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 Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  When at a dinner at Buddenbrooks the appearance of a dish was delayed for a long time, the housewife was embarrassed and the unemployed company was in a bad mood, he restored the good mood, With just this resounding and coarse voice he immediately told questionable anecdotes, which he with Low German Twists spiced up ... Senator Möllendorpf, exhausted and beside herself with laughter, cried out one after the other: "My God, Mr. Consul, stop for a moment!" - Tony Buddenbrook was received coldly by the Hagenstroms, and warmly by the rest of the company. Even Consul Fritsche hurried down the steps of the pavilion, hoping that the Buddenbrooks would help populate the bath again at least in the next year. "Yours, Mamsell!" said Consul Dohlmann, speaking as delicately as possible, for he knew that Fraulein Buddenbrook did not particularly like his manners. "Mademoiselle Buddenbrook!" "You here?" "How lovely!" "And since when?" »And what a delightful toilette!« – They said »lovely«. – "And you live?" "With the Schwarzkopfs?" "With the pilot commander?" "How original!" »How do I find that terribly original!« – People said »terrible«. – "You live in the city?" repeated Consul Fritsche, the owner of the Kurhaus, without letting on that he was embarrassed... "Won't you give us the pleasure at the next reunion?" asked his wife... “Oh, only for a short time in Travemünde?” answered another lady … "Don't you think, dear, that the Buddenbrooks are a bit too exclusive?" Frau Hagenström turned very quietly to Senator Möllendorpf... "And you haven't bathed yet?" someone asked. 'Who else of the young ladies hasn't bathed today? Mariechen, Julchen, Luischen? Of course, your friends will accompany you, Miss Antonie..." A few young girls left the company to go swimming with Tony, and Peter Döhlmann insisted on escorting the ladies along the beach. "God! do you remember our school classes from back then?” asked Tony Julchen Hagenström. "Y-yes! You always played the wicked part,' said Julchen with a pitying smile. One approached the bathing establishment above the beach on the jetty by pairs of planks; and when you passed the stones where Morten Schwarzkopf was sitting with his book, Tony nodded to him several times from afar, with quick movements of his head. Someone asked, "Who were you greeting, Tony?" 'Oh, that was young blackhead,' said Tony; "he escorted me down..." "The pilot commander's son?" asked Julchen Hagenstrom, looking sharply at Morten with her bright black eyes, who for his part was surveying the elegant company with a certain melancholy. Tony, however, said in a loud voice: "One thing I regret: namely that August Möllendorpf, for example, is not here ... It must be really boring on the beach every day!" Eighth Chapter With this began beautiful summer weeks for Tony Buddenbrook, more entertaining and pleasant than she had ever experienced in Travemünde. She blossomed, nothing weighed her down; boldness and carelessness returned to her words and movements.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Jason mentioned church was a big part of his family’s life. Kevin thought how unlike his family Jason’s family was. After his mom died, Kevin went to live with his birth dad, who he hardly knew. His dad drank too much and Kevin basically raised himself. If it hadn’t been for the care and kindness of his maternal grandmother, Kevin was sure he wouldn’t still be alive. While Kevin was toying with the idea he had just shared lunch with the most together guy on campus, Jason suddenly got real. He said, “It’s good to be back at school, I sort of blew it last week with Grace.” He went on to explain he had been dating Grace since their junior year of high school and they were engaged. She was the love of his life and the wedding was planned for spring break. Kevin asked, “So what happened?” “Well,” Jason said, “I know this might sound really old fashioned to you, but I was raised to believe sex is for marriage. We love each other and on the last night, before I left to come back to school, we were kissing and things went a little too far. Everything in my body wanted her, and I could tell she felt the same way. We climbed into the back seat of my truck when boom it hit me what I was about to do. Luckily, my dad’s voice and my mom’s face came back into my head and well—that calmed things down. I was that close to taking her virginity, something I promised I wouldn’t do until we were married and she was ready to give herself to me.” Kevin sat in silence and nodded, thinking how different he and Jason were. Later that night Jeff and Trevor showed up blurry eyed from the long drive. They had been best friends since grade school. Jeff hoped a change of scenery might help his friend find his footing again. Trevor had been a disaster since tenth grade. Jeff watched as Trevor went from being a top student, captain of the baseball team, and class president to smoking pot and not caring much what happened next. Jeff tried to get Trevor to talk to him. He had a hunch that when his dad ran off with his new girlfriend and his mom sank into depression it really messed Trevor up. Trevor spent most weekends at Jeff’s house. His parents took him under their wings, but Trevor wouldn’t even open up to them. He became emotionally numb and the pot seemed to help him stay in denial. Jeff went from feeling concerned, to frustrated, to wanting to head-butt him. Maybe this will help, he silently hoped. Even though it was past midnight, all the lights were on in the house and there was a mangy looking dog crawling out from under the porch to greet them. Trevor wondered if he had fleas, but decided he looked friendly enough to give him a pat.