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 How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  I beam every time I approach it, no matter what else I am brooding about, even though I know the orangutan is not really smiling toward me and does not share a mind like my own. Frankly, if everyone engaged in the mental inference fallacy with animals, and in the process we admitted those animals into our moral circle, maybe we’d have fewer poachers who slaughter elephants and rhinos for their ivory or hunt gorillas and bonobos as food. If people engaged in more mental inference when observing their fellow humans, perhaps we’d have less cruelty and fewer wars. When we have our scientist hats on, however, we must resist the lure of mental inference. 52 We are accustomed to thinking about animals in terms of ourselves: how similar they are to us, what they teach us about ourselves, how they might be useful to us, how we are superior to them. It’s okay for us to anthropomorphize animals if it’s going to protect them. But when we see animals through the lens of our own identity, we can harm them in ways that we often don’t think about. We treat anxiously attached dogs as “too dominant” and punish them when we should be offering them predictable care and affection. We rip baby chimps from their mothers when in the wild they would nurse until they are five years old, secure in the warmth and smell of their mother’s fur. Our challenge is to understand animal minds for their own sake, not as inferior human minds. The latter idea comes from the classical view of human nature, which implies that chimps and other primates are less evolved, diminished versions of ourselves. They’re not. They’re adapted to the ecological niche that they live in. Chimps have to forage for food and modern humans largely do not, so a chimp brain is wired to identify and remember details, not to build mental similarities. 53 In the end, if we learn about animals on their own terms, we will benefit because our relationship with them will be better. We humans will do less damage to them and to the world that we all inhabit. ... Animals are emotional creatures, at least as far as human perceivers are concerned. This is part of the social reality that we create. We grant emotions to our cars, our houseplants, and even little circles and triangles in a movie. We also grant emotions to animals. However, this does not mean that animals experience emotion. Animals with a small affective niche cannot form emotion concepts. A lion cannot hate a zebra when she hunts and kills it as prey. That is why we don’t find the lion’s actions immoral.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  the old times, but he continued to badger her about her future, picking at BY LAWRENCE VENUTI that old wound. At Christmas he was back in Eastwood, and when he visited her he seemed exultant. He had decided that it was Jessie he should marry, that he had in fact been attracted to her all along. They should keep it quiet for a while; although his writing career was taking off (his first 205 206 • The Art of Seduction "What can Love be novel was about to be published), he needed to make more money. Caught then?" I said. "A off guard by this sudden announcement, and overwhelmed with happiness, mortal?" "Far from it." Jessie agreed to everything, and they became lovers. "Well, what?" "As in my previous examples, he is Soon, however, the familiar pattern repeated: criticisms, breakups, an-half-way between mortal nouncements that he was engaged to another girl. This only deepened his and immortal." What sort hold on her. It was not until 1912 that she finally decided never to see him of being is he then, Diotima?" "He is a great again, disturbed by his portrayal of her in the autobiographical novel Sons spirit, Socrates; everything and Lovers. But Lawrence remained a lifelong obsession for her. that is of the nature of a In 1913, a young English woman named Ivy Low, who had read spirit is half-god and half-man." . . . "Who are his Lawrence's novels, began to correspond with him, her letters gushing with parents?" I asked. "That admiration. By now Lawrence was married, to a German woman, the is rather a long story," she Baroness Frieda von Richthofen. To Low's surprise, though, he invited her answered, "but I will tell to visit him and his wife in Italy. She knew he was probably something of a you. On the day that Aphrodite was born the Don Juan, but was eager to meet him, and accepted his invitation. gods were feasting, among Lawrence was not what she had expected: his voice was high-pitched, his them Contrivance the son eyes were piercing, and there was something vaguely feminine about him. of Invention; and after dinner, seeing that a party Soon they were taking walks together, with Lawrence confiding in Low. was in progress, Poverty She felt that they were becoming friends, which delighted her. Then sud-came to beg and stood at denly, just before she was to leave, he launched into a series of criticisms of the door. Now Contrivance was drunk with nectar— her—she was so unspontaneous, so predictable, less human being than ro-wine, I may say, had not bot. Devastated by this unexpected attack, she nevertheless had to agree— yet been discovered— and what he had said was true. What could he have seen in her in the first went out into the garden of place? Who was she anyway? Low left Italy feeling empty—but then Zeus, and was overcome by sleep. So Poverty, thinking

