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 My Life on the Road (2015)

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

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

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

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

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

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

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

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

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

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  In the end, Colorado defeated the biased ballot initiatives, including one that would have conferred legal personhood on a fertilized egg, and also gave its support to Obama. On the night of the election, he won this 80 percent white state with about 60 percent of the votes from women of all races, and more than 70 percent of the votes from all single women. Even more so than in the rest of the country, John McCain would have won if only men had voted. We danced with crowds in the streets of downtown Denver to celebrate a victory for Barack Obama, a man with a great mind and a good heart, as the first African American president of the United States. On very good days, I knew our little group was part of the great tradition of abolitionists and suffragists who traveled by horse-drawn carriage and train to meetings in parlors, town halls, churches, schoolhouses, granges, and barns. They couldn’t rely only on letters, newspapers, and books to spread the word, just as we must not rely only on television, email, Skype, and Twitter. Then and now, we take to the road to hold communal meetings where listeners can speak, speakers can listen, facts can be debated, and empathy can create trust and understanding. In each of these stages of campaigning, I’ve been inspired, angry, hopeless, hopeful, sleepless, surprised, betrayed, exhausted, educated, energized, despairing, and impatient—but never sorry. I wasn’t tempted to join a campaign staff. That is important but a one-way street. Volunteering as a citizen—or with an issue group or a movement—allows ideas to flow both ways. Nor was I tempted to become a candidate myself. That would have meant taking on conflict as a daily diet. I’ve noticed that great political leaders are energized by conflict. I’m energized by listening to people’s stories and trying to figure out shared solutions. That’s the work of an organizer. Sometimes when I’m in the midst of all this, I can hear my mother saying, “Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing your teeth.” I.As a freelancer, I finally did get one assignment in our nation’s capital—to write about the style of the Kennedy White House. It paid less than I would spend traveling back and forth from New York, but I was as fascinated as anybody with the Kennedys. Also I would be reading otherwise tedious research in the West Wing office of Ted Sorensen, JFK’s speechwriter, someone I knew from campaigning. Just being in that political energy field was reward enough. Since Sorensen felt humor was his weak point, there was a small chance I could contribute a word or two to a speech he was finishing on a deadline. A man of sober Nebraska stock, Ted purchased his own stamps, just in case a letter might not be deemed job-related. He was definitely not part of the glamorous Kennedy social life.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  One of the boys ran up to Levin. “Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!” he shouted to him, and he walked a little way off behind him. And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his approval, at killing three snipe, one after another, straight off. Chapter 13 The sportsman’s saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is not missed, the day will be lucky, turned out correct. At ten o’clock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of twenty miles, returned to his night’s lodging with nineteen head of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would not go into the game bag. His companions had long been awake, and had had time to get hungry and have breakfast. “Wait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen,” said Levin, counting a second time over the grouse and snipe, that looked so much less important now, bent and dry and bloodstained, with heads crooked aside, than they did when they were flying. The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevitch’s envy pleased Levin. He was pleased too on returning to find the man sent by Kitty with a note was already there. “I am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can feel easier than ever. I’ve a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna,”—this was the midwife, a new and important personage in Levin’s domestic life. “She has come to have a look at me. She found me perfectly well, and we have kept her till you are back. All are happy and well, and please, don’t be in a hurry to come back, but, if the sport is good, stay another day.” These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his wife, were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed lightly over Levin. One was that the chestnut trace horse, who had been unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out of sorts. The coachman said he was “Overdriven yesterday, Konstantin Dmitrievitch. Yes, indeed! driven ten miles with no sense!” The other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute destroyed his good humor, though later he laughed at it a great deal, was to find that of all the provisions Kitty had provided in such abundance that one would have thought there was enough for a week, nothing was left. On his way back, tired and hungry from shooting, Levin had so distinct a vision of meat-pies that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste them, as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told Philip to give him some. It appeared that there were no pies left, nor even any chicken. “Well, this fellow’s appetite!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing and pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. “I never suffer from loss of appetite, but he’s really marvelous!...”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I.In 1963, a time of controversy over civil rights and Vietnam, political scared network executives, and satire still evoked George S. Kaufman’s show business adage “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.” Though TW3 would eventually become the parent of the much sillier Laugh-In, then of such true heirs as Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report, the continuity acceptance department, otherwise known as the censors, was in a snit of nervousness. Because the show really was live, if anyone departed from the script, the only remedy was to bleep a word or pull the plug completely. Censors also once tried to convince us that the Fairness Doctrine of the Federal Communications Commission required writing a prowar joke for every antiwar joke. Fortunately, they couldn’t think of a prowar joke either. But limits lead to invention. My favorite skit got past “the suits,” as we mercilessly called all network executives, by hiring a juggler to toss huge butcher knives into the air and keep them circling overhead while the audience barely breathed. After what seemed an eternity, a stagehand appeared with a vaudeville-type placard: THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE . Thanks to Surrealism in Everyday Life, I could comment on such events as the high-rise bordellos being subsidized by the government of Holland. All I had to do was comb through the newspapers of the world every Saturday morning—while also watching Soul Train, thus learning new disco moves at the same time—and search for the sort of events about which one says, “You can’t make this stuff up!” I was the only “girl writer,” probably because the power to make people laugh is also a power, so women have been kept out of comedy. Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, and what men fear most from women is ridicule. Later, when Tina Fey was head writer and star of Saturday Night Live, she could still say, “Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.” TW3 was fun. It was pioneering. It couldn’t last. But what did last was Surrealism in Everyday Life as a category in my mind. Never again would I be able to confront the unimaginable without imagining an award for it. When I began to travel as an organizer and was plunged into irrational juxtapositions on the road, I finally understood why laughter is a mark of wanderers, from the holy fools of Old Russia to the roadies of rock music. It’s the surprise, the unexpected, the out of control. It turns out that laughter is the only free emotion—the only one that can’t be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we’re in love because, if we’re kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha!