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Because you don't object to the fact that Gerda is only three years younger than me? You will probably never have assumed, I hope, that I would bring home some youngster from the Möllendorpf-Langhals-Kistenmaker-Hagenstrom district. And as for the "game"?... Oh, I'm almost afraid that Stephan Kistenmaker and Hermann Hagenstrom and Peter Döhlmann and Uncle Justus and the whole town will give me a sly wink when they hear about the game; because my future father-in-law is a millionaire... my god, what can you say about it? There is so much half in us that can be interpreted one way or the other. I admire Gerda Arnoldsen with enthusiasm, but I am not at all inclined to delve deep enough into myself to fathom whether and to what extent the high dowry, which was whispered in a rather cynical way in my ear at the very first introduction, to this one Enthusiasm contributed. I love her, but it makes my happiness and pride all the greater that in becoming my own I am at the same time attracting a significant inflow of capital to our firm. I'm closing, dear mother, this letter, which has become far too long considering the fact that in a few days we'll be able to discuss my happiness verbally. I wish you a pleasant and relaxing bathing holiday and ask you to send my warmest regards to all of us. With faithful love , your obedient son T. Eighth Chapter In fact, there was a lively and festive high summer in the Buddenbrooks' house this year. At the end of July Thomas returned to Mengstrasse and, like the other gentlemen who were busy on business in the city, visited his family a few times by the sea, while Christian had taken a perfect vacation there, for he was complaining about one vague pain in the left leg, which Doctor Grabow had absolutely no idea what to do with, and which Christian therefore thought about all the more carefully... "It's not pain . . . you can't call it that," he explained with an effort, running his hand up and down his leg, wrinkling his large nose, and letting his eyes wander. "It's an agony, a constant, quiet, disturbing agony all over the leg . . . and on the left side, on the side where that Heart sits... Strange... I think it's strange! What do you think about that, Tom…” "Yes, yes..." said Tom. "You now have rest and sea baths..." And then Christian went down to the sea to tell stories to the bathing party that made the beach echo with laughter, or to the Kursaal to play roulette with Peter Döhlmann, Uncle Justus, Doctor Gieseke and some Hamburg suitiers. And Consul Buddenbrook and Tony, as always when one was in Travemünde, visited the old Schwarzkopfs in the front row... "Good'n Dag ook, Ma'm' Grünlich!" said the pilot commander, talking flat with joy. »Well, weetens still want?

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  That summer I would always ride by a certain isba, golden in the low sun, in the doorway of which Polenka, the daughter of our head coachman Zahar, a girl of my age, would stand, leaning against the jamb, her bare arms folded on her breast in a soft, comfortable manner peculiar to rural Russia. She would watch me approach with a wonderful welcoming radiance on her face, but as I rode nearer, this would dwindle to a half smile, then to a faint light at the corners of her compressed lips, and, finally, this, too, would fade, so that when I reached her, there would be no expression at all on her round, pretty face. As soon as I had passed, however, and had turned my head for an instant to take a last look before sprinting uphill, the dimple would be back, the enigmatic light would be playing again on her dear features. I never spoke to her, but long after I had stopped riding by at that hour, our ocular relationship was renewed from time to time during two or three summers. She would appear from nowhere, always standing a little apart, always barefoot, rubbing her left instep against her right calf or scratching with her fourth finger the parting in her light brown hair, and always leaning against things—against the stable door while my horse was being saddled, against the trunk of a tree when the whole array of country servitors would be seeing us off to town for the winter on a crisp September morning. Every time, her bosom seemed a little softer, her forearms a little stronger, and once or twice I discerned, just before she drifted out of my ken (at sixteen she married a blacksmith in a distant village), a gleam of gentle mockery in her wide-set hazel eyes. Strange to say, she was the first to have the poignant power, by merely not letting her smile fade, of burning a hole in my sleep and jolting me into clammy consciousness, whenever I dreamed of her, although in real life I was even more afraid of being revolted by her dirt-caked feet and stale-smelling clothes than of insulting her by the triteness of quasi-seignioral advances.