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Anytime you read a book or news story about animals experiencing human emotions (“News Flash: Cats Feel Schadenfreude toward Mice”), keep this mindset and you’ll quickly see the mental inference fallacy materialize before your eyes. Some scientists still presume that all vertebrates share preserved, core emotion circuits to justify the claim that animals feel as humans do. One prominent neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp, routinely invites his audiences to see evidence of such circuits in his photos of growling dogs and hissing cats, and in videos of baby birds “crying for their mothers.” It is doubtful, however, that these proposed emotion circuits exist in any animal brain. You do have survival circuits for behaviors like the famous “four F’s” (fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating); they’re controlled by body-budgeting regions in your interoceptive network, and they cause bodily changes that you experience as affect, but they are not dedicated to emotion. For emotion, you also need emotion concepts for categorization. 54 The search for emotional capacities in animal minds is ongoing. Bonobos and perhaps chimpanzees, our close cousins, might have the hot-wiring in their brain circuitry to form their own sort of emotion concepts. Elephants are another intriguing possibility; they are long-lived, social animals who form strong bonds in close-knit herds. Ditto for dolphins. Even dogs like Rowdy are good candidates, having been bred alongside humans for thousands of years. Something more may be going on in these animals, even if it is not human emotion. As for laboratory rats, Cupcake the guinea pig, and most other animals that we experience as having emotion, they cannot construct emotion because they don’t have the necessary emotion concepts. Non-human animals feel affect, but the reality of their emotion is, for the moment, only within ourselves. 13 From Brain to Mind: The New Frontier The human brain is a master of deception. It creates experiences and directs actions with a magician’s skill, never revealing how it does so, all the while giving us a false sense of confidence that its products—our day-to-day experiences—reveal its inner workings. Joy, sadness, surprise, fear, and other emotions seem so distinct and feel so built-in that we assume they have separate causes inside us. When you have a brain that essentializes, it’s easy to come up with a wrong theory of the mind. We are, after all, a bunch of brains trying to figure out how brains work. For millennia, the deception has been largely a success.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  In many societies, such unchaste shenanigans continue well beyond the wedding night. The Kulina of Amazonia have a ritual known as the dutse’e bani towi: the “order to get meat.” Don Pollock explains that the village women “go in a group from household to household at dawn, singing to the adult men in each house, ‘ordering’ them to go hunting. At each house, one or more women in the group step forward to bang on the house with a stick; they will serve as the sex partners of the men of the house that night, if they are successful in their hunt. Women in the group…are not allowed to select their own husband.” What happens next is significant. Feigning reluctance, the men drag themselves from their hammocks and head off into the jungle, but before splitting up to hunt independently, they agree on a time and place outside the village to meet later, where they’ll redistribute whatever they’ve bagged, thus ensuring that every man returns to the village with meat, guaranteeing extra-pair sex for one and all. Yet another nail in the coffin of the standard narrative. Pollock’s description of the hunters’ triumphal return is beyond improvement: At the end of the day the men return in a group to the village, where the adult women form a large semicircle and sing erotically provocative songs to the men, asking for their ‘meat.’ The men drop their catch in a large pile in the middle of the semicircle, often hurling it down with dramatic gestures and smug smiles…. After cooking the meat and eating, each woman retires with the man whom she selected as her partner for the sexual tryst. Kulina engage in this ritual with great humor and perform it regularly.3 We’ll bet they do. Pollock kindly confirmed our hunch that the Kulina word for “meat” (bani) refers both to food and to what you’re thinking it does, dear reader. Maybe marriage isn’t a human universal, but the capacity for sexual double entendre just might be. Love, Lust, and Liberty at Lugu Lake There is not now, and never has been, a society in which confidence in paternity is so low that men are typically more closely related genetically to their sisters’ than to their wives’ offspring. Happily promiscuous, nonpossessive, Rousseauian chimpanzees turned out not to exist; I am not convinced by the available evidence that such human beings exist either. DONALD SYMONS, The Evolution of Human Sexuality

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  One of the kids sat at my feet and looked up at me worshipfully. I was thrilled. So poetry was, after all, the universal voice! There was something in Shakespeare which could appeal to even the most naive, untutored ear. All my beliefs seemed vindicated. I read with new inspiration: Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean. So o’er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of noble race. This is an art Which does mend nature—change it rather; but The art itself is nature. (Shakespeare’s plea for open enrollment and/or miscegenation?) The kids began to get restless a few pages later and by then it was getting too cold to sit in one place anyway, so we packed up and moved on shortly after they did. “Wasn’t that great, darling?” I asked as we made our way out of the park. Brian laughed. “Vox populi is, in the main, a grunt,” he said. It was one of his favorite maxims; I don’t know where he got it. Later I discovered that my wallet was missing from the handbag which had lain open on the bench as we read. I wasn’t sure whether the kids lifted it or whether I’d lost it earlier and not noticed. For one mad moment I thought that maybe Brian took it to prove a point about “the common man.” Like my mother, Brian was a Hobbesian. At least until he discovered he was Jesus Christ and underwent a conversion of character and belief. His madness? What were the first signs of it? It’s hard to say. An old college friend recently told me that she knew from the start there was something odd about Brian and “would never have gotten involved with him.” But it was precisely Brian’s strangeness that I liked. He was eccentric, he was not like anyone else, he saw the world through a poet’s eyes (though he had little talent for writing poetry). He saw the universe as animated, as inhabited by spirits. Fruit spoke to him. When he peeled an apple he would make it seem to cry by means of ventriloquism. He used the same ventriloquist’s routine on tangerines and oranges and even bananas—making them sing and speak and even declaim in verse.