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, no, that’s too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see each other more. Come, let’s go up,” said Anna, as she gave her favorite horse the sugar the footman had brought her. “_Et vous oubliez votre devoir_,” she said to Veslovsky, who came out too on the steps. “_Pardon, j’en ai tout plein les poches_,” he answered, smiling, putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket. “_Mais vous venez trop tard_,” she said, rubbing her handkerchief on her hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar. Anna turned to Dolly. “You can stay some time? For one day only? That’s impossible!” “I promised to be back, and the children....” said Dolly, feeling embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage, and because she knew her face must be covered with dust. “No, Dolly, darling!... Well, we’ll see. Come along, come along!” and Anna led Dolly to her room. That room was not the smart guest chamber Vronsky had suggested, but the one of which Anna had said that Dolly would excuse it. And this room, for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in which Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best hotels abroad. “Well, darling, how happy I am!” Anna said, sitting down in her riding habit for a moment beside Dolly. “Tell me about all of you. Stiva I had only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the children. How is my favorite, Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?” “Yes, she’s very tall,” Darya Alexandrovna answered shortly, surprised herself that she should respond so coolly about her children. “We are having a delightful stay at the Levins’,” she added. “Oh, if I had known,” said Anna, “that you do not despise me!... You might have all come to us. Stiva’s an old friend and a great friend of Alexey’s, you know,” she added, and suddenly she blushed. “Yes, but we are all....” Dolly answered in confusion. “But in my delight I’m talking nonsense. The one thing, darling, is that I am so glad to have you!” said Anna, kissing her again. “You haven’t told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting to know. But I’m glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldn’t like would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything. I don’t want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven’t I? But it is a big subject, and we’ll talk over everything properly later. Now I’ll go and dress and send a maid to you.” Chapter 19