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

  Again, writing of retinal rivalry, Helmholtz says: "It is not a trial of strength between two sensations, but depends on our fixing or failing to fix the attention. Indeed, there is scarcely any phenomenon so well fitted for the study of the causes which are capable of determining the attention. It is not enough to form the conscious intention of seeing first with one eye then with the other; we must form as clear a notion as possible of what we expect to see. Then it will actually appear ."[365] [image file=Image00042.jpg] In figures 37 and 38, where the result is ambiguous, we can make the change from one apparent form to the other by imagining strongly in advance the form we wish to see. Similarly in those puzzles where certain lines in a picture form by their combination an object that has no connection with what the picture ostensibly represents; or indeed in every case where an object is inconspicuous and hard to discern from the background; we may not be able to see it for a long time; but, having once seen it, we can attend to it again whenever we like, on account of the mental duplicate of it which our imagination now bears. In the meaningless French words 'pas de lieu Rhône que nous, ' who can recognize immediately the English 'paddle your own canoe'?[366] But who that has once noticed the identity can fail to have it arrest his attention again? When watching for the distant clock to strike, our mind is so filled with its image that at every moment we think we hear the longed-for dreaded sound. So of an awaited footstep. Every stir in the wood is for the hunter his game; for the fugitive his pursuers. Every bonnet in the street is momentarily taken by the lover to enshroud the head of his idol. The image in the mind is the attention; the preperception , as Mr. Lewes calls it, is half of the perception of the looked-for thing.[367] [image file=Image00043.jpg] It is for this reason that men have no eyes but for those aspects of things which they have already been taught to discern. Any one of us can notice a phenomenon after it has once been pointed out, which not one in ten thousand could ever have discovered for himself. Even in poetry and the arts, some one has to come and tell us what aspects we may single out, and what effects we may admire, before our æsthetic nature can 'dilate' to its full extent and never 'with the wrong emotion.' In kindergarten instruction one of the exercises is to make the children see how many features they can point out in such an object as a flower or a stuffed bird. They readily name the features they know already, such as leaves, tail, bill, feet.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  121WHEN I first met Tamara—to give her a name concolorous with her real one—she was fifteen, and I was a year older. The place was the rugged but comely country (black fir, white birch, peatbogs, hayfields, and barrens) just south of St. Petersburg. A distant war was dragging on. Two years later, that trite deus ex machina, the Russian Revolution, came, causing my removal from the unforgettable scenery. In fact, already then, in July 1915, dim omens and backstage rumblings, the hot breath of fabulous upheavals, were affecting the so-called “Symbolist” school of Russian poetry—especially the verse of Alexander Blok. During the beginning of that summer and all through the previous one, Tamara’s name had kept cropping up (with the feigned naïveté so typical of Fate, when meaning business) here and there on our estate (Entry Forbidden) and on my uncle’s land (Entry Strictly Forbidden) on the opposite bank of the Oredezh. I would find it written with a stick on the reddish sand of a park avenue, or penciled on a whitewashed wicket, or freshly carved (but not completed) in the wood of some ancient bench, as if Mother Nature were giving me mysterious advance notices of Tamara’s existence. That hushed July afternoon, when I discovered her standing quite still (only her eyes were moving) in a birch grove, she seemed to have been spontaneously generated there, among those watchful trees, with the silent completeness of a mythological manifestation. She slapped dead the horsefly that she had been waiting for to light and proceeded to catch up with two other, less pretty girls who were calling to her. Presently, from a vantage point above the river, I saw them walking over the bridge, clicking along on brisk high heels, all three with their hands tucked into the pockets of their navy-blue jackets and, because of the flies, every now and then tossing their beribboned and beflowered heads. Very soon I traced Tamara to the modest dachka (summer cottage) that her family rented in the village. I would ride my horse or my bicycle in the vicinity, and with the sudden sensation of a dazzling explosion (after which my heart would take quite a time to get back from where it had landed) I used to come across Tamara at this or that bland bend of the road. Mother Nature eliminated first one of her girl companions, then the other, but not until August—August 9, 1915, to be Petrarchally exact, at half-past four of that season’s fairest afternoon in the rainbow-windowed pavilion that I had noticed my trespasser enter—not until then, did I muster sufficient courage to speak to her.