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.

Page 44 of 170 · 20 per page

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The man gets to possess her all on his own, something he could not do with father in the way, but he first has to win her away from others. The key to this kind of regression is to see and treat your targets as chil- dren. Nothing about them intimidates you, no matter how much authority or social standing they have. Your manner makes it clear that you feel you are the stronger party. To accomplish this it may be helpful to imagine or visualize them as the children they once were; suddenly, powerful people do not seem so powerful and threatening when you regress them in your imagination. Keep in mind that certain types are more vulnerable to an Effect a Regression • 343 oedipal regression. Look for those who, like Professor Mut, seem outwardly the most adult—straitlaced, serious, a little full of themselves. They are struggling to repress their regressive tendencies, overcompensating for their weaknesses. Often those who seem the most in command of themselves are the ripest for regression. In fact they are secretly longing for it, because their power, position, and responsibilities are more a burden than a pleasure. 3. Born in 1768, the French writer François René de Chateaubriand grew up in a medieval castle in Brittany. The castle was cold and gloomy, as if in- habited by the ghosts of its past. The family lived there in semiseclusion. Chateaubriand spent much of his time with his sister Lucile, and his attach- ment to her was strong enough that rumors of incest made the rounds. But when he was around fifteen, a new woman named Sylphide entered his life—a woman he created in his imagination, a composite of all the hero- ines, goddesses, and courtesans he had read about in books. He was con- stantly seeing her features in his mind, and hearing her voice. Soon she was taking walks with him, carrying on conversations. He imagined her inno- cent and exalted, yet they would sometimes do things that were not so in- nocent. He carried on this relationship for two whole years, until finally he left for Paris, and replaced Sylphide with women of flesh and blood. The French public, weary after the terrors of the 1790s, greeted Chateaubriand's first books enthusiastically, sensing a new spirit in them. His novels were full of windswept castles, brooding heroes, and passionate heroines. Romanticism was in the air. Chateaubriand himself resembled the characters in his novels, and despite his rather unattractive appearance, women went wild over him—with him, they could escape their boring marriages and live out the kind of turbulent romance he wrote about.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  "I intend to employ the little time that is left to me in describing my youth," he said, "so long as its essence remains palpa- ble to me." It seemed that Madame Récamier returned Chateaubriand's love, but as usual she struggled to keep it a spiritual affair. The Enchanter, however, deserved his nickname. His poetry, his air of melancholy, and his persis- tence finally won the day and she succumbed, perhaps for the first time in her life. Now, as lovers, they were inseparable. But as always with Cha- teaubriand, over time one woman was not enough. The restless spirit returned. He began to have affairs again. Soon he and Récamier stopped seeing each other. In 1832, Chateaubriand was traveling through Switzerland. Once again his life had taken a downward turn; only this time he truly was old, in body and spirit. In the Alps, strange thoughts of his youth began to assail him, memories of the castle in Brittany. Word reached him that Madame Ré- camier was in the area. He had not seen her in years, and he hurried to the inn where she was staying. She was as kind to him as ever; during the day they took walks together, and at night they stayed up late, talking. One day, Chateaubriand told Récamier he had finally decided to finish his memoirs. And he had a confession to make: he told her the story of Sylphide, his imaginary lover when he was growing up. He had once hoped to meet a Sylphide in real life, but the women he had known had paled in comparison. Over the years he had forgotten about his imaginary lover, but now he was an old man, and he not only thought of her again, he could see her face and hear her voice. And with those memories he real- ized that he had in fact met Sylphide in real life—it was Madame Ré- Effect a Regression • 345 camier. The face and voice were close. More important, there was the calm spirit, the innocent, virginal quality. Reading to her the prayer to Sylphide he had just written, he told her he wanted to be young again, and seeing her had brought his youth back to him. Reconciled with Madame Ré- camier, he began to work again on the memoirs, which were eventually published under the title Memoirs from Beyond the Grave. Most critics agreed that the book was his masterpiece. The memoirs were dedicated to Madame Récamier, to whom he remained devoted until his death, in 1848. Interpretation. All of us carry within us an image of an ideal type of per- son whom we yearn to meet and love.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Byron had hoped that married life would calm him down, but after the ceremony he realized it was a mistake. He told Annabella, "Now you will find that you have married a devil." Within a few years the marriage fell apart. In 1816, Byron left England, never to return. He traveled through Italy for a while; everyone knew his story—the affairs, the incest, the cruelty to his lovers. But wherever he went, Italian women, particularly married no- blewomen, pursued him, making it clear in their own way how prepared they were to be the next Byronic victim. In truth, the women had become the aggressors. As Byron told the poet Shelley, "No one has been more car- ried off than poor dear me—I've been ravished more often than anyone since the Trojan war." Interpretation. Women of Byron's time were longing to play a different role than society allowed them. They were supposed to be the decent, moralizing force in culture; only men had outlets for their darker impulses. Underlying the social restrictions on women, perhaps, was a fear of the more amoral and unbridled part of the female psyche. Feeling repressed and restless, women of the time devoured gothic nov- els and romances, stories