Longing

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 Satyricon (1)

  (Nevertheless, I found it very difficult to stifle my longing for revenge, and after tossing half the night in anxiety, I arose at dawn and, in the hope of mitigating my mental sufferings and of forgetting my wrongs, I took a walk through all the public arcades and) entered a picture-gallery, which contained a wonderful collection of pictures in various styles. I beheld works from the hand of Zeuxis, still undimmed by the passage of the years, and contemplated, not without a certain awe, the crude drawings of Protogenes, which equalled the reality of nature herself; but when I stood before the work of Apelles, the kind which the Greeks call “Monochromatic,” verily, I almost worshipped, for the outlines of the figures were drawn with such subtlety of touch, and were so life-like in their precision, that you would have thought their very souls were depicted. Here, an eagle was soaring into the sky bearing the shepherd of Mount Ida to heaven; there, the comely Hylas was struggling to escape from the embrace of the lascivious Naiad. Here, too, was Apollo, cursing his murderous hand and adorning his unstrung lyre with the flower just created. Standing among these lovers, which were only painted, “It seems that even the gods are wracked by love,” I cried aloud, as if I were in a wilderness. “Jupiter could find none to his taste, even in his own heaven, so he had to sin on earth, but no one was betrayed by him! The nymph who ravished Hylas would have controlled her passion had she thought Hercules was coming to forbid it. Apollo recalled the spirit of a boy in the form of a flower, and all the lovers of Fable enjoyed Love’s embraces without a rival, but I took as a comrade a friend more cruel than Lycurgus!” But at that very instant, as I was telling my troubles to the winds, a white-haired old man entered the picture-gallery; his face was care-worn, and he seemed, I know not why, to give promise of something great, although he bestowed so little care upon his dress that it was easily apparent that he belonged to that class of literati which the wealthy hold in contempt. “I am a poet,” he remarked, when he had approached me and stood at my side, “and one of no mean ability, I hope, that is, if anything is to be inferred from the crowns which gratitude can place even upon the heads of the unworthy! Then why, you demand, are you dressed so shabbily? For that very reason; love or art never yet made anyone rich.” The trader trusts his fortune to the sea and takes his gains, The warrior, for his deeds, is girt with gold; The wily sycophant lies drunk on purple counterpanes, Young wives must pay debauchees or they’re cold. But solitary, shivering, in tatters Genius stands Invoking a neglected art, for succor at its hands. CHAPTER THE EIGHTY-FOURTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  But, according to Homer, the great interpreter of truth--‘One man is meaner than another in looks, but God crowns his words with beauty, and his hearers gaze upon him with delight, while he speaks unfalteringly with winning modesty, and is conspicuous amongst the assembled folk, who look upon him as a God when he walks through the city.’ And again he says: ‘Your beauteous form is destitute of intelligence; the wise Ulysses is praised more highly than the handsome Nireus.’ How then comes it that the love of wisdom, justice, and the other virtues, which are the heritage of the full-grown man, possess no attraction for you, while the beauty of boys excites the most vehement passion! What! should one love Phoedrus, remembering Lysias, whom he betrayed? Could one love the beauty of Alcibiades, who mutilated the statues of the Gods, and, in the midst of a debauch, betrayed the mysteries of the rites of Eleusis? Who would venture to declare himself his admirer, after Athens was abandoned, and Decelea fortified by the enemy--the admirer of one whose sole aim in life was tyranny? But, as the divine Plato says, as long as his chin was beardless, he was beloved by all; but, when he passed from boyhood to manhood, when his imperfect intelligence had reached its maturity, he was hated by all. Why, then, giving modest names to immodest sentiments, do men call personal beauty virtue, being in reality lovers of youth rather than lovers of wisdom? However, it is not my intention to speak evil of distinguished men. But, to descend from graver topics to the mere question of enjoyment, I will prove that connection with women is far more enjoyable than connection with boys. In the first place, the longer enjoyment lasts, the more delight it affords; too rapid pleasure passes quickly away, and it is over before it is thoroughly appreciated; but, if it lasts, it is thereby enhanced. Would to heaven that grudging Destiny had allotted us a longer lease of life, and that we could enjoy perpetual health without any sorrow to spoil our pleasure; then would our life be one continual feast. But, since jealous Fortune has grudged us greater blessings, those enjoyments that last the longest are the sweetest. Again, a woman, from puberty to middle age, until the last wrinkles furrow her face, is worth embracing and fit for intercourse; and, even though the prime of her beauty be past, her experience can speak more eloquently than the love of boys.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  And instead of moving south after the Peasants’ War, to his supporters in Basle, Zurich, and Strasbourg, he had returned like a moth flying around a candle to Saxony, and to the embrace of the relationship with Luther, who had proved his nemesis. Perhaps at some psychological level he depended on Luther’s approval and wanted fervently to persuade him. It is revealing that when Karlstadt set out his theological views in one of his last pamphlets in early 1525, he did so in the form of a dialogue in which he ventriloquized the man who had refused to engage in a proper debate with him at Wittenberg. 39 In print at least, he could triumph over Luther and win the argument. For both sides the encounter at the Black Bear Inn had been the culmination of a personal battle, a struggle between two former friends and allies. Karlstadt as much as Luther had been mesmerized by that confrontation, and he remained trapped in his promise, sealed with the guilder, to attack Luther—and unable to see beyond him, to his own sources of support. — B Y June 1525 the peasants had been defeated, but things would not be the same again in Saxony. Friedrich the Wise, who had supported Luther through his appearance at the Diet of Worms and protected him afterward, was dead. There had been portents: a rainbow that Melanchthon and Luther saw in the night that winter over Lochau, some twenty miles from Wittenberg, where there was a castle used by Friedrich; a child born at Wittenberg without a head, and another with bent feet. 40 The trusted Spalatin had begun to think of leaving the Elector’s service, and wrote to Luther for advice on behalf of a “friend,” who was tempted by sexual thoughts. Luther got the message, and warned Spalatin to forget about marrying and to remain with the Elector, not leaving him while he was “perhaps so close to the grave,” for if he were to leave him now, he would be eternally sorry. 41 And so it proved. At the height of the Peasants’ War, in early May, Spalatin and other councilors were with the Elector at Lochau. As Spalatin described the scene later in his chronicle, the castle was completely deserted, with Duke Johann and all the men away fighting the peasants. Only the court marshal, the secretary, and the doctor were present alongside Spalatin, and the Elector was on his deathbed. Spalatin had rushed to his bedside, having already sent written words of comfort in case he could not reach him in time. Friedrich, who had relied for so many years on Spalatin to read his correspondence, had reached for his glasses and read the letter himself.