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Tom, already twenty, dressed neatly in a blue-grey handkerchief, had pushed back his straw hat and was smoking Russian cigarettes. He hadn't grown very tall; but his mustache, darker than his hair and eyelashes, began to grow vigorously. Raising one eyebrow a little, as was his habit, he looked at the clouds of dust and the trees passing by the highway. Tony said: “I've never been so happy to come to Travemünde as I was this time… first of all, for all sorts of reasons, Tom, you don't need to make fun of yourself; I wish I could leave a certain pair of golden-yellow chops a few miles further... But then it will be a completely new Travemünde, there in the front row at the Schwarzkopfs... I won't bother about the spa company... I know that well enough... And I'm not in the mood for it... Besides, everything is open to the... man out there, he's not embarrassed, be careful, one day he'd appear next to me smiling sweetly..." Tom threw the cigarette away and took a new one from the tin, the lid of which was intricately inlaid with a troika attacked by wolves: a gift from some Russian client to the consul. The cigarettes, those sharp little things with a yellow tip, were Tom's passion; he smoked them copiously and had a bad habit of breathing the smoke deep into his lungs, so that it slowly bubbled out as he spoke. 'Yes,' he said, 'about that, the Kurgarten is teeming with hamburgers. Consul Fritsche, who bought the whole thing, is one himself... Papa says he's supposed to be doing excellent business right now... By the way, you're missing out on a lot if you don't help out a bit... Peter Döhlmann is there, of course; he is never in town at this hour; his business is running at a dog's trot by itself... funny! Well ... And Uncle Justus will certainly come out a bit on Sundays and pay a visit to the roulette ... Then there are the Möllendorpfs and Kistenmakers, I think, all of them, and the Hagenstroms ..." "Ha! - Naturally! How could Sarah Semlinger be expendable …« "By the way, her name is Laura, my child, one has to be fair." »With Julchen, of course … Julchen is supposed to get engaged to August Möllendorpf this summer, and Julchen will do it! Then they definitely belong! You know, Tom, it's outrageous! This run-in family..." 'Yes, dear God... Strunck & Hagenstrom are making business; that's the main thing..." "Of course! and you know how they do it... With their elbows, you know... without any courtesy or refinement... Grandfather said of Hinrich Hagenström: 'The ox will calve', those were his words..." “Yes, yes, yes, it doesn't matter now. Earning is a priority. And as far as this engagement is concerned, it's quite a proper deal. Julchen is going to be a Möllendorpf, and August gets a nice job..." "Oh...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Despite all his business and city duties, he took the time to show him around the city, to show him all the medieval sights, the churches, the gates, the fountains, the market, the town hall, the "Schiffergesellschaft", him in everyone and everyone way to entertain him, after all to introduce him to his closest friends at the stock exchange ... and as the consul, The Consul left this word so unanswered that she didn't even smile, didn't even move her eyelids, but quietly let her bright eyes slide aside and asked some other question... She was equally warm and friendly towards Herr Permaneder, which could not be said of her daughter so absolutely. The hop dealer had already lived through two "childhood days" - for although he had casually indicated on the third or fourth day after his arrival that his business with the local brewery was over, a week and a half had passed since then - and on each of these days On Thursday evenings, when Herr Permaneder was speaking and acting, Ms. Grünlich had thrown hasty and shy glances at the family circle, at Uncle Justus, the cousins Buddenbrook or Thomas, blushed, had remained stiff and silent for long minutes or even left the room... * The green blinds in Frau Grünlich's bedroom on the second floor were moved gently by the mild breath of a clear June night, for both windows were open. On the bedside table by the side of the four-poster bed, several small wicks burned in a glass on a layer of oil, which in turn floated on the water with which the glass was half full, and gave the large room with its straight armchairs, whose upholstery with gray to protect them canvas covered, a still, even and weak light. Frau Grünlich was resting in bed. Her pretty head was softly sunk on pillows surrounded by wide lace borders, and her hands were folded on the quilt. But her eyes, too thoughtful to close, slowly followed the movements of a large, long-bodied insect, midnight with open eyes and decide, decide, all alone and without advice with yes or no about his life and should not only decide about it? It was very quiet. Only the clock on the wall ticked and now and then Mamsell Jungmann cleared his throat in the next room, which was separated from Tony's bedroom only by a portico. There was still light there. The faithful Prussian was still sitting upright at the extending table under the hanging lamp, darning stockings for little Erika, whose deep and peaceful breathing one could hear, for Sesemi Weichbrodt's pupils were now on summer vacation and the child lived on Mengstrasse. Frau Grünlich sat up a little with a sigh and put her head on her hands. "Ida?" she asked in a low voice, "are you still sitting there darning?" "Yes, yes, Tonychen, my child," came Ida's voice...

