” imparted by oral transmission. In India, people did not believe that it was possible to convey a spiritual teaching in writing: you could not, for example, understand the full meaning of the Upanishads simply by perusing the texts. But the Deuteronomists made Yahwism a religion of the book. Henceforth in the West, the benchmark of religious orthodoxy would be a written scripture.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  It seems unpardonable to me today that I had blocked off the investigation of my most distant past for so many years, not on principle, to be sure, but still of my own accord, and that now it is too late for me to seek out Adler, who had lived in London until his death in the summer of 1988, and talk to him about that extra- territorial place where at the time, as I think I have mentioned before, said Austerlitz, some sixty thousand people were crammed together in an area little more than a square kilometer in size—industrialists and manufacturers, lawyers and doctors, rabbis and university professors, singers and composers, bank managers, businessmen, shorthand typists, housewives, farmers, labourers and millionaires, people from Prague and the rest of the Protectorate, from Slovakia, from Denmark and Holland, from Vienna and Munich, Cologne and Berlin, from the Palatinate, from Lower Franconia and Westphalia—each of whom had to make do with about two square meters of space in which to exist and all of them, in so far as they were in any condition to do so or until they were loaded into trucks and sent on east, obliged to work entirely without remuneration in one of the primitive factories set up, with a view to generating actual profit, by the External Trade Section, assigned to the bandage-weaving workshop, to the handbag and satchel assembly line, the production of horn buttons and other haberdashery items, the manufacturing of wooden soles for footwear and of cowhide galoshes; to the charcoal yard, the making of such board games as Nine Men’s Morris and Catch the Hat, the splitting of mica, the shearing of rabbit fur,

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Any one of these possibilities is far more probable than other suggestions that have been made. His treatment of Una would justify the self-condemning language Augustine uses. He was not merely persuading Una to live with him, but to make a break with her church (and, no doubt, her Catholic parents). Augustine would later reproach himself bitterly for trying to persuade a dear friend to give up Catholicism. Though the Church admitted some forms of legal concubinage, Augustine said (4.2) theirs was not such a union, since they did not intend to have children. And the lack of further offspring after the first shows that Augustine—against her will, he implies—used contraceptive strategies. Later, as a bishop, Augustine would pose a case that was very clearly what his own life with Una had been, her faithfulness contrasted with his faithlessness on the basis of the intent to bear children. If a man lives with one woman for some time, but only until he finds another worthier in terms of rank or advantages, he commits adultery in his heart, not against the one he wants to claim but against the one he lived with, even though they were not married. As for the woman who had knowingly and willingly lived with him outside the marriage contract—if she was true to his bed [tori fidem—exactly the way Augustine described his faithfulness to Una’s bed] and does not seek another partner, I could bring no evident charge of adultery against her. . . . In fact, she is better than many married mothers if, in her sexual relations she did what she could to have children, but had to submit against her will to the prevention of conception. (What Is Good in Marriage 5.5) O’Donnell suggests that this passage has the feel of a thing Una or her family may have been expected to hear. In his dramatic sixteenth year at home, Augustine developed a relationship that would last even longer than the one with Una, though it was ended with an emotional rupture (O’Donnell 2.381–82). That was with his influential friend, the Thagaste multimillionaire Romanian (Lepelley 2.178–82). In The Testimony, Augustine credits his father with trying to raise money for his further education in Carthage. But in the earlier Answer to Skeptics (2.2), he makes it clear that Romanian took over his education from the outset: When I lacked money in young manhood, and was ready to travel for my education, you opened your estate [domus] to me, your resources [sumptus], and, what is more than either, your heart [animus]. And when I was deprived of my father, you compensated for that by your patronage, encouragement, and financial help.