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 The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  already risen from 27 to 33 guilders. And that for mere sheets of printed paper! To provide ourselves with a source of nutrition that will keep, aside from the hundred cans of food we’ve stored here, we bought three hundred pounds of beans. Not just for us, but for the office staff as well. We’d hung the sacks of beans on hooks in the hallway, just inside our secret entrance, but a few seams split under the weight. So we decided to move them to the attic, and Peter was entrusted with the heavy lifting. He managed to get five of the six sacks upstairs intact and was busy with the last one when the sack broke and a flood, or rather a hailstorm, of brown beans went flying through the air and down the stairs. Since there were about fifty pounds of beans in that sack, it made enough noise to raise the dead. Downstairs they were sure the house was falling down around their heads. Peter was stunned, but then burst into peals of laughter when he saw me standing at the bottom of the stairs, like an island in a sea of brown, with waves of beans lapping at my ankles. We promptly began picking them up, but beans are so small and slippery that they roll into every conceivable corner and hole. Now each time we go upstairs, we bend over and hunt around so we can present Mrs. van Daan with a handful of beans. I almost forgot to mention that Father has recovered from his illness. Yours, Anne P.S. The radio has just announced that Algiers has fallen. Morocco, Casablanca and Oran have been in English hands for several days. We’re now waiting for Tunis. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1942 Dearest Kitty, Great news! We’re planning to take an eighth person into hiding with us! Yes, really. We always thought there was enough room and food for one more person, but we were afraid of placing an even greater burden on Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman. But since reports of the dreadful things being done to the Jews are getting worse by the day, Father decided to sound out these two gentlemen, and they thought it was an excellent plan. “It’s just as dangerous, whether there are seven or eight,” they noted rightly. Once this was settled, we sat down and mentally went through our circle of acquaintances, trying to come up with a single person who would blend in well with our extended family. This wasn’t difficult. After Father had rejected all the

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  He agreed. After the dishes were done, I went to his room and asked if he’d refused the sausage because of our last quarrel. Luckily, that wasn’t the reason; he just thought it was bad manners to seem so eager. It had been very hot downstairs and my face was as red as a lobster. So after taking down some water for Margot, I went back up to get a little fresh air. For the sake of appearances, I first went and stood beside the van Daans’ window before going to Peter’s room. He was standing on the left side of the open window, so I went over to the right side. It’s much easier to talk next to an open window in semidarkness than in broad daylight, and I think Peter felt the same way. We told each other so much, so very much, that I can’t repeat it all. But it felt good; it was the most won- derful evening I’ve ever had in the Annex. I’ll give you a brief description of the various subjects we touched on. First we talked about the quarrels and how I see them in a very different light these days, and then about how we’ve become alienated from our parents. I told Peter about Mother and Father and Margot and myself. At one point he asked, “You always give each other a good-night kiss, don’t you?” “One? Dozens of them. You don’t, do you?” “No, I’ve never really kissed anyone.” “Not even on your birthday?” “Yeah, on my birthday I have.” We talked about how neither of us really trusts our parents, and how his parents love each other a great deal and wish he’d confide in them, but that he doesn’t want to. How I cry my heart out in bed and he goes up to the loft and swears. How Margot and I have only recently gotten to know each other and yet still tell each other very little, since we’re always together. We talked about every imaginable thing, about trust, feelings and ourselves. Oh, Kitty, he was just as I thought he would be.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The little gang would come and wait for me late in the afternoon at the end of the road. They were happy and playful, and, spotting them one day, the student’s father said with a cordial note in his voice that I must be a hell of girl to have all these boys at my disposal. In fact, I had given up counting. I had completely forgotten my childhood investigation into the permitted number of husbands. I was not a ‘collector’, and I thought that the boys and girls that I saw at parties mauling and being mauled, and mouth-to-mouth kissing until their breath gave out with as many people as possible so that they could boast about it the next day, were somehow offensive. I was happy simply to discover that the delicious giddiness I felt at the ineffably soft touch of a stranger’s lips, or when a hand fitted itself over my pubis, could be experienced an indefinite number of times because the world was full of men predisposed to do just that. Nothing else really mattered. I had nearly lost my virginity earlier to a boy I had met who made quite an impression on me. He had a slightly drooping face, huge lips and very black hair. No arm or hand had ever covered so much of my body surface as when I lay trapped by the sweater he had pulled up over my head and the sides of my knickers that he held taut across my groin. That was the first time that I had felt myself to be in the grip of pleasure. The boy asked me, did I ‘want more’. I had no idea what that might mean, because I couldn’t see what ‘more’ I could possibly have. In fact, I brought the session to an end and, even though I continued this flirtation, meeting up with him regularly in the holidays, I never thought to take it further. Neither was I particularly taken with the idea of ‘going out with’ someone – or with several people. I fell in love twice and with both men any physical relationship immediately became impossible: the first one had just got married and, anyway, showed no interest in me at all, the second lived a long way away. I therefore had little desire to hook up with a boyfriend. The student was too bland, André was as good as engaged to my friend, and Ringo had a long-term partner. And in Paris I had the friend I had made love to first, Claude, and he seemed to be in love with a bourgeois girl who could utter such poetic sentences as ‘touch my breasts, they’re so soft this evening’, without letting him go any further. This example had quickly, if rather confusingly, taught me that I could not be classed as a great seductress, and that my place in the world was therefore not so much amongst the women, facing the men, but alongside the men.