Joy

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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly’s, and was in very high spirits. To explain to Stepan Arkadyevitch the state of excitement in which he found himself, he said that he was happy like a dog being trained to jump through a hoop, who, having at last caught the idea, and done what was required of him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps up to the table and the windows in its delight. Chapter 2 On the day of the wedding, according to the Russian custom (the princess and Darya Alexandrovna insisted on strictly keeping all the customs), Levin did not see his betrothed, and dined at his hotel with three bachelor friends, casually brought together at his rooms. These were Sergey Ivanovitch, Katavasov, a university friend, now professor of natural science, whom Levin had met in the street and insisted on taking home with him, and Tchirikov, his best man, a Moscow conciliation-board judge, Levin’s companion in his bear-hunts. The dinner was a very merry one: Sergey Ivanovitch was in his happiest mood, and was much amused by Katavasov’s originality. Katavasov, feeling his originality was appreciated and understood, made the most of it. Tchirikov always gave a lively and good-humored support to conversation of any sort. “See, now,” said Katavasov, drawling his words from a habit acquired in the lecture-room, “what a capable fellow was our friend Konstantin Dmitrievitch. I’m not speaking of present company, for he’s absent. At the time he left the university he was fond of science, took an interest in humanity; now one-half of his abilities is devoted to deceiving himself, and the other to justifying the deceit.” “A more determined enemy of matrimony than you I never saw,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “Oh, no, I’m not an enemy of matrimony. I’m in favor of division of labor. People who can do nothing else ought to rear people while the rest work for their happiness and enlightenment. That’s how I look at it. To muddle up two trades is the error of the amateur; I’m not one of their number.” “How happy I shall be when I hear that you’re in love!” said Levin. “Please invite me to the wedding.” “I’m in love now.” “Yes, with a cuttlefish! You know,” Levin turned to his brother, “Mihail Semyonovitch is writing a work on the digestive organs of the....” “Now, make a muddle of it! It doesn’t matter what about. And the fact is, I certainly do love cuttlefish.” “But that’s no hindrance to your loving your wife.” “The cuttlefish is no hindrance. The wife is the hindrance.” “Why so?” “Oh, you’ll see! You care about farming, hunting,—well, you’d better look out!” “Arhip was here today; he said there were a lot of elks in Prudno, and two bears,” said Tchirikov. “Well, you must go and get them without me.” “Ah, that’s the truth,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “And you may say good-bye to bear-hunting for the future—your wife won’t allow it!”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  In the back of this cavernous Coliseum, someone began to sing “We Shall Overcome.” Like waves of an ocean, people stood to sing, too. I saw a white man and woman from the Mississippi delegation, the group that had been elected as a state conference partly taken over by the Klan, reach across neighbors to hold hands and stand. By the second chorus, the observers in the bleachers and media were standing and singing, too. Even after the singing was over, people raised clasped hands above their heads and chanted, “It’s our movement now!” No one seemed to want this moment to end. I was surprised to find myself in tears. Because these women had trusted me to help as a writer, I began to see a way of bringing together two things—writing and activism—that until then had torn me apart in everyday life. From those two years on, I divided my life into Before and After. Before Houston, I had voted to pay some of our scarce funds to retired policemen, who would know how to protect the conference from hostile demonstrators. After Houston, I realized that the young women volunteers with red T-shirts and movement experience had kept security far better than the retired cops. My lack of belief in them had been a lack of belief in myself. Before Houston, I had known that women in small groups could be courageous and loyal to each other and respect each other’s differences. After Houston, I’d learned that women could do this in large numbers, across chasms of difference, and for serious purpose. Before Houston, I had said that women could run huge public events at least as well as men. After Houston, I believed it. At the end of an emotional closing ceremony that left all the delegates plus observers singing and chanting, clusters of women lingered for hours on the convention floor—talking, exchanging addresses, pledging to stay in touch. They seemed reluctant to leave this space that had been our only reality for three days and nights. Then at last I found myself standing alone amid the litter and empty chairs, feeling my adrenaline draining away and exhaustion rushing in. I wondered: Would anybody in the future know or care what had happened here? From my own college history courses, I knew that a century of abolitionists and suffragists had been reduced to a few textbook paragraphs. Magnetic people could be made to seem distant, boring, irrelevant. In newspaper coverage, the Houston conference was far overshadowed by a brief and symbolic visit to Israel by President Sadat of Egypt.15 As if summoned by my doubt, three young Native women were walking toward me across the Coliseum floor. One was carrying a red-fringed shawl with a ribbon-work border of purple and gold. Another held a long beaded necklace with a large blue and white medallion. They put the shawl around my shoulders, explaining that I could wear it while dancing at powwows.