in which women were adventurous, and had the same capacity for good and evil as men. Books like these helped to trigger a revolt, with women like Lady Caroline playing out a little of the fantasy life they had had in their girlhood, where it had to some extent been permit- need to lower his sexual object. . . . Women belonging to the higher levels of civilization do not usually transgress the prohibition against sexual activities during the period of waiting, and thus they acquire this close association between the forbidden and the sexual. . . . • The injurious results of the deprivation of sexual enjoyment at the beginning manifest themselves in lack of full satisfaction when sexual desire is later given free rein in marriage. But, on the other hand, unrestrained sexual liberty from the beginning leads to no better result. It is easy to show that the value the mind sets on erotic needs instantly sinks as soon as satisfaction becomes readily obtainable. Some obstacle is necessary to swell the tide of the libido to its height; and at all periods of history, wherever natural barriers in the way of satisfaction have not sufficed, mankind has erected conventional ones in order to be able to enjoy love. This is true both of individuals and of nations. In times during which no obstacles to sexual satisfaction existed, such as, maybe, during the decline of the civilizations of antiquity, love became worthless, life became empty, and strong reaction- formations were necessary before the indispensable emotional value of love could be recovered. —SIGMUND FREUD, "CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE," SEXUALITY AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE, TRANSLATED BY JOAN RIVIÈRE 354 • The Art of Seduction ted.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Well, this was the end, they were separating for good, since that was how she wanted it. Tourvel argued back: she was a married woman, she had no choice. Valmont softened his tone and apologized: he was unused to having such strong feelings, he said, and could not control himself. Still, he would never trouble her again. Then he laid on a table the letters he had come to return. Tourvel came closer: the sight of her letters, and the memory of all the turmoil they represented, affected her powerfully. She had thought his de- cision to renounce his libertine way of life was voluntary, she said—with a touch of bitterness in her voice, as if she resented being abandoned. No, it was not voluntary, he replied, it was because she had spurned him. Then he suddenly stepped closer and took her in his arms. She did not resist. "Adorable woman!" he cried. "You have no idea of the love you inspire. You will never know how I have worshipped you, how much dearer my feelings have been to me than life! . . . May [your days] be blessed with all of the happiness of which you have deprived me!" Then he let her go and turned to leave. Tourvel suddenly snapped. "You shall listen to me. I insist," she said, and grabbed his arm. He turned around and they embraced. This time he waited no longer, picking her up, carrying her to an ottoman, overwhelm- ing her with kisses and sweet words of the happiness he now felt. Before this sudden flood of caresses, all her resistance gave way. "From this mo- ment on I am yours," she said, "and you will hear neither refusals nor re- grets from my lips." Tourvel was true to her word, and Valmont's suspicions were to prove correct: the pleasures he won from her were far greater than with any other woman he had seduced. Interpretation. Valmont—a character in Choderlos de Laclos's eighteenth- century novel Dangerous Liaisons—can sense several things about the Prési- dente at first glance. She is timid and nervous. Her husband almost certainly treats her with respect—probably too much of it. Beneath her in- terest in God, religion, and virtue is a passionate woman, vulnerable to the lure of a romance and to the flattering attention of an ardent suitor. No one, not even her husband, has given her this feeling, because they have all been so daunted by her prudish exterior. Valmont begins his seduction, then, by being indirect. He knows Tourvel is secretly fascinated with his bad reputation. By acting as if he is contemplating a change in his life, he can make her want to reform him—a desire that is unconsciously a desire to love him.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  This diffused approach to parenting isn’t limited to villages in Africa or Amazonia. Desmond Morris recalls an afternoon he spent with a female truck driver in Polynesia. She told him that she’d had nine children, but had given two of them to an infertile friend. When Morris asked how the kids felt about that, she said they didn’t mind at all, as “all of us love all of the children.” Morris recalls, “This last point is underlined by the fact that, when we reach the village…she passes the time by wandering over to a group of toddlers, lying down in the grass with them and playing with them exactly as if they were her own. They accept her instantly, without any questioning, and a passer-by would never have guessed that they were anything other than a natural family playing together.”11 “A natural family.” Perhaps this easy acceptance between adults and unrelated children, the diffuse nurturing found in societies where children refer to all men as father and all women as mother, societies small and isolated enough to safely assume the kindness of strangers, where overlapping sexual relationships leave genetic paternity unknowable and of little consequence…perhaps this is the “natural” family structure of our species. Could it be that the atomic isolation of the husband-wife nucleus with an orbiting child or two is in fact a culturally imposed aberration for our species—as ill-suited to our evolved tendencies as corsets, chastity belts, and suits of armor? Dare we ask whether mothers, fathers, and children are all being shoe-horned into a family structure that suits none of us? Might the contemporary pandemics of fracturing families, parental exhaustion, and confused, resentful children be predictable consequences of what is, in truth, a distorted and distorting family structure inappropriate for our species? Nuclear Meltdown If the independent, isolated nuclear family unit is, in fact, the structure into which human beings most naturally configure themselves, why do contemporary societies and religions find it necessary to prop it up with tax breaks and supportive legislation while fiercely defending it from same-sex couples and others proposing to marry in supposedly “nontraditional” ways? One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all—apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection? Furthermore, if the nuclear triad is so deeply embedded in our nature, why are fewer and fewer of us choosing to live that way? In the United States, the percentage of nuclear family households has dropped from 45 to 23.5 since the 1970s. Married couples (with and without children) accounted for roughly 84 percent of all American households in 1930, but the latest figure is just under 50 percent, while the number of unmarried couples living together has mushroomed from about 500,000 in 1970 to more than ten times that number in 2008.