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  The difference between success and failure is so much smaller than people recognize. The whole thing is based on companies trying to achieve escape velocity before they blow themselves up.” Trip says pulling off an IPO is “like a caper movie. You know they’re going to try to rob the place, but you don’t know how they’re going to do it, and you don’t know if they’ll get away with it. There’s the promised land, over there, but will they make it?” Halligan and Shah and their investors have pulled off the caper. HubSpot has gone public. The investors have made a fortune. On October 9, the first day of trading, Halligan and Shah and a team of top executives go to New York and ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. They all wear goofy orange HubSpot sunglasses, like a bunch of clowns. The rest of us gather in the big conference room in Cambridge, watching a live feed from the floor of the stock exchange. Two young women sitting in front of me have loaded the Yahoo Finance app on their iPhones and are trying to figure out how much their options are worth. Once the stock starts trading, the “reporters” (they’re actually PR people) on the stock exchange floor conduct interviews with the executives from HubSpot, asking them if they have anything to say to the folks back in the home office. The best comment comes from Dharmesh. He owns 7 percent of the company, more than any other individual. At a $30 stock price, his 2.3 million shares are worth nearly $70 million. This windfall has come to him thanks to a single daring bet, one that probably seemed crazy at the time: Back in 2006, he took $500,000 of his own money out of the bank and used it to start HubSpot. He was the only seed investor. Dharmesh holds the title of chief technology officer, and he wrote the HubSpot culture code, but he doesn’t seem to be around much. By October 2014, when the IPO takes place, he is mostly working on a new project, an online community for marketers, called Inbound.org. But now he’s the richest person at the company. I’m anxious to hear what he will say to the people back in Cambridge—the engineers who write the code, the bros in the boiler room who sell it, the grunts in the content factory who generate the leads, the customer service reps who deal with angry people all day. Most of these people will get next to nothing from this IPO, but their hard work had just made Dharmesh an immensely wealthy man. How will he thank them? He embodies our culture: humble and modest, remarkable and transparent.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  The Russians are in possession of more than half the Crimea. The British aren’t advancing beyond Cassino. We’ll have to count on the Western Wall. There have been a lot of unbelievably heavy air raids. The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in The Hague was bombed. All Dutch people will be issued new ration registration cards. Enough for today. Yours, Anne M. Frank SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 1944 My dearest Kitty, Remember yesterday’s date, since it was a red-letter day for me. Isn’t it an important day for every girl when she gets her first kiss? Well then, it’s no less important to me. The time Bram kissed me on my right cheek or Mr. Woudstra on my right hand doesn’t count. How did I suddenly come by this kiss? I’ll tell you. Last night at eight I was sitting with Peter on his divan and it wasn’t long before he put an arm around me. (Since it was Saturday, he wasn’t wearing his overalls.)”Why don t we move over a little,” I said, “so won t keep bumping my head against the cupboard.” He moved so far over he was practically in the corner. I slipped my arm under his and across his back, and he put his arm around my shoulder, so that I was nearly engulfed by him. We’ve sat like this on other occasions, but never so close as we were last night. He held me firmly against him, my left side against his chest; my heart had already begun to beat faster, but there was more to come. He wasn’t satisfied until my head lay on his shoulder, with his on top of mine. I sat up again after about five minutes, but before long he took my head in his hands and put it back next to his. Oh, it was so wonderful. I could hardly talk, my pleasure was too intense; he caressed my cheek and arm, a bit clumsily, and played with my hair. Most of the time our heads were touching. I can’t tell you, Kitty, the feeling that ran through me. I was too happy for words,

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  But finally the reunion of Kore and Demeter was reenacted and the mystery concluded with rhapsodic scenes and sacred tableaux that filled the initiates with joy and relief. At Eleusis, they had achieved an ekstasis, “stepping outside” their normal, workaday selves, and experienced new insight. No secret doctrine was imparted. As Aristotle would explain later, the mystai did not go to Eleusis to learn anything, but to have an experience, which, they felt, transformed them. 72 “I came out of the mystery hall,” one of the mystai recalled, “feeling a stranger to myself.” 73 The Greek historian Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE ) thought that dying might be like the Eleusinian experience: Wandering astray in the beginning, tiresome walking in circles, some frightening paths in darkness that lead nowhere; then, immediately before the end, all the terrible things—panic and shivering, sweat and amazement. And then some wonderful light comes to meet you, pure regions and meadows are there to greet you, with sounds and dances and solemn, sacred words and holy views. 74 The final rapture, orchestrated by the intense psychodrama, gave people intimations of the beatific bliss enjoyed by the gods. The Greeks were learning to think with logical, analytical rigor, and yet periodically they felt the need to surrender themselves to the irrational. The Athenian philosopher Proclus (c. 412–485 CE ) believed that the initiation of Eleusis created a sympatheia, a profound affinity with the ritual, so that they lost themselves and became wholly absorbed in the rite “in a way that is unintelligible to us and divine.” Not all the mystai achieved this; some were simply “stricken with panic,” and remained imprisoned in their fear, but others managed to “assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become one with the gods, and experience divine possession.” 75 In India, people were beginning to achieve similar bliss in the techniques of introspection. There was no such interior journey at Eleusis; this was quite different from the solitary ekstasis achieved by some of the mystics of the Axial Age. The illumination of Eleusis did not happen in a remote forest hermitage, but in the presence of thousands of people. Eleusis belonged to the old, pre-Axial world. By imitating Demeter and Persephone, reenacting their passage from death to life, the mystai left their individual selves behind and became one with their divine models. The same was true of the mysteries of Dionysus. 