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Then I turned back my sight unto my Lady, and on this side and that I was bemazed; for in her eyes was blazing such a smile, I thought with mine I had touched the bottom both of my grace and of my Paradise. Then—joyous both to hearing and to sight—the spirit added things to his beginning I understood not, so profound his speech; neither of choice hid he himself from me, but of necessity, for above the target of mortals his thought took its place. And when the bow of ardent love was so tempered that his discourse descended towards the target of our intellect; the first I understood was, “Blessed be thou, thou Three and One, who art so greatly courteous in my seed.” And followed on: “A dear long-cherished hunger, drawn from the reading of the mighty volume wherein not changeth ever white nor black, thou hast assuaged, my son, within this light, wherein I speak to thee; thanks unto her who for the lofty flight clad thee with wings. Thou deemest that to me thy thought hath way e’en from the primal Thought, as ray forth from the monad, rightly known, the pentad and the hexad; and therefore, who I be, or why I seem to thee more gladsome than another in this festive throng thou makest not demand. Rightly thou deemest; for less and great in this life gaze on the mirror 2 whereon, or ere thou thinkest, thou dost outspread thy thought. But that the sacred love, wherein I watch with sight unintermitted, and which setteth me athirst with a sweet longing, may be fulfilled the better, secure and bold and joyous let thy voice sound forth the will, sound forth the longing, whereto my answer already is decreed.” I turned to Beatrice, and she heard ere that I spoke, and granted me a signal that made the wings of my desire increase. Then I thus began: “Love and intelligence, soon as the prime equality appeared to you, became of equal poise to each of you, because the sun which lightened you and warmed with heat and brightness hath such equality that illustrations all fall short of it. But unto mortals, will and instrument, for reason manifest to you, unequally are feathered in their wings. 3 Wherefore I, a mortal, feel the stress of this unequalness, and therefore only with my heart give thanks for the paternal greeting. But I may and do entreat thee, living topaz, who dost be-gem this precious jewel, that thou assuage me with thy name.” “Oh leaf of mine, in whom I took delight, only expecting thee, I was thy taproot,” such opening in his answer made he me. Then said: “He from whom thy kindred hath its name, and who a hundred years and more 4 hath circled round the Mount on the first terrace, was son to me, and thy grandfather’s father; meet it is, that with thy works thou shouldst abate his long-stretched toil for him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “You were driving to Ergushovo,” said Levin, feeling as if he would sob with the rapture that was flooding his heart. “And how dared I associate a thought of anything not innocent with this touching creature? And, yes, I do believe it’s true what Darya Alexandrovna told me,” he thought. Stepan Arkadyevitch took him by the arm and led him away to Karenin. “Let me introduce you.” He mentioned their names. “Very glad to meet you again,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly, shaking hands with Levin. “You are acquainted?” Stepan Arkadyevitch asked in surprise. “We spent three hours together in the train,” said Levin smiling, “but got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified—at least I was.” “Nonsense! Come along, please,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing in the direction of the dining-room. The men went into the dining-room and went up to a table, laid with six sorts of spirits and as many kinds of cheese, some with little silver spades and some without, caviar, herrings, preserves of various kinds, and plates with slices of French bread. The men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt delicacies, and the discussion of the Russification of Poland between Koznishev, Karenin, and Pestsov died down in anticipation of dinner. Sergey Ivanovitch was unequaled in his skill in winding up the most heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of Attic salt that changed the disposition of his opponent. He did this now. Alexey Alexandrovitch had been maintaining that the Russification of Poland could only be accomplished as a result of larger measures which ought to be introduced by the Russian government. Pestsov insisted that one country can only absorb another when it is the more densely populated. Koznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they were going out of the drawing-room to conclude the argument, Koznishev said, smiling: “So, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there is but one method—to bring up as many children as one can. My brother and I are terribly in fault, I see. You married men, especially you, Stepan Arkadyevitch, are the real patriots: what number have you reached?” he said, smiling genially at their host and holding out a tiny wine-glass to him. Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevitch with particular good humor. “Oh, yes, that’s the best method!” he said, munching cheese and filling the wine-glass with a special sort of spirit. The conversation dropped at the jest. “This cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?” said the master of the house. “Why, have you been going in for gymnastics again?” he asked Levin, pinching his muscle with his left hand. Levin smiled, bent his arm, and under Stepan Arkadyevitch’s fingers the muscles swelled up like a sound cheese, hard as a knob of iron, through the fine cloth of the coat. “What biceps! A perfect Samson!”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Even on this short trip to the bohemian end of Wellington – a journey that, having been traversed by car, offered no opportunity whatsoever for reading – she had brought along, in her knapsack, three novels and a short tract by De Beauvoir on ambiguity – so much ballast to stop her floating away, up and over the flood, into the night sky. ‘The Zor meister – rocking with the salt of the earth .’ At her right were her friends, greeting her; at her left, the homeless guy, just at her shoulder, from whom she now moved away, laughing stupidly at the idea of any connection between them. She was hugged and shaken. Here were people, friends. A boy called Ron, of delicate build whose movements were tidy and ironic, who liked to be clean, who liked things Japanese. A girl called Daisy, tall and solid like a swimmer, with an all-American ingeńue face, sandy hair and more of a salty manner than she required, given her looks. Daisy liked eighties romantic comedies and Kevin Bacon and thrift-store handbags. Hannah was red-headed and freckled, rational, hard-working, mature. She liked Ezra Pound and making her own clothes. Here were people. Here were tastes and buying habits and physical attributes. ‘Where’s Claire?’ asked Zora, looking around them. ‘ ’Cross the street,’ said Ron, holding his hand against his hip. ‘With Eddie and Lena and Chantelle and everybody – most of the class came. Claire’s loving it, naturally.’ ‘She sent you over?’ ‘I guess. Ooooh, Dr Belsey. Do you smell trauma?’ Happily, Zora rose to the bait. By virtue of who she was she had information other students could not hope to have. She was their vital link to the inner life of professors. She had no qualms about sharing all she knew.  the anatomy lesson ‘Are you serious ? She totally can’t look me in the eye – even in class, when I’m reading she’s nodding at the window.’ ‘I think she’s just ADD,’ drawled Daisy. ‘Attention Dick Deficiency,’ said Zora, because she was extremely quick. ‘If it doesn’t have a dick, it’s basically deficient.’ Her little audience guffawed, pretending to a worldliness none of them had earned. Ron gripped her chummily round the shoulders. ‘The wages of sin, etcetera,’ he said as they began to walk, and then, ‘Whither morality?’ ‘Whither poetry?’ said Hannah. ‘Whither my ass?’ said Daisy, and nudged Zora for one of her cigarettes. They were smooth and bright, and their timing was wonderful, and they were young and hilarious. It was really something to see, they thought, and this was why they spoke loudly and gestured, inviting onlookers to admire. ‘ Tell me about it,’ said Zora, and flicked open the carton.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Was it thanks to those theatricals that she had now outgrown her juvenile jaded airs and was so adorably keen to explore rich reality? I experienced the queer lightness of dreams that pale but warm Sunday morning when we abandoned Professor Chem’s puzzled house and sped along Main Street toward the four-lane highway. My Love’s striped, black-and-white, cotton frock, jaunty blue cap, white socks and brown moccasins were not quite in keeping with the large beautifully cut aquamarine on a silver chainlet, which gemmed her throat: a spring rain gift from me. We passed the New Hotel, and she laughed. “A penny for your thoughts,” I said and she stretched out her palm at once, but at that moment I had to apply the brakes rather abruptly at a red light. As we pulled up, another car came to a gliding stop alongside, and a very striking looking, athletically lean young woman (where had I seen her?) with a high complexion and shoulder-length brilliant bronze hair, greeted Lo with a ringing “Hi!”—and then, addressing me, effusively, edusively (placed!), stressing certain words, said: “What a shame it was to tear Dolly away from the play—you should have heard the author raving about her after that rehearsal—” “Green light, you dope,” said Lo under her breath, and simultaneously, waving in bright adieu a bangled arm, Joan of Arc (in a performance we saw at the local theatre) violently outdistanced us to swerve into Campus Avenue. “Who was it exactly? Vermont or Rumpelmeyer?” “No—Edusa Gold—the gal who coaches us.” “I was not referring to her. Who exactly concocted that play?” “Oh! Yes, of course. Some old woman, Clare Something, I guess. There was quite a crowd of them there.” “So she complimented you?” “Complimented my eye—she kissed me on my pure brow”—and my darling emitted that new yelp of merriment which—perhaps in connection with her theatrical mannerisms—she had lately begun to affect. “You are a funny creature, Lolita,” I said—or some such words. “Naturally, I am overjoyed you gave up that absurd stage business. But what is curious is that you dropped the whole thing only a week before its natural climax. Oh, Lolita, you should be careful of those surrenders of yours. I remember you gave up Ramsdale for camp, and camp for a joyride, and I could list other abrupt changes in your disposition. You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere. You should try to be a little nicer to me, Lolita. You should also watch your diet. The tour of your thigh, you know, should not exceed seventeen and a half inches. More might be fatal (I was kidding, of course).

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Finally came he which was appointed to my good fortune, according to the promise ‘of the . most puissant goddess. For the great priest, which bare the restoration of my human shape, by the com- mandment of the goddess approached more and more, carrying in his right hand both the timbrel and the garland of roses to give me, which was in very deed my crown to deliver me from cruel fortune which was always mine enemy, after the sufferance of so much calamity and pain, and after the endurance of so many perils. Then I, not running hastily by reason of sudden joy, lest I should disturb the quiet procession with my beastly importunity, but going softly as a man doth step 559 LUCIUS APULEIUS quato corpore, sane divinitus decedente populo, sensim 13 irrepo. At sacerdos ut reapse cognoscere potui, nocturni commonefactus oraculi miratusque con- gruentiam mandati muneris, confestim restitit, et ultro porrecta dextera ob os ipsum meum coronam exhibuit. Tunc ego trepidans, assiduo pulsu micanti corde, coronam, quae rosis amoenis intexta fulgurabat, avido ore susceptam cupidus promissi devoravi. Nec me fefellit caeleste promissum : protinus mihi dela. bitur deformis et ferina facies. Ac primo quidem squalens pilus defluit, ac dehinc cutis crassa tenuatur, venter obesus residet, pedum plantae per ungulas in digitos exeunt, manus non iam pedes sunt sed in erecta porriguntur officia, cervix procera cohibetur, os et caput rotundatur, aures enormes repetunt pristinam parvitatem, dentes saxei redeunt ad hu- manam minutiem, et, quae me potissimum cruciabat ante, cauda nusquam. Populi mirantur, religiosi venerantur tam evidentem maximi numinis potentiam et consimilem nocturnis imaginibus magnificentiam et facilitatem reformationis, claraque et consona voce, caelo manus attendentes, testantur tam illustre deae beneficium. 