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Farmworkers from Mexico and California will meet in a massive rally at Calexico, a town whose very name is a blend of two countries, and declare that the poor of one country will no longer be used against the poor of another. The problem is press coverage. Hours of driving time from the surrounding airports, plus the 110-degree desert heat, have discouraged any media interest. This historic event is like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. I have no idea what to do about it, but when Cesar says in his soft-spoken but urgent way that you have to be someplace, you have to be there. At the Los Angeles airport, I am picked up by a union guy in his battered car, and we drive through the night to catch up with the marchers. In the distance, on an asphalt road stretching like a ribbon through the desert, I finally see hundreds of workers and their families. They are carrying a swaying image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a palanquin, their banners shimmering in the heat waves like a mirage. Only famous supporters will attract media, but Bobby Kennedy, the one national political leader to champion the farmworkers’ cause, was assassinated the year before by a lone gunman. Now, from gas stations and motels along the march route, I make calls to celebrities in Cesar’s name. Several movie stars say no, with either condescension or deep regret. So does California senator George Murphy; not surprising, since he once said that Mexicans were farmworkers because they were “built close to the ground.” The first to say yes is Reverend Ralph Abernathy, the civil rights veteran who marched with the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I ask if he wants to stay with a farmworker’s family, and there is silence. Then in a voice filled with long years of movement fatigue, he says he needs an air-conditioned motel room. After more calls, I get word that Senators Walter Mondale, Ted Kennedy, and John Tunney will show up when we reach the border. All this finally makes a few reporters sign on, though they warn me that extreme heat may keep TV cameras from working. As the long lines of marchers draw close from both sides of the border, a flatbed truck pulls up to serve as a stage. Cesar climbs onto it to call out to them through a bullhorn. When the two groups finally meet and embrace, I can feel tears welling up, then drying instantly in the desert heat. Reverend Abernathy and the senators speak to the crowd about the need for a living wage for all farmworkers. The cameras roll. The rally becomes national news. By the time I get home to New York a day later, even my taxi driver knows about this Poor People’s March. I’m surprised by how much this means to me. There are few rewards greater than uncovering a secret that shouldn’t be a secret.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  But when the organizing began, they asked me to make coffee.” They laugh with relief when she says, “I want to make sure that when the revolution comes, I’m not cooking grits for it.” As she sums up, “I’m not black on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and a woman on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.” Since many have also been raised with traditional southern ideas of womanhood, they also cheer when I talk about women feeling like a half-person without a man standing next to them, whether on Saturday night or throughout life. This would surprise men, too, I explain, if they realized how little it matters which man is standing there. More laughter, and cries of “Tell it!” They’re glad to hear what a black woman once said to her white southern sisters: “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space.” Though some in the audience yell out objections to Margaret’s sprinkling of four-letter words—after all, she is a poet from the South Side of Chicago—she gets applause when she says that if critics don’t like the way she talks, they can leave. When someone asks me if I believe in God and I say no—I believe in people—I get a hushed silence. So I go on: If, in monotheism, God is man, man is God. Why does God look suspiciously like the ruling class? Why is Jesus, a Jewish guy from the Middle East, blond and blue-eyed? There is a relieved response of laughter, and even a few shouts of “Tell it!” At the end, the student organizers give us the highest praise: the result has been worth the year they spent persuading us to come. We have made them look reasonable by comparison. Home in New York, we read newspaper clippings from Denton that sum up our subject matter as “sexism, racism, job discrimination, children, welfare, abortion, homosexuality, bisexuality,” in a discussion described as “emotional, controversial, thought provoking, relevant.” There are also quotes from audience members who call this lecture and discussion “embarrassing” and “the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” It seems that people went away either angry or inspired. For Margaret, it’s a proof of need that helps her decide to co-found the National Black Feminist Organization—together with Eleanor Holmes Norton from the EEOC, Jane Galvin Lewis of the Women’s Action Alliance, artist Faith Ringgold, author Michele Wallace, and many others. After Margaret moves to Oakland, she keeps organizing and working in women’s centers there. When I visit her, we reminisce about the two dozen campuses we visited together in less than one year—but our conversation always comes back to TWU. Thirty-five years pass before I’m back on that campus again. This time I’m campaigning for Hillary Clinton in her 2008 primary race for the presidency, and speaking together with Jehmu Greene, a young African American woman who, like me, has decided, after much soul-searching, to campaign for Clinton—because of her longer experience in battling the ultra-right wing—and to support Obama in the future.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He did not, as he had done at other times, recall the whole train of thought—that he did not need. He fell back at once into the feeling which had guided him, which was connected with those thoughts, and he found that feeling in his soul even stronger and more definite than before. He did not, as he had had to do with previous attempts to find comforting arguments, need to revive a whole chain of thought to find the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace was keener than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling. He walked across the terrace and looked at two stars that had come out in the darkening sky, and suddenly he remembered. “Yes, looking at the sky, I thought that the dome that I see is not a deception, and then I thought something, I shirked facing something,” he mused. “But whatever it was, there can be no disproving it! I have but to think, and all will come clear!” Just as he was going into the nursery he remembered what it was he had shirked facing. It was that if