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 Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  To make this life sweet and attractive would only rivet the chains which the soul should long to strip off, and would quench that longing for heaven which was the mark of earnest religion. It is significant that those Church Fathers who brought the eternal life to the front in the thought of the Church, either unconsciously or consciously parted company with the millennial hope. The hymns of the Church are like an auriferous sand-bed in which the intenser religious feelings of past generations have been deposited. They perpetuate what would otherwise be most fugitive: the religious emotions. If any one will look over either the standard church hymnals or the popular revival collections, he will find very few hymns expressing the desire for a purer and diviner life of humanity on earth. So far as I have been able to see, those hymns which have something of the ring of the social hope are either re-expressions of Hebrew hymns, or hymns about the millennial coming of Christ, or patriotic hymns, or foreign missionary hymns. From these four significant sources some joy of the social hope has streamed into Christian hymnology. On the other hand, the hymns expressing the yearning of the soul for the blessed life in the world to come are beyond computation. The other-worldliness of Christians indirectly did affect social life for good. The fear of eternal punishment, the hope of eternal reward, the prospect of facing the great Judge of all things, held many a coarse nature from evil and to justice and mercy, who might not have done the right for the right’s sake or through any higher motive. It helped to sensitize the conscience of the Christian nations up to a certain point. But that only confirms our general proposition, that the social effects hitherto produced by Christianity have been produced indirectly as by-products, and that the main current of its power has been deflected from the task of Christianizing social life. The ascetic tendency The other-worldliness of early Christianity was only one aspect of its general ascetic view of life. When ascetic piety turned its face to the future, it longed for complete release from the world and the body, and for the bliss of pure spirituality in heaven. When it turned its face to present duties and relations, it sought to lessen the contact with the world and to wear thin the body, in order to weaken the hold of the sensuous and material over the soul, to enjoy some foretaste of the rapturous contemplation in heaven, and to prepare the spirit for its final victory and escape. This attitude of mind was common to all earnest religious movements of the ancient world. Christian asceticism was not Christian; it was only a Christian modification of a general spiritual drift in contemporary life. All these movements in some measure identified evil with matter. The flesh that envelops the soul is the seat of evil; hence it must be opposed and worn down.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘Not a soul. Or 1*11 have to hunt out some better hole.’ A fortnight went by, as funereal in its routine as life in a monastery; but it did not pall on either recluse. During the daytime, the Pal set forth on her old woman’s junketings: poker parties, nips of whisky, and poisonous gossip, hole-and-corner gambling-dens, lunches of ‘regional dishes’ in the stuffy darkness of a Norman or Limousin restaurant. Cheri would arrive with the first shadow of evening, sometimes drenched to the skin. She would recognize the slam of his taxi-door and no longer asked: ‘ But why do you never come in your motor? ’ He would leave after midnight, and usually before daybreak. During his prolonged sessions on the Algerian divan, the Pal sometimes saw him drop off to sleep and remain for an instant or two with his neck twisted against his shoulder, as though caught in a snare. She never slept herself till after his departure, having forgotten the need for repose. Only once, in the small hours of the morning, while he was putting back, meticulously and one by one, the contents of his pockets—key on its chain, note-case, little flat revolver, handkerchief, cigarette-case of green gold — did she dare to ask: ‘Doesn’t your wife begin to wonder, when you come in so late?’ Cheri raised long eyebrows above eyes grown larger from lack of sleep:' No. Why? She knows perfectly well I’ve been up to no harm.’ ‘ No child, of course, is easier to manage than you are Shall you be coming again this evening? ’ *1 don’t know. I’ll see. Carry on as if I were coming for certain.’ Once more he gazed long at all the lily necks, all the blue eyes, that flowered on one wall of his sanctuary, before he went his way, only to return again, faithfully, some twelve hours later. By roundabout ways he considered cunning, he would lead the Pal to speak of Lea, then he would clear the narrative of all bawdy asides that might retard it.4 Skip it. Skip it!’ Barely bothering to enunciate the words, he relied on the initial sibilants to speed up or curtail the monologue. He would listen only to stories without malice in them, and glorifications of a purely descriptive nature. He insisted upon strict respect for documentary truth and checked his chronicler peevishly. He stocked his mind with dates, colours, materials, and places, and the names of dressmakers. ‘What’s poplin? ’ he fired at her point-blank. * Poplin’s a mixture of silk and wool, a dry material... if you know what I mean; one that doesn’t stick to the skin.’ ‘Yes. And mohair? You said “of white mohair”.*

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It was opposed on principle by the Gnostic teachers and by some of the Greek Church fathers; for them salvation consisted in the emancipation of the spirit from the deadly prison-house of matter, and they could not admit a glorification of the material world in millennial splendor. Gradually as the years rolled on and the Lord failed to come, this hope grew fainter. Montanism in the second half of the second century sought to revive it by strenuous insistence on it, but only brought it into discredit. When the Empire accepted Christianity as the State religion, and the peace and power which, under the pressure of persecution, had seemed possible only through the direct intervention of God, had come in other ways, the millennial hope was practically abandoned by the leaders of the Church. They had their millennium. Eusebius pleased the courtiers of Constantine by suggesting that perhaps the marble and gold of the Church ordered by Constantine over the Saviour’s tomb was the new Jerusalem. The common people long clung to the millennial hope; they were still disinherited and longed for their inheritance. Now, the millennial hope is the social hope of Christianity. There are two personalities to which religion holds out a hope of salvation: the little personality of man, and the great collective personality of mankind. To the individual, Christianity offers victory over sin and death, and the consummation of all good in the life to come. To mankind it offers a perfect social life, victory over all the evil that wounds and mars human intercourse and satisfaction for the hunger and thirst after justice, equality, and love. One or the other of these two may be emphasized in the religious life of an individual or a nation. Ancient Israel believed intensely in the divine consummation for the community; the hope of a future life for the individual had very little influence in Jewish religious life before the Exile. On the other hand, in the Greek world of the first Christian centuries the longing for eternal life was exceedingly strong, and the hope for any collective salvation almost non-existent. In the synoptic teaching of Jesus all turns on the kingdom of God, and the life hereafter is rarely referred to; in the Gospel of John “eternal life” is the central word and the “kingdom of God” scarcely occurs. Many men to-day longed for heaven when they were young, and the idea of a salvation for society never occurred to them; now they are almost indifferent whether they personally will survive death or not; but they would gladly give their life if it could help forward the salvation of society. A perfect religious hope must include both: eternal life for the individual, the kingdom of God for humanity. In early Christianity we see a gradual change of emphasis from the one hope to the other. From its Hebrew origin it brought the social hope; from its Greek environment it accepted the intensification of the individual hope.