14 At ego stupore nimio defixus tacitus haerebam, animo meo tam repentinum tamque magnum non capiente gaudium, quid potissimum praefarer pri- marium, unde novae vocis exordium caperem, quo sermone nunc renata lingua felicius auspicarer, quibus quantisque verbis tantae deae gratias agerem, Sed sacerdos, utcumque divino monitu cognitis ab 560 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  While I did devise with myself all these things with an orator’s indignation, I perceived by certain signs and tokens (which were doubtful but yet not ignorant to so wise an ass) that he was not the notable thief Haemus, but rather Tlepolemus her husband. For after much communication he began to speak more openly, not fearing any more my presence than if I were dead, and said: “Be of 317 LUCIUS APULEIUS dulcissima, nam totos istos hostes tuos statim captivos habebis," et instantia validiore vinum iam inmixtum, sed modico tepefactum vapore, sauciis illis et crapula vinolentiaque madidis ipse abstemius non cessat im- pingere. Et Hercule suspicionem mihi fecit, quasi soporiferum quoddam venenum cantharis immisceret illis. Cuncti denique sed prorsus omnes vino sepulti iacebant, omnes pares mortuis. Tune nullo negotio artissimis vinculis impeditis ac pro arbitrio suo constrictis illis, imposita dorso meo puella, dirigit gressum ad suam patriam. 13 Quam simul accessimus, tota civitas ad votivum conspectum effunditur. Procurrunt parentes, affines, clientes, alumni, famuli, laeti faciem, gaudio delibuti : pompam cerneres omnis sexus et omnis aetatis no- vumque et Hercule memorandum spectamen, vir- ginem asino triumphantem. Denique ipse etiam hilarior pro virili parte ne praesenti negotio ut alienus discreparem, porrectis auribus proflatisque naribus rudivi fortiter, immo tonanti clamore per- sonui. Etillam thalamo receptam commode parentes sui fovebant, me vero cum ingenti iumentorum civiumque multitudine confestim retro Tlepolemus agebat non invitum, nam et alias curiosus et tunc 318 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII good cheer, my sweet friend Charite, for thou shalt have by and by all these thy enemies captive unto thee." Then he filled wine to the thieves more and more, mixed with no water, but a little warmed, and never ceased till they were all overcome and soaked with abundance of drink, whereas he himself ab- stained and bridled his own appetite: and truly, I did greatly suspect that he had mingled in their cups some deadly poison, for incontinently they all fell down asleep on the ground one after another, drowned and overcome by the wine, and lay as though they had been dead. Then did he very easily tie them all in chains and bind them as he would, and he took the maiden and set her upon my back and went homeward.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third, when we suddenly see a new reality. Einstein said he had to be very careful while shaving, because when he had an idea, he laughed—and he cut himself. Laughter is an orgasm of the mind. On the road, moments of surrealism may come and go in a second: I’m looking out the scenic window of a train speeding through miles of empty moonlit desert—when acres of neatly arranged abandoned refrigerators flash by. They may also last for hours: I’m returning tired to a sterile hotel lobby, and am invited into a reunion of the last living members of a Negro baseball league, whose stories take me into another world. Since learning causes our brains to grow new synapses, I like to believe that the road is sharpening my mind and lengthening my life with surprise. II.It’s 1997, toward the end of my third decade traveling as an organizer, and I’m speaking at a campus near Boston. The postlecture discussion has lasted until midnight, the last plane to New York is long gone, and I must get home so I can leave on another trip in the morning. Fortunately, kindhearted students come to my rescue with a local car service, and even steal a pillow from a dorm so I can sleep all the way home. But once on the road, I’m still wide awake with postlecture adrenaline. Also the driver, a cheerful white guy in his fifties, wants to talk. As we make our way through a blinding rainstorm, he explains that we’re safe because he used to be a cross-country trucker driving in all kinds of weather. He pulled down $200,000 a year, and owned his own rig, but quit because he was a stranger to his wife and grandkids. Now that he owns this local car service, he has a family again—but still, he misses, really misses, his old cross-country life. “What do you miss?” I ask, imagining he’ll say speed, going it alone, adrenaline, danger—everything I remember from the classic movie They Drive by Night. “I miss the community,” he says. Since this isn’t at all what I expected, I ask him to explain. He says civilians just don’t understand, and asks if I want to see for myself. We turn off the turnpike onto a service road. Near three gas pumps, I see several parked trucks, their huge shapes outlined by multicolored safety lights that shine through the black rain like Christmas. Behind them is a windowless shack that’s dark except for a couple of neon beer signs. Opening the door is like throwing a switch. We’re plunged into bright lights, laughter, music, the smell of fresh bread, and an energy level more like noon than two a.m. At the counter, we are served coffee in mugs as heavy as dumbbells plus slabs of a pie that must have been big enough for four-and-twenty blackbirds.