76 Here too the participants united themselves to a suffering god, following Dionysus’s frenzied wanderings when, driven mad by his stepmother, Hera, he had journeyed through the forests of Greece and through the eastern lands of Egypt, Syria, and Phrygia in search of healing.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  And he likes to be left alone, so I don’t know how much he likes me. In any case, we’re getting to know each other a little better. I wish we dared to say more. But who knows, maybe that time will come sooner than I think! Once or twice a day he gives me a knowing glance, I wink back, and we’re both happy. It seems crazy to talk about his being happy, and yet I have the overwhelming feeling he thinks the same way I do. Yours, Anne M. Frank SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1944 Dear Kitty, This is the first Saturday in months that hasn’t been tiresome, dreary and boring. The reason is Peter. This morning as I was on my way to the attic to hang up my apron, Father asked whether I wanted to stay and practice my French, and I said yes. We spoke French together for a while and I explained something to Peter, and then we worked on our English. Father read aloud from Dickens, and I was in seventh heaven, since I was sitting on Father’s chair, close to Peter. I went downstairs at quarter to eleven. When I went back up at eleven-thirty, Peter was already waiting for me on the stairs. We talked until quarter to one. Whenever I leave the room, for example after a meal, and Peter has a chance and no one else can hear, he says, “Bye, Anne, see you later.” Oh, I’m so happy! I wonder if he’s going to fall in love with me after all? In any case, he’s a nice boy, and you have no idea how good it is to talk to him! Mrs. van D. thinks it’s all right for me to talk to Peter, but today she asked me teasingly, “Can I trust you two up there?” “Of course,” I protested. “I take that as an insult!” Morning, noon and night, I look forward to seeing Peter. Yours, Anne M. Frank PS. Before I forget, last night everything was blanketed in snow. Now it’s

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1944 Dearest Kitty, A lot has changed for me since Saturday. What’s happened is this: I was longing for something (and still am), but. . . a small, a very small, part of the problem has been resolved. On Sunday morning I noticed, to my great joy (I’ll be honest with you), that Peter kept looking at me. Not in the usual way. I don’t know, I can’t explain it, but I suddenly had the feeling he wasn’t as in love with Margot as I used to think. All day long I tried not to look at him too much, because whenever I did, I caught him looking at me and then -- well, it made me feel wonderful inside, and that’s not a feeling I should have too often. Sunday evening everyone, except Pim and me, was clustered around the radio, listening to the “Immortal Music of the German Masters.” Dussel kept twisting and turning the knobs, which annoyed Peter, and the others too. After restraining himself for half an hour, Peter asked somewhat irritably if he would stop fiddling with the radio. Dussel replied in his haughtiest tone, “Ich mach’ das schon!” [I’ll decide that.] Peter got angry and made an insolent remark. Mr. van Daan sided with him, and Dussel had to back down. That was it. The reason for the disagreement wasn’t particularly interesting in and of itself, but Peter has apparently taken the matter very much to heart, because this morning, when I was rummaging around in the crate of books in the attic, Peter came up and began telling me what had happened. I didn’t know anything about it, but Peter soon realized he’d found an attentive listener and started warming up to his subject. “Well, it’s like this,” he said. “I don’t usually talk much, since I know beforehand I’ll just be tongue-tied. I start stuttering and blushing and I twist my words around so much I finally have to stop, because I can’t find the right words. That’s what happened yesterday. I meant to say something entirely different, but once I started, I got all mixed up. It’s awful. I used to have a bad habit, and sometimes I wish I still did: whenever

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Mahavira’s harsh lifestyle had a special purpose. Like all ascetics, he wanted to release his true self from the constraints of the body, and thus achieve inner control and peace of mind. But he did not achieve moksha until he had developed an entirely new way of looking at the world that was informed through and through by ahimsa: “harmlessness.”110 Each human being had a soul (jiva), a living entity within, which was luminous, blissful, and intelligent. But animals, plants, water, fire, air, and even rocks and stones each had jivas too; they had been brought to their present existence by the karma of their former lives. All beings shared the same nature, therefore, and must be treated with the same courtesy and respect that we would wish to receive ourselves.111 Even plants had some form of awareness; in future lives, they could become sacred trees, and then progress to human form and finally achieve enlightenment. If they gave up all violence, animals could be reborn in heaven. The same rule applied to human beings, who could achieve moksha only if they did not harm their fellow creatures. Until an ascetic had acquired this empathic view of the world, he could not attain moksha. For Mahavira, liberation was nonviolence. When he achieved this insight at the age of forty-two, he immediately experienced enlightenment. At that time, according to the earliest texts, he was living in a field beside a river.112 He had fasted for two and a half days, drunk no water, exposed himself to the full glare of the sun, and achieved kevala, a unique knowledge that gave him an entirely different perspective. He could now perceive all levels of reality simultaneously, in every dimension of time and space, as though he were a god. Indeed, for Mahavira, a deva was simply a creature who had attained kevala by perceiving and respecting the divine soul that existed in every single creature. Naturally this state of mind could not be described, because it entirely transcended ordinary consciousness. It was a state of absolute friendliness with all beings, however lowly. In this enlightened state of being, “words return in vain, no statements of mundane logic can be made, and the mind cannot fathom it.” You could speak of it only by saying, “Neti . . . neti” (“Not this . . . not this”). When an enlightened person had attained this perspective, he or she would find that there was “nothing with which it can be compared. Its being is without form. . . . It is not sound, nor form, nor soul, nor heaven, nor touch or anything like that.”113 But, Mahavira was convinced, anybody who followed his regimen would automatically attain this ineffable state, and become a Jina. Hence his followers were known as the Jains, and his dharma was “the Way of the Conquerors.”