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Why did he not simply marry Una? If she was of a lower class than his, an order of Constantine against class mixture forbade that. Besides, he could adopt Godsend and legitimize his birth in a proper marriage. More important, Augustine had, both in his Manichean days and under Cicero’s exhortation in Hortensius, felt that a life of continence was the only discipline for a philosopher. Later, as a bishop, he would present laymen with the ideal of marriage where sex was indulged only for the begetting of heirs. He could not trust himself to stay continent with Una, where long habit held sway; but he no doubt fooled himself into thinking he could do that with the prepubescent bride promised him. But he soon found he could not remain celibate, even without the provocation of Una’s presence—he took a “stopgap” mistress to tide him over until the marriage. It is characteristic that he did not resort to promiscuity, but to another sole concubine. There is no way to excuse Augustine’s treatment of Una—as his own later words about his situation show. But can we say that he “dismissed” her? She presumably had some say in the matter, and looked to her son’s prospects as well as her own peace of soul. As a Catholic, she may not have been complacent about the paganism into which Augustine had descended by the time he reached Milan, and court life may not have appealed to her. The woman he loved for so long presumably had some will of her own, and the way he refused to name her may have honored her own wish. She would have been in her early forties when Augustine wrote The Testimony, ten years after this breakup, and living in the Catholic community of Africa, very likely in Thagaste, of which Augustine’s friend Alypius was bishop at the time. At any rate, she would have remained in correspondence with Godsend.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  the star-shaped town, and perhaps that was why, at the sight of the records room, a kind of idée fixe forced itself upon me that, all along, my true place of work should have been there in the little fortress of Terezin, where so many had perished in the cold, damp casemates, and it was my own fault that I had not taken it up. =" AS fe pie i , & in ; f, 4 7 PS fS FSS As I was tormenting myself with such thoughts, distinctly aware, so Austerlitz continued, that my face was being marked by the signs of that anguish which so often assails me, I was approached by one of the library staff called Henri Lemoine, who had recognized me from those early years of mine in Paris when I went daily to the rue Richelieu. Jacques Austerlitz, inquired Lemoine, stopping by my desk and leaning slightly down to me, and so, said Austerlitz, we began a long, whispered conversation in the Haut-de-jardin reading room, which was gradually emptying now, about the dissolution, in line with the inexorable spread of processed data, of our capacity to remember, and about the collapse, l’effondrement, as Lemoine put it, of the Bibliotheque Nationale which is already under way. The new library building, which in both its entire layout and its near-ludicrous internal regulation seeks to exclude the reader as a potential enemy, might be described, so Lemoine thought, said Austerlitz, as the official manifestation of the increasingly importunate urge to break with everything which still has some living connection to the past. At a certain point in our conversation, said Austerlitz, and in response to a casual request of mine,

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He was born at Hochheim, near Gotha, and died probably in Cologne.437 In the last years of the thirteenth century he was prior of the Dominican convent of Erfurt, and provincial of the Dominicans in Thuringia, and in 1300 was sent to Paris to lecture, taking the master’s degree, and later the doctorate. After his sojourn in France he was made prior of his order in Saxony, a province at that time extending from the Lowlands to Livland. In 1311 he was again sent to Paris as a teacher. Subsequently he preached in Strassburg, was prior in Frankfurt, 1320, and thence went to Cologne. Charges of heresy were preferred against him in 1325 by the archbishop of Cologne, Henry of Virneburg. The same year the Dominicans, at their general chapter held in Venice, listened to complaints that certain popular preachers in Germany were leading the people astray, and sent a representative to make investigations. Henry of Virneburg had shown himself zealous in the prosecution of heretics. In 1322, Walter, a Beghard leader, was burnt, and in 1325 a number of Beghards died in the flames along the Rhine. It is possible that Eckart was quoted by these sectaries, and in this way was exposed to the charge of heresy. The archbishop’s accusations, which had been sent to Rome, were set aside by Nicolas of Strassburg, Eckart’s friend, who at the time held the position of inquisitor in Germany. In 1327, the archbishop again proceeded against the suspected preacher and also against Nicolas. Both appealed from the archbishop’s tribunal to the pope. In February, Eckart made a public statement in the Dominican church at Cologne, declaring he had always eschewed heresy in doctrine and declension in morals, and expressed his readiness to retract errors, if such should be found in his writings.438 In a bull dated March 27, 1329, John XXII. announced that of the 26 articles charged against Eckart, 15 were heretical and the remaining 11 had the savor of heresy. Two other articles, not cited in the indictment, were also pronounced heretical. The papal decision stated that Eckart had acknowledged the 17 condemned articles as heretical. There is no evidence of such acknowledgment in the offenders extant writing.439 Among the articles condemned were the following. As soon as God was, He created the world.—The world is eternal.—External acts are not in a proper sense good and divine.—The fruit of external acts does not make us good, but internal acts which the Father works in us.—God loves the soul, not external acts. The two added articles charged Eckart with holding that there is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable, and that God is neither good nor better nor best, so that God can no more be called good than white can be called black. Eckart merits study as a preacher and as a mystic theologian. As a Preacher.