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "How can I describe what I felt then? I didn't dare dream of the Queen. I was so bereft that any respite was wondrous to me. He led me now into the castle, and I who had rebelled against everyone was quickly scampering after him down the stone corridors past the slippers and boots of Lords and Ladies who all turned to take some notice of me and give some compliment. The stable boy was very proud. "And then we entered a great high-ceilinged parlor. It seemed never in my life had I seen cream-colored velvet and gilt, and statues against the walls, nor the bouquets of fresh flowers everywhere. I felt myself born again with no thought of my own nakedness or subservience. "And there sat the Queen in a high-backed chair, resplendent in purple velvet, her ermine cape over her shoulders, I scurried forward boldly, ready to offend by obsequiousness, and showered her hem and her shoes with kisses. "At once she stroked my hair, and lifted my head. 'Have you suffered enough for you stubbornness?' she asked, and as she did not take her hands away I kissed them, kissed her soft palms and her warm fingers. The sound of her laugh was beautiful to me. I glimpsed the mounds of her white breasts, and the tight girdle about her waist. I kissed her hands until she stopped me and held my face and opened my mouth with her fingers and felt of my lips and teeth and then removed the gag, saying that I must not speak. At once I nodded. "This will be a day of tests for you, my willful young Prince," she said. And then she put me in a paroxysm of exquisite pleasure by touching my penis. She felt of its hardness. I tried to keep my hips from moving forward towards her. "She approved. And then she ordered my punishments. She had heard of my chastisement in the garden, she said, and would my young groom, the stable boy, please punish me for her amusement. "I was on the round marble table in front of her at once, squatting obediently. I remember the doors were open. I saw the distant figures of Lords and Ladies moving past. I knew there were other Ladies in this very room. I could see the soft colors of their dresses and even the shimmer of their hair. But I had no thought but to please the Queen and only hoped that I might manage to remain in this difficult squatting position for her as long as she wished, no matter how cruel the paddle.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the figure when the cards were brought him. “Coming, coming!” He went in to his wife. “Come, Sasha, don’t be cross!” he said, smiling timidly and affectionately at her. “You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it all right.” And having made peace with his wife he put on an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards his studio. The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit of these people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their carriage. Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the bottom of his heart one conviction—that no one had ever painted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picture was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people’s criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from them something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he had found this.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears,” observed Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had the mistiest notions about the chase. He cut off and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine as a spider-web. Levin smiled. “Not at all. Quite the contrary; a child can kill a bear,” he said, with a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were approaching the table. “You have killed a bear, I’ve been told!” said Kitty, trying assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip away, and setting the lace quivering over her white arm. “Are there bears on your place?” she added, turning her charming little head to him and smiling. There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness—soft, timid tenderness—and promise and hope and love for him, which he could not but believe in and which choked him with happiness. “No, we’ve been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back from there that I met your _beau-frère_ in the train, or your _beau-frère’s_ brother-in-law,” he said with a smile. “It was an amusing meeting.” And he began telling with droll good-humor how, after not sleeping all night, he had, wearing an old fur-lined, full-skirted coat, got into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s compartment. “The conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out on account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings in elevated language, and ... you, too,” he said, addressing Karenin and forgetting his name, “at first would have ejected me on the ground of the old coat, but afterwards you took my part, for which I am extremely grateful.” “The rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too ill-defined,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, rubbing the tips of his fingers on his handkerchief. “I saw you were in uncertainty about me,” said Levin, smiling good-naturedly, “but I made haste to plunge into intellectual conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire.” Sergey Ivanovitch, while he kept up a conversation with their hostess, had one ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at him. “What is the matter with him today? Why such a conquering hero?” he thought. He did not know that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings. Levin knew she was listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him. And this was the only thing that interested him. Not in that room only, but in the whole world, there existed for him only himself, with enormously increased importance and dignity in his own eyes, and she. He felt himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy, and far away down below were all those nice excellent Karenins, Oblonskys, and all the world.