• From Satyricon (1)

  In their Mercury, the ancients realized their beau ideal or archetype of go-between which they called; in vulgar language “pimp”. That God, as go-between for Jupiter, was often involved in the most hazardous enterprises, such as abducting Io, who was guarded by Argus of the hundred eyes; Mercury I say, was the God of concord, or eloquence, and of mystery. Except to inspire them with friendly feeling and kind affections, Mercury never went among mortals. Touched by his wand, venomous serpents closely embraced him. Listening to him, Achilles forgot his pride, extended hospitality to Priam and permitted him to take away the body of Hector. The ferocious Carthaginians were softened through the influence of this God of peace, and received the Trojans in friendship. Mercury it was who gathered men into society and substituted social customs for barbarism. He invented the lyre and was the master of Amphion, who opened the walls of Thebes by the charm of his singing. Mercury or Hermes gave the first man knowledge; but it was enveloped in a mysterious veil which it was never permitted the profane to penetrate, which signifies that all that he learned from God, concerning amorous adventures, should be wrapped in profound silence. How beautiful all these allegories are! And how true! How insipid life would be without these mysterious liaisons, by which Nature carries out her designs, eluding the social ties, without breaking them! Disciples of Mercury, I salute you, whatever be your sex; to your discretion, to your persuasive arts are confided our dearest interests, the peace of mind of husbands, the happiness of lovers, the reputation of women, the legitimacy of children. Without you, this desolated earth would prove to be, in reality, a vale of tears; the young and beautiful wife united to decrepit husband, would languish and grow weak, like the lonely flower which the sun’s rays never touch. Thus did Mexence bind in thine indissoluble bands the living and the dead. Fate, however, has often avenged the go-betweens on account of the misunderstandings from which they suffer at the hands of the vulgar. Otho opened the way to the empire of the world by his services as a go-between for Nero. And the go-betweens of princes, and even of princesses, are always found in the finest situations. Even Otho did not lose all his rights; Nero exiled him with a commission of honor, “because he was caught in adultery with his own wife, Poppaea.” “Uxoris moechus coeperate esse suae” (Suet. Otho, chap. 111), said malicious gossip at Rome. BIBLIOGRAPHY To the scholar contemplating an exhaustive study of Petronius, the masterly bibliography compiled by Gaselee is indispensable, and those of my readers who desire to pursue the subject are referred to it. The following is a list of editions, translations, criticisms and miscellaneous publications and authors from which I have derived benefit in the long and pleasant hours devoted to Petronius. EDITIONS, Opera Omnia.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It left Karlstadt a broken man. He kept his word, publishing virtually nothing once he returned to the Wittenberg area. He did manage to move to Kemberg, however, from where he journeyed to meet sympathetic figures like the noblemen Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Crautwald in Silesia. A few years later, he moved to Basle, where he found a more congenial intellectual home, but he did not publish much. His theology continued to develop the idea of Gelassenheit, and when he died in 1541, he was in the process of composing a major synoptic work on theology in which Gelassenheit would have played a central role. It is puzzling that he failed utterly to capitalize on either the Peasants’ War or on the support his ideas were gaining in the cities of southern Germany. The man who wanted to engage in honest toil like a peasant found himself attacked and hunted by peasants who saw him as a learned grosser Hans, just another “big Jack.” And instead of moving south after the Peasants’ War, to his supporters in Basle, Zurich, and Strasbourg, he had returned like a moth flying around a candle to Saxony, and to the embrace of the relationship with Luther, who had proved his nemesis. Perhaps at some psychological level he depended on Luther’s approval and wanted fervently to persuade him. It is revealing that when Karlstadt set out his theological views in one of his last pamphlets in early 1525, he did so in the form of a dialogue in which he ventriloquized the man who had refused to engage in a proper debate with him at Wittenberg.39 In print at least, he could triumph over Luther and win the argument. For both sides the encounter at the Black Bear Inn had been the culmination of a personal battle, a struggle between two former friends and allies. Karlstadt as much as Luther had been mesmerized by that confrontation, and he remained trapped in his promise, sealed with the guilder, to attack Luther—and unable to see beyond him, to his own sources of support. —BY June 1525 the peasants had been defeated, but things would not be the same again in Saxony. Friedrich the Wise, who had supported Luther through his appearance at the Diet of Worms and protected him afterward, was dead. There had been portents: a rainbow that Melanchthon and Luther saw in the night that winter over Lochau, some twenty miles from Wittenberg, where there was a castle used by Friedrich; a child born at Wittenberg without a head, and another with bent feet.40 The trusted Spalatin had begun to think of leaving the Elector’s service, and wrote to Luther for advice on behalf of a “friend,” who was tempted by sexual thoughts. Luther got the message, and warned Spalatin to forget about marrying and to remain with the Elector, not leaving him while he was “perhaps so close to the grave,” for if he were to leave him now, he would be eternally sorry.41