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I came home at seven-thirty worn out by a magnificent night with Henry and three hours with Eduardo. I didn’t have the strength to go to Henry again. I had dinner, smoked dreamily. I glided into my bedroom, felt a sense of being enclosed, of falling into myself. I got my journal from its last hiding place under my dressing table and threw it on the bed. And I had the feeling that this is the way an opium smoker prepared his pipe. The journal, like a fragment of myself, shares my duplicities. Where has my tremendous fatigue gone? Occasionally I stop writing and feel a profound lethargy. And then some demoniac feeling urges me on. I confide in Allendy. I talk profusely about my childhood, quote from my early journals obvious phrases about Father—so intelligible now, my passion for him. Also my sense of guilt; I felt I did not deserve anything. We discuss finances and I tell him the cost of the visits prevents me from seeing him more often. He not only reduces his fee by half but offers to let me pay in part by working for him. I am flattered. We talk about physical facts. I am underweight. A few pounds more would give me security. Will Allendy add medicine to the psychic treatment? I confess the fear I have that my breasts are small perhaps because I have masculine elements in me and half of my body may therefore be adolescent. Allendy: “Are they absolutely undeveloped?” “No.” As we flounder in talk I say, “You are a doctor; I’ll simply show them to you.” And I do. Then he laughs at my fears. “Perfectly feminine,” he says, “small but well outlined—lovely figure. A few pounds more, yes,” but how disproportionate my self-criticisms. He has observed the unnaturalness of my personality. As if enveloped in a mist, veiled. No news to me, except that I did not know it could be so plainly read. For example, my two voices, which have become quite apparent lately: one, according to Fred, is like that of a child before its First Communion, timid, soundless. The other is assured, deeper. This one appears when I have a great deal of confidence. Allendy thinks that I have created a completely artificial personality, like a shield. I conceal myself. I have constructed a manner that is seductive, affable, gay, and within this I am hidden. I had asked him to help me physically. Was this a sincere action, showing him my breasts? Did I want to test my charm on him? Wasn’t I pleased that he should be complimentary? That he should show more interest in me? Is it Allendy or Henry who is curing me? Henry’s new love has me in a state of bliss such as I have never known. He wanted to hold off. He didn’t want to put himself in my power.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  “There goes Speleieff,” Lea observed, “he’s a good sort. And there goes Merguillier on his piebald: eleven o’clock. It won’t be long before that dried-up old Berthellemy passes on his way to thaw out his bones on the Sentier de la Vertu. Curious how people can go on doing the same thing day after day! I could almost believe I’d never left Paris, except that Cheri isn’t here. My poor Cheri! He’s finished with, for the present. Night-life, women, eating at any hour, drinking too much. It’s a pity. He might have turned into a decent sort, perhaps, if he’d only had pink chaps like a pork-butcher and flat feet ” She left the window, rubbing her numbed elbows, and shrugged her shoulders. “ Cheri could be saved once, but not a second time.” She polished her nails, breathed on a tarnished ring, peered closely at the disastrous red of her hair and its greying roots, and j otted down a few notes on a pad. She did everything at high speed and with less composure than usual, trying to ward off an attack of her old insidious anxiety. Familiar as this was, she denied its connexion with her grief and called it ‘her moral indigestion’. She began wanting first one thing, then suddenly another - a well-sprung victoria with a quiet horse appropriate to a dowager; then a very fast motor-car; then a suite of Directoire furniture. She even thought of doing her hair differently; for twenty years she had worn it high, brushed straight off the neck. “ Rolled curls low on the neck, like Lavalliere? Then I should be able to cope with this year’s loose-waisted dresses. With a strict diet, in fact, and my hair properly hennaed, I can hope for ten — no, let’s say five years more of ...” With an effort she recovered her good sense, her pride, her lucidity. “A woman like me would never have the courage to call a halt? Nonsense, my pretty, we’ve had a good run for our money.” She surveyed the tall figure, erect, hands on hips, smiling at her from the looking-glass. She was still Lea. “Surely a woman like that doesn’t end up in the arms of an old man? A woman like that, who’s had the luck never to soil her hands or her mouth on a withered stick! Yes, there she stands, the ‘vampire’, who needs must feed off youthful flesh.” She conjured up the chance acquaintances and lovers of her early days: always she had escaped elderly lechers; so she felt pure, and proud of thirty years devoted to radiant youths and fragile adolescents.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Many ideas that used to seem fundamental and satisfying seem strangely narrow and trivial in this greater world of God. Some of the old religious appeals have utterly lost their power over us. But there are others, unknown to our fathers, which kindle religious passions of wonderful intensity and purity. The wrongs and sufferings of the people and the vision of a righteous and brotherly social life awaken an almost painful compassion and longing, and these feelings are more essentially Christian than most of the fears and desires of religion in the past. Social Christianity is adding to the variety of religious experience, and is creating a new type of Christian man who bears striking a family likeness to Jesus. These new religious emotions ought to find conscious and social expression. But the Church, which has brought down so rich an equipment from the past for the culture of individual religion, is poverty-stricken in face of this new need. The ordinary church hymnal rarely contains more than two or three hymns in which the triumphant chords of the social hope are struck. Our liturgies and devotional manuals offer very little that is fit to enrich and purify the social thoughts and feelings. We offer a large & growing selection of Christian titles All available through your favourite online stores Just search for CrossReach Publications!