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Kevin shook his head to awaken himself to the present. Texas wasn’t anything like LA. People shook his hand with a friendliness and directness he wasn’t used to. He noticed how both guys and good-looking girls with bleach-blonde hair, and long, Texas-tanned legs, flocked to Jason. He was a sort of hero. Kevin liked being his new roommate and wondered how weird it was that he, the lost kid from LA, was here with this giant of a man. He looked over at Jeff and Trevor and saw the same mystified look on their faces. The band played three more songs that pricked at him; he looked around, and some of the students had their eyes closed and hands raised. Again, he shook his head and wondered where he was. About that time, a guy who looked like he was in his mid-thirties thanked the band and prayed. He prayed in a way that seemed more like a conversation than repeating words to someone far, far away. He said his name was James. James looked at the students filling the brightly lit room. He said, “Welcome to Real Life. I’m your campus pastor. My wife and I are here for you. Kaycie, would you come up here and bring the boys with you?” His wife gathered their three little boys, as she walked to the platform. Her long, red hair was a contrast to most of the blondes in attendance. She was stunning, with soft blue-gray eyes, and was gentle with her three rowdy sons. She put her arm around James’s waist and gave him a warm smile. For the second time since he arrived at Texas A&M, Kevin felt something warm in his gut. Was it a longing? Trust? Again, he brushed the feeling aside to focus on what James was saying after Kaycie and their three little boys rumbled off the platform. James said, “Sometime this year Kaycie will share her story with you. I promise you don’t want to miss what she has to say. My wife is my hero. We have been through some hard times, and we hope our story can help you avoid some of our mistakes. This is Real Life. We don’t pull punches here. We aren’t religious, but we do love Jesus and believe He is alive and real and wants to help each of us do real life. We talk about the issues relevant to college students. So let’s get started. “If you want to turn to the passage I am speaking from, open the Bible app on your smartphone to 1 Thessalonians 4. You might think this is a weird place to begin considering the Apostle Paul starts with, ‘One final word, friends.’ But I love how Paul just gets right to it and since I am a Texas boy I like getting right into it too.” Then he read:

• From The Hours (1998)

  For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”— was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished— how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages. She inhales deeply. It is so beautiful; it is so much more than . . . well, than almost anything, really. In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading. But this is the new world, the rescued world—there’s not much room for idleness. So much has been risked and lost; so many have died. Less than five years ago Dan himself was believed to have died, at Anzio, and when he was revealed two days later to be alive after all (he and some poor boy from Arcadia had had the same name), it seemed he had been resurrected. He seemed to have returned, still sweet-tempered, still smelling like himself, from the realm of the dead (the stories you heard then about Italy, about Saipan and Okinawa, about Japanese mothers who killed their children and themselves rather than be taken prisoner), and when he came back to California he was received as something more than an ordinary hero. He could (in the words of his own alarmed mother) have had anyone, any pageant winner, any vivacious and compliant girl, but through some obscure and possibly perverse genius had kissed, courted, and proposed to his best friend’s older sister, the bookworm, the foreign-looking one with the dark, close-set eyes and the Roman nose, who had never been sought after or cherished; who had always been left alone, to read. What could she say but yes? How could she deny a handsome, good-hearted boy, practically a member of the family, who had come back from the dead? So now she is Laura Brown. Laura Zielski, the solitary girl, the incessant reader, is gone, and here in her place is Laura Brown.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  with His friends around a fire, except He is not rambling about anything, He is really listening, not so much pushing an agenda but being kind and understanding and speaking some truth and encouragement into their lives. Helping them believe in the mission they feel inside themselves, the mission that surrounded Jesus and the crazy life they had embraced. I remember the first time I had feelings for Jesus. It wasn’t very long ago. I had gone to a conference on the coast with some Reed students, and a man spoke who was a professor at a local Bible college. He spoke mostly about the Bible, about how we should read the Bible. He was convincing. He seemed to have an emotional relationship with the Book, the way I think about Catcher in the Rye. This man who was speaking reads through the Bible three times each year. I had never read through the Bible at all. I had read a lot of it but not all of it, and mostly I read it because I felt that I had to; it was healthy or something. The speaker guy asked us to go outside and find a quiet place and get reacquainted with the Book, hold it in our hands and let our eyes feel down the pages. I went out on the steps outside the rest room and opened my Bible to the book of James. Years ago I had a crush on a girl, and I prayed about it and that night read through James, and because it is a book about faith and belief I felt like God was saying that if I had faith she would marry me. So I was very excited about this and lost a lot of weight, but the girl gave her virginity to a jerk from our youth group, and they are married now. I didn’t care, honestly. I didn’t love her that much. I only say that because the book of James, in my Bible, is highlighted in ten colors and underlined all over the place, and it looks blood raw, and the yellow pages remind me of a day when I believed so faithfully in God, so beautifully in God. I read a little, maybe a few pages, then shut the book, very tired and confused. But when we got back from the conference, I felt like my Bible was calling me. I felt this promise that if I read it, if I just read it like a book, cover to cover, it wouldn’t change me into an idiot, it wouldn’t change me into a clone of Pat Buchanan, and that was honestly the thing I was worried about with the Bible. If I read it, it would make me simple in my thinking. So I started in Matthew, which is one of the Gospels about Jesus. And I read through Matthew and Mark, then Luke and John. I read those books in a week or so, and Jesus was very confusing, and I didn’t know if I liked Him very much, and I was certainly tired of Him by the second day. By the time I got to the end of Luke, to the part where they were going to kill