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty knew that this insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of shame at being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving to be better—she loved it in him, and so she smiled. “And you? What are you dissatisfied with?” she asked, with the same smile. Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds of her disbelief. “I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself....” he said. “Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?” “Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing whatever but that you should not stumble—see? Oh, but really you mustn’t skip about like that!” he cried, breaking off to scold her for too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path. “But when I think about myself, and compare myself with others, especially with my brother, I feel I’m a poor creature.” “But in what way?” Kitty pursued with the same smile. “Don’t you too work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work on the estate, and your book?...” “Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your fault,” he said, pressing her hand—“that all that doesn’t count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.” “Well, what would you say about papa?” asked Kitty. “Is he a poor creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?” “He?—no! But then one must have the simplicity, the straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven’t got that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It’s all your doing. Before there was you—and _this_ too,” he added with a glance towards her waist that she understood—“I put all my energies into work; now I can’t, and I’m ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, I’m pretending....” “Well, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey Ivanovitch?” said Kitty. “Would you like to do this work for the general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing else?” “Of course not,” said Levin. “But I’m so happy that I don’t understand anything. So you think he’ll make her an offer today?” he added after a brief silence. “I think so, and I don’t think so. Only, I’m awfully anxious for it. Here, wait a minute.” She stooped down and picked a wild camomile at the edge of the path. “Come, count: he does propose, he doesn’t,” she said, giving him the flower.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  so the fair Lady, after I was taken by her, set forth, and so Statius with queenly mien did say: “Come with him.” If, reader I had greater space for writing, I would sing, at least in part, of the sweet draught which never would have sated me; but forasmuch as all the pages ordained for this second canticle are filled, the curb of art no further lets me go. I came back from the most holy waves, born again, even as new trees renewed with new foliage, pure and ready to mount to the stars.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  For millennia, we have passed down knowledge through story and song. If you tell me a statistic, I’ll make up a story to explain why it’s true. Our brains are organized by narrative and image. After I joined the ranks of traveling organizers—which just means being an entrepreneur of social change—I discovered the magic of people telling their own stories to groups of strangers. It’s as if attentive people create a magnetic force field for stories the tellers themselves didn’t know they had within them. Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak. Perhaps because women are seen as good listeners, I find that a traveling woman—perhaps especially a traveling feminist—becomes a kind of celestial bartender. People say things they wouldn’t share with a therapist. As I became more recognizable as part of a movement that gives birth to hope in many people’s lives, I became the recipient of even more stories from both women and men. I remember such serendipity as waiting out a storm in a roadhouse that just happened to have a jukebox and a stranded tango teacher who explained the street history of this dance; hearing Mohawk children as they relearned language and spiritual rituals that had been forbidden for generations; sitting with a group of Fundamentalists Anonymous as they talked about kicking the drug of certainty; being interviewed by a nine-year-old girl who was the best player on an otherwise all-boy football team; and meeting a Latina college student, the daughter of undocumented immigrants, who handed me her card: CANDIDATE FOR THE U .S . PRESIDENCY , 2032. There are also natural gifts of an on-the-road life. For instance, witnessing the northern lights in Colorado, or walking under a New Mexico moon bright enough to reveal the lines in my palm, or hearing the story of a solitary elephant in a Los Angeles zoo reunited with an elephant friend of many years before, or finding myself snowed into Chicago with a fireplace, a friend, and a reason to cancel everything. More reliably than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present. —MY LAST HOPE IS to open up the road—literally. So far it’s been overwhelmingly masculine turf. Men embody adventure, women embody hearth and home, and that has been pretty much it. Even as a child, I noticed that Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz spent her entire time trying to get back home to Kansas, and Alice in Wonderland dreamed her long adventure, then woke up just in time for tea. From Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey to Eugene O’Neill’s heroes who were kept from the sea by clinging women, I had little reason to think the road was open to me. In high school, I saw Viva Zapata!, the Hollywood version of that great Mexican revolutionary.