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  “It’s too good to last!” he thought. So, with a brave effort, he returned to reality. He looked more carefully at the offending object, and was able to reel off: “ The two initials, set in little brilliants, which Lea had designed first for her suede bag, then for her dressing-table set of light tortoise-shell, and later for her writing-paper! ” Not for a moment would .he admit that the monogram on the bag might represent some other name. He smiled ironically. “Coincidence be blowed! I wasn’t born yesterday I I came upon this bag by chance this evening, and tomorrow my wife will go and engage one of Lea’s old footmen again by chance. After that I shan’t be able to go into a single restaurant, cinema, or tobacconist’s without running up against Lea at every turn. It’s my own fault. I can’t complain. I ought to have left her alone.” He put some small change beside his glass, and got up before summoning the barman. He faced away from the old woman as he slipped between the two tables, holding himself in under his waistcoat, like a tomcat squeezing under a gate. This he managed so adroitly that the edge of his coat only just brushed against the glass of green creme-de-menthe. Murmuring an apology, he made a dash for the glass door, to escape into the fresh air beyond. Horrified, but not really in the least surprised, he heard a voice call out after him, ‘ Cheri 1 ’ He had feared — known indeed - that this was coming. He turned to find that there was nothing about the raddled old ruin to help him recall her name; but he made no second attempt to escape, realizing that everything would be explained. ‘ Don’t you recognize me? You don’t? But how could you? More women were aged by the war than men were killed by it, and that’s a fact. All the same, it’s not for me to complain; I didn’t risk losing anyone in the war. ... Eh I Cheri! ...* She laughed; and recognition was complete, for he saw that what he had taken for decrepitude was only poverty and natural indifference. Now that she was holding herself upright and laughing, she did not look more than her age — sixty or thereabouts — and the hand with which she sought Chari’s was certainly not that of a doddering old grandmother. ‘The Pall’ Cheri murmured, almost in tones of admiration. ‘Are you really pleased to see me?* ‘Oh, yes. ...’ He was not telling a lie. He was gaining assurance step by step and thinking, “It’s only her ... Poor Old Pal ... I’d begun to fear ...” ‘Will you have a glass of something. Pal?’ ‘Just a whisky and soda, my pretty. My! haven’t you kept your looks!* He swallowed the bitter compliment which she tossed to him from the peaceful fringes of old age.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Over the time that passed between the time she knew herself to have been adopted and the time she was “found,” a period of some thirty years, she had many times mentioned her other mother. “My other mommy,” and later “my other mother,” had been from the time she first spoke the way she referred to her. She had wondered who and where this other mother was. She had wondered what she looked like. She had considered and ultimately rejected the possibility of finding out. John had once asked her, when she was small, what she would do if she met her “other mommy.” “I’d put one arm around Mom,” she had said, “and one arm around my other mommy, and I’d say ‘Hello, Mommies.’ ” She had never, not once, mentioned her other father. I have no idea why but the picture in her mind seemed not to include a father. “What a long strange journey this has been,” the letter from Florida read. She burst into tears as she read it to me. “On top of everything else,” she said through the tears, “my father has to be a Deadhead.” Three years later the final message arrived, this one from her sister. Her sister wanted her to know that their brother had died. The cause of death was unclear. His heart was mentioned. Quintana had never met him. I am not sure of the dates but I think he would have been born the year she was five. After I became five I never ever dreamed about him. This call to say that he had died may have been the last time the sisters spoke. When Quintana herself died, her sister sent flowers. 24Ifind myself leafing today for the first time through a journal she kept in the spring of 1984, a daily assignment for an English class during her senior year at the Westlake School for Girls. “I had an exciting revelation while studying a poem by John Keats,” this volume of the journal begins, on a page dated March 7, 1984, the one-hundred-and-seventeenth entry since she had begun keeping the journal in September of 1983. “In the poem, ‘Endymion,’ there is a line that seems to tell my present fear of life: Pass into nothingness.” This March 7, 1984, entry continues, moves into a discussion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger and their respective understandings of the abyss, but I am no longer following the argument: automatically, without thinking, appallingly, as if she were still at the Westlake School and had asked me to take a look at her paper, I am editing it. For example: Delete commas setting off title “Endymion.” “Tell,” as in “a line that seems to tell my present fear of life,” is of course wrong. “Describe” would be better. “Suggest” would be better still. On the other hand: “tell” might work: try “tell” as she uses it. I try it: She “tells” her present fear of life in relation to Sartre.