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.

Page 143 of 299 · 20 per page

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Then they stayed there within my sight, singing O Queen of heaven so sweetly that ne’er hath parted from me the delight. Oh how great the wealth crammed in those most rich chests, which here on earth were goodly acres for the seeding! Here they have life and joy even in that treasure which was earned in weeping in the exile of Babylon, where gold was scorned.7 Here triumphs under the lofty Son of God and Mary, in his victory, together with the ancient and new council, he who doth hold the keys of so great glory.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  It was then that I sprang my surprise. Oh, what a dreamy pet! She walked up to the open suitcase as if stalking it from afar, at a kind of slow-motion walk, peering at that distant treasure box on the luggage support. (Was there something wrong, I wondered, with those great gray eyes of hers, or were we both plunged in the same enchanted mist?) She stepped up to it, lifting her rather high-heeled feet rather high, and bending her beautiful boy-knees while she walked through dilating space with the lentor of one walking under water or in a flight dream. Then she raised by the armlets a copper-colored, charming and quite expensive vest, very slowly stretching it between her silent hands as if she were a bemused bird-hunter holding his breath over the incredible bird he spreads out by the tips of its flaming wings. Then (while I stood waiting for her) she pulled out the slow snake of a brilliant belt and tried it on. Then she crept into my waiting arms, radiant, relaxed, caressing me with her tender, mysterious, impure, indifferent, twilight eyes—for all the world, like the cheapest of cheap cuties. For that is what nymphets imitate—while we moan and die. “What’s the katter with misses?” I muttered (word-control gone) into her hair. “If you must know,” she said, “you do it the wrong way.” “Show, wight ray.” “All in good time,” responded the spoonerette. Seva ascendes, pulsata, brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa, clatterans, populus in corridoro. Hancnisi mors mihi adimet nemo! Juncea puellula, jo pensavo fondis-sime, nobserva nihil quidquam; but, of course, in another moment I might have committed some dreadful blunder; fortunately, she returned to the treasure box. From the bathroom, where it took me quite a time to shift back into normal gear for a humdrum purpose, I heard, standing, drumming, retaining my breath, my Lolita’s “oo’s” and “gee’s” of girlish delight. She had used the soap only because it was sample soap. “Well, come on, my dear, if you are as hungry as I am.” And so to the elevator, daughter swinging her old white purse, father walking in front (nota bene: never behind, she is not a lady). As we stood (now side by side) waiting to be taken down, she threw back her head, yawned without restraint and shook her curls. “When did they make you get up at that camp?” “Half-past—” she stifled another yawn—“six”—yawn in full with a shiver of all her frame. “Half-past,” she repeated, her throat filling up again.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  It was always the same, Claire’s poetry class, and it was always a pleasure. Each student’s poem was only a slight variation on the poem they had brought in the week before, and all poems were consistently met with Claire’s useful mix of violent affection and genuine insight. So Ron’s poems were always about modern sexual alienation, and Daisy’s poems were always about New York, Chantelle’s were always about the black struggle, and Zora’s were the kind that appear to have been generated by a random word-generating machine. It was Claire’s great gift as a teacher to find  the anatomy lesson something of worth in all these efforts and to speak to their authors as if they were already household names in poetry-loving homes across America. And what a thing it is, at nineteen years old, to be told that a new Daisy poem is a perfect example of the Daisy oeuvre, that it is indeed evidence of a Daisy at the height of her powers, exercising all the traditional, much loved, Daisy strengths! Claire was an excellent teacher. She reminded you how noble it was to write poetry; how miraculous it should feel to communicate what is most intimate to you, and to do so in this stylized way, through rhyme and metre, images and ideas. After each student had read their work and it had been discussed seriously and pertinently, Claire would finish by reading a poem by a great, usually dead poet, and encourage her class to discuss this poem no differently than they had discussed the others. And in this way one learned to imagine continuity between one’s own poetry and the poetry of the world. What a feeling! You walked out of that class if not shoulder to shoulder with Keats and Dickinson and Eliot and the rest, then at least in the same echo chamber, in the same roll-call of history. The transformation was most noticeable on Carl. Three weeks ago he had attended his first class wearing a comic, sceptical slouch. He read his lyrics in a grumpy mumble and seemed angered by the interested appreciation with which they were met. ‘It’s not even a poem ,’ he countered. ‘It’s rap.’ ‘What’s the difference?’ Claire asked. ‘They two different things,’ Carl had argued, ‘two different art forms. Except rap ain’t no art form. It’s just rap .’ ‘So it can’t be discussed?’ ‘You can discuss it – I ain’t stopping you.’ The first thing Claire did with Carl’s rap that day was show him of what it was made. Iambs, spondees, trochees, anapaests. Passionately Carl denied any knowledge of these arcane arts. He was used to being feˆted at the Bus Stop but not in a classroom. Large sections of Carl’s personality had been constructed on the founding principle that classrooms were not for Carl.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘What did she get – something lovely? Oh, that is lovely,’ said Claire as she approached, peering down at Kiki’s ankle. She tucked her tiny body into a cleft of Warren’s. Photographs elongated her, making her appear long and wiry, but in life this American poet was only five foot one and physically prepubescent, even now, at fifty-four. She was neatly made with the minimum of material. When she moved a finger, you could trace the motion through pulleys of veins that went all the way up her slender arms and shoulders to her neck, itself elegantly creased like the lungs of an accordion. Her elfin head with its inch of closely cropped brown  On Beauty hair fitted neatly into her lover’s hand. To Kiki they looked very happy – but what did that mean? Wellington couples had a talent for looking happy. ‘Incredible day, isn’t it? We got back a week ago and it’s hotter here than it was there. The sun is a lemon today, it is . It’s like a huge lemon-drop. God , it’s incredible,’ said Claire, as Warren softly palpated the back of her skull. She was babbling a little; it always took her a minute or two to settle. Claire had been at graduate school with Howard, and Kiki had known her thirty years, but never had she felt that they knew each other well. They did not quite gel as friends. There was a part of Kiki that felt every meeting with Claire was like the first time all over again. ‘And you look marvellous!’ cried Claire now. ‘It’s so good to see you. What an outfit! It’s like a sunset – the red, the yellow, the orangey-brown – Keeks, you’re setting .’ ‘Honey,’ said Kiki, moving her head from side to side in a manner she understood white people enjoyed, ‘I done set already .’ Claire made the jangle sound of laughter. Not for the first time, Kiki noted the implacable intelligence of her eyes, the way they did not indulge in the natural release of the act. ‘Come on, walk with us,’ said Claire plaintively, putting Warren between herself and Kiki, as if he were their child. It was a strange way to walk – it meant they had to talk to each other over Warren’s body. ‘OK – we got to keep an eye out for Jerome, though – he’s about. So how was Italy?’ asked Kiki. ‘ Amazing . Wasn’t it incredible?’ said Claire, looking to Warren with an intensity that fulfilled Kiki’s hazy idea of how an artist should be: passionate, attentive, bringing her native enthusiasm to the smallest matters. ‘Was it just a vacation?’ asked Kiki. ‘Weren’t you collecting a prize or – ?’ ‘Oh, a silly . . . nothing, the Dante thing – but that’s not interesting – Warren spent the whole time in this rape field going crazy over this new theory about airborne pollutants from fields, GM

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O VBeatrice, rejoicing in Dante’s progress, explains the supreme gift of Free Will, shared by angels and men and by no other creature. Hence may be deduced the supreme significance of vows, wherein this Free Will, by its own act, sacrifices itself. Wherefore there can be nothing so august as to form a fitting substitute, nor any use of the once consecrated thing so hallowed as to excuse the breaking of the sow. And yet Holy Church grants dispensations. The explanation lies in the distinction between the content of the vow (the specific thing consecrated) and the act of vowing. The vow must in every case be kept, but he who has made it, may, under due authority, sometimes substitute for the specific content of the vow some other, worth half as much again; which last condition precludes any substitute for the complete self-dedication of monastic vows. And he who makes a vow such as God cannot sanction, has in that act already done evil; to keep such a vow is only to deepen his guilt; and, kept or broken, it brings his religion into contempt. Dante’s further questioning is cut short by their ascent to Mercury, which grows brighter at their presence. Here, in the star that scarce asserts itself, but is lost to mortals in the sun’s rays, are the once ambitious souls, that now rejoice in the access of fresh objects of love. They approach Dante, and one of them, with lofty gratulations, offers himself as the vehicle of divine enlightenment. Dante questions him as to his history and the place assigned to him in heaven; whereon the spirit (Justinian) so glows with joy that his outward form is lost in sight. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] “IF I FLAME on thee in the warmth of love, beyond the measure witnessed upon earth, and so vanquish the power of thine eyes, marvel not; for this proceedeth from perfect vision, which, as it apprehendeth, so doth advance its foot in the apprehended good. Well do I note how in thine intellect already doth reglow the eternal light, which only seen doth ever kindle love; and if aught else seduce your love, naught is it save some vestige of this light, ill understood, that shineth through therein. Thou wouldst know whether with other service reckoning may be paid for broken vow, so great as to secure the soul from process.” So Beatrice began this chant, and, as one who interrupteth not his speech, continued thus the sacred progress: “The greatest gift God of his largess made at the creation, and the most conformed to his own excellence, and which he most prizeth, was the will’s liberty, wherewith creatures intelligent,1 both all and only, were and are endowed. Now will appear to thee (if thence thou draw due inference) the high worth of the vow, if so made that God consent when thou consentest;2