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

  In drinking this fresh milk into which all the mountain had put its perfume, and of which each savory swallow seemed to give new life, I certainly experienced a series of feelings which the word agreeable is insufficient to designate. It was like a pastoral symphony, apprehended by the taste instead of by the ear" (quoted by F. Paulhan from 'Les Problèmes de l'Æsthétique Contemporaine, p. 63).—Compare the dithyrambic about whiskey of Col. R. Ingersoll, to which the presidential campaign of 1888 gave such notoriety: "I send you some of the most wonderful whiskey that ever drove the skeleton from a feast or painted landscapes in the brain of man. It is the mingled souls of wheat and corn. In it you will find the sunshine and shadow that chase each other over the billowy fields, the breath of June, the carol of the lark, the dews of the night, the wealth of summer, and autumn's rich content—all golden with imprisoned light. Drink it, and you will hear the voice of men and maidens singing the 'Harvest Home,' mingled with the laughter of children. Drink it, and you wilt feel within your blood the star-lit dawns, the dreamy, tawny dusks of many perfect days. For forty years this liquid joy has been within the happy staves of oak, longing to touch the lips of man."—It is in this way that I should reply to Mr. Gurney's criticism on my theory. My "view," this writer says (Mind, IX. 425), "goes far to confound the two things which in my opinion it is the prime necessity of musical psychology to distinguish—the effect chiefly sensuous of mere streams or masses of finely colored sound, and the distinctive musical emotion to which the form of a sequence of sound, its melodic and harmonic individuality, even realized in complete silence, is the vital and essential object. It is with the former of these two very different things that the physical reactions, the stirring of the hair—the tingling and the shiver—are by far most markedly connected. . . . If I may speak of myself, there is plenty of music from which I have received as much emotion in silent representation as when presented by the finest orchestra; but it is with the latter condition that I almost exclusively associate the cutaneous tingling and hair-stirring. But to call my enjoyment of the form, of the note-after-noteness of a melody a mere critical 'judgment of right' [see below, p. 472] would really be to deny to me the power of expressing a fact of simple and intimate expression in English. It is quintessentially emotion. . . . Now there are hundreds of other bits of music . . . . which I judge to be right without receiving an iota of the emotion.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  the rest will follow. But -- and this is the worst part -- I seem to be chasing him. I’m always the one who has to go upstairs; he never comes to me. But that’s because of the rooms, and he understands why I object. Oh, I’m sure he understands more than I think . Yours, Anne M. Frank MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1944 My dearest Kitty, Contrary to my usual practice, I’m going to write you a detailed description of the food situation, since it’s become a matter of some difficulty and importance, not only here in the Annex, but in all of Holland, all of Europe and even beyond. In the twenty-one months we’ve lived here, we’ve been through a good many “food cycles” -- you’ll understand what that means in a moment. A “food cycle” is a period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. For a long time we ate nothing but endive. Endive with sand, endive without sand, endive with mashed potatoes, endive-and-mashed potato casserole. Then it was spinach, followed by kohlrabi, salsify, cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, etc., etc. It’s not much fun when you have to eat, say, sauerkraut every day for lunch and dinner, but when you’re hungry enough, you do a lot of things. Now, however, we’re going through the most delightful period so far, because there are no vegetables at all. Our weekly lunch menu consists of brown beans, split-pea soup, potatoes with dumplings, potato kugel and, by the grace of God, turnip greens or rotten carrots, and then it’s back to brown beans. Because of the bread shortage, we eat potatoes at every meal, starting with breakfast, but then we fry them a little. To make soup we use brown beans, navy beans, potatoes, packages of vege- table soup, packages of chicken soup and packages of bean soup. There are brown beans in everything, including the bread. For dinner we always have potatoes with imitation gravy and -- thank goodness we’ve still got it -- beet salad. I must tell you about the dumplings. We make them with government-issue flour, water and yeast.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The person who persevered in this struggle for goodness would arrive at what Mencius called “floodlike qi ” ( hao jan chi qi )—a phrase that he coined himself and found difficult to explain. It was a special sort of qi, which lifted human beings to the divine: This is a ch’i *6 which is, in the highest degree, vast and unyielding ( hao jan ). Nourish it with integrity and place no obstacle in its path and it will fill the space between Heaven and Earth. It is a ch’i which unites rightness and the Way. Deprive it of these and it will collapse. It is born of accumulated rightness, and cannot be appropriated by anybody through a sporadic show of rightness. 