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “Of course, the sex remained unpainted. Bijou was going entirely naked but for the semblance of a fig leaf. I was allowed to kiss the unpainted sex—carefully, or I would have swallowed jade green and Chinese red. And Bijou was so proud of her African tattoo designs. Now she looked like the queen of the desert. Her eyes had a hard, lacquered glow. She shook her earrings, laughed, covered herself with a cape and left me. I was in such a state that it took me hours to prepare myself for the ball—merely a coat of brown paint. “I told you Bijou was a faithless one. She did not even allow the paint to dry. When I arrived I could see that more than one man had braved the dangers of being painted with her own designs. The tattoos were completely blurred. The ball was at its height. The boxes were filled with tangled couples. It was one collective orgasm. And Bijou had not waited for me. As she walked about she left a tiny trail of semen, by which I could have followed her easily anywhere.” Hilda and RangoHilda was a beautiful Parisian model who fell deeply in love with an American writer, whose work was so violent and sensual that it attracted women to him immediately. They would write him letters or try for an introduction through his friends. Those who succeeded in meeting him were always amazed by his gentleness, his softness. Hilda had the same experience. Seeing that he remained impassive, she began to court him. It was only when she had made the first advances, caressed him, that he began making love to her as she had expected to be made love to. But each time, she would have to begin all over. First she had to tempt him in some way—fix a loosened garter, or talk about some experience in the past, or lie on his couch, throw back her head and thrust her breasts forwards, stretching herself like an enormous cat. She would sit on his lap, offer her mouth, unbutton his pants, excite him. They lived together for several years, deeply attached to each other. She became accustomed to his sexual rhythm. He lay back waiting and enjoying himself. She learned to be active, bold, but she suffered, because she was by nature extraordinarily feminine. Deep down she had the belief that woman could easily control her desire, but that man could not, that it was even harmful for him to try to. She felt that woman was meant to respond to man’s desire. She had always dreamed of having a man who would force her will, rule her sexually, lead.

• From Satyricon (1)

  At rest on my pallet, night’s silence had scarce settled down To soothe me, and eyes heavy-laden with slumber to lull When torturing Amor laid hold of me, seizing my hair And dragging me, wounding me, ordered a vigil till dawn. ‘Oh heart of stone, how canst thou lie here alone?’ said the God, ‘Thou joy of a thousand sweet mistresses, how, oh my slave?’ In disarrayed nightrobe I leap to bare feet and essay To follow all paths; but a road can discover by none. One moment I hasten; the next it is torture to move, It irks me again to turn back, shame forbids me to halt And stand in the midst of the road. Lo! the voices of men, The roar of the streets, and the songs of the birds, and the bark Of vigilant watch-dogs are hushed! Alone, I of all Society dread both my slumber and couch, and obey Great Lord of the Passions, thy mandate which on me was laid.” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINTH. (Such thoughts as these, of lovely Circe’s charms so wrought upon my mind that) I disordered my bed by embracing the image, as it were, of my mistress, (but my efforts were all wasted.) This obstinate (affliction finally wore out my patience, and I cursed the hostile deity by whom I was bewitched. I soon recovered my composure, however, and, deriving some consolation from thinking of the heroes of old, who had been persecuted by the anger of the gods, I broke out in these lines:) Hostile gods and implacable Fate not me alone pursue; Herakles once suffered the weight of heaven’s displeasure too Driven from the Inachian coast: Laomedon of old Sated two of the heavenly host: in Pelias, behold Juno’s power to avenge an affront; and Telephus took arms Knowing not he must bear the brunt; Ulysses feared the storms Angry Neptune decreed as his due. Now, me to overwhelm Outraged Priapus ever pursues on land and Nereus’ realm.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  34 Paul, the youngest, aged thirteen when his father died, enjoyed a full and successful career as a court physician, settling finally in Leipzig, and fathering six children. Luther’s youngest daughter, Margarethe, made a good match, marrying a Prussian nobleman who was a student at Wittenberg; she gave birth to several children but died in 1570, aged only thirty-six. 35 By 1564 the vast monastery that had been left to the family in perpetuity had been sold. Bucer—the sly “fox,” as his Lutheran opponents had dubbed him—went into exile in England after the Interim and worked with Thomas Cranmer on revising the Book of Common Prayer. He lived out the rest of his life in the damp cold of Cambridge, hankering after his warm German stove back in Strasbourg. 36 If he had failed to accomplish the union between Lutherans and sacramentarians for which he had worked so hard, he left a lasting legacy in shaping the Anglican Church. As for Karlstadt, Luther’s old opponent, no church commemorated him as its founder, and only one crude woodcut image of him has survived. But his influence lived on, both in the Swiss sacramentarian tradition and within Anabaptism, where his adoption and development of the old mystical stance of Gelassenheit inspired a skeptical attitude to secular power, and a separatist tradition of devotion as well as commitment to martyrdom. Indeed, in the first half of the seventeenth century, the new religious stirrings that would eventually give rise to Pietism began to recover elements of religion that had been lost within Luther’s mature theology. There was a new vogue for the Theologia deutsch and the mystical works of Johannes Tauler, and in 1605, Staupitz’s treatises on the love of God were republished by Johann Arndt, one of the leading Pietists. 37 The spiritual tradition that Luther had shared with his mother, and that had been so important to Karlstadt, was rediscovered and became part of Lutheran devotional life once again, even if Karlstadt himself would never be rehabilitated. — I N the years after Luther’s death, a Lutheran culture began to take shape. As he came to be remembered in sermon and print, images of the reformer remained as important as they had been in his life. Lutheran hymns were printed with a full-length portrait on the title page, standing foursquare for truth. Life-size (and larger than life-size) paintings of Luther were produced by the Cranach workshop, creating the new iconography of an individual who was not a saint, but whose physical presence was evoked by these realistic images. They were also available as woodcuts that could be assembled from eleven sheets to make a cheap life-size pinup, complete with printed “frame.” Every Lutheran church now had to have its Luther portrait.