—His sermons were delivered in churches and at conferences within cloistral walls. His style is graphic and attractive, to fascination.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Overtly Kruger never uttered a word of reproach but his manner indicated plainly enough that I was becoming a bum. One day I was taken ill. The rich diet was taking effect upon me. I don’t know what ailed me, but I couldn’t get out of bed. I had lost all my stamina, and with it whatever courage I possessed. Kruger had to look after me, had to make broths for me, and so on. It was a trying period for him, more particularly because he was just on the verge of giving an important exhibition at his studio, a private showing to some wealthy connoisseurs from whom he was expecting aid. The cot on which I lay was in the studio; there was no other room to put me in. The morning of the day he was to give his exhibition, Kruger awoke thoroughly disgruntled. If I had been able to stand on my feet I know he would have given me a clout in the jaw and kicked me out. But I was prostrate, and weak as a cat. He tried to coax me out of bed, with the idea of locking me up in the kitchen upon the arrival of his visitors. I realized that I was making a mess of it for him. People can’t look at pictures and statues with enthusiasm when a man is dying before their eyes. Kruger honestly thought I was dying. So did I. That’s why, despite my feelings of guilt, I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm when he proposed calling for the ambulance and having me shipped to the American Hospital. I wanted to die there, comfortably, right in the studio; I didn’t want to be urged to get up and find a better place to die in. I didn’t care where I died, really, so long as it wasn’t necessary to get up. When he heard me talk this way Kruger became alarmed. Worse than having a sick man in his studio should the visitors arrive, was to have a dead man. That would completely ruin his prospects, slim as they were. He didn’t put it that way to me, of course, but I could see from his agitation that that was what worried him. And that made me stubborn. I refused to let him call the hospital. I refused to let him call a doctor. I refused everything. He got so angry with me finally that, despite my protestations, he began to dress me. I was too weak to resist. All I could do was to murmur weakly—“you bastard you!” Though it was warm outdoors I was shivering like a dog. After he had completely dressed me he flung an overcoat over me and slipped outside to telephone. “I won’t go! I won’t go!” I kept saying but he simply slammed the door on me. He came back in a few minutes and, without addressing a word to me, busied himself about the studio. Last minute preparations.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I stood over him, with one eye on the clock, and watched every stroke of the pen. It hurt to hand over the dough. Not all of it, thank God—but a good part of it. I had roughly about 2,500 francs in my pocket. Roughly, I say. I wasn’t counting by francs any more. A hundred, or two hundred, more or less—it didn’t mean a goddamned thing to me. As for him, he was going through the whole transaction in a daze. He didn’t know how much money he had. All he knew was that he had to keep something aside for Ginette. He wasn’t certain yet how much—we were going to figure that out on the way to the station. In the excitement we had forgotten to change all the money. We were already in the cab, however, and there wasn’t any time to be lost. The thing was to find out how we stood. We emptied our pockets quickly and began to whack it up. Some of it was lying on the floor, some of it was on the seat. It was bewildering. There was French, American and English money. And all that chicken feed besides. I felt like picking up the coins and chucking them out of the window—just to simplify matters. Finally we sifted it all out; he held on to the English and American money, and I held on to the French money. We had to decide quickly now what to do about Ginette—how much to give her, what to tell her, etc. He was trying to fix up a yarn for me to hand her—didn’t want her to break her heart and so forth. I had to cut him short. “Never mind what to tell her,” I said. “Leave that to me. How much are you going to give her, that’s the thing? Why give her anything?” That was like setting a bomb under his ass. He burst into tears. Such tears! It was worse than before. I thought he was going to collapse on my hands. Without stopping to think, I said: “All right, let’s give her all this French money. That ought to last her for a while.” “How much is it?” he asked feebly. “I don’t know—about 2,000 francs or so. More than she deserves anyway.” “Christ! Don’t say that!” he begged. “After all, it’s a rotten break I’m giving her. Her folks’ll never take her back now. No, give it to her. Give her the whole damned business. … I don’t care what it is.” He pulled a handkerchief out to wipe the tears away. “I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s too much for me.” I said nothing. Suddenly he sprawled himself out full length—I thought he was taking a fit or something—and he said: “Jesus, I think I ought to go back. I ought to go back and face the music. If anything should happen to her I’d never forgive myself.” That was a rude jolt for me.