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Wor- ried that she would find his sentiments ridiculous, he would not reveal his name; yet he had to let her know that he adored her. Sabatier was used to such attentions—one man after another had fallen in love with her—but this letter was different: in this man she seemed to have inspired a quasi- religious ardor. The letter, written in a disguised handwriting, contained a poem dedicated to her; titled "To One Who Is Too Gay," it began by prais- ing her beauty, yet ended with the lines And so, one night, I'd like to sneak, When darkness tolls the hour of pleasure, A craven thief, toward the treasure Which is your person, plump and sleek. . . . And, most vertiginous delight! Into those lips, so freshly striking And daily lovelier to my liking— Infuse the venom of my spite. Mixed in with her admirer's adoration, clearly, was a strange kind of lust, with a touch of cruelty to it. The poem both intrigued and disturbed her—and she had no idea who had written it. A few weeks later another letter arrived. As before, the writer en- veloped Sabatier in cultlike worship, mixing the physical and the spiritual. And as before, there was a poem, "All in One," in which he wrote, Omissions, denials, deflections, deceptions, diversions, and humility— all aimed at provoking this second state, the secret of true seduction. Vulgar seduction might proceed by persistence, but true seduc- tion proceeds by absence. . . . It is like fencing: one needs a field for the feint. Throughout this period, the seducer [Johannes], far from seeking to close in on her, seeks to maintain his distance by various ploys: he does not speak directly to her but only to her aunt, and then about trivial or stupid subjects; he neutral- izes everything by irony and feigned pedanticism; he fails to respond to any feminine or erotic move- ment, and even finds her a sitcom suitor to disenchant and deceive her, to the point where she herself takes the initiative and breaks off her engagement, thus completing the seduction and creating the ideal situation for her total abandon. —JEAN BAUDRILLARD, SEDUCTION, TRANSLATED BY BRIAN SINGER 385 386 • The Art of Seduction No single beauty is the best, Since she is all one flower divine O mystic metamorphosis! My senses into one sense flow— Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, Her breath is music faint and low! Clearly the author was haunted by Sabatier's presence, and thought of her constantly—but now she began to be haunted by him, thinking of him night and day, and wondering who he was. His subsequent letters only deepened the spell.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Indeed, the only couple with whom she had relations of real cordiality, devoid of any arrière-pensée or practical foresight, were the Farlows who had just come back from a business trip to Chile in time to attend our wedding, with the Chatfields, McCoos, and a few others (but not Mrs. Junk or the even prouder Mrs. Talbot). John Farlow was a middle-aged, quiet, quietly athletic, quietly successful dealer in sporting goods, who had an office at Parkington, forty miles away: it was he who got me the cartridges for that Colt and showed me how to use it, during a walk in the woods one Sunday; he was also what he called with a smile a part-time lawyer and had handled some of Charlotte’s affairs. Jean, his youngish wife (and first cousin), was a long-limbed girl in harlequin glasses with two boxer dogs, two pointed breasts and a big red mouth. She painted—landscapes and portraits—and vividly do I remember praising, over cocktails, the picture she had made of a niece of hers, little Rosaline Honeck, a rosy honey in a Girl Scout uniform, beret of green worsted, belt of green webbing, charming shoulder-long curls—and John removed his pipe and said it was a pity Dolly (my Dolita) and Rosaline were so critical of each other at school, but he hoped they would get on better when they returned from their respective camps. We talked of the school. It had its drawbacks, and it had its virtues. “Of course, too many of the tradespeople here are Italians,” said John, “but on the other hand we are still spared—” “I wish,” interrupted Jean with a laugh, “Dolly and Rosaline were spending the summer together.” Suddenly I imagined Lo returning from camp—brown, warm, drowsy, drugged—and was ready to weep with passion and impatience. 19 A few words more about Mrs. Humbert while the going is good (a bad accident is to happen quite soon). I had been always aware of the possessive streak in her, but I never thought she would be so crazily jealous of anything in my life that had not been she. She showed a fierce insatiable curiosity for my past. She desired me to resuscitate all my loves so that she might make me insult them, and trample upon them, and revoke them apostately and totally, thus destroying my past. She made me tell her about my marriage to Valeria, who was of course a scream; but I also had to invent, or to pad atrociously, a long series of mistresses for Charlotte’s morbid delectation. To keep her happy, I had to present her with an illustrated catalogue of them, all nicely differentiated, according to the rules of those American ads where schoolchildren are pictured in a subtle ratio of races, with one—only one, but as cute as they make them—chocolate-colored round-eyed little lad, almost in the very middle of the front row.