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  One woman rises to speak: “Close your eyes and pretend you are living with a woman—how would you divide the housework?” There is a long pause. “Now, don’t lower your standards.” There are cheers of approval. • On another campus, some women tell me about men who leave their underwear on the floor and don’t feel compelled to pick it up—or even notice. By now, the shouts and laughter have become quite rowdy, and I’ve begun to worry about a silent young Japanese woman near the front. Perhaps we are offending her. As if summoned by my thought, she stands and turns to face all five hundred or so women. “When my husband leaves his underwear on the floor,” she says quietly, “I find it quite useful to nail it to the floor.” Amid laughter and cheers, this shy young woman seems surprised to find herself laughing, too. She tells the group this is the first time she has ever said anything in public. • In a discussion of the advantages of having younger men as husbands and lovers—because they’re more likely to treat women as equals—one woman rises to say, “Of course they understand better. We were their mothers!” Once again I worry about a much older and ladylike woman in a front row who looks disapproving. When I ask if we are offending her, she rises, turns to the audience, and says, “When you are having an affair with a younger man”—I notice she doesn’t say if, but when —“try never to get on top. You look like a bulldog.” This remark coming from an unlikely woman—but one who had clearly been there—brought down the house. —IF THERE IS ONE thing that these campus visits have affirmed for me, it’s that the miraculous but impersonal Internet is not enough. As in the abolitionist and suffragist era, when there were only six hundred or so colleges with a hundred students each—and itinerant organizers like the Grimké sisters, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth traveled to speak in town halls, granges, churches, and campgrounds—nothing can replace being in the same space. That’s exactly why we need to keep creating the temporary worlds of meetings, small and large, on campuses and everywhere else. In them, we discover we’re not alone, we learn from one another, and so we keep going toward shared goals. Individual organizers in the civil rights movement had a network of black churches, not just phones and mimeograph machines, and veterans speaking against the war in Vietnam had coffeehouses and rock concerts. Now that there are at least four thousand campuses with more than fifteen million students—not yet diverse enough, but more diverse than ever before—they are the mainstay for wandering organizers like me. I recommend trying this kind of grassroots organizing for a week or a year, a month or a lifetime—working for whatever change you want to see in the world.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  We could finish each other’s sentences. Inspired by our different paths to a shared place, we had the idea of collecting Gandhian tactics into a pamphlet for women’s movements everywhere. After all, Gandhi’s tactic of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, would be well suited to women, and so would his massive marches and consumer boycotts. As part of our research, we interviewed Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, a rare woman leader during the independence struggle. She had worked with Gandhi, led his national women’s organization, warned him against agreeing to the partition of India and Pakistan as the price of independence, and then led a renaissance of Indian handicrafts that used the talents of millions of refugees displaced by partition. As we explained our idea of teaching Gandhian tactics to women’s movements, she listened to us patiently, sitting and rocking on her veranda, sipping tea. When we were finished, she said, “Well, of course, my dears. We taught him everything he knew.” She made us laugh—and she explained. In India under the British, Gandhi had witnessed a massive women’s movement organizing against suttee, the immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres, and much more. In England as a young man studying to be a barrister, Gandhi also saw the suffrage movement, and he later urged activists working for self-rule in India to emulate the courage and tactics of the Pankhursts, England’s most famous and radical suffragists. After his return to India from South Africa, where he organized against the discrimination that Indians were subjected to, he was alarmed to find an independence movement with almost no roots in the villages and the daily lives of ordinary people. He began to live like a villager himself, to organize mass marches and consumer boycotts, and to measure success by changes in the lives of the poorest and least powerful: village women. As Kamaladevi explained kindly, Devaki and I had the Great Man theory of history, and hadn’t known that the tactics we were drawn to were our own. She made us both laugh again—and learn. As Vita Sackville-West wrote: I worshipped dead men for their strength, Forgetting I was strong. —WHEN I WENT HOME after that second India visit, I saw my own past differently. I had walked in Indian villages in the 1950s, sure that they had no relevance to my own life. But now a women’s revolution was springing from talking circles of our own. At home, I had been going to everything from battered women’s shelters and freestanding women’s clinics to women’s centers on campuses and protests by single mothers trying to survive on welfare. My becoming an itinerant feminist organizer was just a Western version of walking in villages.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his opponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position. He tried to say this. She knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to illustrate his meaning, she understood at once. “I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to him, then one can....” She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most complex ideas. Shtcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a card-table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging circles over the new green cloth. They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner—the liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman’s duties in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no family can get on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nurses, either relations or hired. “No,” said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes; “a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself....” At the hint he understood her. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes—you’re right; you’re right!” And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old maid’s existence and its humiliation in Kitty’s heart; and loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments. A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Sviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was indeed no failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to Nevyedovsky; they could not have found a better representative of the new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every honest person, as he said, was on the side of today’s success and was rejoicing over it. Stepan Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having a good time, and that everyone was pleased. The episode of the elections served as a good occasion for a capital dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the tearful discourse of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky, that his excellency would have to select another more complicated method of auditing the accounts than tears. Another nobleman jocosely described how footmen in stockings had been ordered for the marshal’s ball, and how now they would have to be sent back unless the new marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings. Continually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky: “our marshal,” and “your excellency.” This was said with the same pleasure with which a bride is called “Madame” and her husband’s name. Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that he was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new liberal tone. After dinner several telegrams were sent to people interested in the result of the election. And Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was in high good humor, sent Darya Alexandrovna a telegram: “Nevyedovsky elected by twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people.” He dictated it aloud, saying: “We must let them share our rejoicing.” Darya Alexandrovna, getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Stiva had a weakness after dining for _faire jouer le télégraphe._ Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not from Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The party—some twenty—had been selected by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and well bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new marshal of the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of “our amiable host.” Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a tone in the provinces. Towards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor asked Vronsky to come to a concert for the benefit of the Servians which his wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been getting up. “There’ll be a ball, and you’ll see the belle of the province. Worth seeing, really.” “Not in my line,” Vronsky answered. He liked that English phrase. But he smiled, and promised to come.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  seeming a star that changeth place, save that from where it kindleth no star is lost, and that itself endureth but a little; such from the horn that stretcheth to the right unto that cross’s foot, darted a star of the constellation that is there a-glow; nor did the gem depart from off its riband, but coursed along the radial line, like fire burning behind alabaster. With such-like tenderness Anchises’ shade proffered itself, if our greatest Muse deserveth credit, when in Elysium he perceived his son.1 “Oh blood of mine! oh grace of God poured o’er thee! to whom, was ever twice, as unto thee, heaven’s gate thrown open?” So spake that light; wherefore I gave my heed to him. Then I turned back my sight unto my Lady, and on this side and that I was bemazed; for in her eyes was blazing such a smile, I thought with mine I had touched the bottom both of my grace and of my Paradise. Then—joyous both to hearing and to sight—the spirit added things to his beginning I understood not, so profound his speech; neither of choice hid he himself from me, but of necessity, for above the target of mortals his thought took its place. And when the bow of ardent love was so tempered that his discourse descended towards the target of our intellect; the first I understood was, “Blessed be thou, thou Three and One, who art so greatly courteous in my seed.” And followed on: “A dear long-cherished hunger, drawn from the reading of the mighty volume wherein not changeth ever white nor black, thou hast assuaged, my son, within this light, wherein I speak to thee; thanks unto her who for the lofty flight clad thee with wings. Thou deemest that to me thy thought hath way e’en from the primal Thought, as ray forth from the monad, rightly known, the pentad and the hexad; and therefore, who I be, or why I seem to thee more gladsome than another in this festive throng thou makest not demand. Rightly thou deemest; for less and great in this life gaze on the mirror2 whereon, or ere thou thinkest, thou dost outspread thy thought. But that the sacred love, wherein I watch with sight unintermitted, and which setteth me athirst with a sweet longing, may be fulfilled the better, secure and bold and joyous let thy voice sound forth the will, sound forth the longing, whereto my answer already is decreed.” I turned to Beatrice, and she heard ere that I spoke, and granted me a signal that made the wings of my desire increase. Then I thus began: “Love and intelligence, soon as the prime equality appeared to you, became of equal poise to each of you, because the sun which lightened you and warmed with heat and brightness hath such equality that illustrations all fall short of it. But unto mortals, will and instrument, for reason manifest to you, unequally are feathered in their wings.3