• From Shunned (2018)

  This was how I first came to understand the holiday’s power to bring people together, providing an occasion for them to reflect on the meaning of friendship and reach out to each other to affirm it. Eventually I got caught up in the joy of the season, singing along to “Silent Night” on the car radio, counting the days until Christmas. One of the high points that month was a girls’ night out to watch a performance of A Christmas Carol at the Goodman Theatre. Cindy organized the logistics with a few other women from the office. We dressed in various forms of black velvet, red silk, and pearls and met at my apartment for a toast. Cheeks rosy and hearts dancing with champagne bubbles, we bundled up and ventured into the cold night. I’d never seen the play before, having believed that to do so would be an act of religious treason. As a child, I was never allowed to watch TV movies like A Charlie Brown Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas; however, I’d loved reading Dickens and was familiar with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge. Taking our seats, waiting for the show to begin, I scanned the crowd and saw all the families who’d come together. Just in front of me sat a little girl wearing black patent leather shoes, her blond hair falling in ringlets down the back of her lace collar. A sorrowful heat swirled around my heart and throat as I pictured my niece, Sheena, who would have looked much the same if she’d been there with me. I missed my family and knew this was a tradition we would never share. I wasn’t even comfortable telling them I had come. The theater lights dimmed, and the lush velvet curtain opened to reveal another world, beautifully staged. Moment by moment, wonder replaced my sadness as the actors cast their spell over the hushed crowd, carried to another place and time. I was inspired by Scrooge’s redemption, how he claimed a future for himself that was filled with happiness and generosity. I carried that feeling of hope and possibility into my dreams that night. It was as inspiring as any church service I’d ever been to. The office Christmas party was another first. Richard brought all areas of the division together, which totaled a few hundred people.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Most of all, he was a radical mystic, who sought union with God, not primarily a social radical. His theology displays an underlying tension between his mysticism, rejecting everything to do with the flesh, and his revolutionary radicalism, which led him to engage with the material world. Some of these paradoxes are evident in his views of sexuality, for example. For Müntzer, like Karlstadt, Christ’s call to his disciples to leave behind wife and family was a key text, and there is a powerful streak of asceticism in his writings. When Melanchthon defended the marriage of monks, Müntzer castigated him: “By your arguments you drag men to matrimony although the bond is not yet an immaculate one; but a Satanic brothel, which is as harmful to the church as the most accursed perfumes of the priests. Do not these passionate desires impede your sanctification?” 29 Yet although he commended virginity, he took a wife in June 1523, and like Karlstadt, he chose a noblewoman. 30 Müntzer seems to have nursed a strong sense of dispossession, and his conviction of being a persecuted outsider made him able to articulate a shared sense of social alienation, reaching out to others across class barriers. A powerful speaker, he knew how to inspire groups of peasants, townsfolk, and villagers, women as well as men. Throughout his career, whether in Zwickau, Allstedt, or Mühlhausen, he seems to have followed the same political strategy. Starting from his local community, he created a movement that he interpreted in apocalyptic terms, and he gave his followers a sense of imminent danger and excitement by identifying and denouncing their enemies. He then proceeded to build alliances and coalitions, at first locally and then farther afield. His theology had the capacity to inspire large groups of people, drawing intense personal commitment from them, even to risk their lives. He enjoyed no network of large urban presses to print his work, there was no university behind him, and no territorial ruler to protect him. His success, albeit short-lived, suggests that what the Reformation meant to many ordinary people in Saxony and Thuringia could be very different from what it meant to Luther. — I N the meantime, Karlstadt, having been forced out of Orlamünde and a series of south German cities, had ended up more than 250 miles to the southwest, in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, where he was living in hiding. The city was surrounded by a peasant army and one day, when he went on a stroll outside the city, he came upon a group of illiterate peasants, who ordered him at gunpoint: “Are you a brother, then read the messenger’s letters.