59 The practice of ren would bring ordinary, frail human beings into harmony with the Way. Zhuangzi had experienced something similar, but had claimed that self-consciousness could only impede the flow of the qi. Not so, Mencius replied; unity with the Way could be attained by disciplined, sustained moral effort. The Golden Rule was crucial. This was the virtue that made the junzi truly humane, and brought the individual into a mystical relationship with the entire universe. “All the ten thousand things are there in me,” Mencius said in one of his most important instructions. “There is no greater joy for me than to find, on self-examination, that I am true to myself. Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence [ ren ].” 60 By behaving as though other people were as important as yourself, you could experience an ecstatic unity with all things. A junzi no longer felt that there was any distinction between him and other creatures. Such a person became a divine force for good in a troubled world. When he looked back to the feudal period, a time when the king’s egotism had been constrained by the li, Mencius believed that his subjects had been content. Those distant days seemed like a golden age compared with the violence and terror of the Warring States period. The king had radiated the potency of the Way and had exerted a profound moral influence on his people, who had been “happy,” “expansive and content.” They had “moved daily toward goodness without realizing who brought this about.” There were no kings of that caliber today, but anybody could become a junzi, a fully mature person, and have the same effect on his environment. “A junzi transforms where he passes, and works wonders where he abides. He is in the same stream as Heaven above and Earth below. Can he be said to bring but small benefit?” 61 I n China, the Axial Age had started late but was now in full flower. In the other regions, it was either running down or in the process of becoming something different.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He stood sipping his drink in the bar; they stood on the twilit sidewalk. Eric watched Vivaldo and used these moments to remember him. Vivaldo seemed more radiant than he had ever been, and less boyish. He was still very slim, very lean, but he seemed, somehow, to have more weight. In Eric’s memory, Vivaldo always put one foot down lightly, like a distrustful colt, ready, at any moment, to break and run; but now he stood where he stood, the ground bore him, and his startled, sniffing, maverick quality was gone. Or perhaps not entirely gone: his black eyes darted from face to face as he spoke, as he listened, investigating, weighing, watching, his eyes hiding more than they revealed. The conversation took a more somber turn. One of the musicians had brought up the subject of money—of unions, and, with a gesture toward the spot where Eric stood, of working conditions. Vivaldo’s eyes darkened, his face became still, and he looked briefly down at Ida. She watched the musician who was speaking with a proud, bitter look on her face. “So maybe you better give it another thought, gal,” the musician concluded. “I’ve thought about it,” she said, looking down, touching one of the earrings. Vivaldo took this hand in his, and she looked up at him; he kissed her lightly on the tip of the nose. “Well,” said another musician, wearily, “we better be making it on in.” He turned and entered the bar, saying, “Excuse me, man” to Eric as he passed. Ida whispered something in Vivaldo’s ear; he listened, frowning. His hair fell over his forehead, and he threw his head back, sharply, with a look of annoyance, and saw Eric. For a moment they simply stared at each other. Another musician, entering the bar, passed between them. Then, Vivaldo said, “So there you are. I didn’t really believe you’d make it; I didn’t really believe you’d be back.” “But I’m here,” said Eric, grinning, “now, what do you think of that?” Vivaldo suddenly raised his arms and laughed—and the policeman moved directly behind him, glowering, seeming to wait for an occult go-ahead signal—and covered the space between himself and Eric and threw both arms around him. Eric nearly dropped the glass he was holding, for Vivaldo had thrown him off balance; he grinned up into Vivaldo’s grinning face; and was aware, behind Vivaldo, of Ida, inscrutably watching, and the policeman, waiting. “You fucking red-headed Rebel,” Vivaldo shouted, “you haven’t changed a bit! Christ, I’m glad to see you, I’d no idea I’d be so glad to see you.” He released Eric, and stepped back, oblivious, apparently, to the storm he was creating. He dragged Eric out of the bar, into the street, over to Ida. “Here’s the sonofabitch we’ve been talking about so long, Ida; here’s Eric. He’s the last human being to get out of Alabama.”