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Extraordinary, said Howard to himself, and closed the door. He went into the kitchen in search of wine. He heard the bell go again, and Monique answer, and people come in, and then more people right behind them. He poured his glass – the bell again – Erskine and his wife, Caroline. And then another crowd could be heard relieving themselves of their coats just as Howard thumped the cork back in the bottle. The house was filling up with people he was not related to by blood. Howard began to feel in the party mood. Soon enough he relaxed into his role of life and soul: pressing food upon his guests, pouring their drinks, talking up his reluctant, invisible children, correcting a quotation, weighing in on an argument, introducing people to each other twice or thrice over. During his many three-minute conversations he managed to be committed, curious, supportive, celebratory, laughing before you had finished your funny sentence, refilling your glass even as beaded bubbles still winked at the brim. If he caught you in the action of putting on or looking for your coat, you were treated to a lover’s complaint; you pressed his hand, he pressed yours. You swayed together like sailors. One felt confident to tease him, slightly, about his Rembrandt, and he in turn said something irreverent about your Marxist past or your creative-writing class or your eleven-year-long study of Montaigne, and the goodwill was at such a pitch that you did not take it personally. You placed your coat back on the bed. Finally, when you again persisted with your talk of deadlines and morning starts and made it out of the front door, you closed it with the new and gratifying impression that not only did Howard Belsey not hate you – as you had always previously assumed – but, in fact, the man had long harboured a boundless admiration of you which only his natural English reserve had prevented him from expressing before this night. At nine thirty, Howard decided it was time to give a little speech in the garden to the assembled company. This was well received.  kipps and belsey

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Where is Howard?’ said Kiki, revolving her head absurdly round the empty room. ‘He’ll just love this. He loves to hear that nothing on him doth fade.’ Meredith laughed again. Howard re-entered the room with a clap of his hands, but then the bell rang once more. ‘Bloody hell . Could you excuse us? Like Piccadilly Circus in here. Jerome! Zora?’ Howard cupped a hand to his ear like a man waiting for a response to his fake bird call. ‘Howard,’ tried Kiki, holding up the frame, ‘Howard, look at this.’ ‘Levi? No? Have to be us, then. Just excuse us one minute.’ Kiki followed Howard into the hall, where together they opened the door to the Wilcoxes, one of the rare, genuinely moneyed Wellingtonian couples of their acquaintance. The Wilcoxes owned a preppy clothes chain store, gave generously to the college, and looked like the shells of two Atlantic shrimp in evening wear. Right behind them came Howard’s assistant, Smith J. Miller, bearing a home-made apple-pie and dressed like the neat Kentucky gentleman he was. They were all ushered into the kitchen to do their best with the completely unsuitable social pairing of old-school Marxist  kipps and belsey English professor Joe Rainier and the young woman he was presently dating. There was a New Yorker cartoon on the fridge that Kiki now wished she had taken down. An upscale couple in the back of a limo. Woman saying: Of course they’re clever. They have to be clever. They haven’t got any money . ‘Just go through, go through,’ brayed Howard, making the signal for directing sheep across a country road. ‘People in the living room, or the garden’s lovely . . .’ A few minutes later they were alone once more in the hall. ‘I mean, where’s Zora – she’s been going on about the bloody party for weeks and now neither hide nor hair – ’ ‘She’s probably gone to get some smokes or something.’ ‘I think at least one of them should be present. So people don’t think we keep them in some kind of child sex prison camp in the attic.’ ‘I’ll go and deal with it, Howie, OK? You just get everybody what they need. Where the hell is Monique? Wasn’t she meant to be bringing somebody?’ ‘In the garden jumping up and down on bags of ice ,’ said Howard impatiently, as if she might have figured this out for herself. ‘Bloody ice-maker fucked up half an hour ago.’ ‘Fuck.’ ‘Yes, darling, fuck .’ Howard pulled his wife towards him and put his nose in between her breasts. ‘Can’t we just have a party here? You and me and the girls?’ he asked, tentatively squeezing the girls. Kiki drew back from him. Although peace had broken out in the Belsey household, sex had not yet returned. In the past month Howard had stepped up his flirtatious campaign. Touching, holding and now squeezing.