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  A sweater and a pair of shapeless tan pants lay on the floor. We shook their owner into miserable consciousness. He was completely amnesic. In an accent that Rita recognized as pure Brooklynese, he peevishly insinuated that somehow we had purloined his (worthless) identity. We rushed him into his clothes and left him at the nearest hospital, realizing on the way that somehow or other after forgotten gyrations, we were in Grainball. Half a year later Rita wrote the doctor for news. Jack Humbertson as he had been tastelessly dubbed was still isolated from his personal past. Oh Mnemosyne, sweetest and most mischievous of muses! I would not have mentioned this incident had it not started a chain of ideas that resulted in my publishing in the Cantrip Review an essay on “Mimir and Memory,” in which I suggested among other things that seemed original and important to that splendid review’s benevolent readers, a theory of perceptual time based on the circulation of the blood and conceptually depending (to fill up this nutshell) on the mind’s being conscious not only of matter but also of its own self, thus creating a continuous spanning of two points (the storable future and the stored past). In result of this venture—and in culmination of the impression made by my previous travaux —I was called from New York, where Rita and I were living in a little flat with a view of gleaming children taking shower baths far below in a fountainous arbor of Central Park, to Cantrip College, four hundred miles away, for one year. I lodged there, in special apartments for poets and philosophers, from September 1951 to June 1952, while Rita whom I preferred not to display vegetated—somewhat indecorously, I am afraid—in a roadside inn where I visited her twice a week. Then she vanished—more humanly than her predecessor had done: a month later I found her in the local jail. She was trés digne , had had her appendix removed, and managed to convince me that the beautiful bluish furs she had been accused of stealing from a Mrs. Roland MacCrum had really been a spontaneous, if somewhat alcoholic, gift from Roland himself. I succeeded in getting her out without appealing to her touchy brother, and soon afterwards we drove back to Central Park West, by way of Briceland, where we had stopped for a few hours the year before. A curious urge to relive my stay there with Lolita had got hold of me. I was entering a phase of existence where I had given up all hope of tracing her kidnaper and her. I now attempted to fall back on old settings in order to save what still could be saved in the way of souvenir, souvenir que me veux-tu ? Autumn was ringing in the air. To a post card requesting twin beds Professor Hamburg got a prompt expression of regret in reply.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  you in by their immediacy, their visual power, their coldness. Having trans-kindling the flame with formed his art, Warhol also transformed himself: like his paintings, he be-which he burned. How came pure surface. He trained himself to hold himself back, to stop talking. often did he vainly kiss the treacherous pool, how often The world is full of people who try, people who impose themselves ag- plunge his arms deep in the gressively. They may gain temporary victories, but the longer they are waters, as he tried to clasp around, the more people want to confound them. They leave no space the neck he saw! But he could not lay hold upon around themselves, and without space there can be no seduction. Cold Co-himself. He did not know quettes create space by remaining elusive and making others pursue them. what he was looking at, Their coolness suggests a comfortable confidence that is exciting to be but was fired by the sight, around, even though it may not actually exist; their silence makes you want and excited by the very illusion that deceived his to talk. Their self-containment, their appearance of having no need for eyes. Poor foolish boy, why other people, only makes us want to do things for them, hungry for the vainly grasp at the fleeting slightest sign of recognition and favor. Cold Coquettes may be maddening image that eludes you? The thing you are seeking to deal with—never committing but never saying no, never allowing close-does not exist: only turn ness—but more often than not we find ourselves coming back to them, ad-aside and you will lose dicted to the coldness they project. Remember: seduction is a process of what you love. What you see is but the shadow cast drawing people in, making them want to pursue and possess you. Seem dis-by your reflection; in itself tant and people will go mad to win your favor. Humans, like nature, hate a it is nothing. It comes with vacuum, and emotional distance and silence make them strain to fill up the you, and lasts while you empty space with words and heat of their own. Like Warhol, stand back are there; it will go when you go, if go you can. . . . and let them fight over you. • He laid down his weary head on the green grass, [ Narcissistic] women have the greatest fascination for and death closed the eyes which so admired their men. . . . The charm of a child lies to a great extent in his owner's beauty. Even then, narcissism, his self-sufficiency and inaccessibility, just as when he was received into does the charm of certain animals which seem not to con-the abode of the dead, he cern themselves about us, such as cats. . . . It is as if we kept looking at himself in envied them their power of retaining a blissful state of the waters of the Styx. His sisters, the nymphs of the