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  You have to sleep , I told myself sternly. But already I could feel myself moving into a panic which recalled my worst childhood night terrors. I felt the center of myself slipping backward in time even as my adult, rational self protested. You are not a child , I said aloud, but the insane pounding of my heart continued. I was covered with cold sweat. I sat rooted to the bed. I knew I needed a bath, but would not take one because of my fear of leaving the room. I had to pee desperately, but was afraid to go out to the toilet. I did not even dare to take off my shoes (for fear the man under the bed would grab me by the foot). I did not dare wash my face (who knew what lurked behind the curtain?). I thought I saw a figure moving on the terrace outside the window. Phantom cars of light crossed the ceiling. A toilet flushed in the hall and I jumped. There were footsteps down the hall. I began to remember scenes from Murders in the Rue Morgue. I remembered some nameless movie I had seen on television at about the age of five. It showed a vampire who could fade in and out of walls. No locks could keep him out. I visualized him pulsating in and out of the dirty, splotched wallpaper. I appealed again to my adult self for help. I tried to be critical and rational. I knew what vampires stood for. I knew the man under the bed was partly my father. I thought of Groddeck’s Book of the It. The fear of the intruder is the wish for the intruder. I thought of all my sessions with Dr. Happe in which we had spoken of my night terrors. I remembered my adolescent fantasy of being stabbed or shot by a strange man. I would be sitting at my desk writing and the man would always attack from behind. Who was he? Why was my life populated by phantom men? “Is there no way out of the mind?” Sylvia Plath asked in one of her desperate last poems. If I was trapped, I was trapped by my own fears. Motivating everything was the terror of being alone. It sometimes seemed I would make any compromise, endure any ignominy, stay with any man just so as not to face being alone. But why? What was so terrible about being alone? Try to think of the reasons , I told myself. Try. me : Why is being alone so terrible? me : Because if no man loves me I have no identity. me : But obviously that isn’t true. You write, people read your work and it matters to them.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  the suggestion, Ellington played along. For several minutes he talked to the mother on the telephone, lavishing her with compliments on the charming daughter she had raised, and telling her not to worry—he was taking good Men despise women who care of the girl. The daughter got back on the phone and said, "We're fine love too much and because we're with Mr. Ellington and he's such a perfect gentleman." As unwisely. soon as she hung up, the three of them resumed the naughtiness they had — L U C I A N , DIALOGUES started. To the two girls, it later seemed an innocent but unforgettable night OF THE COURTESANS, T R A N S L A T E D B Y A . L . H . of pleasure. Sometimes several of these far-flung mistresses would show up at the same concert. Ellington would go up and kiss each of them four times (a I shall endeavor briefly to habit of his designed for just this dilemma). And each of the ladies would outline to you how a love assume she was the one with whom the kisses really mattered. when gained can be deepened. They say it can be increased in particular by making it an infrequent Interpretation. Duke Ellington had two passions: music and women. The and difficult business for two were interrelated. His endless affairs were a constant inspiration for his lovers to set eyes on each music; he also treated them as if they were theater, a work of art in them-other, for the greater the difficulty of offering and selves. When it came time to separate, he always managed it with a theatri-receiving shared cal touch. A clever remark and a gift would make it seem that for him the consolations, the greater affair was hardly over. Song lyrics referring to their night together would become the desire for, and feeling of love. Love also keep up the aesthetic atmosphere long after he had left town. No wonder grows if one of the lovers women kept coming back for more. This was not a sexual affair, a tawdry shows anger to the other, one-nighter, but a heightened moment in the woman's life. And his care-for a lover is at once sorely afraid that a partner's free attitude made it impossible to feel guilty; thoughts of one's mother or Beware the Aftereffects • 423 husband would not spoil the illusion. Ellington was never defensive or wrath when roused may apologetic about his appetite for women; it was his nature and never the harden indefinitely. Love fault of the woman that he was unfaithful. And if he could not help his de-again experiences increase when genuine jealousy sires, how could she hold him responsible? It was impossible to hold a preoccupies one of the grudge against such a man or complain about his behavior. lovers, for jealousy is called