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

  This new, data-driven understanding leads to innovative ideas about how to live a fulfilling and healthful life. If your brain operates by prediction and construction and rewires itself through experience, then it’s no overstatement to say that if you change your current experiences today, you can change who you become tomorrow. The next few chapters delve into these implications in the areas of emotional intelligence, health, law, and our relationships with other animals. 40 9 Mastering Your Emotions Every time you bite into a juicy peach or munch a bag of crunchy potato chips, you’re not simply replenishing your energy. You’re having an experience that is pleasant, unpleasant, or something in between. You bathe not only to stave off disease but also to enjoy warm water against your skin. You seek out other people not to stand in a herd for protection from predators but to feel the glow of friendship or to unload when you’re feeling burdened. And sex is clearly for more than propagating your genes. These examples show that you have a special link between the physical and the mental. Each time you perform a physical act for your body budget, you’re also doing something mental with concepts. Every mental activity has a physical effect as well. You can put this connection to work for you, to master your emotions, enhance your resilience, become a better friend or parent or lover, and even change your conception of who you are. Change is not easy. Ask any therapist or Buddhist monk; they’ve trained for years to become aware of their experiences and control them. Even so, you can take small steps right now based on the theory of constructed emotion and the new view of human nature it implies. Some of the suggestions I propose in this chapter will sound familiar, like getting enough sleep, but with new scientific justification to motivate you. Other advice will probably be entirely new, like learning words from a foreign language, which you’ve probably never associated with emotional health. Not every suggestion will be right for you; some will fit your lifestyle better than others. But the effort can lead to greater well-being and success. Students with a richer emotion vocabulary do better in school. People with a balanced body budget are less likely to develop serious illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, and as they age, their mental abilities will stay sharper for longer. And life may become more meaningful and fulfilling. Can you snap your fingers and change your feelings at will, like changing your clothes? Not really.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  – no doubt I have. But I see they still like to spend an evening together with a cigar. You know, between you and me,’ she whispered, and Kiki wondered what had happened to not making fun of one’s own husband, ‘they’re very good friends.’ Kiki lifted her left eyebrow in neat, devastating fashion: ‘Monty Kipps’s best friend is a gay man.’ Carlene gave a little shriek of amusement. ‘Goodness, he would never say that. Never! You see, he doesn’t think of it that way.’ ‘What other way is there to think about it?’ Carlene wiped tears of mirth from her eyes. Kiki whistled. ‘You sure as hell never hear the brother mention that on Bill O’Reilly.’ ‘Oh, my dear, you’re terrible. Terrible!’ She was truly gleeful now, and Kiki marvelled at how this whitened her eyes and tightened her skin. She looked younger, healthier. They laughed together for a while, at quite different things, so Kiki imagined. After a while the glee subsided on both sides, and they fell into more normal conversation. These little mutual revelations reminded them of their common ground, and in this they walked around leisurely, steering clear of anything that might prove an obstacle to easy movement. Both mothers, both familiar with England, both lovers of dogs and gardens, both slightly awed by the abilities of their children. Carlene spoke a great deal of Michael, of whose practicality and money sense she seemed very  the anatomy lesson proud. Kiki in return offered up her own somewhat falsified family anecdotes, consciously smoothing over the rougher edges of Levi, sketching in a slender, mendacious picture of Zora’s devotion to family life. Kiki mentioned the hospital several times, hoping to segue into an inquiry as to the nature of Carlene’s illness, but each time, at the brink, she hesitated. The time passed. They finished their tea. Kiki found she had eaten three pieces of pie. At the door, Carlene kissed Kiki on both cheeks, at which point Kiki smelt her own workplace, clearly, acutely. She let go of where she held Carlene, under each brittle elbow. She walked the pretty garden path back to the street. 

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He rolled his eyes because I dressed up as Salome´. Now is that something to roll your eyes about?’ Just before an oncoming lamp-post their little chain of three dissolved itself, and Claire and Warren merged into each other again. ‘ Claire , I wouldn’t have rolled my eyes, honey – you should have said something.’  On Beauty ‘It was utterly last minute, Keeks, really it was,’ said Warren. ‘You think I would have married this woman if I’d had time to think about it? She called me up and said it’s the birthday of St John the Baptist, let’s do it, and we did it.’ ‘Again, please,’ said Kiki, although this aspect of the couple, their locally celebrated ‘eccentricity’, was not really attractive to her. ‘So I have this Salome´ dress – red, sequinned, I knew when I saw it that it was my Salome´ dress, I bought it in Montreal. I wanted to get married in my Salome´ dress and take a man’s head with me. And, goddamn it, I did. And it’s such a sweet head,’ said Claire, pulling it gently towards her. ‘So full of facts,’ said Kiki. She wondered how many times this exact routine would be repeated to well-wishers in the coming weeks. She and Howard were just the same, especially when they had news. Each couple is its own vaudeville act. ‘ Yes ,’ said Claire, ‘so full of genuine facts . And I never had that before, someone who knew anything real at all . Apart from ‘‘art is truth’’ – you can’t move for people in this town who know that. Or think they know it.’ ‘Mom.’ Jerome, in all his gloomy Jeromeity, had joined them. The ill-pitched greetings that compassionate age sings to mysterious youth rang out; hair was almost tousled and then wisely not, the eternal unanswerable question was met with a new and horrible answer (‘I’m dropping out.’ ‘He means he’s taking a little time out.’). For a moment it seemed that the world had drained itself of all possible subjects that might be gently discussed on a hot day in a pretty town. Then the glorious news of matrimony was recalled and joyfully repeated only to be met with the dispiriting request for specifics (‘Oh, well, it’s actually my fourth , Warren’s second’). Through all this Jerome continued to unwrap, very slowly, a silver foil package in his hand. At last the top of a volcanic burrito was revealed; it then promptly erupted in his hand and down his wrist. Their little circle took a collective step back.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  * By and by she commanded Zephyrus by the ap- pointment of her husband to bring them down; neither did he delay, for with gentle blasts he re- tained them up, and laid them softly in the valley : I am not able to express the often embracing, kissing, and greeting which was between them three; and » those tears which had been then laid apart sprang forth again for joy. * Come in,' quoth Psyche, * Into our house with gladness and refresh your afflicted minds with me yoursister.' After this she shewed them the storehouses of treasure, she caused them to hear the great company of voices which served her, the fair bath was made ready, and she entertained them richly with dainty meats of her celestial table, and when they had eaten and filled themselves with divine delicacies they conceived great envy within their hearts: and one of them being very curious in every point, did not-cease to demand what her hus- band was, and who was the lord of so precious a house; but Psyche, remembering the promise which she made to her husband, did not let it go forth from the secret places of her heart, but with timely colour feigned that he was a young man of comely stature with soft down, rather than a beard, just beginning to shadow his cheeks, and had great de- light in hunting in the hills and dales hard by: and : 211 LUCIUS APULEIUS bus occupatum, et ne qua sermonis procedentis labe consilium tacitum proderetur, auro facto gemmosis- que monilibus onustas eas statim vocato Zephyro tradit reportandas. _ 9 Quo protenus perpetrato sorores egregiae domum redeuntes, iamque gliscentis invidiae felle flagrantes multa secum sermonibus mutuis perstrepebant: sic denique infit altera : * En orba et saeva et iniqua For- tuna! Hocine tibi complacuit, ut utroque parente prognatae diversam sortem sustineremus? Et nos quidem, quae natu maiores sumus, maritis advenis ancillae deditae, extorres et Lare et ipsa patria de- gamus longe parentum velut exulantes, haec autem novissima, quam fetu satiante postremus partus effudit, tantis opibus et deo marito potita sit, quae nec uti recte tanta bonorum copia novit? Vidisti, soror, quanta in domo iacent et qualia monilia, quae praenitent vestes, quae splendicant gemmae, quantum praeterea passim caleatur aurum: quod si maritum etiam tam formosum tenet, ut affirmat, nulla nune in orbe toto felicior vivit. Fortassis tamen procedente consuetudine et affectione roborata deam quoque illam deus maritus efficiet. Sic est Hercule, sic se gerebat ferebatque : iam iam sursum respicit et deam spirat mulier, quae voces ancillas habet et ventis ipsis imperitat. | At ego misera primum patre meo seniorem maritum sortita sum, dein cucurbita calviorem et 212 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK V lest by her long talk she should be found to trip or fail in her words and betray her secret counsel, she filled their laps with gold and ornaments of jewels, and commanded Zephyrus to carry them away.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  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. And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared. The Bus Stop was a Wellington institution. For twenty years it had been a cheap and popular Moroccan restaurant, attracting students, the aged hippies of Kennedy Square, professors, locals and tourists. A first-generation Moroccan family ran it and the food was very good, unpretentious and flavoursome. Although there was no Moroccan diaspora in Wellington to appreciate the authenticity of the lamb tagine or the saffron couscous, this had never tempted the Essakalli family into Americanization. They served what they themselves enjoyed eating and waited for the Wellingtonians to acclimatize, which they did.