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  less other less important women. He craved variety. One evening in 1668, The duchess finally got the king spent an evening at the theater, where he conceived a sudden de-bored seeing people looking sire for a young actress called Nell Gwyn. She was pretty and innocent all over the floor for the ring. She looked around looking (only eighteen at the time), with a girlish glow in her cheeks, but haughtily, then took Duke the lines she recited onstage were so impudent and saucy. Deeply excited, by the arm, saying, "It the king decided he had to have her. After the performance he took her doesn't mean anything. I can always get diamonds, out for a night of drinking and merriment, then led her to his royal bed. but how often can I get a Nell was the daughter of a fishmonger, and had begun by selling orman like Duke anges in the theater. She rose to the status of actress by sleeping with writ-Ellington?" • She ers and other theater men. She had no shame about this. (When a footman disappeared with Duke. The band started the of hers got into a fight with someone who said he worked for a whore, she second half by themselves, broke it up by saying, "I am a whore. Find something better to fight and eventually Duke about.") Nell's humor and sass amused the king greatly, but she was low-smilingly reappeared to finish the concert. born, and an actress, and he could hardly make her a favorite. After several — D O N GEORGE, S W E E T M A N : nights with "pretty, witty Nell," he returned to his principal mistress, THE REAL DUKE ELLINGTON Louise Keroualle, a well-born Frenchwoman. Keroualle was a clever seductress. She played hard to get, and made it clear she would not give the king her virginity until he had promised her a title. It was the kind of chase Charles enjoyed, and he made her the I do know, however, that men become bigger-hearted Duchess of Portsmouth. But soon her greed and difficultness began to wear and better lovers once they on his nerves. To divert himself, he turned back to Nell. Whenever he vis-get the suspicion that their ited her, he was royally entertained with food, drink, and her great good mistresses care less about them. When a man humor. The king was bored or melancholy? She took him drinking or believes himself to be the gambling, or out to the country, where she taught him to fish. She always one and only lover in a had a pleasant surprise up her sleeve. What he loved most of all was her woman's life, he'll whistle and go his way. • / ought wit, the way she mocked the pretentious Keroualle. The duchess had the to know; I have followed habit of going into mourning whenever a nobleman of another country this profession for the last

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  its imagination or realism, dream, or a movie star or political star, or even one of those real-life fasci-the meaningful impressions nators, like a Warhol, who may cross our path? Unable to have them, we it leaves—t hese are all become obsessed with them—they haunt our thoughts, our dreams, our secondary. Only the myth fantasies. We imitate them unconsciously. The psychologist Sandor Feris powerful, and at the heart of the enczi calls this "introjection": another person becomes part of our ego, we cinematographic myth lies internalize their character. That is the insidious seductive power of a Star, a seduction— that of the power you can appropriate by making yourself into a cipher, a mix of the renowned seductive figure, a man or woman (but real and the unreal. Most people are hopelessly banal; that is, far too real. The Star • 127 What you need to do is etherealize yourself. Your words and actions seem above all a woman) linked to come from your unconscious—have a certain looseness to them. You to the ravishing but specious power of the hold yourself back, occasionally revealing a trait that makes people wonder cinematographic image whether they really know you. itself. . . . • The star is by The Star is a creation of modern cinema. That is no surprise: film re- no means an ideal or sublime being: she is creates the dream world. We watch a movie in the dark, in a semisomno- artificial. . . . Her presence lent state. The images are real enough, and to varying degrees depict serves to submerge all realistic situations, but they are projections, flickering lights, images—we sensibility and expression know they are not real. It as if we were watching someone else's dream. It beneath a ritual fascination with the void, beneath was the cinema, not the theater, that created the Star. ecstasy of her gaze and the On a theater stage, actors are far away, lost in the crowd, too real in nullity of her smile. This is their bodily presence. What enabled film to manufacture the Star was the how she achieves mythical status and becomes subject close-up, which suddenly separates actors from their contexts, filling your to collective rites of mind with their image. The close-up seems to reveal something not sacrificial adulation. • The so much about the character they are playing but about themselves. We ascension of the cinema idols, the masses' glimpse something of Greta Garbo herself when we look so closely into divinities, was and remains her face. Never forget this while fashioning yourself as a Star. First, you a central story of modern must have such a large presence that you can fill your target's mind the way times. . . . There is no point in dismissing it as

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  at an angle, indirectly, so that the target only gradually becomes aware of you. Haunt the periphery of your target's life— approach through a third party, or seem to cultivate a relatively neutral relationship, moving gradually from friend to lover. Arrange an occasional "chance" encounter, as if you and your target were destined to become acquainted— nothing is more seductive than a sense of destiny. Lull the target into feeling secure, then strike. Friend to Lover Anne Marie Louis d'Orléans, the Duchess de Montpensier, known in seventeenth-century France as La Grande Mademoiselle, had never known love in her life. Her mother had died when she was young; her father remarried and ignored her. She came from one of Europe's most illustrious families: her grandfather had been King Henry IV; the future King Louis XIV was her cousin. When she was young, matches had been pro- Many women adore the posed between her and the widowed king of Spain, the son of the Holy elusive, \ Hate overeagerness. So, play Roman emperor, and even cousin Louis himself, among many others. But hard to get, \ Stop boredom all of these matches were designed for political purposes, or because of her developing. And don't let family's enormous wealth. No one bothered to woo her; she rarely even your entreaties \ Sound too met her suitors. To make matters worse, the Grande Mademoiselle was an confident of possession. Insinuate sex \ idealist who believed in the old-fashioned values of chivalry: courage, hon- Camouflaged as friendship. esty, virtue. She loathed the schemers whose motives in courting her were I've seen ultrastubborn dubious at best. Whom could she trust? One by one she found a reason to creatures \ Fooled by this gambit, the switch from spurn them. Spinsterhood seemed to be her fate. companion to stud. In April of 1669, the Grande Mademoiselle, then