the chief proof of the Divinity was His revelation of what is right, how is it this revelation is confined to the Christian church alone? What relation to this revelation have the beliefs of the Buddhists, Mohammedans, who preached and did good too? It seemed to him that he had an answer to this question; but he had not time to formulate it to himself before he went into the nursery. Kitty was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in the bath. Hearing her husband’s footstep, she turned towards him, summoning him to her with her smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that lay floating and sprawling on its back, while with the other she squeezed the sponge over him. “Come, look, look!” she said, when her husband came up to her. “Agafea Mihalovna’s right. He knows us!” Mitya had on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of recognizing all his friends. As soon as Levin approached the bath, the experiment was tried, and it was completely successful. The cook, sent for with this object, bent over the baby. He frowned and shook his head disapprovingly. Kitty bent down to him, he gave her a beaming smile, propped his little hands on the sponge and chirruped, making such a queer little contented sound with his lips, that Kitty and the nurse were not alone in their admiration. Levin, too, was surprised and delighted. The baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped in towels, dried, and after a piercing scream, handed to his mother.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  But when the organizing began, they asked me to make coffee.” They laugh with relief when she says, “I want to make sure that when the revolution comes, I’m not cooking grits for it.” As she sums up, “I’m not black on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and a woman on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.” Since many have also been raised with traditional southern ideas of womanhood, they also cheer when I talk about women feeling like a half-person without a man standing next to them, whether on Saturday night or throughout life. This would surprise men, too, I explain, if they realized how little it matters which man is standing there. More laughter, and cries of “Tell it!” They’re glad to hear what a black woman once said to her white southern sisters: “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space.” Though some in the audience yell out objections to Margaret’s sprinkling of four-letter words—after all, she is a poet from the South Side of Chicago—she gets applause when she says that if critics don’t like the way she talks, they can leave. When someone asks me if I believe in God and I say no—I believe in people—I get a hushed silence. So I go on: If, in monotheism, God is man, man is God. Why does God look suspiciously like the ruling class? Why is Jesus, a Jewish guy from the Middle East, blond and blue-eyed? There is a relieved response of laughter, and even a few shouts of “Tell it!” At the end, the student organizers give us the highest praise: the result has been worth the year they spent persuading us to come. We have made them look reasonable by comparison. Home in New York, we read newspaper clippings from Denton that sum up our subject matter as “sexism, racism, job discrimination, children, welfare, abortion, homosexuality, bisexuality,” in a discussion described as “emotional, controversial, thought provoking, relevant.” There are also quotes from audience members who call this lecture and discussion “embarrassing” and “the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” It seems that people went away either angry or inspired. For Margaret, it’s a proof of need that helps her decide to co-found the National Black Feminist Organization—together with Eleanor Holmes Norton from the EEOC, Jane Galvin Lewis of the Women’s Action Alliance, artist Faith Ringgold, author Michele Wallace, and many others. After Margaret moves to Oakland, she keeps organizing and working in women’s centers there. When I visit her, we reminisce about the two dozen campuses we visited together in less than one year—but our conversation always comes back to TWU. Thirty-five years pass before I’m back on that campus again. This time I’m campaigning for Hillary Clinton in her 2008 primary race for the presidency, and speaking together with Jehmu Greene, a young African American woman who, like me, has decided, after much soul-searching, to campaign for Clinton—because of her longer experience in battling the ultra-right wing—and to support Obama in the future.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Will there really be a trousseau and all that?” Levin thought with horror. “But can the trousseau and the benediction and all that—can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!” He glanced at Kitty, and noticed that she was not in the least, not in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the trousseau. “Then it must be all right,” he thought. “Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like,” he said apologetically. “We’ll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can take place now. That’s very well.” The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have gone away, but he kept her, embraced her, and, tenderly as a young lover, kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were obviously muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it was they who were in love again or their daughter. When the prince and the princess had gone, Levin went up to his betrothed and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and could speak, and he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he said not at all what he had to say. “How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my heart I was always sure,” he said. “I believe that it was ordained.” “And I!” she said. “Even when....” She stopped and went on again, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, “Even when I thrust from me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but I was carried away. I ought to tell you.... Can you forgive that?” “Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so much. I ought to tell you....” This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had resolved from the first to tell her two things—that he was not chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these facts. “No, not now, later!” he said. “Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I’m not afraid of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled.” He added: “Settled that you’ll take me whatever I may be—you won’t give me up? Yes?” “Yes, yes.