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  40 The fictional Faust, however, did not escape the Devil, and the work included swipes at the Pope and at Catholic clergy, illustrating the combination of antipapal aggression and devotional intensity that was becoming the trademark of Luther’s legacy. In England, Marlowe took the tale and transformed it into a searing tragedy within five years of the Faustbuch being printed. In the hands of Goethe, it would become the classic of German literature, a metaphor for the Enlightenment struggle that altogether transcended its confessional origins. It is impossible to conceive of German culture apart from Lutheranism, and its echoes have pervaded artistic production of all kinds up to the present day. — P EOPLE from every walk of life were touched by Luther’s message, and it changed their lives forever. Just three examples give a flavor of how he inspired very different individuals. Although Germany’s leading artist Albrecht Dürer never met Luther, he longed to paint “the pious man.” When Luther disappeared from public view after the Diet of Worms, Dürer anxiously followed every rumor, convinced that he had been murdered by the Pope’s minions. 41 But how did Luther transform Dürer’s faith? In 1500, he painted an extraordinary self-portrait. Dürer looked directly at the viewer, his beautiful locks filling the visual space. At twenty-eight years old, the age believed to be most perfect, he adopted a Christlike pose, his fur coat the only hint that this was a sixteenth-century person. This picture was redolent of a religiosity that owed everything to the ideals of the imitation of Christ, the spirituality that permeated the sermons of Staupitz and the sodality of his supporters in Nuremberg. Eleven years later, Dürer included himself in another landmark picture, the All Saints Altar for Nuremberg’s Landauer chapel. It is a painting that has eluded definitive interpretation. It shows the saints, led by St. Augustine, while beneath them hovers another celestial group of representatives of all the different social orders, from emperors to peasants. Dürer included himself in the picture as a small figure on a grassy sward on the earth below, holding a cartouche to proclaim that he was the painter. He stands alone, observing the New Jerusalem and the heavenly hosts, to whom the Christian community is joined through prayer. The altarpiece epitomized the devotional life of the old Church—the Church of indulgences, mutual prayer, and works—and it was painted for a chapel where perpetual Masses were said for the dead. This was the piety that Luther’s Reformation would sweep away. Dürer’s painting of the four apostles, finished in 1528, the year he died, exuded a completely different spirituality. John and Mark are blocks of color, their solidity conveying the authority of Scripture. Dürer incorporated into the painting quotations from Luther’s German Bible of 1522. He also chose not to depict the customary four evangelists, replacing Matthew and Luke with Peter, who embodies the Church, and Paul, whose writings were key to Luther’s thought.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  From this new perspective, any government had to be viewed as illegitimate, because it usurped the prerogatives of the Hidden Imam, the true Lord of the Age. Nothing could be expected of earthly rulers, therefore, though in order to survive, the Shiis must cooperate with the powers-that-be. They would live a spiritual life, yearning for a justice that could only return to earth in the Last Days “after a long time has passed.” The sole authority they would accept was that of the Shii ulema, who had taken the place of the former “agents” of the Imams. Because of their learning, their spirituality, and their mastery of the divine law, the ulema had become the deputies of the Hidden Imam and spoke in his name. But because all governments were illegitimate, ulema must not hold political office. 34 Shiis thus tacitly condoned a total secularization of politics that could seem to violate the crucial Islamic principle of tawhid, which forbade any such separation of state and religion. But the mythology of this secularization sprang from a religious insight. The legend of the Imams, who had nearly all been assassinated, poisoned, imprisoned, exiled, and, finally, eliminated by the caliphs, represented the basic incompatibility of religion and politics. Political life belongs to the realm of logos; it must be forward-looking, pragmatic, able to compromise, plan, and organize society on a rational basis. It has to balance the absolute demands of religion with the grim reality of life on the ground. Premodern, agrarian society was based on a fundamental inequality; it depended upon the labor of peasants who could not share the fruits of civilization. The great confessional religions of the Axial Age (c. 700–200 BCE) had all been preoccupied with this dilemma and tried to grapple with it. Where there were insufficient resources, and where lack of technology and communications made it harder to impose authority, politics became more brutal and aggressively practical. It was, therefore, extremely difficult for any government to live up to the Islamic ideal or to tolerate the existence of an Imam, an embodiment of divine wisdom, who made its shortcomings so sadly evident. Religious leaders could admonish, criticize, and protest against flagrant abuses, but in some tragic sense the sacred had to be either marginalized or kept within bounds, as the caliphs had interned the Imams in the Askari fortress in Samarra. But there was nobility in the Shii devotion to an ideal which must be kept alive, even though, like the Hidden Imam, it was concealed and currently unable to operate in a tyrannical and corrupt world. Even though the Shiah had become a mythological faith, that did not mean that it was irrational. In fact, Shiism became a more rational and intellectual version of Islam than the Sunnah.