forty-two, met one —OVID, THEART OF LOVE, of the strangest men in the court: the Marquis Antonin Peguilin, later TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN known as the Duke de Lauzun. A favorite of Louis XIV's, the thirty-six-year-old Marquis was a brave soldier with an acid wit. He was also an in-curable Don Juan. Although he was short, and certainly not handsome, his impudent manners and his military exploits made him irresistible to On the street, I do not stop women. The Grande Mademoiselle had noticed him some years before, ad- her, or I exchange a miring his elegance and boldness. But it was only this time, in 1669, that greeting with her but never come close, but always she had a real conversation with him, if a short one, and although she knew strive for distance. of his lady-killer reputation, she found him charming. A few days later they Presumably our repeated ran into each other again; this time the conversation was longer, and encounters are clearly noticeable to her;

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Genji went far away, and things settled down. Then the emperor died and his son took over. A kind of emptiness had come to the court: the dozens of women whom Genji had seduced could not endure his absence, and flooded him with letters. Even women who had never known him intimately would weep over any relic he had left behind—a robe, for instance, in which his scent still lingered. And the young emperor missed his jocular presence. And the princesses missed the music he had played on the koto. And Oborozukiyo pined for his midnight visits. Finally even Kokiden broke down, realizing that she could not resist him. So Genji was summoned back to the court. And not only was he forgiven, he was given a hero's welcome; the young emperor himself greeted the scoundrel with tears in his eyes. The Natural • 65 The story of Genji's life is told in the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman of the Heian court. The character was most likely based on a real-life man, Fujiwara no Korechika. Indeed another book of the period, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, describes an encounter between the female author and Korechika, and reveals his incredible charm and his almost hypnotic effect on women. Genji is a Natural, an undefensive lover, a man who has a lifelong obsession with women but whose appreciation of and affection for them makes him irresistible. As he says to Oborozukiyo in the novel, "I am always allowed my way." This self-belief is half of Genji's charm. Resistance does not make him defensive; he retreats gracefully, reciting a little poetry, and as he leaves, the perfume of his robes trailing behind him, his victim wonders why she has been so afraid, and what she is missing by spurning him, and she finds a way to let him know that the next time things will be different. Genji takes nothing seriously or personally, and at the age of forty, an age at which most men of the eleventh century were already looking old and worn, he still seems like a boy. His seductive powers never leave him. Human beings are immensely suggestible; their moods will easily spread to the people around them. In fact seduction depends on mimesis, on the conscious creation of a mood or feeling that is then reproduced by the other person. But hesitation and awkwardness are also contagious, and are deadly to seduction. If in a key moment you seem indecisive or self-conscious, the other person will sense that you are thinking of yourself, instead of being overwhelmed by his or her charms. The spell will be broken.

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

  The capacity to create emotion concepts, share them with others, and use them to construct social reality is a function of our biological makeup. [back] 23. word for rainbow, радуга : To produce the word радуга with a non-Russian keyboard, visit translate.google.com and translate the word “rainbow” to Russian, then copy and paste. [back] 24. green are to an American: Other cultural examples include the Himba, who categorize some shades of Western “green” and “blue” as a single color, and the Berinmo of Papua New Guinea, who have only five color categories. [back] 25. that don’t exist in English: Good summaries can be found in Russell 1991a; Mesquita and Frijda 1992; and Pavlenko 2014. calling it “Forelsket”: So Bad So Good 2012. certain feeling of close friendship: Verosupertramp85 2012. “Tocka” is a spiritual anguish: Ibid. a strong, spiritual longing: Wikipedia, s.v. “Saudade,” last modified April 1, 2016, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade . called “Pena Ajena”: So Bad So Good 2012. [back] 26. something that is unbearably adorable: Garber 2013; So Bad So Good 2012. [back] 27. before the event takes place: “Better Than English” 2016. [back] 28. looking worse after a haircut: Pimsleur 2014. [back] 29. depending on context: Lutz 1980; Russell 1991b. “the desire for revenge”: Kundera 1994. required to be grateful anyway: So Bad So Good 2012. [back] 30. no concept of “Anger”: Briggs 1970. no concept of “Sadness”: Levy 1975; Levy 2014. [back] 31. individual, in the body: Nummenmaa et al. 2014. Various scholars throughout history have also located emotion in the body; see heam.info/body-3 . require two or more people: Pavlenko 2014. Westerners lump together as emotional: Ibid. [back] 32. “to basic psychological realities”: Wierzbicka 1986, 584. invention of the seventeenth century: Danziger 1997. [back] 33. spatial relations, and causality: Mapping words to conceptual representations is neither simple nor universal; see heam.info/concepts-13 . language to language is astonishing: Malt and Wolff 2010, 7. [back] 34. had never smiled so much: Victor Danilchenko, my husband’s colleague, tells me that in his native Ukraine, habitual smiling is not the norm, and the term “American smile” means a fake and insincere smile. prefer high arousal, pleasant states: Tsai 2007. [back] 35. shame, and respect: De Leersnyder et al. 2011. [back] 36. report more physical illness: Consedine et al. 2014. [back] 8. A New View of Human Nature 1. lower salaries in the future: The human brain develops until late adolescence, but the most sensitive time begins during the first trimester and continues throughout the first several years of life, particularly for brain regions important for body-budgeting, control, and learning (Hill et al. 2010).