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] NEITHER DID our speech make the going, nor the going, more slow; but, talking we went bravely on, even as a ship driven by a fair wind. And the shades, that seemed things twice dead, drew in wonderment at me through the pits of their eyes, aware of my being alive. And I, continuing my discourse, said: “Perchance he goeth upward more slowly than he would do, for another’s sake. But tell me, if thou knowest, where Piccarda1 is; tell me if I see any person to be noted among this people who gaze so at me.” “My sister, who, whether she were more fair or more good I know not, now triumphs, rejoicing in her crown on high Olympus.” Thus spake he at first, and then: “Here ’tis not forbidden to name each one, since our features are so wrung by abstinence. This (and he showed with his finger) is Bonagiunta, Bonagiunta of Lucca;2 and that visage, beyond him, shrivelled more than the others, held Holy Church within its arms: from Tours sprang he, and by fasting purges the eels of Bolsena and the sweet wine.”3 Many others he named to me, one by one, and all did seem glad at the naming, so that I saw therefore not one black look. I saw Ubaldino della Pila4 using his teeth for very hunger on the void; and Boniface5 who pastured many peoples with the rook. I saw Messer Marchese,6 who once had leisure to drink at Forlì with less thirst, and yet was so craving that he never felt sated. But as he doth who looks, and then esteems one more than another, so did I to him of Lucca who seemed to have most knowledge of me. He was muttering, and something like “Gentucca,” I heard there where he was feeling the wounds of Justice, which so doth pluck them. “O soul,” said I, “that seemeth yearning so to talk with me, speak so that I may understand thee, and satisfy me and thee with thy speech.” “A woman is born and wears not yet the wimple,” he began, “who will make my city pleasing to thee, however man may rebuke it. Thou shalt go hence with this prophecy; if thou hast taken my muttering in error, the real facts will make it yet clear to thee.7 But tell if I see here him who invented the new rhymes beginning: ‘Ladies that have intelligence of Love.’ ”8 And I to him: “I am one who, when Love inspires me take note, and go setting it forth after the fashion which he dictates within me.” “O brother,” said he, “now I see the knot which kept back the Notary, and Guittone, and me, short of the sweet new style that I hear.9 Truly I see how your pens follow close after him who dictates, which certainly befell not with ours.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA64.jpg] CENTRAL ITALY IN DANTE’S TIME C A N T O X X XWhen the car arrests itself, all the elders who had preceded it, turn and face round to it; and when one of them invokes the bride of Lebanon, blessed spirits rise up around it, as men shall rise at the last day. Flowers are flung in a cloud from their hands as they utter blessings, culled from Christian and Gentile scriptures; and a form clad in the colours of the three theological virtues rises like the sun in their midst. Dante without further testimony from his eyes, recognizes the tokens of the ancient flame, and like a terrified child turns round to ask comfort and support from Virgil. But Virgil has gone, and not even the joys of the Earthly Paradise can prevent Dante’s cheeks, though cleansed by the mountain dew, from darkening again with tears. But the sense of outward loss when bereft of Virgil is soon swallowed up in the sense of inward loss caused by his own faithlessness and sin; for Beatrice sternly recalls him to face his own insulted and outraged ideal. Bereft of Virgil’s support when he looks around, encountering his own image in the stream when he looks down, like a child before an angered mother, Dante feels his heart at first frozen by reproaches, then melted by the pleading intercession of the angels. But Beatrice is still unbending; and turning to the angelic presences she rehearses the promise of Dante’s youth and the unworthiness of his manhood, the gracious and fleeting beauty of his early vows, the pursuit of false good to which he then surrendered himself, her own unavailing pleadings with him, and his fall, so deep that naught save the vision of the region of the lost, won for him by her prayers and tears, could avail to save him. The deep fate of God were broken should he taste of the higher joys, access to which she had won for him, without paying some scot of penitential tears. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] WHEN THE WAIN of the first heaven which setting nor rising never knew, nor veil of other mist than of sin, and which made there each one aware of his duty, even as the lower wain guides him who turns the helm to come into port,1 had stopped still, the people of truth, who had first come between the griffin and it,2 turned them to the car as to their peace; and one of them as if sent from heaven “Veni sponsa de Libano“3 did shout thrice in song, and all the others after him. As the saints at the last trump shall rise ready each one from his tomb, with re-clad voice singing Halleluiah, such on the divine chariot rose up a hundred ad vocem tanti senis, ministers and messengers of life eternal.4 All were saying: “Benedictus qui venis”;5 and, strewing flowers above and around, “Manibus o date lilia plenis.”6

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  The body whence it was chased forth, lieth down below in Cieldauro,12 and itself from martyrdom and exile came unto this peace. See flaming next the glowing breath of Isidor, of Bede, and of Richard,13 who, in contemplating, was more than man. The one from which thy glance returneth unto me, is the light of a spirit who, in weighty thoughts, him seemed went all too slowly to his death; it is the light eternal of Sigier who, lecturing in the Vicus Straminis, syllogized truths that brought him into hate.”14 Then as the horologue, that calleth us, what hour the spouse of God15 riseth to sing her matins to her spouse that he may love her, wherein one part drawing and thrusting other, giveth a chiming sound of so sweet note, that the well-ordered spirit with love swelleth; so did I see the glorious wheel revolve and render voice to voice in harmony and sweetness that may not be known except where joy maketh itself eternal.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We park the car on the Rue des Ecoles (the nearest parking place we can find) and leave all our gear in the car. For a moment I hesitate because there’s no way to lock up our things—the Triumph only has a canvas flap—but after all, what do I care about permanence or possessions? Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose—right? We make for a café on the Place St. Michel, babbling to each other about how great it is to be back in Paris, how Paris never changes, how the cafés are always right where you left them, and the streets are always right where you left them, and Paris is always right where you left it. Two beers each and we are kissing ostentatiously in public. (Anyone would think we were the world’s greatest lovers in private.) “The superego is soluble in alcohol,” says Adrian, becoming again the self-confident flirt he was in Vienna. “My superego is soluble in Europe,” I say. And we both laugh rather too loudly. “Let’s never go home,” I propose. “Let’s stay here forever and be delirious every day.” “The grape is the only true existentialist,” Adrian answers, holding me close. “Or the hops. Is it hops or hop? I’m never sure.” “Hops,” he says authoritatively, taking another belt of beer. “Hops,” I say, doing the same. We skip through Paris in a beery blur. We eat couscous for lunch and oysters for supper, and in between we drink innumerable beers and make innumerable stops to pee; we skip through the Jardin des Plantes and around the Pantheon and through the narrow streets near the Sorbonne. We skip through the Jardin du Luxembourg. Finally we rest on a bench near the Fontaine de l’Observatoire. We are happily stewed. We watch the great bronze horses rearing out of the fountain. I have that strange sense of invulnerability which alcohol gives and I feel that I am living in the midst of a romantic movie. I feel so relaxed and loose and giddy. New York is farther away than the moon. “Let’s find a hotel room and go to bed,” I say. Not a strong wave of lust, but just a friendly wish to consummate this romantic giddiness. We might try once more. Just one perfect fuck to remember him by. All our attempts have been somehow disappointing. It seems such a shame that we’ve been together all this time and have risked so much for so little.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Without ever becoming intimates, she felt she could honestly say that she and Kiki had always been fond of each other. Never had she resented Kiki or wished her ill. And here Claire emerged out of herself; refocused on Zora’s features so that hers was again a sovereign face and not a blur of colour and personal thoughts. It was not possible to make the last leap – to consider what it was Kiki now thought of Claire. To do that was to become subhuman before yourself, the person cast out beyond pity, a Caliban. Nobody can cast themselves out. A commotion was going on by the stage. The next act was waiting for Doc Brown to finish his introduction. The group was huge. Nine, ten boys? They were the kind of boys who make three times as much noise as their actual number. They jostled each other, shoulder to shoulder, on the way up the steps, and struggled to reach a collection of five or so microphones on stands in front of them – there would not be enough for all. One of them was Levi Belsey. ‘Looks like your brother’s up,’ said Claire, poking Zora lightly in the back. ‘Oh, God,’ said Zora, peeking through a gap in her fingers. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky – maybe he’s just the hype man.’ ‘Hype man?’ ‘Like a cheerleader. But for rap,’ explained Daisy helpfully. Finally all the boys were on the stage. The band was dismissed.  On Beauty This group had their own tape: a heavy Caribbean beat and jangly keyboards over the top. They all began to speak at once in a loud Creole. That wasn’t working. Further jostling decided that one guy should begin. A skinny guy in a hoodie came forward and gave it his all. The language barrier had an interesting effect. The ten boys were clearly eager that their audience understand what was being said; they jumped and whooped and leaned into the crowd, and the crowd could not help but respond, although most understood nothing bar the beat. Levi was indeed the hype man, picking up his microphone every few bars and shouting ‘YO!’ into it. Some of the younger black kids in the audience rushed the stage in response to the sheer energy of this performance, and here Levi came into his own, encouraging them in English. ‘Levi doesn’t even speak French,’ said Zora frowning at the performance. ‘I don’t think he has any idea what he’s hyping.’ But then came the chorus – sung by everyone together, including Levi, in English: ‘AH-RIS-TEED, CORRUPTION AND GREED, AND SO WE ALL SEE, WE STILL AIN’T FREE!’ ‘Nice rhymes,’ said Chantelle, laughing. ‘Nice and basic.’ ‘Is this political ?’ asked Daisy with distaste. After two outings, the chorus thankfully dropped back into the manic Creole of the verse. Claire struggled to simultaneously translate for her class. She soon gave it up under the weight of too many unfamiliar terms.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  But nobody laughed. ‘I’m out,’ said Levi and bounced off his stool. Levi’s family turned to him in surprise. ‘I gotta go,’ he reiterated. ‘Back to school?’ asked Jerome, looking at his own watch. ‘Uh-huh,’ said Levi because there was no point in worrying people unnecessarily. He made his farewells, pulling on his Michelin Man coat, thumping first sister and then brother hard between their shoulder blades. He pressed play on his iPod (the earphones of these had never left his ears). He got lucky. It was a beautiful song by the fattest man in rap: a -pound, Bronx-born, Hispanic genius. Only twenty-five years old when he died of a coronary, but still very much alive to Levi and millions of kids like Levi. Out of the coffee shop and down the street Levi bounced to the fat man’s ingenious boasts, similar in their formality (as Erskine had once tried to explain) to those epic boasts one finds in Milton, say, or in  On Beauty the Iliad . These comparisons meant nothing at all to Levi. His body simply loved this song; he made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was dancing down the street, the wind at his back making him as fleet of foot as Gene Kelly. Soon he could see the church steeple and then, as he got a block closer, a flash of the wash-white bed-sheets, knotted to black railings. He wasn’t so late. A few of the guys were still unpacking. Felix – who was the ‘leader’, or at least the guy who held the purse strings – waved. Levi jogged up to meet him. They knocked fists, clasped hands. Some people’s hands are sweaty, most are moist, and then there are a few rare souls like Felix whose hands are as dry and cool as stone. Levi wondered whether it was something to do with his blackness. Felix was blacker than any black man Levi ever met in his life. His skin was like slate. Levi had this idea that he would never say out loud and that he knew didn’t make sense, but anyway he had this idea that Felix was like the essence of blackness in some way. You looked at Felix and thought: This is what it’s all about, being this different; this is what white people fear and adore and want and dread. He was as purely black as – on the other side of things – those weird Swedish guys with translucent eyelashes are purely white. It was like, if you looked up black in a dictionary . . . It was awesome. And, as if to emphasize his singularity, Felix didn’t goof off like the other guys, he didn’t joke. He was all business. The only time Levi had seen him laugh was when Levi asked Felix that first Saturday whether he had a job going.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] WHEN HE who doth illumine all the world descendeth so from our hemisphere that day on every side is done away, the heaven which before is kindled by him only, now straightway maketh itself reappear by many lights wherein the one regloweth.1 And this act of heaven came to my mind when the ensign of the world and of its leaders within its blessed beak was silent; because all those living lights, far brightlier shining, began songs which from my memory must slip and fall. O sweet love, smile-bemantled, how glowing didst thou seem in those flute holes breathed on only by sacred ponderings!2 When the dear and shining stones, whereby I saw the sixth heaven gemmed, had imposed silence on the angelic chimes, meseemed to hear the murmuring of a river which drop-peth clear from rock to rock and showeth the abundance of its source. And as the sound taketh its form in the lute-neck, or at the opening of the pipes the wind that entereth, so, delay of expectation done away, that murmuring of the eagle rose up through its neck as it were hollow; there it became a voice and issued thence, out from its beak, in form of words, such as the heart awaited, whereon I wrote them. “That part in me which seeth and which doth endure the sun in mortal eagles,” it began to me, “must now fixedly be gazed upon, for of the fires wherefromout I make my figure, those with which the eye sparkleth in my head, of all their ranks are chief. He who shineth midmost, as the pupil, was the singer of the Holy Spirit who bore the ark from city unto city; now knoweth he the merit of his song, in so far as ’twas the effect of his own counsel,3 by the remuneration like unto it. Of the five who make the eyebrow’s arch, he who doth neighbour closest on the beak consoled the widow for her son;4 now knoweth he how dear it costs Christ not to follow, by his experience of this sweet life and of the opposite. And he who followeth on the circumference whereof I tell, upon the upper arch, death did delay by his true penitence;5 now knoweth he that the eternal judgment is not transmuted when a worthy prayer giveth unto to-morrow upon earth what was to-day’s. The next who followeth, with the laws and me, with good intention that bore evil fruit, to give place to the pastor, made himself a Greek; now knoweth he that the ill deduced from his good deed hurteth not him though the world be destroyed thereby.6 And him thou seest on the down-sloping arch was William, whom that land deploreth which weepeth for that Charles and Frederick live; now knoweth he how heaven is enamoured of the righteous king, and by the semblance of his glow he maketh it yet seen.7

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He transformed his voice and his face to suit his moods. Sometimes he was Edward G. Robinson as Al Capone, sometimes Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, sometimes Grimfalcon the Elf (a character we invented together), sometimes Shakewoof (another imaginary friend: part Shakespeare, part snuggly sheepdog—a sort of poetry-writing hound)…. Our long days and nights together were a series of routines, impersonations, playlets—with Brian doing most of the playing. I was such a good audience! We could walk and walk and walk and walk—from Columbia to the Village, across the Brooklyn Bridge (reciting Hart Crane, of course) and then all the way back to Manhattan—and never be bored. We never sat at a restaurant table in silence like grim young married couples do. We were always talking and laughing. Until we got married that is. Marriage ruined everything. Four years of being lovers and best friends and Shakespearean scholars together—and we blew it by getting married. I never wanted to. Marriage always seemed to be something I’d have plenty of time for in the future. The distant future. But Brian wanted to own my soul. He was afraid I’d fly away. So he gave me an ultimatum. Marry me or I’ll leave you. And I was scared of losing him, and I wanted to get away from home, and I was graduating from college and didn’t know what the hell else to do—so I married him.