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  I’d done a lot of this research before meeting Casi, about ten years ago. Still, what she brought to the book was crucial. First, she’d done her own research into human sexual behavior in rural Mozambique for the World Health Organization in the first years of the AIDS crisis, so she had extensive “real life” understanding of how things work in that part of the world. She grew up in a mixed Muslim/Hindu Indian family in Africa, so she brought a lot of multicultural nuance to the project, and of course, being a medical doctor, she was integral to the discussions of diet, longevity, infant care, and so on. Portuguese is her native language, and English is actually one of six that she speaks. As the native English speaker and professional writer, I did the writing, but she read every draft, again and again, before it went to anyone else. To call her anything other than a coauthor would be inadequate. DS: You’ve lived in Spain for a long time. Have you seen any major differences in the way Americans and Spanish deal with sex? CR: Oh yeah. In fact, that may be why I’ve lived in Spain for so long! Despite the history of Catholicism as the “official religion,” urban Spanish people, at least, are far less conflicted about sex than the typical American. One of the first things that struck me was how openly and unashamedly Spanish people flirt. I’m not, and never have been, a particularly great-looking guy, but after a few weeks walking around in Barcelona, I felt like Brad Pitt! It’s not sleazy or even necessarily sexual, but women look in your eyes, and if they like what they see, they smile. So simple. There’s not that fear and suspicion of strangers one finds so often in American cities, where eye contact is to be avoided at all costs. In the U.S., there seems to be an assumption that any man you don’t know could very well be a rapist-pervert-murderer or creep of some sort. I’m not blaming women for having that fear, of course, but it’s pretty depressing for men and women. In Barcelona, you can walk down the street and be smiled at by three or four lovely women per block. It sure makes walking a lot more fun! Cacilda gets the same sort of ego boosts all the time. (But she is particularly beautiful, so it’s less surprising.) Nothing sleazy, mind you, but just guys who say things like, “Hi. I just wanted to introduce myself and ask if you’d like to have a drink sometime. You’re really lovely.” There’s an innocence around flirting here that’s been lost in the States. It’s a shame, as it’s very much a win-win situation that dramatically improves quality of life for everyone involved. DS: What was the most surprising thing you learned while working on Sex at Dawn?

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  He did not move, as if he must accustom himself to the darkness, and then immediately he came forward and released Beauty's wrists and ankles. She stood trembling. And then her arms were about him. He held her against his chest, his stiff organ prodding her thighs, and she felt the silken skin of his face, and then his mouth opened over hers, hard, yes, savoring her. "Beauty," he gave a deep sigh and she knew he was smiling. Her hand went up to feel his eyelashes. In the light of the moon she saw the planes of his face, his white teeth. She touched him all over hungrily, desperately. And then she descended upon him with loud kisses. "Wait, wait, my lovely one, I am as anxious as you are," he whispered. But she couldn't keep her hands off his shoulders, his neck, his satin flesh. "Come with me," he said and though it seemed an effort to disengage himself, he opened another door and took her down a long, low-roofed passage. The moon entered windows that were no more than narrow slices out of the wall, and then he paused before one of many heavy doors, and she found herself descending a twisting stairway. Beauty grew afraid. "But where are we going? We'll be caught, and what will happen to us?" she whispered. But he had opened a door and led her into a little chamber. One little square of window gave them light, and Beauty saw a heavy straw bed covered with a white blanket. A servant's robe hung upon a hook, but all was neglected as if the room had long ago been forgotten. Alexi bolted the door. No one could possibly open it. "I thought you meant to escape," Beauty sighed with relief. "But will they find us here?" Alexi was looking at her, the moon full on his face and his eyes that were filled with that strange serenity. "The Queen sleeps every night of her life until the break of day. Felix has been dismissed. If I'm at the foot of her bed at dawn, we won't be discovered. But there is always the chance, and then we shall be punished." "O, I don't care, I don't care." Beauty said frantically. "Neither do I," he started to say, but his mouth was buried in Beauty's neck as Beauty flung her arms about him. At once they were on the straw bed, against the soft blanket. Beauty's buttocks felt the prickles of the straw, but they meant nothing to her so much as Alexi's wet, hard kisses. She pressed her breasts to his chest, she wrapped her legs about his hips and strained against him. All the long night's teasing and tormenting of her was maddening her. And then he drove into her that thick sex she had desired from the first instant she had seen it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Music, on the other hand, is seductive, and gets under our skin. It is in- in his closet; 'tis his will. \ tended for pleasure. A melody or rhythm stays in our blood for days after we Let but the commons hear have heard it, altering our moods and emotions, relaxing or exciting us. To this testament, \ Which (pardon me) I do not mean make music instead of noise, you must say things that please—things that re- to read, \And they would late to people's lives, that touch their vanity. If they have many problems, go and kiss dead Caesar's you can