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Like Shariati, Khomeini was trying to prove that Islam was not a medieval faith but had always championed values that the West thought it had invented. But Islam had been infected and weakened by the imperialists. People wanted to separate religion and politics on the Western model, and this had perverted the faith: “Islam lives among the people as if it were a stranger,” Khomeini lamented. “If somebody were to present Islam as it truly is, he would find it difficult to make people believe him.” 72 The Iranians were in the grip of spiritual malaise. “We have completely forgotten our identity, and have replaced it with a Western identity,” Khomeini used to say. Iranians had “sold themselves and do not know themselves, becoming enslaved to alien ideals.” 73 He believed that the way to heal this alienation was to create a society based entirely on the laws of Islam, which were not only more natural for Iranians than the imported law codes of the West, but were of sacred origin. If they lived in a divinely ordered milieu, impelled by the law of the land to live exactly as God intended, they themselves and the meaning of their lives would be transformed. The disciplines, practices, and rituals of Islam would create within them the Muhammadan spirit that was the ideal for humanity. For Khomeini, faith was not a notional acceptance of a creed, but an attitude and lifestyle that embodied a revolutionary struggle for the happiness and integrity that God intended for humanity. “Once faith comes, everything follows.” 74 Such faith was revolutionary because it constituted a revolt against the hegemony of the Western spirit. A Westerner was likely to find Khomeini’s theory of Velayat-e Faqih (“the Government of the Jurist”) sinister and coercive, but the “modern” government that Iranians had experienced had not brought them the freedoms that people took for granted in Europe and America. Khomeini was coming to embody in his own person an alternative Shii ideal to the Pahlavi monarchy. He was known to be a mystic and to embody divine knowledge in a way that was similar, if not identical, to that of the Imams. Like Husain, he had challenged the corrupt rule of a tyrant; like the Imams, he had been imprisoned and almost put to death by an unjust ruler; like some of the Imams, he had been forced into exile and deprived of what was rightfully his. Now in Najaf, living beside the shrine of Imam Ali, Khomeini seemed rather like the Hidden Imam: physically inaccessible to his people, he still guided them from afar and would one day return. There was a rumor that Khomeini had dreamed that, despite his present exile, he would die in Qum.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  76 It called attention to the government’s neglect of education and labor conditions; the fact that the Society alone was able to appeal to the fellahin was also disturbing. But, more important, all the Society’s institutions had a distinctly Muslim identity. Its factories all had mosques and gave the workers time to make the required prayers; in accordance with the social message of the Koran, working conditions and pay were good; workers had health insurance and decent holidays; disputes were arbitrated fairly. The extraordinary success of the Society was a dramatic demonstration of the fact that, whatever the intellectuals and pundits claimed, most of the Egyptian people wanted to be religious. It also showed that Islam could be progressive. There was no slavish return to the practices of the seventh century. The Brothers were extremely critical of the new Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and condemned its literalistic interpretations of Islamic law, such as cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers. 77 The Brothers had no definite notions about the kind of polity the future Islamic state should have, but they insisted that to be faithful to the spirit of the Koran and Sunnah, there must be a fairer distribution of wealth than there was in the Saudi Kingdom. Their general ideas were certainly in tune with the times: rulers should be elected (as in the early Muslim period), and, as the rashidun (“righteous”) caliphs had urged, a ruler must be accountable to the people and must not rule dictatorially. But Banna always felt that precise discussions about a possible Islamic state were premature, because there was still much basic preparation to be done. 78 Banna simply asked that Egypt be allowed to make its state Islamic; the Soviets had chosen communism, and the West democracy; countries where the population was predominantly Muslim should have the right to construct their polity on an Islamic basis, if and when they so wished. 79 The Society was not perfect. Because of its appeal to the masses, it tended to be anti-intellectual. Its pronouncements were often defensive and self- righteous. The Brothers’ image of the West, which stressed its greed, tyranny, and spiritual bankruptcy, had been distorted by the colonial experience. The object of Western imperialism had not simply been, as one of the Society’s spokesmen maintained, “to humiliate us, to occupy our lands and begin destroying Islam.” 80 The Society’s leaders were intolerant of dissension in the ranks. Banna insisted on absolute obedience and did not delegate responsibility sufficiently. As a result, after his death, nobody could take his place, and the Society was virtually destroyed from within by fruitless infighting. But by far its most serious and damaging failing was the emergence in 1943 of a terrorist unit known as “The Secret Apparatus” (al jihaz al- sirri).