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the table!” she said, and, laying down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up. “What! shall I be left alone—without her?” he thought with horror, and he took the chalk. “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting down to the table. “I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.” He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes. “Please, ask it.” “Here,” he said; and he wrote the initial letters, _w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t_. These letters meant, “When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?” There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, “Is it what I think?” “I understand,” she said, flushing a little. “What is this word?” he said, pointing to the _n_ that stood for _never_. “It means _never_,” she said; “but that’s not true!” He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, _t, i, c, n, a, d_. Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of the two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, “Then I could not answer differently.” He glanced at her questioningly, timidly. “Only then?” “Yes,” her smile answered. “And n... and now?” he asked. “Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like—should like so much!” she wrote the initial letters, _i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h._ This meant, “If you could forget and forgive what happened.” He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, “I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you.” She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver. “I understand,” she said in a whisper. He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without asking him, “Is it this?” took the chalk and at once answered.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  make swift counterpoise unto my will,” I said, “thou blessed spirit, and give proof that I can cast reflection upon thee of what I think.” 2 Whereat the light which was new to me, from out its depth, wherein it first was singing, went on as one rejoicing to do well: “In that region of the depraved Italian land which sitteth ’twixt Rialto and the springs of Brenta and Piave, riseth a hill, lifted to no great height, whence erst came down a firebrand that made a dire assault upon the country. 3 Out of one root spring I with it; Cunizza was I called, and here I glow because the light of this star overcame me. But joyously I grant myself indulgence for the occasion of my lot, nor doth it grieve me, which would seem, mayhap, hard saying to your common herd. 4 Of this shining and dear gem of our heaven, which most doth neighbour me, great fame remaineth, and ere it shall perish this centenary year shall be five times repeated. See if a man should make himself excel, so that the first life leave another after! And of this thinketh not the present crowd that Tagliamento and Adige enclose; the which, though smitten, yet repenteth not. But soon shall come to pass that Padua at the pool shall change the water that doth bathe Vicenza, because the folk are stubborn against duty. 5 And where Sile meets Cagnano, one holdeth sway and goeth with uplifted head to catch whom even now the net is being woven. 6 A wail shall yet arise from Feltro for the trespass of its impious pastor, 7 which shall be so foul that for the like none ever entered Malta. 8 Too ample were the charger which should receive Ferrara’s blood, and weary who should weigh it ounce by ounce, which this obliging priest shall give to prove himself a partisan; and such-like gifts shall suit the country’s way of life. Aloft are mirrors,—ye name them Thrones, 9 —whence God in judgment shineth upon us so that these words approve themselves to us.” Here she was silent, and to me her semblance was of one who turneth him to other heeding, judging as by the wheel whereto she gave herself, like as she was before. 10 The other joy, noted already to me as a thing illustrious, shone in my sight like a fine ruby that the sun should strike. By joy up there brightness is won, just as a smile on earth; but down below darkeneth the shade externally as the mind saddeneth. “God seeth all, and into him thy seeing sinketh,” said I, “blessed spirit, so that no wish may steal itself from thee. Then wherefore doth thy voice, which gladdeneth. Heaven ceaselessly,—together with the singing of those Flames devout, which make themselves a cowl with the six wings,— 11 not satisfy my longings?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?” The hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his face tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor of Alexey Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the hall-porter. Seryozha had come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively beg the hall-porter to announce him, saying that he and his children had death staring them in the face. Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall, took great interest in him. “Well, was he very glad?” he asked. “Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away.” “And has anything been left?” asked Seryozha, after a pause. “Come, sir,” said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head he whispered, “Something from the countess.” Seryozha understood at once that what the hall-porter was speaking of was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday. “What do you say? Where?” “Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!” “How big? Like this?” “Rather small, but a fine thing.” “A book.” “No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,” said the porter, hearing the tutor’s steps approaching, and carefully taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off, he signed with his head towards the tutor. “Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!” answered Seryozha with that gay and loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily Lukitch. Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune of which he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia Ivanovna’s niece. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come for him. It seemed to Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be glad and happy. “You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky today?” “To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him.” “And is he glad?” “Glad at the Tsar’s gracious favor! I should think so! It’s a proof he’s deserved it,” said the porter severely and seriously. Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung down between the gray whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who saw him only from below. “Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?” The porter’s daughter was a ballet dancer. “When is she to come on week-days? They’ve their lessons to learn too. And you’ve your lesson, sir; run along.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Ah! and here they are!” Stepan Arkadyevitch said towards the end of dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to Vronsky, who came up with a tall officer of the Guards. Vronsky’s face too beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in the club. He propped his elbow playfully on Stepan Arkadyevitch’s shoulder, whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to Levin with the same good-humored smile. “Very glad to meet you,” he said. “I looked out for you at the election, but I was told you had gone away.” “Yes, I left the same day. We’ve just been talking of your horse. I congratulate you,” said Levin. “It was very rapidly run.” “Yes; you’ve race horses too, haven’t you?” “No, my father had; but I remember and know something about it.” “Where have you dined?