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  They want to be us.” We stopped before a house perched way on top of the hill, they had stuff at the curb. I jumped down, got the baby gate, the high chair with blue food-mottled pads, the playpen and the bouncer seat. Yvonne’s eyes turned dark when she saw what I was handing her. Her high color bleached to beige, her mouth pressed together. She grabbed the chair and threw it in the back, more roughly than necessary. She curled up on the carseat when we were moving again, picked up her Seventeen and turned pages, her hands trembling. She closed the magazine and stared at the girl on the cover, a girl who had never been pregnant, never had a social worker or a filling. Yvonne stroked the water-wavy cover. I could tell, she wanted to know what that girl knew, feel how she felt, to be so beautiful, wanted, confident. Like people touching the statue of a saint. “You think I’d look good blond?” Yvonne held the cover up next to her face. “It’s never done me much good,” I said, rotating the ladybugs, making them run. I saw Claire’s face on the banks of the McKenzie, pleading with me to let the fish go. It was the least I could do. I would have to make my own luck anyway. I leaned out behind Niki and opened the bubble into the wind. IT WAS quarter to eight when we pulled up in front of Marshall High. My eighth school in five years. The front building was faced with elaborate brick, but temporary trailers flanked it on every side. Yvonne lowered her head over the magazine, embarrassed to be seen. She had just dropped out of school this winter. “Hey,” Rena called to me as I got out of the van. She leaned across Niki, holding out a couple of folded bills. “Money makes world go around.” I took the money and thought of Amelia as I shoved it in my pocket. “Thanks.” Niki sneered at the kids sitting on the wall, finishing their cigarettes before class. “School sucks. Why don’t you blow it off? Rena doesn’t care.” I shrugged. “I’ve only got one more semester,” I said. But truthfully, I was afraid to have one less thing in my life. 24 [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] I SAT UP in bed at one in the morning, cotton stuffed in my ears, as Rena and the comrades partied down in the living room. Just now, they were wailing along to an old Who record cranked so loud I could feel it right through the floor. This was why Rena liked it down here among contractors and bakeries and sheet metal shops. You could make all the noise you wanted. I was learning, everything on Ripple Street was rock ’n’ roll. Niki sang with three different bands, and Rena’s personal soundtrack consisted of all the big seventies rock she’d first heard on black market tapes in Magnitogorsk.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  This young man with lack-lustre eyes, though he knew just how to perform the wearing and difficult duties of a parasite, had just yielded to curiosity and blamed himself for such rashness. Chdri, circumspect and at the same time highly elated, never stopped talking about L£a. He made all the right remarks, showed all the sound sense of a married man. He spoke in praise of marriage, while giving Lea’s virtues their due. He extolled the submissive sweetness of his young wife, and thus found occasion to criticize Lea’s independence of character. ‘ Oh, the old devil, she had her own ideas about everything, I can tell you!’ He went a step further in his confidences, speaking of Lea with severity, and even impertinence. He was sheltering behind idiotic words, prompted by the suspicions of a deceived lover, and at the same time enjoying the subtle pleasure of being able to speak of her without danger. A little more, and he would have sullied her name, while his heart was rejoicing in his own memories of her: sullied the soft sweet name which he had been unable to mention freely during the last six months, and the whole gracious vision he had of Lea, leaning over him with her two or three irreparable wrinkles, and her beauty, now lost to him, but — alas - ever present. About eleven o’clock they rose to go, chilled by the emptiness of the almost deserted restaurant. However, at the next table. La Loupiote was busy writing letters and had called for telegraph forms. She raised her white, inoffensive, sheep-like head as the two friends passed by. ‘ Well, aren’t you even going to say good evening? ’ ‘ Good evening,’ Cheri condescended to say. La Loupiote drew her friend’s attention to Cheri’s good looks. ‘Would you believe it! And to think that he’s got such pots of money. Some people have everything!’ But when Cheri merely offered her an open cigarette-case, she became vituperative. * They have everything, except the knowledge of how to make proper use of it. Go back home to your mother, dearie!’ ‘Look here,’ Cheri said to Desmond when they were outside in the narrow street, ‘ Look here, I was about to ask you, Desmond ... Wait till we get away from this beastly crowd. ...’ The soft damp evening air had kept people lingering in the streets, but the theatre-goers from the Rue Caumartin onwards had not yet packed the Boulevard. Ch£ri took his friend by the arm: ‘ Look here, Desmond ... I wanted you to make another telephone call.’ Desmond stopped, ‘ Again? ’ ‘You’ll ask for Wagram—’ ‘ 17-08.’ * You’re marvellous ... Say that I’ve been taken ill in your flat. Where are you living? * ‘Hotel Morris.’