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God’s way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion? We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other. Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him. Will we be in ashes before we are one? What great gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don’t we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other! I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away. I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The fog that had reigned that morning had turned to snow, which fell in large soft flakes and turned into dung. They parted at the Buddenbrooksche garden gate; but when Hanno was halfway across the front yard, Kai came back and put his arm around his neck. "Don't despair... And don't play!" he said softly; then his slender, unkempt form disappeared into the snow flurry. Hanno left his books in the hallway in the bowl that the bear held out in front of him and went into the living room to greet his mother. She was sitting on the chaise longue reading a book bound in yellow. As he strode across the carpet, she looked at him with her brown ones close together eyes with bluish shadows in the corners. When he stood in front of her, she took his head between her hands and kissed his forehead. He went up to his room, where Miss Clementine had prepared some breakfast for him, washed and ate. When he was done, he took a pack of those small, sharp Russian cigarettes, which he was no longer unfamiliar with, from the desk and began to smoke. Then he sat down at the harmonium and played something very difficult, severe, fugal by Bach. And finally he clasped his hands behind his head and looked out the window at the noiselessly falling snow. There was nothing else to see there. There was no longer a graceful garden with a splashing fountain beneath his window. The view was cut off by the gray side wall of the neighboring villa. At four o'clock lunch was eaten. Gerda Buddenbrook, little Johann and Fraulein Clementine were alone. Later Hanno made the preparations for making music in the salon and waited for his mother at the grand piano. They played Beethoven's Opus 24 Sonata. In the Adagio the violin sang like an angel; but Gerda, dissatisfied, took the instrument from her chin, looked at it sullenly, and said that it wasn't in the right mood. She stopped playing and went upstairs to rest. Hanno stayed behind in the drawing room. He went to the glass door that opened onto the narrow porch and gazed out at the sodden front yard for a few minutes. Suddenly, however, he took a step backwards, violently pulled the cream-colored curtain in front of the door so that the room lay in a yellowish semidarkness, and started toward the grand piano. There he stood again for a while, and his gaze, fixed and vaguely fixed on one point, slowly darkened, became veiled, blurred... He sat down and began one of his fantasies.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  who was there pictured is the only one whom I love, revere, and adore, not as a woman merely, but as an earthly divinity, on whom my life and death depend. The only favour I ask of you, madam, is that the perfect passion, which has been life to me whilst concealed, may not be my death now that I have declared it. If I am worthy that you should regard me and receive me as your most impassioned servant, suffer me at least to live, as I have hitherto done, upon the blissful consciousness that I have dared to give my heart to a being so perfect, and so worthy of all honour, that I must be content to love her, though I can never hope to be loved in re- turn. If the knowledge you now possess of my intense love does not render me more agreeable to your eyes than heretofore, at least do not deprive me of life, which for me consists in the bliss of seeing you as usual. I now receive from you no other favour than that which is absolutely necessary for my existence. If I have less, you will have a servant the less, and will lose the best and most affectionate one you have ever had or ever will have." The queen, whether it vi^as that she might appear other than she really was, or that she might put his love for her to a longer proof, or that she loved another whom she would not forsake for him, or, lastly, that she was glad to have this lover in reserve in case her heart should become vacant through any fault which might possibly be committed by him whom she loved already, said to him, in a tone which expressed neither anger nor satisfaction, " I will not ask you, Elisor, although I know not the power of love, how you can have been so presumptuous and so extravagant as to love me ; for I know that the heart of man is so little at his own com- mand that one cannot love or hate as one chooses. But Third day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 2 4 1 since you have so well concealed your feelings, I desire to know how long you have entertained them ? " Elisor, looking in her beautiful face, and hearing her inquire about his malady, was not without hopes that she would afford him some relief ; but, on the other hand, seeing the self-command and the gravity with which she questioned him, he feared he had to do with a judge who was about to pronounce sentence against him. Not- withstanding this fluctuation between hope and fear, he protested that he had loved her since her early youth ; but that it was only within the last seven years he had been conscious of his pain, or rather of a malady so agreeable that he would rather die than be cured.