produce the same effect by distracting them, focusing their attention wounds \ And dip their napkins in his sacred away from themselves by saying things that are witty and entertaining, or blood. . . . \ PLEBEIAN: that make the future seem bright and hopeful. Promises and flattery are mu-We'll hear the will! Read sic to anyone's ears. This is language designed to move people and lower it, Mark Antony. \ ALL: The will, the will! We will their resistance. It is language designed for them, not directed at them. hear Caesar's will! \ The Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio was physically unattractive, yet ANTONY: Have patience, women could not resist him. Even those who knew of his Don Juan repu- gentle friends; I must not read it. \ It is not meet you tation and disliked him for it (the actress Eleanora Duse and the dancer know how Caesar loved Isadora Duncan, for instance) fell under his spell. The secret was the flow of you. \ You are not wood, words in which he enveloped a woman. His voice was musical, his language you are not stones, but poetic, and most devastating of all, he knew how to flatter. His flattery was men; \ And being men, hearing the will of Caesar, aimed precisely at a woman's weaknesses, the areas where she needed vali- \ It will inflame you, it dation. A woman was beautiful, yet lacked confidence in her own wit and will make you mad. \ 'Tis intelligence? He made sure to say that he was bewitched not by her beauty good you know not that you are his heirs; \ For if but by her mind. He might compare her to a heroine of literature, or to a you should, O, what carefully chosen mythological figure. Talking to him, her ego would dou-would come of it? . . . \ If ble in size. you have tears, prepare to shed them now. \ You all Flattery is seductive language in its purest form. Its purpose is not to do know this mantle. I express a truth or a real feeling, but only to create an effect on the recipient. remember \ The first time Like D'Annunzio, learn to aim your flattery directly at a person's insecuri- ever Caesar put it on. . . . \ Look, in this place ran

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  His thrusts were brutal, strong, as if he too were overcome with denied passion. Her aching sex was filled, her tight nipples throbbing, and she snapped her hips, lifting him as she had lifted the Prince, feeling him fill her, pinion her. At last she rose up crying out in her relief, and she felt him come with a last driving motion. Hot fluids filled her, and she lay back gasping. She lay against his chest. He cradled her, rocked her, never stopped kissing her. And when she sucked his nipples, bit at them playfully with her teeth, he was hard again and pushing against her. He rose to his knees and lifted her down on his organ. She whispered her assent and then he moved her back and forth, jabbing her, working her. She had her head thrown back, her teeth clenched. "Alexi, my Prince!" she cried. And again her wet sex, stretched wide over him, throbbed in a frenzied rhythm until she was all but screaming with release as again he filled her. It was not until after a third time that they lay still. Yet she bit at his nipples, her hands feeling his scrotum, his penis. He rested on his elbow and smiled down at her, and let her do as she wished, even when her fingers probed his anus. She had never felt a man in this manner before. She sat up, and made him roll on his face, and then she examined all of him. And then, overcome with shyness, she lay beside him again, nestled into his arms and buried her head in his warm, sweet smelling hair, and welcomed his gentle, deep, affectionate kisses. His lips played with hers. He whispered her name in her ear, and laying his hand between her legs sealed her tight with his palm as he clung to her. "We must not fall asleep," he said. "I fear that for you the punishment might be too terrible." "And not for you?" she asked. He appeared to reflect, and then he smiled. "Probably not," he answered. "But you are a fledgling." "And do I do so badly?" she asked. "You are incomparable in all things," he said. "Don't let your cruel masters and mistresses deceive you. They are in love with you." "Ah, but how should we be punished?" she asked. "Would it be the village?" She dropped her voice as she said it. "And who has told you about the village?" he asked, a little surprised. "It could be the village..." he was thinking... "but no favorite of the Queen of the Crown Prince has ever been cast out into the village.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  All the men looked at me with benevolence; so much attention made me feel important. I pretended to hesitate before ordering a grenadine in regal tones. This was the high point of the day, a voluptuous triumph of color and taste. Abdesselam brought me a big glass of a wonderful red; holding it tight with both hands and concentrating my senses of sight and of smell on it, I lost myself in a world of sweetness, all harmony and perfume, which was the very world of my childhood. All around me the grownups were joking, laughing at something or other. I had abandoned the superficial pleasures of society for sublime ecstasies; I had become an exquisite thread in a web of silk, a melting color in a rainbow, a light bubble kissed by the breeze. As soon as we were hungry we returned home. Here an atmosphere of more concentrated solemnity greeted us. With the afternoon, the holiday burst into bloom. In the room that had been specially prepared, the Bride of Sabbath was awaiting us, with the bed all covered with light-pink spreads, the narcissus flowers drooping in the bowl, and the table ready, covered with a flowered cloth. The women, like Oriental dolls dressed in bright silks, were sagely gossiping in the yard, all in chorus, as excited as little girls. My mother had darkened her eyes with long black lines of kohl and was wearing all her jewelry. As we, the men, now came home, the bride began to show some emotion; my mother and sister abandoned their meditations to busy themselves in the kitchen. The feast of black and oily Pquela, of rice-stuffed sausage, of tripe, and of oxtail would last for two hours. Then we generally entrusted our heavy digestion to sleep, and we concluded our Sabbath at the movies. ~ 3. OLD CLOTHES ~