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Then everything came out pell-mell and arsey-versy. Pages and pages. Reams of it. None of it belonged in the novel. Nor even in The Book of Perennial Gloom . Reading them over I had the impression of examining an old print: a room in a medieval dwelling, the old woman sitting on the pot, the doctor standing by with red-hot tongs, a mouse creeping towards a piece of cheese in the corner near the crucifix. A ground-floor view, so to speak. A chapter from the history of everlasting misery. Depravity, insomnia, gluttony posing as the three graces. All described in quicksilver, benzine and potassium permanganate. Another day my hands might wander over the keys with the felicity of a Borgia’s murderous paw. Choosing the staccato technique, I would ape the quibblers and quipsters of the Ghibellines. Or put it on, like a saltimbanque performing for a feeble-minded monarch. The next day a quadruped: everything in hoof beats, clots of phlegm, snorts and farts. A stallion (ech!) racing over a frozen lake with torpedoes in his bowels. All bravura, so to say. And then, as when the hurricane abates, it would flow like a song—quietly, evenly, with the steady lustre of magnesium. As if hymning the Bhagavad Gita. A monk in a saffron robe extolling the work of the Omniscient One. No longer a writer. A saint. A saint from the Sanhedrin sent. God bless the author! (Have we a David here?) What a joy it was to write like an organ in the middle of a lake! Bite me, you bed lice! Bite while I have the strength! The Book of Life—Nexus“Val, you’re a dreamer.” “Sure I am. But I’m an active dreamer. There’s a difference.” Then I added: “We’re all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put down a few words. Certainly I want to write. But I don’t think it’s the end-all and be-all. How shall I put it? Writing is like the caca that you make in your sleep. Delicious caca, to be sure, but first comes life, then the caca. Life is change, movement, quest… a going forward to meet the unknown, the unexpected. Only a very few men can say of themselves, ‘I have lived!’ That’s why we have books—so that men may live vicariously. But when the author also lives vicariously—!” She broke in. “When I listen to you sometimes, Val, I feel that you want to live a thousand lives in one. You’re eternally dissatisfied—with life as it is, with yourself, with just about everything. You’re a Mongol. You belong on the steppes of Central Asia.” “You know,” I said, getting worked up now, “one of the reasons why I feel so disjointed is that there’s a little of everything in me. I can put myself in any period and feel at home in it.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  This view is especially clear in IQH 7.26f., in which the psalmist thanks God for enlightening him. Parallel to this note at the beginning of a hymn is the thanks for not placing the psalm- ist's lot 'in the congregation of Vanity' (IQH 7.34) or for placing his soul 'in the bundle of the living' (IQH 2.20). Knowledge here is double-pronged: one knows, by God's grace, that salvrtion is to be found in the community; and one knows, in retrospect, that it is precisely the gift of knowledge that is essential to effect election (IQH 14.12f.). That is, God's making the member of the sect 'know' is the way in which the member is able to appropriate the election. The knowledge that one is elect, and that one's election has been given effect by knowledge that he is elect, does not, however, exhaust 'knowledge'. After he enters the community his knowledge must still be purified (IQS 1.12). One of the main points of the priestly blessing on entrants is that God will give them wisdom and eternal knowledge (IQS 2.3). The members receive further knowledge concerning the bifurcation of mankind into the elect and the non-elect after they enter (IQS 3.13f.). Further, it is clear that some elements of essential knowledge can be gained only after entry into the sect (IQS 5.11f.; 6.16; Q) 15.5-11). Thus there is no quarrel with placing knowledge first in the 'way of salvation', as long as it is understood that the knowledge thus referred to is that connected with the election of the sectarians. That one must be given knowledge in order to be counted among the elect helps explain, as we have noted, why some in Israel are elect and some not. We have previously noted that members are purified on entry. One of the most basic views of the Qumran community was that all outside the sect were damned. Since one cannot be born into the Qumran covenant, it follows that there must be purification at the time of admission. We may note, again, that purification is repeatedly referred to by the psalmist in terms that indicate that it is connected to election and entry into the sect. This is the case, in fact, in the hymn cited by Bardtke, where the purification is for the purpose of making man holy for God and so that he may jom the community (IQH 11.10-12). On the other hand, purification does not stop there. The member after entry may still sin, and this requires repeated purification, and it is apparently for this that the psalmist prays in IQH 16.11f. This brings us to the only substantial difference between Bardtke's 'way of salvation' and the soteriological pattern which I have described: Bardtke gives no place (as IQH 11.3-14 does not) to the role of the commandments 9] Conclusion and atonement for transgression of them after entry. The 'way' moves directly from purification from sin to participation in the holy community.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady very graciously replied that she was ready to do his desire, so but she might and it were honourable. Then said he, 'Madam, your kinsfolk and all the Bolognese believe and hold you for certain to be dead, wherefore there is no one who looketh for you more at home, and therefore I would have you of your favour be pleased to abide quietly here with my mother till such time as I shall return from Modona, which will be soon. And the reason for which I require you of this is that I purpose to make a dear and solemn present of you to your husband in the presence of the most notable citizens of this place.' The lady, confessing herself beholden to the gentleman and that his request was an honourable one, determined to do as he asked, how much soever she desired to gladden her kinsfolk of her life,[449] and so she promised it to him upon her faith. Hardly had she made an end of her reply, when she felt the time of her delivery to be come and not long after, being lovingly tended of Messer Gentile's mother, she gave birth to a goodly male child, which manifold redoubled his gladness and her own. Messer Gentile took order that all things needful should be forthcoming and that she should be tended as she were his proper wife and presently returned in secret to Modona. There, having served the term of his office and being about to return to Bologna, he took order for the holding of a great and goodly banquet at his house on the morning he was to enter the city, and thereto he bade many gentlemen of the place, amongst whom was Niccoluccio Caccianimico. Accordingly, when he returned and dismounted, he found them all awaiting him, as likewise the lady, fairer and sounder than ever, and her little son in good case, and with inexpressible joy seating his guests at table, he let serve them magnificently with various meats. [Footnote 449: _i.e._ with news of her life.]