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  There was in Paris a man so good-natured that he would have scrupled to believe that a man had lain with his wife though he had seen it with his own eyes. This poor man married the most profligate woman in the world, but never noticed her licentiousness, and treated her as though she were the best of wives. But one day, when King Louis XIL was in Paris, this woman went and gave herself up to one of that prince's chanters ; and when she found that the king was quitting Paris and that she was about to lose her lover, she resolved to go with him and quit her husband. The chanter had no objection to this, and took her to a house he had near Blois, where they lived long together. The poor hus- band, not finding his wife, searched for her in all direc- tions, and learned at last that she had gone off with the chanter. Wishing to recover his lost sheep which he had badly guarded, he wrote her several letters, begging her to return and promising to receive her, provided she would lead a good life for the future ; but she took such pleasure in the chanter's singing that she had for- gotten her husband's voice, made no account of his fair words, and snapped her fingers at him. The incensed husband then gave her notice that he would claim her legally through the Church, since she would not return Sixth day.-\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 475 to him of her own accord ; whereupon, fearing that if justice meddled with the matter she and her chanter would come badly off, she devised a scheme worthy of such a woman.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  In the lifetime of the last Duke Charles there was at Alengon a proctor named St. Aignan, who had married a gentlewoman of that country more handsome than vir- tuous, who, for her beauty and her levity, was much courted by the Bishop of Sees. In order to accomplish his ends, this prelate took care to amuse the husband so well, that not only he took no notice of the doings of either of the pair, but even forgot the attachment he had always felt towards his masters. He passed from fidelity to perfidy, and finally went the length of practising sorceries to cause the death of the duchess. The prel- ate maintained a long correspondence with this unlucky woman, who intrigued with him rather from motives of interest than of love ; whereto she was also solicited by her husband. But she entertained such a passion for 14 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Nm>el 1 the son of the Lieutenant-General of Alengon, named Du Mesnil, that it half crazed her ; and she often made the prelate give her husband some commission or an- other, that she might see the lieutenant-general's son at her ease. This affair lasted a long while, the prelate being entertained for her purse, and the other for her pleasure. She vowed to Du Mesnil that, if she received the bishop well, it was only that she might be the more free to continue her caresses to himself ; and that, what- ever she did, the bishop got nothing but words, and he might be assured nobody but himself should ever have anything else of her. One day, when her husband had to wait upon the bishop, she asked leave of him to go to the country, alleging that the air of the city did not agree with her. No sooner had she arrived at his farm than she wrote to the lieutenant's son, bidding him not fail to visit her about ten o'clock at night. The poor young man did so; but on his arrival the servant woman who usually let him in, met him and said, " Go elsewhere, my friend, for your place is filled." Du Mesnil, thinking that the husband had returned, asked the servant how all was going on. Seeing before her a handsome, well-bred young man, the girl could not help pitying him to think how much he loved, and how little he was loved in re- turn. With this feeling, she resolved to acquaint him with her mistress's behaviour, believing that it would cure him of loving her so much. She told him that the Bishop of S6es had but just entered the house, and was in bed with her mistress, who had not expected him till the following day ; but having detained the husband at his own residence, he had stolen away by night to visit her. The lieutenant's son was thunderstruck at this disclosure, and could hardly bring himself to believe it.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  To baffle observation, therefore, he entered into an intrigue with a lady named Paulina, who was considered in her time so beautiful that few men saw her and es- caped her fascinations. Paulina being aware how Ama- dour had made love in Barcelona and Perpignan,and won the hearts of the handsomest ladies in the country, especially that of a certain Countess of Palamos, who was reputed the finest woman in all Spain, told him one day that she pitied him for having, after so many good fortunes, married a wife so ugly as his own. Amadour, who well knew that she had a mind to supply his wants, talked to her in the most engaging terms he could use, hoping to conceal a truth from her by making her be- lieve a falsehood. As she had experience in love, she did not content herself with words, and plainly perceiv- ing that Amadour's heart was not her own, she made no doubt that he wanted to use her as a stalking-horse. With this sufipicion in her mind, she observed hia> w First Jay.l QUEEN OF NA VARRE. yy narrowly that not a single glance of his eyes escaped her; but he managed, though with the utmost difficulty, to regulate them so well that she could never get beyond conjectures. Florida, who had no notion of the nature of Amadour's feelings towards her, used to speak to him so familiarly before Paulina that he could hardly prevent his eyes from following the movements of his heart. To prevent bad consequences, one day, as Florida and he were talking together at a window, he said to her, " My dear, I beseech you to advise me which of the two is better, to speak or to die ? " " I shall always advise my friends to speak," she re- plied, without hesitation ; " for there are few words which cannot be remedied : but from death there is no return." " You promise me, then, that not only you will not be angry at what I want to tell you, but even that you will not give way to surprise until I have laid my whole mind open to you ? " " Say what you please," replied Florida, " for if you surprise me there is no one who can reassure me."