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘Who else, if it wasn’t you? If a door opened, it was Nounoune; the telephone rang, Nounoune; a letter in the garden postbox, perhaps Nounoune. ... In the very wine I drank, I looked for you, and I never found a Pommery to equal yours. And then at nights ... Oh, heavens above! ’ He was walking up and down the carpet with rapid, noiseless steps. ‘I know now what it is to suffer for a woman, and no mistake! After you, I know what all the other women will be ... dust and ashes! Oh, how well you’ve poisoned me! ’ She drew herself up slowly in her chair, and, letting her body turn now this way, now that, followed Cheri’s movements. Her cheeks were dry, rather shiny, and their fevered flush made the blue of her eyes almost intolerable. He was walking up and-down, head lowered, and he never stopped talking. e Imagine Neuilly with you not there, the first days after my return! For that matter, everything—with you not there ! I almost went mad. One night, the child was ill - I no longer remember what it was, headache, pains, something. I felt sorry for her, but I had to leave the room; otherwise nothing in the world could have stopped me saying, “ Wait, don’t cry, I’ll go and fetch Nounoune and she’ll make you well” — and you would have come, wouldn’t you, Nounoune? Great heavens, what a life it was.... I took on Desmond at the Hotel Morris, paid him well into the bargain, and sometimes at night I would tell him stories. ... I used to speak as if you were unknown to him. “ Old boy, there’s never been a skin like hers.... Take one look at that cabochon sapphire of yours, and then hide it away for ever, because no light can turn the blue of her eyes to grey! ” I used to tell him how you could be tough when you wanted to be; and that no one had ever got the better of you, least of all me 11 used to say, “ That woman, old boy, when she’s wearing just the right hat” — the dark blue one-with the white wing, Nounoune, last summer’s — “ and with the way she has of putting on her clothes — you can match her against any other woman you may choose — and she’ll put every one of them in the shade! ” And then that wonderful manner you have of walking — of talking - your smile — the erect way you hold yourself, I used to say to him — to Desmond: “ Ah! A woman like Lea is something! ” ’ He snapped his fingers with proprietary pride and stopped, quite out of breath from his talking and walking. ctI never said all that to Desmond,” he thought, “and yet I’m not telling lies. Desmond understood all right.”

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘That? That’s her costume for Auteuil in ... in 1888, or ’89. Yes, the year of the Exhibition. In front of that one, dear boy, you should raise your hat. They don’t turn out beauties like that any more.’ ‘Pooh! ... I don’t think it so stunning,’ The Pal folded her hands. Hatless, she looked older, and her high forehead was a buttery yellow under hair dyed greenish black. ‘Not so stunning! That waist you could encircle with your ten fingers! That lily neck! And be good enough to let your eyes rest on that dress! All in frilled sky-blue chiffon, dear boy, and looped up with little pink moss-roses sewn on to the frills, and the hat to match! And the little bag to match as well — we called them almsbags at that time. Oh! the beauty she was then! There’s been nothing since to compare with her first appearances: she was the dawn, the very sun of love.’ ‘First appearances where?’ She gave Cheri a gentle dig in the ribs. ‘Get along with you. ... How you make me laugh! Ah! the trials of life must melt into thin air when you’re about the house!* His rigid features passed unobserved. He was still facing the wall, seemingly riveted by several Leas — one smelling an artificial rose, another bending over a book with medieval hasps, her swan neck rising from a pleatless collar, a white and rounded neck like the bole of a birch-tree. ‘Well, I must be going,’ he said, like Valerie Cheniaguine. ‘What d’you mean ~ you must be going? What about my diningroom? And my bedroom? just glance at them, my pretty! Take a note of them for your little love-nest.’ *Ah! yes. ... Listen; not to-day, because ...’He glanced distrustfully towards the rampart of portraits, and lowered his voice. ‘I’ve an appointment. But I’ll come back ... to-morrow. Probably tomorrow, before dinner.’ ‘ Good. Then I can go ahead? ’ ‘Go ahead?’ ‘With the flat-’ ‘Yes, that’s right. See about it. And thanks.’ “I really begin to wonder what the world’s coming to. ... Young or old — it’s hard to tell which are the most disgusting. ... Two ‘turns* before me! ... and ‘the first appearances,’ said the old spider, ‘the dazzling first appearances.’ ... And all quite openly. No, really, what a world!”

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She did not answer. She bent to pick up a tortoiseshell comb that had fallen to the floor and pushed it back in her hair, humming to herself. She went on humming a little snatch of a song in front of a looking-glass, pleased with herself, proud of having kept her selfcontrol so easily, covered up so successfully the only emotional moment of their separation, proud of having held back words that must never be said: * Speak ... beg for what you want, demand it, put your arms round my neck. ... You have suddenly made me happy. ../ Madame Peloux must have been talking a great deal and for a long time before Lea appeared. The high colour on her cheeks emphasized the sparkle of her large eyes, which expressed only an indiscreet and inscrutable watchfulness. This Sunday she was wearing a black afternoon dress with a very narrow skirt, and nobody could fail to have observed that her feet were tiny and her stays too tight. She stopped talking, took a little sip from the petal-thin brandy glass wanning in her hand, and nodded at L<§a in lazy contentment. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day? Such weather, such weather! Would any one believe we’re in the middle of October?* ‘Oh, no, never. ... Most certainly not!* two obsequious voices answered in chorus. Beside the curving garden path a stream of red salvias wound between the banks of grey-mauve Michaelmas daisies. Golden butterflies flitted as if it were summer and the scent of chrysanthemums, strengthened by the hot sun, was wafted into the gardenroom. A yellowing birch-tree trembled in the wind above beds of tea-roses, where the last of the bees still were busy. ‘But what’s this weather,* yelled Madame Peloux, suddenly waxing lyrical, ‘but what’s this weather, when compared to what they must be having in Italy? * ‘Yes, indeed! ... Just what I was thinking!’ the attendant voices echoed. Lea turned with a frown in their direction. “If only they would hold their tongues,” she thought. The Baroness de la Berche and Madame Aldonza were sitting at a card-table, playing piquet. Madame Aldonza, an aged ballerina, with legs eternally swathed in bandages, was distorted with rheumatism, and wore her shiny black wig a little askew. Opposite her, a head or more taller, the Baroness squared her rigid shoulders like a country priest’s. Her face was large and had grown alarmingly masculine with age. She was a bristling bush of hair - hair in her ears, tufts in her nostrils and on her lip, and rough hairs between her fingers. ‘Baroness, don’t forget I made ninety,’ Madame Aldonza bleated e a goat. ‘Score it, score it, my good friend! All I want is to see everyone happy.’ An endless flow of honied words masked her savage cruelty. L£a looked at her closely as if for the first time, felt disgusted, and turned back to Madame Peloux. “ Charlotte, at least, looks human,” she thought.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘ Oh, go on with you, that’s all right. Don’t be silly! Can’t I even open my mouth without your getting all melodramatic? ’ She sat down and turned her back on him. He remained standing, with nothing in his hands: his parted lips were swollen, giving him the look of a sulky child; one black lock hung down over his eyebrow. Surreptitiously, L£a watched him in a looking-glass, till his reflection vanished when he sat down. In her turn. Lea was embarrassed when she felt him staring at her back, broadened by the loose folds of her gandoura. She returned to her dressing-table, smoothed her hair, rearranged her comb, and, as if for want of something better to do, began unscrewing the top of a scent-bottle. Cheri turned his head as the first whiff reached his nostrils. ‘Nounoune!’ he called. She did not answer. ‘Nounoune!’ * Beg my pardon,’ she ordered, without turning round. ‘Not likely!’ he sneered. ‘I can’t force you. But you’ll leave the house. And at once. ...’ ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said at once peevishly. ‘ Better than that.’ ‘I beg your pardon,’ he repeated, quite low. ‘ That’s better.’ She went over to him and ran her hand lightly over his bowed head. ‘ Come, tell me all about it.’ He shivered, trembling under her touch. ‘What do you want me to tell you? It's not very complicated. I’ve come back, that’s all.’ ‘Tell me! Come along, tell me!’ He rocked backwards and forwards on his seat, pressing his hands between his knees, and raised his head towards Lea without meeting her eyes. She watched the quivering of his nostrils, and she heard him trying to control his rapid breathing. She had only to say once more, ‘ Come, tell me all about it/ and give him a prod with her finger, as if to push him over. At once he cried out, ‘Nounoune darling! Nounoune darling! ’ and threw all his weight upon her, clasping her long legs, so that they gave way under her. Once seated, she let him slither to the floor and sprawl over her with tears, and inarticulate words, and groping fingers that caught at her lace and her pearls and hunted feverishly under her dress for the shape of her shoulder and under her hair to touch her ears. ‘Nounoune darling! We’re together again, my Nounoune! Oh, my Nounoune! your shoulder, and your scent, and your pearls, my Nounoune, oh, it’s so stunning ... and that little burnt taste your hair has, oh, it’s ... it’s stunning. ...’

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I pressed my hand to the frosted pane, let the heat from my body melt the ice, leaving a perfect outline against the darkness. But I was thinking about light coming in through white curtains, the smell of ocean and sage and fresh laundry. Voices and music, a scratchy recording of Dietrich singing “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss,” rose into the sound well of the courtyard, but inside my head, I could hear the repetitive cries of a red-shouldered hawk, the faint rustle of lizards in a dry wash, a click of palms and the almost imperceptible sigh of rose petals falling. In the dark palmprint, I could see my blurred image, but also my mother’s face shimmering on a rooftop over an unknowable city, talking to the three-quarter moon. I wanted to hear what she was saying. I wanted to smell that burnt midnight again, I wanted to feel that wind. It was a secret wanting, like a song I couldn’t stop humming, or loving someone I could never have. No matter where I went, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California. Discover Your Next Great Read Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors. Tap here to learn more. White Oleander by Janet Fitch A READING GROUP GUIDE o•le•an•der n. A poisonous Eurasian evergreen shrub (Nerium oleander) having fragrant, white, rose, or purple flowers and whorled leaves [Med. Lat., prob. alteration of L. lat. lorandrum, alteration of Lat. rhododendron]. —American Heritage College Dictionary This astonishing novel, universally praised for its lyrical beauty and narrative power, tells an unforgettable story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, and the search for love and identity. On Writing White Oleander Janet Fitch talks with Laura Miller, Editorial Director of Salon.com Recently, Janet Fitch’s life has had an enchanted quality. At 43—after 22 years of laboring away at her fiction, publishing the occasional story in small literary magazines—she has seen her first novel, White Oleander, become a national bestseller. But White Oleander itself is no fairy tale. It’s the story of Astrid Magnussen, daughter of the beautiful, merciless poet Ingrid. In Venice Beach, mother and daughter live a peripatetic bohemian lifestyle ruled by Ingrid’s rigorous idea of beauty (three white flowers in a plain glass vase is the epitome of her aesthetic) and her contempt for emotional weakness. When Ingrid condescends to an affair with a less than exquisite man, falls in love and then is summarily dumped, she poisons her former lover and eventually winds up in prison. Astrid then begins a journey through a series of foster homes, in each one learning about sex, money, love, independence, courage, rage and the manifold ways of becoming a woman. Tell me about the genesis of White Oleander. I had the character of Ingrid first. She was actually the protagonist of a short story.