• From Real Life (2020)

  Elle commence maintenant. — Oh que oui ! » s’était exclamé Yngve, posant la main dans le dos de Lukas. « Oh que oui, bon dieu. — À la vie », avait dit Emma, levant son gobelet en plastique. La lumière des flammes dansait à travers la paroi. Wallace regardait cette lumière onduler, se contorsionner dans le liquide. Des bulles dorées montaient à la surface du champagne. Il avait levé son gobelet aussi. « À la vie », avaient-ils tous dit, doucement, chacun à sa manière, puis plus fort, jusqu’à le scander encore et encore. À la vie, disaient-ils, imprégnant ces mots de tous leurs espoirs et désirs pour l’avenir. Leur rire résonnait dans la nuit et les arbres, et sur la rive qu’ils avaient derrière eux, des gens dînaient, riaient, pleuraient et faisaient leurs affaires comme ils l’avaient toujours fait et le feraient toujours. Titre original : Real Life Conception graphique : Karine Picault – Studio Delcourt Design original : Grace Han Première publication chez Riverhead, USA, en 2020. © Brandon Taylor, 2020. © La croisée, un label du groupe Delcourt, 2022, pour la présente traduction. La croisée Groupe Delcourt 8, rue Léon Jouhaux 75010 Paris www.editions-lacroisee.fr ISBN : 978-2-4130-5341-5 Ce document numérique a été réalisé par Nord Compo . Sommaire Couverture Titre Partie 1 Partie 2 Partie 3 Partie 4 Partie 5 Partie 6 Partie 7 Partie 8 Partie 9 Partie 10 Remerciements À propos de l'auteur Copyright L’orage grondait sans cesse – tonnerre et éclairs et vent tellement violent qu’il ébranlait les arbres parfois jusqu’à les déraciner. Il a tellement plu un été que rien ne voulait rester dans la terre, des pieds de tomates et de choux poussaient incongrus parmi les ronces parce que les graines avaient été dispersées sur le sable par la pluie. C’est ce qui me revient en premier, le fumet de la terre détrempée, la chaleur collée au sol et la brume grise qui se levait après un gros orage. Les nuages étaient d’un gris-noir violacé, s’adoucissant quand la météo se calmait, et on voyait bien de quel côté était venue la tempête, car les arbres étaient encore écartelés de part et d’autre et il s’ouvrait un large sentier à travers les bois, comme si un animal gigantesque s’y était frayé un chemin.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Pretty well—under the circumstances.” Her pause suggested that the circumstances were grim. “She had a right fine boy, weighed seven pounds.” She was about to say more; but Ida entered. She was already quite tall, nearly as tall as she was going to be. She, too, had been dealing in hot combs and curling irons, Vivaldo’s later impression that she had been in pigtails was due to the fact that her hair had been curled tightly all over her head. The dress she wore was long and blue and full, of some rustling material which billowed above her long legs. She came into the room, looking only at her brother, with an enormous, childlike smile. He and Rufus stood up. “You see, I got here,” said Rufus, smiling, and he and his sister kissed each other on the cheek. Their mother stood watching them with a proud, frowning smile. “I see you did,” said Ida, moving a little away from him, and laughing. Her delight in seeing her brother was so real that Vivaldo felt a kind of anguish, thinking of his own house, his own sister. “I been wondering if you’d make it—you keep so busy all the time.” She said the last with a wry, proud, grown-up exasperation, as one submitting to the penalties imposed by her brother’s power and glory. She had not looked at Vivaldo, though she was vividly aware of him. But Vivaldo would not exist until Rufus permitted it. He permitted it now, tentatively, with one hand on his sister’s neck. He turned her toward Vivaldo. “I brought a friend of mine along, Vivaldo Moore. This is my sister, Ida.” They shook hands. Her handshake was as brief as her mother’s had been, but stronger. And she looked at Vivaldo differently, as though he were a glamorous stranger, glamorous not only in himself and his color but in his scarcely to-be-imagined relation to her brother. “Well, now, where,” asked Rufus, teasingly, “do you think you’d like to go, young lady?” And he watched her, grinning. But there was a constraint in the room now, too, which had not been there before, which had entered with the girl who would soon be a woman. She stood there like a target and a prize, the natural prey of someone—somewhere—who would soon be on her trail. “Oh, I don’t care,” she said. “Anywhere you-all want to go.” “But you so dressed up—you sure you ain’t ashamed to be seen with us?” He was also dressed up, in his best dark suit and a shirt and tie he had borrowed from Vivaldo. Ida and her mother laughed. “Boy, you stop teasing your sister,” said Mrs. Scott. “Well, go on, get your coat,” Rufus said, “and we’ll make tracks.” “We going far?” “We going far enough for you to have to wear a coat.” “She don’t mean is you going far,” said Mrs. Scott. “She trying to find out where you going and what time you coming back.