• From The Hours (1998)

  She will never find a love like that which the lone kiss seemed to offer. Virginia, excited, rises from her chair and puts her book on the table. Leonard asks from his own chair, “Are you going to bed?” “No. It’s early, isn’t it?” He scowls at his watch. “It’s nearly half past ten,” he says. “I’m just restless. I’m not tired yet.” “I’d like you to go to bed at eleven,” he says. She nods. She will remain on good behavior, now that London’s been decided on. She leaves the parlor, crosses the foyer, and enters the darkened dining room. Long rectangles of moonlight mixed with street light fall through the window onto the tabletop, are swept away by windblown branches, reappear, and are swept away again. Virginia stands in the doorway, watching the shifting patterns as she would watch waves break on a beach. Yes, Clarissa will have loved a woman. Clarissa will have kissed a woman, only once. Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking, insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa—exultant, ordinary Clarissa—will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visionary, will be the one to die. Mrs. Brown She finishes brushing her teeth. The dishes have been washed and put away, Richie is in bed, her husband is waiting. She rinses the brush under the tap, rinses her mouth, spits into the sink. Her husband will be on his side of the bed, looking up at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. When she enters the room he will look at her as if he is surprised and happy to see her here, his wife, of all people, about to remove her robe, drape it over the chair, and climb into bed with him. That is his way—boyish surprise; a suave, slightly abashed glee; a deep and distracted innocence with sex coiled inside like a spring. She thinks sometimes, can’t help thinking, of those cans of peanuts sold in novelty shops, the ones with the paper snakes waiting to pop out when the lids are opened. There will be no reading tonight. She slips her toothbrush back into its slot in the porcelain holder. When she looks in the medicine-cabinet mirror, she briefly imagines that someone is standing behind her. There is no one, of course; it’s just a trick of the light. For an instant, no more than that, she has imagined some sort of ghost self, a second version of her, standing immediately behind, watching. It’s nothing.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Now, since Greg Spencer told me about truth, when I go to meet somebody, I pray that God will help me feel His love for them. I ask God to make it so both conversations, the one from the mouth and the one from the heart, are true. 19 Love How to Really Love Yourself I WISH AN I DIFRANCO WASN’T A LESBIAN . I AM listening to her right now, and I think I would marry her if she would have me. I would hang out in the front row at all her concerts and sing along and pump my fist and get angry at all the right times. Then, later, on the bus, she would lay her head on a pillow in my lap, and I would get my fingers tangled in her dreadlocks while we watched Charlie Rose on the television. Some friends and I were walking to our cars one night outside the Roseland after an Emmy Lou Harris concert, and I could see into her bus and Charlie Rose was on the television. I thought to myself, I like that show, and part of me wanted to knock on the window and ask if I could come in. I would not have bothered her or even asked for an autograph. I would have just watched television. He was interviewing Bishop Tutu, I think. By the time I got home the interview was over. If Ani Defranco and I got married, I would write books on the bus rides between cities and in the evening, after the concerts, we would watch Charlie Rose, and three or four times each night we would whisper, Good question, Charlie, good question. But none of this will happen because Ani Difranco is not attracted to men, I don’t think. Otherwise we would be on. [image "9780785263708_0237_002" file=Image00088.jpg] The thing about Reed College you may not know is that it is a beautiful place. I mean the people are beautiful, and I love them. My housemate, Grant, and I were on campus the other day helping kids move into their dorms, and we met this kid Nathan, who needed us to move a couch up to his room. Grant and I were sort of surprised when Nathan started talking to us because, no kidding, he sounded just like Elmer Fudd. He was short and stocky, and nobody but Elmer Fudd himself sounds more like Elmer Fudd than Nathan. Grant almost started laughing, but we tried very hard to listen to the person inside the voice, and so on the way to the storage shed Nathan opened up and told us that as a summer job he worked at Los Alamos, researching nuclear weapons. Nathan does not know his left from his right, which I thought was a peculiar characteristic, given he is one of the smartest people in the world or something.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  good archdeacon, and of several other worthy people, was willing to take her back upon her oath that, for the future, she would behave like an honest woman ; an oath which the simple man, who loved her much, readily believed that she would keep. He took her back into his house, and treated her in all respects as before, except that he gave her two old servant women, one of whom was always with her when the other was elsewhere. But for all her hus- band's good treatment, her extravagant love for the canon made her regard all her repose as a torment. Though she was a very fine woman, and he a man of strong and vigorous temperament, yet she had no children by him, for her heart was always seven leagues away from her body. Nevertheless, such was her dissimulation, that her husband believed she had forgotten the past, as he had done on his part ; but her heart was too wicked to be capable of so happy and laudable a change. At the very time when she saw that her husband loved her most and distrusted her least, she feigned illness, and carried on the deception so well that the poor hus- band was in great distress on her account,. and spared nothing for her cure. At last he and all his household believed that she really was sinking to the grave. Seeing that her husband was as much afflicted at this as he had reason to be rejoiced, she begged he would authorize her to make her will ; which he freely did, with tears in his eyes. Having the power to make a will, because she had no children, she bequeathed to her hus- band all she had in her gift, beseeching his pardon for the affront she had put upon him. Then she sent for the parish priest, confessed, and received the holy sacra- ment of the altar with such devotion that everyone wept at witnessing so fine and so glorious an end. In the evening she begged her husband to have extreme unction 484 THE HF.PTAMERON OF THE \Norvd(i\