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  First day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE, en The whole company, inckiding even the ladies con. cerned, laughed so heartily that the conversation would have ended there, if Dagoucin, who had not yet spoken, had not taken it into his head to say, " A man is surely very unreasonable who cannot content himself when he has the means. I have often known people who, think- ing to better themselves, only made themselves much worse off, because they could not be satisfied in reason. Such people deserve no pity ; for, after all, inconstancy is unpardonable." " But what would you do," inquired Simontault, " with those who have not found their true half .'' Would you call it inconstancy on their part to seek it wherever It might be found .-' " "As it is impossible to know," replied Dagoucin, " where is that half so exactly like its counterpart that there is no difference between them, one should hold fast where love has once attached him, and change neither in heart nor will, happen what may. For if she you love is like you, and has but one will with you, it is yourself you will love, and not her." " You will fall into a false opinion, Dagoucin," said Hircan, " as though we ought to love our wives without being loved." " When one loves a woman, Hircan," said Dagoucin, " only because she has beauty, charming manners, and fortune, and the end he proposes to himself is pleasure, honours, or riches, such a love is not of long duration ; for when the principle that inspired it ceases, the love itself vanishes at once. I am then convinced that he who loves, and has no other end and desire than to love well, will die rather than cease to love." " In good faith, Dagoucin," said Simontault, "I do not believe you have ever been really in love. Had you (3o THE IIEPTAMERON OF THE \Noz'el'i. known what it is to be so, like other men, you would not now be picturing to us Plato's Republic, founded on fine phrases, and on Httle or no experience." "You are mistaken," replied Dagoucin. "I have been in love ; I am so still, and shall be so as long as I live. Ikit I am so much afraid that the demonstration of my passion would do injustice to the perfection of my love, that I shrink from making it known to her by whom I would be loved in equal measure. I dare not even think how I love her, lest my eyes should betray the secret of my heart ; for the more I conceal my flame, the more pleasure I feel in the consciousness that I love per- fectly." " Yet I suppose you would be very glad to be loved in return } " said Geburon.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  For the first time in her life she waited in vain for what had never before failed her: complete trust on the part of her young lover, a self-surrender to confessions, candours, endless secrets — those hours in the depths of the night when, in almost filial gratitude, a young man unrestrainedly pours out his tears, hi^ private likes and dislikes on the kindly bosom of a mature and trusted friend. “They’ve always told me everything in the past,” she thought obstinately. “I’ve always known just what they were worth - what they were thinking and what they wanted. But this boy, this brat... No, that would really be the limit.” He was now strong, proud of his nineteen years, gay at meals, and impatient in bed; even so he gave away nothing but his body, and remained as mysterious as an odalisque. Tender? Yes, if an ifivoluntary cry or an impulsive hug is an indication of tenderness. But the moment he spoke, he was ‘spiteful ’ again, careful to divulge nothing of his true self. How often at dawn had Lea held him in her arms, a lover soothed, relaxed, with half-closed lids! Each morning his eyes and his mouth returned to life more beautiful, as though every waking, every embrace, had fashioned them anew! How often, at such moments, had she indulged her desire to master him, her sensual longing to hear his confession, and pressed her forehead against his, whispering, ‘Speak. Say something. Tell me ...’ But no confession came from those curved lips, scarcely anything indeed but sulky or frenzied phrases woven round ‘Nounoune’ — the name he had given her when a child and the one he now used in the throes of his pleasure, almost like a cry for help. ‘Yes, I assure you, he might be a Chinee or an African/ she declared to Anthime de Berthellemy, and added, ‘I can’t tell you why.’ The impression was strong but confused, and she felt lazily incompetent to find words for the feeling that she and Cheri did not speak the same language. It was the end of September when they returned to Paris. Cheri went straight to Neuilly, the very first evening, to * spring a surprise* on Madame Peloux. He brandished chairs, cracked nuts with his fist, leaped on to the billiard-table and played cowboy in the garden at the heels of the terrified watch-dogs. ‘Ouf!* Lea sighed, as she entered her house in the Avenue Bugeaud, alone. ‘How wonderful! - a bed to myself!’ But at ten o’clock the following night she was sipping coffee and trying not to find the evening too long or the dining-room too large, when a nervous cry was#forced from her lips. Cheri had suddenly appeared, framed in the doorway - Cheri, wafted on silent, winged feet. He was not speaking or showing any sign of affection, but just running towards her. ‘Are you mad?*