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  “That’s not entirely true,” said Eric, “don’t listen to her. They’re just very interested, that’s all. I don’t believe anything until it happens.” He took a blue handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his face. “Let’s go in,” he said. “Baby,” said Vivaldo, “you’re going to be a star.” He kissed Eric on the forehead. “You son of a bitch.” “Nothing is set,” said Eric, and he looked at Cass. He grinned. “I’m really part of an economy drive. They can get me cheap, you know, and they’ve got almost everybody you ever heard of lined up for the other roles—so my agent explained to me that my name goes below the title—” “But in equal size,” said Cass. “One of those and introducing deals,” said Eric, and laughed. He looked pleased about his good news for the first time. “Well, baby, it looks like you’ve made it now,” said Ida. “Congratulations.” “Your clairvoyant Frenchman,” Cass said, “was right.” “Only what are they going to do about that ante-bellum accent?” asked Vivaldo. “Look,” said Eric, “let’s go see this movie. I speak French in it.” He threw an arm around Vivaldo’s shoulder. “Impeccably.” “Hell,” Vivaldo said, “I don’t really feel like seeing a movie. I’d much rather take you out and get you stinking drunk.” “You’re going to,” said Eric, “as soon as the movie’s over.” And they came, laughing, through the doors just as the French film began. The titles were superimposed over a montage of shots of Paris in the morning: laborers on their bicycles, on their way to work, coming down from the hills of Montmartre, crossing the Place de la Concorde, rolling through the great square before Notre Dame. In great close-ups, the traffic lights flashed on and off, the white batons of the traffic policemen rose and fell; it soon became apparent that one had already picked up the central character and would follow him to his destination; which, if one could judge from the music would be a place of execution. The film was one of those politics, sex, and vengeance dramas the French love to turn out, and it starred one of the great French actors, who had died when this film was completed. So the film, which was not remarkable in itself, held this undeniable necrophilic fascination. Working with this actor, being on the set while this man worked, had been one of the great adventures of Eric’s life. And though Cass, Vivaldo, and Ida were interested in the film principally because Eric appeared in it, the attention which they brought to it was dictated by the silent intensity of Eric’s adoration. They had all heard of the great actor, and they all admired him. But they could not see, of course, as Eric could, with what economy of means he managed great effects and turned an indifferent role into a striking creation.

• From Another Country (1962)

  The policeman seemed to take a dim, even a murderous view of this, and, ceasing to wait on occult inspiration, peered commandingly into the bar. The signal he then received caused him, slowly, to move a little away. But Vivaldo beamed on Eric as though Eric were his pride and joy; and said again, to Ida, staring at Eric, “Ida, this is Eric. Eric, meet Ida.” And he took their hands and placed them together. Ida grasped his hand, laughing, and looked into his eyes. “Eric,” she said, “I think I’ve heard more about you than I’ve ever heard about any living human being. I’m so glad to meet you, I can’t tell you. I’d decided you weren’t nothing but a myth.” The touch of her hand shocked him, as did her eyes and her warmth and her beauty. “I’m delighted to meet you, too,” he said. “You can’t have heard more about me—you can’t have heard better about me—than I’ve heard about you.” They held each other’s eyes for a second, she still smiling, wearing all her beauty as a great queen wears her robes—and establishing that distance between them, too—and then one of the musicians came to the doorway, and said, “Ida, honey, the man says come on with it if you coming.” And he disappeared. Ida said, “Come on, follow me. They’ve got a table for us way in back somewhere.” She took Eric’s arm. “They’re doing me a favor, letting me sit in. I’ve never sung in public before. So I can’t afford to bug them.” “You see,” said Vivaldo, behind them, “you got off the boat just in time for a great occasion.” “You should have let him say that,” said Ida. “I was just about to,” said Eric, “believe me.” They squeezed through the crowd to the slightly wider area in the back. Here, Ida paused, looking about her. She looked up at Eric. “What happened to Richard and Cass?” “They asked me to apologize for them. They couldn’t come. One of the kids was sick.” He felt, as he said this, a faint tremor of disloyalty—to Ida: as though she were mixed up in his mind with the colored children who had attacked Paul and Michael in the park. “Today of all days,” she sighed—but seemed, really, scarcely to be concerned about their absence. Her eyes continued to search the crowd; she sighed again, a sigh of private resignation. The musicians were ready, attempts were being made to silence the mob. A waiter appeared and seated them at a tiny table in a corner next to the ladies’ room, and took their order. The malevolent heat, now that they were trapped in this spot, began rising from the floor and descending from the ceiling.