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Most are not interested in politics, but given the predisposition to religion, they would be easy to mobilize by Islamic leaders in a social or economic crisis. Many of the young, however, still feel that modern Egyptian society does not have their interests at heart. Students in the science, engineering, and mathematics faculties are still drawn to the more extreme groups. They find that a stringent Muslim lifestyle gives them a viable alternative to the secularist option, helps them to make the difficult transition from a rural to a modern urban culture, and gives them a sense of authenticity and belonging. 64 It also provides them with a community, something which is more difficult to achieve in modern society but which is a crucial human need. They are not seeking to turn the clock back but are looking for new ways to apply the Islamic paradigm, which served Muslims well for centuries, to current conditions. The deep discontent which erupted so horribly in the assassination of Sadat still simmers beneath the surface, after two decades of Mubarak’s limited liberalization and partial implementation of democracy. The difference now is that the Islamists are much more organized. Patrick Gaffney, the American Arabist, revisited Minya in 1991 and noted that the crowds performing the noon prayers every Friday in the main street outside the tiny fundamentalist mosque were much more disciplined than they had been in the 1970s. Gone was the old ragged and disorderly defiance. Many of the participants were in their thirties and forties; they wore a uniform white jala-biyyah and the correct Islamic head covering. They gave the impression of forming a distinct and focused subculture, with its own direction and identity. Gaffney also noted a huge new government building housing the offices of the Ministry of the Interior, which was meant to symbolize the massive power of the state. An emblem of control in a former trouble spot, it seemed to have nothing to do with the dedicated Islamists, who were oriented to Mecca rather than Cairo. 65 Two realms existed side by side in Egypt in a schizophrenic rift that shows no sign of healing. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is war between the “two nations.” Periodically, there are reports of arrests and shoot-outs between the police and the most extreme Muslim groups. Where the majority of Islamists are content with a fundamentalist separation from secular society, a small minority resort to terror. Since 1986, there have been politically motivated attacks on Americans, Israelis, and prominent Egyptians. In 1987, Islamists shot Hasan Abu Bawha, a former minister of the interior, and Nabawi Ahmed, the editor of the weekly journal al-Mussawar.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Mendelssohn also argued for the separation of church and state, and for the privatization of religion—a solution that was very attractive to Jews who longed to shake off the restrictions of the ghetto and become involved in mainstream European culture. By making their faith a purely personal affair, they could both remain Jewish and become good Europeans. Mendelssohn insisted that Judaism was a rational faith that was eminently suited to the temper of the times; its doctrines were based on reason. When God had revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, he had brought the Jewish people a law and not a set of doctrines. Judaism was, therefore, only concerned with morality and human behavior; it left the minds of Jews entirely free. Mendelssohn seemed to have little understanding of the mystical and mythical element in Judaism; his was the first of a number of attempts to make Judaism acceptable to the modern world by forcing it into a rationalistic mold that was alien to it—as it was alien to most religions. Mendelssohn’s ideas were, of course, anathema to the Hasidim and Misnagdim of Eastern Europe, as well as to the more Orthodox Jews of the Western world. He was reviled as a new Spinoza, a heretic who had abandoned the faith and gone over to the gentiles. Yet this would have grieved Mendelssohn; while he clearly found much of traditional Judaism incredible and alien, he did not want to abandon the Jewish God or his Jewish identity. He had a significant number of disciples, however. Ever since the Shabbetai Zevi affair, many Jews had shown that they longed to transcend the strictures of traditional Judaism, which they found confining. They were happy to follow Mendelssohn’s example: to mix in gentile society, study the new sciences, and keep their faith a private matter. Mendelssohn was one of the first to devise a way out of the ghetto into modern Europe that did not oblige Jews to reject their people and their own cultural heritage. Besides engaging in the intellectual life of the Enlightenment, some of these Jewish maskilim (“enlightened ones”) began to study their own heritage from a more secular standpoint. Some of them, as we shall see, would undertake a modern, scientific exploration of Jewish history; others began to study and to write in Hebrew, the sacred tongue which among Orthodox Jews was reserved for prayer and works of devotion. Now Maskilim began to create a new Hebrew literature, secularizing this holy language.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  This apparently craven dependence upon the supernatural was the obverse of everything that they were trying to achieve. The Zionists wanted to create a fresh Jewish identity, a New Jew, liberated from the unhealthy, confining life of the ghetto. The New Jew would be autonomous, the controller of his own destiny in his own land. But this quest for roots and self-respect amounted to a declaration of independence from Jewish religion. The Zionists were, above all else, pragmatists, and this made them men of the modern era. Yet they were all profoundly aware of the explosive “charge” of the symbol of the Land. In the mythical world of Judaism, the Land was inseparable from the two most sacred realities, God and the Torah. In the mystical journey of the Kabbalah, the Land was linked symbolically to the last stage of the interior descent into the self, and was identical with the divine Presence the Kabbalist discovered in the ground of his being. The Land was thus fundamental to Jewish identity. However practical their approach, Zionists recognized that no other land could really “save” the Jews and bring them psychic healing. Peretz Smolenskin (1842–95), who was bitterly opposed to the rabbinic establishment, was convinced that Palestine was the only possible location for a Jewish state. Leo Pinsker (1821–91) was only converted to this idea slowly, and against his better judgment, but he finally had to admit that the Jewish state had to be in Palestine. Theodor Herzl had nearly lost the leadership of the Zionist movement at the Second Zionist Conference in Basel (1898) when he had suggested a state in Uganda. He was forced to stand before the delegates, raise his hand, and quote the words of the Psalmist: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, may my right hand wither!” Zionists were ready to exploit the power of this mythos to make their wholly secular and even Godless campaign a viable reality in the real world. That they succeeded was their triumph. But their endorsement of this mythical, sacred geography would be as problematic as ever when they tried to translate it into hard fact. The first Zionists had very little understanding of the terrestrial history of Palestine during the previous two thousand years; their slogan: “A land without a people for a people without a land!” showed a complete disregard for the fact that the land was inhabited by Palestinian Arabs who had their own aspirations for the country. If Zionism succeeded in its limited, pragmatic, and modern objective of establishing a secular Jewish state, it also embroiled the people of Israel in a conflict which, at this writing, shows little sign of abating. T HE M USLIMS of Egypt and Iran, as we have seen, had first experienced modernity as aggressive, invasive, and exploitative.