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov On a Book Entitled Lolita After doing my impersonation of suave John Ray, the character in Lolita who pens the Foreword, any comments coming straight from me may strike one—may strike me, in fact—as an impersonation of Vladimir Nabokov talking about his own book. A few points, however, have to be discussed; and the autobiographic device may induce mimic and model to blend. Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as “What is the author’s purpose?” or still worse “What is the guy trying to say?” Now, I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no other purpose than to get rid of that book and who, when asked to explain its origin and growth, has to rely on such ancient terms as Interreaction of Inspiration and Combination—which, I admit, sounds like a conjurer explaining one trick by performing another. The first little throb of Lolita went through me late in 1939 or early in 1940, in Paris, at a time when I was laid up with a severe attack of intercostal neuralgia. As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage. The impulse record had no textual connection with the ensuing train of thought, which resulted, however, in a prototype of my present novel, a short story some thirty pages long. I wrote it in Russian, the language in which I had been writing novels since 1924 (the best of these are not translated into English, and all are prohibited for political reasons in Russia). The man was a Central European, the anonymous nymphet was French, and the loci were Paris and Provence.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  It is a question of focal adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount, and a certain contrast that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse delight. When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine years have elapsed, I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf in my life. We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open, and soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve. No wonder, then, that my adult life during the European period of my existence proved monstrously twofold. Overtly, I had so-called normal relationships with a number of terrestrial women having pumpkins or pears for breasts; inly, I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach. The human females I was allowed to wield were but palliative agents. I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I had , caught glimpses of an incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine. My world was split. I was aware of not one but two sexes, neither of which was mine; both would be termed female by the anatomist. But to me, through the prism of my senses, “they were as different as mist and mast.” All this I rationalize now. In my twenties and early thirties, I did not understand my throes quite so clearly. While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body’s every plea. One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangulated me. Psychoanalysts wooed me with pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. The fact that to me the only objects of amorous tremor were sisters of Annabel’s, her handmaids and girl-pages, appeared to me at times as a forerunner of insanity.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  might be: a young poet who had frequented her salon for several years, at her throat. Yet first she Charles Baudelaire. He seemed shy, in fact had hardly spoken to her, but confessed in conscience, repented and asked God's she had read some of his poetry, and although the poems in the letters were pardon; she accused herself more polished, the style was similar. At her apartment Baudelaire would al-of having sinned against ways sit politely in a corner, but now that she thought of it, he would smile the one she knew had always been hers, and who at her strangely, nervously. It was the look of a young man in love. Now would still be, were he when he visited she watched him carefully, and the more she watched, the alive. . . . She counted all surer she was that he was the writer, but she never confirmed her intuition, of the unkindnesses and because she did not want to confront him—he might be shy, but he was a recalled each individual unkindness; she noted man, and at some point he would have to come to her. And she felt certain every one, and repeated that he would. Then, suddenly the letters stopped coming—and Madame often: "Oh misery! What Sabatier could not understand why, since the last one had been even more was I thinking, when my lover came before me and I adoring than all of the others before. did not deign to welcome Several years went by, in which she often thought of her anonymous him, nor even care to admirer's letters, but they were never renewed. In 1857, however, Baude-listen! Was I not a fool to refuse to speak or even look laire published a book of poetry, The Flowers of Evil, and Madame Sabatier at him? A fool? No, so recognized several of the verses—they were the ones he had written for help me God, I was cruel her. Now they were out in the open for everyone to see. A little while later and deceitful! . . . 7 believe the poet sent her a gift: a specially bound copy of the book, and a letter, that it was I alone who struck him that mortal this time signed with his name. Yes, he wrote, he was the anonymous blow. When he came writer—would she forgive him for being so mysterious in the past? happily before me expecting Furthermore, his feelings for her were as strong as ever: "You didn't think me to receive him joyfully and I shunned him and for a moment that I could have forgotten you? . . . You to me are more would never even look at than a cherished image conjured up in dream, you're my superstition . . . him, was this not a mortal my constant companion, my secret! Farewell, dear Madame. I kiss your blow? At that moment, when I refused to speak, I hands with profound devotion."