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  With her brown bobbed hair, luminous gray eyes and pale skin, she looked perfectly charming. Her hips were no bigger than those of a squatting lad; in fact, I do not hesitate to say (and indeed this is the reason why I linger gratefully in that gauze-gray room of memory with little Monique) that among the eighty or so grues I had had operate upon me, she was the only one that gave me a pang of genuine pleasure. “ Il était malin, celui qui a inventé ce truc-là ,” she commented amiably, and got back into her clothes with the same high-style speed. I asked for another, more elaborate, assignment later the same evening, and she said she would meet me at the corner café at nine, and swore she had never posé un lapin in all her young life. We returned to the same room, and I could not help saying how very pretty she was to which she answered demurely: “ Tu es bien gentil de dire ça ” and then, noticing what I noticed too in the mirror reflecting our small Eden—the dreadful grimace of clenched-teeth tenderness that distorted my mouth—dutiful little Monique (oh, she had been a nymphet all right!) wanted to know if she should remove the layer of red from her lips avant qu’on se couche in case I planned to kiss her. Of course, I planned it. I let myself go with her more completely than I had with any young lady before, and my last vision that night of long-lashed Monique is touched up with a gaiety that I find seldom associated with any event in my humiliating, sordid, taciturn love life. She looked tremendously pleased with the bonus of fifty I gave her as she trotted out into the April night drizzle with Humbert Humbert lumbering in her narrow wake. Stopping before a window display she said with great gusto: “ Je vais m’acheter des bas! ” and never may I forget the way her Parisian childish lips exploded on “ bas ,” pronouncing it with an appetite that all but changed the “a” into a brief buoyant bursting “o” as in “ bot .” I had a date with her next day at 2.15 P.M . in my own rooms, but it was less successful, she seemed to have grown less juvenile, more of a woman overnight. A cold I caught from her led me to cancel a fourth assignment, nor was I sorry to break an emotional series that threatened to burden me with heart-rending fantasies and peter out in dull disappointment. So let her remain, sleek, slender Monique, as she was for a minute or two: a delinquent nymphet shining through the matter-of-fact young whore. My brief acquaintance with her started a train of thought that may seem pretty obvious to the reader who knows the ropes.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  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. The first blows felt warm and good to me. I felt my buttocks flinch and tighten and it seemed I had never experienced such full swelling pleasure, unsatisfied as it was, in my penis. "Of course I was soon groaning from the blows, and with my efforts to conceal the sound, the Queen kissed my face and told me that though my lips must remain sealed, I should let her know how I suffered for her.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Never speak of the village," Leon cautioned her calmly. "That punishment is for incorrigibles and you are the slave of the Crown Prince himself. As for the Bridle Path, my lovely, you shall know soon enough." He laid her down in her bed, strapping her ankles and wrists far away from her so that not even in sleep could she touch herself. "Dream," he said to her, "for tonight the Prince will want you." DUTIES IN THE PRINCE'S CHAMBER THE PRINCE was finishing his supper when Beauty was brought to him. The castle hummed with life, torches flaring in the long, high, vaulted corridors. And the Prince sat in a library of sorts, eating alone at a narrow table. Several ministers were about with papers for him to sign, and there was the sound of their soft leather sock boots on the floor, and the crackling of the scrolls of parchment. Beauty knelt by his chair, listening to the scratch of his pen, and when she was sure he would not see, she looked up at him. He appeared radiant to her. He wore a blue velvet surcoat trimmed in silver and emblazoned with his coat of arms above a heavy silk girdle. The sides of the surcoat were loosely laced and through them Beauty could see his white shirt, and she admired as well the firm muscles of his legs in the long tight fustian breeches. He took a few more bites of his meat as a plate was set down on the stones for Beauty. And quickly she lapped up the wine he poured in a bowl for her, and ate the meat as delicately as she could without using her fingers. It seemed he was watching her. He gave her bits of cheese and more fruit, and she heard him give some little sound of satisfaction. She cleaned her plate with her tongue. She would have done anything to show him how pleased she was to be with him again, and quite suddenly she remembered she had not kissed his boots, and she made up for this immediately. The smell of the clean, polished leather was delicious to her. She felt his hand on the back of her neck, and when she looked up, he fed her a handful of grapes one by one, lifting each one a little higher so that she had to rise off her heels to get it. He tossed the last grape in the air. She darted up to catch it in her mouth and succeeded. Then overcome with shyness she bowed her head. Was he pleased? After all she'd witnessed during the day, he seemed her savior. She could have wept for happiness now that she was with him. Lord Gregory had wanted her to dine with the slaves.