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch. “We were at the second table, behind the columns.” “We’ve been celebrating his success,” said the tall colonel. “It’s his second Imperial prize. I wish I might have the luck at cards he has with horses. Well, why waste the precious time? I’m going to the ‘infernal regions,’” added the colonel, and he walked away. “That’s Yashvin,” Vronsky said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat down in the vacated seat beside them. He drank the glass offered him, and ordered a bottle of wine. Under the influence of the club atmosphere or the wine he had drunk, Levin chatted away to Vronsky of the best breeds of cattle, and was very glad not to feel the slightest hostility to this man. He even told him, among other things, that he had heard from his wife that she had met him at Princess Marya Borissovna’s. “Ah, Princess Marya Borissovna, she’s exquisite!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all laughing. Vronsky particularly laughed with such simplehearted amusement that Levin felt quite reconciled to him. “Well, have we finished?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up with a smile. “Let us go.” Chapter 8 Getting up from the table, Levin walked with Gagin through the lofty room to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he walked with a peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big room, he came upon his father-in-law. “Well, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?” said the prince, taking his arm. “Come along, come along!” “Yes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It’s interesting.” “Yes, it’s interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite different. You look at those little old men now,” he said, pointing to a club member with bent back and projecting lip, shuffling towards them in his soft boots, “and imagine that they were _shlupiks_ like that from their birth up.” “How _shlupiks_?”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  He looked at them, and with gladsome mien answered: “Go we thither, for slowly they come, and do thou confirm thy hope, sweet son.” As yet that people were so far off (I mean after a thousand paces of ours) as a good slinger would carry with his hand, when they all pressed close to the hard rocks of the steep cliff, and stood motionless and close, as he halts to gaze around who goes in dread. “O ye whose end was happy, O spirits already chosen,” Virgil began, “by that same peace which I believe by you all is awaited, tell us where the mountain slopes, so that it may be possible to go upward; for time lost irks him most who knoweth most.” As sheep come forth from the pen, in ones, in twos, in threes, and the others stand all timid, casting eye and nose to earth, and what the first one doeth, the others do also, huddling up to her if she stand still, silly and quiet, and know not why, so saw I then the head of that happy flock move to come on, modest in countenance, in movement dignified. When those in front saw the light broken on the ground on my right side, so that the shadow was from me to the rock,6 they halted, and drew them back somewhat; and all the others that came after, knowing not why, did the like. “Without your question I confess to you, that this is a human body ye see, by which the sun’s light on the ground is cleft. Marvel ye not, but believe that not without virtue which cometh from heaven, he seeks to surmount this wall.” So my Master; and that worthy people said: “Turn ye, enter then before us,” with the backs of their hands making sign. And one of them began: “Whoever thou art, thus while going turn thy face, give heed if e’er thou sawest me yonder.” I turned me to him, and steadfastly did look: golden-haired was he, and fair, and of noble mien; but one of his eyebrows a cut had cleft. When I humbly had disclaimed ever to have seen him, he said: “Now look”; and he showed me a wound above his breast. Then smiling said: “I am Manfred,7 grandson of Empress Constance; wherefore I pray thee, that when thou returnest, thou go to my fair daughter, parent of the glory of Sicily and of Aragon, and tell her sooth, if other tale be told. After I had my body pierced by two mortal stabs, I gave me up weeping to him who willingly doth pardon. Horrible were my transgressions; but infinite goodness hath such wide arms that it accepteth all that turn to it. If Cosenza’s Pastor, who to chase of me was set by Clement, then had well read that page in God, the bones of my body would yet be at the bridgehead near Benevento, under the guard of the heavy cairn.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. “He’s jealous,” she thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He’s jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr the cook,” she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling of possession strange to herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him from his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d turn round ... I’ll _will_ him to!” and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence of her gaze. “Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was looking at him and smiling, he looked round. “Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up. “He looked round,” she thought. “It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him, and trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not. “How happy we are alone together!—I am, that is,” he said, going up to her with a radiant smile of happiness. “I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.” “And what were you thinking about?” “I? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break off,” she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little holes now, do you see?” She took up her scissors and began cutting them out. “No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and watching the tiny scissors moving round. “Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the back of your head.” “Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural, too good,” he said, kissing her hand. “I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems to me.” “And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her head round. “A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!” Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready. “Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma. “They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.” “Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or else I shall read your letters without you.”