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  To attend the theater when the perfect lady. He had one worry: she was angling to get married, and he she does, gaze at her could never marry her—she was an actress with a dubious past. The other beauty— \ From the colonels were already scandalized by his involvement with her. Neverthe-shoulders up she's time \ Most delectably spent, a less, the affair went on. feast for adoring glances, \ In 1945, Perón was dismissed from his post and jailed. The colonels For the eloquence of feared his growing popularity and distrusted the power of his mistress, who eyebrows, the speaking sign. \ Applaud when some seemed to have total influence over him. It was the first time in almost two male dancer struts on as years that he was truly alone, and truly separated from Eva. Suddenly he felt the heroine, \ Cheer for new emotions sweeping over him: he pinned her photographs all over the each lover's role. \ When wall. Outside, massive strikes were being organized to protest his imprison-she leaves, leave too—b ut sit there as long as she ment, but all he could think about was Eva. She was a saint, a woman of does: \ Waste time at your destiny, a heroine. He wrote to her, "It is only being apart from loved ones mistress's whim. . . . \ Get that we can measure our affection. From the day I left you . . . I have not her accustomed to you; \ Habit's the key, spare no been able to calm my sad heart. . . . My immense solitude is full of your pains till that's achieved. \ memory." Now he promised to marry her. Let her always see you The strikes grew in intensity. After eight days, Perón was released from around, always hear you talking, \ Show her your prison; he promptly married Eva. A few months later he was elected presi-face night and day. \ When dent. As first lady, Eva attended state functions in her somewhat gaudy you're confident you'll be dresses and jewelry; she was seen as a former actress with a large wardrobe. missed, when your absence \ Seems sure to cause her Then, in 1947, she left for a tour of Europe, and Argentines followed her regret, \ Then give her every move—the ecstatic crowds that greeted her in Spain, her audience some respite: a field with the pope—and in her absence their opinion of her changed. How improves when fallow, \ well she represented the Argentine spirit, its noble simplicity, its flair for Parched soil soaks up the rain. \ Demophoön's drama. When she returned a few weeks later, they overwhelmed her with presence gave Phyllis no attention. more than mild excitement; Eva too had changed during her trip to Europe: now her dyed blond \ It was his sailing caused

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Mona Lisa's smile is one Some months later, Madame Récamier sent Auguste a gift: Gérard's fa-that has struck several mous painting of her reclining on a sofa. The prince spent hours in front of critics. They accordingly find in the beautiful it, trying to pierce the mystery behind her gaze. He had joined the com-Florentine's expression the pany of her conquests—of men like the writer Benjamin Constant, who most perfect representation said of her, "She was my last love. For the rest of my life I was like a tree of the contrasts that struck by lightning." dominate the erotic life of women; the contrast between reserve and seduction, and between the Interpretation. Madame Récamier's list of conquests became only more most devoted tenderness and a sensuality that is impressive as she grew older: there was Prince Metternich, the Duke of ruthlessly demanding— Wellington, the writers Constant and Chateaubriand. For all of these men consuming men as if they she was an obsession, which only increased in intensity when they were were alien beings. away from her. The source of her power was twofold. First, she had an an- — S I G M U N D FREUD, LEONARDO gelic face, which drew men to her. It appealed to paternal instincts, charm-DA VINCI AND A MEMORY OF HIS CHILDHOOD, TRANSLATED ing with its innocence. But then there was a second quality peeking BY ALAN TYSON through, in the flirtatious looks, the wild dancing, the sudden gaiety—all these caught men off guard. Clearly there was more to her than they had thought, an intriguing complexity. When alone, they would find them- [Oscar Wilde's] hands selves pondering these contradictions, as if a poison were coursing through were fat and flabby; his handshake lacked grip, and their blood. Madame Récamier was an enigma, a problem that had to be at a first encounter one solved. Whatever it was that you wanted, whether a coquettish she-devil or recoiled from its plushy an unattainable goddess, she could seem to be. She surely encouraged this limpness, but this aversion was soon overcome when illusion by keeping her men at a certain distance, so they could never figure he began to talk, for his her out. And she was the queen of the calculated effect, like her surprise genuine kindliness and entrance at the Château de Coppet, which made her the center of atten-desire to please made one forget what was unpleasant tion, if only for a few seconds. Send Mixed Signals • 189 The seductive process involves filling someone's mind with your image. in his physical appearance Your innocence, or your beauty, or your flirtatiousness can attract their at- and contact, gave charm to his manners, and grace to

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Drawn together by their grief over de Staël's death, she and Chateaubriand became friends. She listened so attentively to him, adopting his moods and echoing his sentiments, that he felt that he had at last met a woman who understood him. There was also something rather ethereal about Madame Récamier. Her walk, her voice, her eyes—more than one man had compared her to some unearthly angel. Chateaubriand soon burned with the desire to possess her physically. The year after their friendship began, she had a surprise for him: she had convinced a friend to purchase Vallée aux Loups. The friend was away for a few weeks, and she invited Chateaubriand to spend some time with her at his former estate. He happily accepted. He showed her around, explaining what each little patch of ground had meant to him, the memories the place conjured up. He felt youthful feelings welling up inside him, feelings he had forgotten about. He delved further into the past, describing events in his childhood. At moments, walking with Madame Récamier and looking into those kind eyes, he felt a shiver of recognition, but he could not quite identify it. All he knew was that he had to go back to the memoirs that he had laid aside. "I intend to employ the little time that is left to me in describing my youth," he said, "so long as its essence remains palpa-ble to me." It seemed that Madame Récamier returned Chateaubriand's love, but as usual she struggled to keep it a spiritual affair. The Enchanter, however, deserved his nickname. His poetry, his air of melancholy, and his persistence finally won the day and she succumbed, perhaps for the first time in her life. Now, as lovers, they were inseparable. But as always with Chateaubriand, over time one woman was not enough. The restless spirit returned. He began to have affairs again. Soon he and Récamier stopped seeing each other. In 1832, Chateaubriand was traveling through Switzerland. Once again his life had taken a downward turn; only this time he truly was old, in body and spirit. In the Alps, strange thoughts of his youth began to assail him, memories of the castle in Brittany. Word reached him that Madame Ré- camier was in the area. He had not seen her in years, and he hurried to the inn where she was staying. She was as kind to him as ever; during the day they took walks together, and at night they stayed up late, talking.