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Under the poplars, the car was already athrob. On the sidewalk, Louise stood shading her eyes with her hand, as if the little traveler were already riding into the low morning sun. The gesture proved to be premature. “Hurry up!” shouted Haze. My Lolita, who was half in and about to slam the car door, wind down the glass, wave to Louise and the poplars (whom and which she was never to see again), interrupted the motion of fate: she looked up—and dashed back into the house (Haze furiously calling after her). A moment later I heard my sweetheart running up the stairs. My heart expanded with such force that it almost blotted me out. I hitched up the pants of my pajamas, flung the door open: and simultaneously Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, panting, and then she was in my arms, her innocent mouth melting under the ferocious pressure of dark male jaws, my palpitating darling! The next instant I heard her—alive, unraped—clatter downstairs. The motion of fate was resumed. The blond leg was pulled in, the car door was slammed—was re-slammed—and driver Haze at the violent wheel, rubber-red lips writhing in angry, inaudible speech, swung my darling away, while unnoticed by them or Louise, old Miss Opposite, an invalid, feebly but rhythmically waved from her vined veranda. 1 6 The hollow of my hand was still ivory-full of Lolita—full of the feel of her pre-adolescently incurved back, that ivory-smooth, sliding sensation of her skin through the thin frock that I had worked up and down while I held her. I marched into her tumbled room, threw open the door of the closet and plunged into a heap of crumpled things that had touched her. There was particularly one pink texture, sleazy, torn, with a faintly acrid odor in the seam. I wrapped in it Humbert’s huge engorged heart. A poignant chaos was ’welling within me—but I had to drop those things and hurriedly regain my composure, as I became aware of the maid’s velvety voice calling me softly from the stairs. She had a message for me, she said; and, topping my automatic thanks with a kindly “you’re welcome,” good Louise left an unstamped, curiously clean-looking letter in my shaking hand. This is a confession: I love you [so the letter began; and for a distorted moment I mistook its hysterical scrawl for a schoolgirl’s scribble]. Last Sunday in church—bad you, who refused to come to see our beautiful new windows!—only last Sunday, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you.

• From Querelle (1953)

  God grant that I may envelop myself in my chilly gestures, in a chilly fashion, like some very languid Englishman in his traveling rug, an eccentric lady in her shawl. To confront men with, You have given me a gilded rapier, chevrons, medals, gestures of com- 93 I QUERELLE mand: these accessories are my salvation. They allow me to weave about me some invisible lace, of intentionally coarse design. That coarseness exhausts me, even though I find it comforting. When I grow old, I shall take refuge in t_he last resort, behind the ridiculous fa�ade of rimless steel pince-nez, celluloid collars, a stammer, and starched cuffs. Querelle told his comrades that he is a "victim" of the recruitment posters! So am I, a victim of those posters, and a victim's victim. What sudden joy/ I am all joy. My hands, mechanically at first, described, in empty space, at the height of my chesttwo female breasts, grafting them on as it were. I was happy. Now I repeat the gesture, such bliss. Such great abundance. I am overflowing. I stop: I am her, overflowing. I start over. I caress these two aerial boobs. They are beautiful. They are heavy, my palms support them . It happened when I stood leaning against the rail, at night, looking across, listening to the noises of Alexandria. I caress my breasts, my hips. I feel my buns getting rounder, more voluptuous. Egypt lies behind me now: the sands, the Sphinx, the Pharaohs, the Nile, the Arabs, the Casbah, and the wonderful adventure of being her. I would like them a little pear-shaped. Once again, I dragged the door curtains in with me, quite unwittingly. I felt how they wanted to envelop me in their folds, and I could not resist making a splendid gesture, to free myseU of them . The gesture of a swimmer parting the water. I come back in. Still thinking about the liveliness of the cigarette between the sailor's lingers. A ready-made cigarette. It burned, it went through its little motions between Querelle's 94 I JEAN GENET almost immobile fingers, and he had no idea of the life he was imbuing that little tobacco stick with. I was no more able to take my eyes oH his fingers than oH the object they were animating. Animated by such grace, such elegant, delicate, scintillating movements! Querelle stood listening to one of his buddies talking about the girls in the brothels. "I have never seen myself.'' Do I have charms another could fall for? \Vho else, besides myself, is subject to Querelle's charms? How could I tum into him? Could I bring myself to graft onto my body his best features: his hair, his balls? Even his hands?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it. Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered something, and making a sign to Levin, walked back again. The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the bridal pair. The priest was the same old man that had confessed Levin. He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom, sighed, and putting his right hand out from his vestment, blessed the bridegroom with it, and also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid the crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the candles, and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them. “Can it be true?” thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride. Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long glove shook as it held the candle. All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position—all suddenly passed away and he was filled with joy and dread. The handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his curly locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward, and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest. “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the solemn syllables rang out slowly one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound. “Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,” the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested for an instant, and slowly died away. They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their troth. “Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee,” the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the head deacon.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously, and felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had eaten nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not simply fresher and stronger than ever, but felt utterly independent of his body; he moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do anything. He was convinced he could fly upwards or lift the corner of the house, if need be. He spent the remainder of the time in the street, incessantly looking at his watch and gazing about him. And what he saw then, he never saw again after. The children especially going to school, the bluish doves flying down from the roofs to the pavement, and the little loaves covered with flour, thrust out by an unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves, those doves, and those two boys were not earthly creatures. It all happened at the same time: a boy ran towards a dove and glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out. All of this together was so extraordinarily nice that Levin laughed and cried with delight. Going a long way round by Gazetny Place and Kislovka, he went back again to the hotel, and putting his watch before him, he sat down to wait for twelve o’clock. In the next room they were talking about some sort of machines, and swindling, and coughing their morning coughs. They did not realize that the hand was near twelve. The hand reached it. Levin went out onto the steps. The sledge-drivers clearly knew all about it. They crowded round Levin with happy faces, quarreling among themselves, and offering their services. Trying not to offend the other sledge drivers, and promising to drive with them too, Levin took one and told him to drive to the Shtcherbatskys’. The sledge-driver was splendid in a white shirt-collar sticking out over his overcoat and into his strong, full-blooded red neck. The sledge was high and comfortable, and altogether such a one as Levin never drove in after, and the horse was a good one, and tried to gallop but didn’t seem to move. The driver knew the Shtcherbatskys’ house, and drew up at the entrance with a curve of his arm and a “Wo!” especially indicative of respect for his fare. The Shtcherbatskys’ hall-porter certainly knew all about it. This was evident from the smile in his eyes and the way he said: “Well, it’s a long while since you’ve been to see us, Konstantin Dmitrievitch!”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored,” he said, promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But apparently she did not care to pursue the conversation in that strain, and she turned to the old countess. “Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye, countess.” “Good-bye, my love,” answered the countess. “Let me have a kiss of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that I’ve lost my heart to you.” Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed it and was delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and put her cheek to the countess’s lips, drew herself up again, and with the same smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to Vronsky. He pressed the little hand she gave him, and was delighted, as though at something special, by the energetic squeeze with which she freely and vigorously shook his hand. She went out with the rapid step which bore her rather fully-developed figure with such strange lightness. “Very charming,” said the countess. That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her till her graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile remained on his face. He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed. “Well, maman, are you perfectly well?” he repeated, turning to his mother. “Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been very good, and Marie has grown very pretty. She’s very interesting.” And she began telling him again of what interested her most—the christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in Petersburg, and the special favor shown her elder son by the Tsar. “Here’s Lavrenty,” said Vronsky, looking out of the window; “now we can go, if you like.” The old butler, who had traveled with the countess, came to the carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up to go. “Come; there’s not such a crowd now,” said Vronsky. The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter the other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but just as they were getting out of the carriage several men ran suddenly by with panic-stricken faces. The station-master, too, ran by in his extraordinary colored cap. Obviously something unusual had happened. The crowd who had left the train were running back again. “What?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!... Crushed!...” was heard among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm, turned back. They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door to avoid the crowd. The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch followed the crowd to find out details of the disaster.