• From The Lover (1984)

  The memory of the little white girl must have been there, lying there, the body, across the bed. For a long time she must have remained the queen of his desire, his personal link with emotion, with the immensity of tenderness, the dark and terrible depths of the flesh. Then the day must have come when it was possible. The day when desire for the little white girl was so strong, so unbearable that he could find her whole image again as in a great and raging fever, and penetrate the other woman with his desire for her, the white child. Through a lie he must have found himself inside the other woman, through a lie providing what their families, Heaven, and the northern ancestors expected of him, to wit, an heir to their name. Perhaps she knew about the white girl. She had native servants in Sadec who knew about the affair and must have talked. She couldn’t not have known of his sorrow. They must both have been the same age, sixteen. That night, had she seen her husband weep? And, seeing it, had she offered consolation? A girl of sixteen, a Chinese fiancée of the thirties, could she without impropriety offer consolation for such an adulterous sorrow at her expense? Who knows? Perhaps she was mistaken, perhaps the other girl wept with him, not speaking for the rest of the night. And then love might have come after, after the tears. But she, the white girl, never knew anything of all this. Years after the war, after marriages, children, divorces, books, he came to Paris with his wife. He phoned her. It’s me. She recognized him at once from the voice. He said, I just wanted to hear your voice. She said, It’s me, hello. He was nervous, afraid, as before. His voice suddenly trembled. And with the trembling, suddenly, she heard again the voice of China. He knew she’d begun writing books, he’d heard about it through her mother whom he’d met again in Saigon. And about her younger brother, and he’d been grieved for her. Then he didn’t know what to say. And then he told her. Told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, he could never stop loving her, that he’d love her until death. Neauphle-le-Château–Paris February–May 1984

• From The Lover (1984)

  It must have been a long time before he was able to be with her, to give her the heir to their fortunes. The memory of the little white girl must have been there, lying there, the body, across the bed. For a long time she must have remained the queen of his desire, his personal link with emotion, with the immensity of tenderness, the dark and terrible depths of the flesh. Then the day must have come when it was possible. The day when desire for the little white girl was so strong, so unbearable that he could find her whole image again as in a great and raging fever, and penetrate the other woman with his desire for her, the white child. Through a lie he must have found himself inside the other woman, through a lie providing what their families, Heaven, and the northern ancestors expected of him, to wit, an heir to their name. Perhaps she knew about the white girl. She had native servants in Sadec who knew about the affair and must have talked. She couldn’t not have known of his sorrow. They must both have been the same age, sixteen. That night, had she seen her husband weep? And, seeing it, had she offered consolation? A girl of sixteen, a Chinese fiancée of the thirties, could she without impropriety offer consolation for such an adulterous sorrow at her expense? Who knows? Perhaps she was mistaken, perhaps the other girl wept with him, not speaking for the rest of the night. And then love might have come after, after the tears. But she, the white girl, never knew anything of all this. Years after the war, after marriages, children, divorces, books, he came to Paris with his wife. He phoned her. It’s me. She recognized him at once from the voice. He said, I just wanted to hear your voice. She said, It’s me, hello. He was nervous, afraid, as before. His voice suddenly trembled. And with the trembling, suddenly, she heard again the voice of China. He knew she’d begun writing books, he’d heard about it through her mother whom he’d met again in Saigon. And about her younger brother, and he’d been grieved for her. Then he didn’t know what to say. And then he told her. Told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, he could never stop loving her, that he’d love her until death. Neauphle-le-Château–Paris February–May 1984 [image "Penguin Random House Next Reads logo" file=image_rsrcDK.jpg] What’s next on your reading list?Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now.

• From The Lover (1984)

  I said “I love you” in Chinese back to her. “I love you” is all the Chinese she knows, and all the language we have in common. Commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Vietnam Writers Association, she talked-story about a woman who had nine children killed in war. Kissing me, she kissed an American with roots in two countries that warred against Vietnam. The couple with no names in The Lover also reach each other through history that moved populations singly and en masse to and fro across the earth and into its every corner. Neither the girl in the fedora and gold lamé heels nor the Chinese man from Cholon belong in Vietnam; she is a generation removed from France, and he, generations away from China. The girl and her mother and brothers are barbarians, sans culture . How to enroot oneself but to make primitive, sexual connection with another? It may be that erotic love is more intense, dramatic, and romantic under imperialist colonialist circumstances than during normalization. Another pair of lovers, the ones in Hiroshima, Mon Amour , try to part; they may meet again, next war. “Please, leave me now.” “We’ll probably die without meeting again.” “Probably, unless one day there is a war.” I read The Lover to be Marguerite Duras writing about herself. She was born in Indochina, and like the narrating lover “returns” to France at the age of seventeen. I’ll take the nameless “I” to be Marguerite. My favorite books are about the writer writing about writing. I, Marguerite, create myself as an artist and as a woman as I write—levels and levels of consciousness—consciousness of consciousness. And I also make up the world, and a place to be. Rootless, I existentially write myself the stable world. “I’m going to write. That’s what I see beyond the present moment, in the great desert in whose form my life stretches out before me.” “I want to write. I’ve already told my mother: That’s what I want to do—write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. She says grimly, When you’ve got your math degree you can write if you like, it won’t be anything to do with me then. She’s against it, it’s not worthy, it’s not real work, it’s nonsense. Later she said, A childish idea.” “I answered that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was to write, nothing else but that, nothing.” “I’m still part of the family, it’s there I live to the exclusion of everywhere else. It’s in its aridity, its terrible harshness, its malignance, that I’m most deeply sure of myself, at the heart of my essential certainty, the certainty that later on I’ll be a writer.” The Lover is a story about girl and woman becoming artist. I feel all right about taking this fiction as Marguerite Duras’s autobiography. In Duras’s movie, Hiroshima, Mon Amour , the heroine is making a movie about peace.