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  Lda turned away her head. “His eyes ... Oh, we must get this over quickly. ...” She put her cheek against his forehead. ‘It was X, child, it was my real self who said to you, “Don’t cause unnecessary pain; spare the doe. ...” I had quite forgotten, but luckily you remembered. You are breaking away from me very late in the day, my naughty little boy; I’ve been carrying you next to my heart for too long, and now you have a load of your own to carry: a young wife, perhaps a child. ... I am to blame for everything you lack. ... Yes, yes, my pretty, here you are, thanks to me, at twentyfive, so light-hearted, so spoilt, and at the same time so sad. ... I’m very worried about you. You’re going to suffer and make others suffer. You who have loved me. ...’ His fingers tightened their grip on her negligee, and Lea felt the sharp nails of her ‘naughty child’ bite into her breast. ‘You who have loved me,’ she went on after a pause, ‘will you be able to? ... I don’t know how to explain what I mean. ...’ He drew back in order to listen: and she could barely restrain herself from saying, ‘ Put your hand back on my breast and your nails where they have left their mark; my strength abandons me as soon as your flesh is parted from mine.* Instead, she leaned over him as he knelt in front of her, and continued: ‘You have loved me, and you will regret ... ’ She smiled at him, looking down into his eyes. ‘What vanity, eh! ... But you will regret me! I beg of you, when you’re tempted to terrify the girl entrusted to your care and keeping, do restrain yourself! At such moments, you must find for yourself the wisdom and kindness you never learned from me. I never spoke to you of the future. Forgive me, Cheri - I’ve loved you as if we were both destined to die within the same hour. Because I was bom twenty-four years before you, I was doomed, and I dragged you down with me. ...* He was listening very attentively, which made his face look hard. She put her hand on his forehead to smooth the furrows of anxiety. ‘ Can you see us, Chdri, going out to lunch together at Armenonville ! ... Can you see us inviting Monsieur and Madame Lili! ...’ She gave a sad little laugh, and shivered.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Sometimes things fall apart, and it’s completely out of our control. Other times things fall apart because they need to. That doesn’t always mean that the relationship or job (or whatever) needs to end, but it does mean that change is already on the way, whether we like it or not. Scary, I know. For me, what needed to change was my relationship to my work. As I’ve shared, I used to bury myself in “busy” because I didn’t know any other way. Next, I hustled hard because I loved the praise it got me. Later, I grinded because it was a great way to avoid big feelings. When I noticed a “disturbance in the force” like, say, grief, I knew exactly how to swat it away. Get busy—emotions averted, deadlines met. Winning! Or so I thought. I wish I could have gently coached myself the way I would have a member of my community. But often it’s easier to see the wounds, fears, and perceived limitations that drive others than it is to connect to these parts of ourselves. In truth, every coach needs a coach, and my coach was gone. Dad had always guided me through big life transitions. I’d lay out my thoughts or problems with him, even the stuff I didn’t want to admit, and no matter how gnarly my dilemma, he’d help me find a path forward by saying the things I needed to hear, like . . . “Don’t hold back.” “Dig deep and hold fast.” “Say ‘I love you.’” “Let yourself off the hook.” “Show up.” “Make it a great day.” And even, “Knock it off.” An oldie but goodie that snaps me out of brain rot. His business advice, in particular, was often applicable to other areas of life, too. He’d remind me to “do the hard thing first,” which sometimes meant making the hard call, tackling the annoying job, and getting the tough stuff behind me without delay. Every time I’ve followed his guidance, I inevitably feel a weight lifting off my chest, even when it was a task from hell. Another one of his gems was to encourage me to ask myself the candid question I often didn’t want to even think about: Have I reached the point of diminishing returns? If the answer was yes—meaning the blood, sweat, and frustration weren’t remotely paying off—he’d follow up with another classic: “Go where the sun shines the hottest.” To me, this means directing my attention to where the energy, action, and opportunity is, as opposed to just going through the motions, eking out crumbs out of obligation. Dad’s wisdom is a potent reminder: Don’t stay stuck in old, ineffectual rhythms because they feel safe. Trust that what’s meant for you doesn’t require you to drain your life force to experience success or fulfillment.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘Fred, shall I never get you to leave your razor in the bathroom, instead of bringing it in here!* Almost naked and still damp, he took his time in turning round, and his back was silver-flecked with dabs of talcum powder. ‘What?* The voice, which seemed to come from afar, broke into a laugh. ‘Fred, you look like a cake that’s been badly sugared. An unhealthy looking cake. Next year, we won’t be as stupid as we have been this. We’ll take a place in the country.’ * Do you want a place in the country? * ‘Yes. Not this morning, of course.’ She was pinning up her hair. She pointed with her chin to the curtain of rain, streaming down in a grey torrent, without any sign of thunder or wind. ‘But next year, perhaps ... Don’t you think?’ ‘It’s an idea. Yes, it’s an idea.’ He was putting her politely at arm’s length, in order to return to his surprising discovery. “I really did think that it was only one year since I’d seen her. I never took the war Into reckoning. I haven’t seen her for one, two, three, four, five years. One, two, three, four.... But, in that case, have I really forgotten her? No! Because these women have spoken of her in front of me, and I’ve never jumped up and shouted, ‘Hold on! If that’s true - then what about Lea? ’ Five years ... How old was she in 1914?” He counted once more, and ran up against an unbelievable total. “ That would make her just about sixty to-day, wouldn’t it? ... How absurd!” ‘And the important thing,’ Edmee went on, ‘is to choose it carefully. Let’s see, a nice part of the world would be —’ ‘Normandy,’ Cheri finished for her absent-mindedly. ‘Yes, Normandy. Do you know Normandy?’ * No... Not at all well.... It’s green. There are lime trees, ponds...’ He shut his eyes, as though dazed. ‘Where do you mean? In what part of Normandy? * ‘Ponds, cream, strawberries, and peacocks. ...’ ‘You seem to know a lot about Normandy! What grand country it must be! What else d’you find there?’ He appeared to be reading out a description as he leaned over the round mirror in which he made sure of the smoothness of chin and cheeks after shaving. He went on, unmoved, but hesitatingly. ‘ There are peacocks. ... Moonlight on parquet floors, and a great big red carpet spread on the gravel in front of...’ He did not finish. He swayed gently, and slithered on to the carpet. His fall was checked halfway by the side of the bed. As his head lay against the rumpled sheets, the overlying tan of his pallid cheeks had the greenish tinge of an old ivory.