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 Henry and June (1986)

  Talks about the fantastic possibilities in me: his first impression of me standing on the doorstep—“so lovely”—and then sitting in the big black armchair “like a queen.” He wants to destroy the “illusion” of my great honesty. I read him what I wrote on the effect of his notes. He said I could only write like that, with imaginative intensity, because I had not lived out what I was writing about, that the living-out kills the imagination and the intensity, as happens to him. Note to Henry in purple ink on silver paper: “The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have. Excessive living weighs down the imagination. We will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.” Writers make love to whatever they need. Henry conforms to my image and tries to be more subtle, becomes poetic. He said he could very well imagine June saying to him, “I would not mind your loving Anaïs because it is Anaïs.” I affect their imaginations. It is the strongest power. I have seen romanticism outlast the realistic. I have seen men forget the beautiful women they have possessed, forget the prostitutes, and remember the first woman they idolized, the woman they never could have. The woman who aroused them romantically holds them. I see the tenacious yearning in Eduardo. Hugo will never be healed of me. Henry can never really love again after loving June. When I talk about her, Henry says, “What a lovely way you have of putting things.” “Perhaps it is an evasion of facts.” He says to me exactly what I wrote some time ago: I submit to life and then I find beautiful explanations for my act. I make the piece fit into the creative weaving. “You and June wanted to embalm me,” I say. “Because you seem so utterly fragile.” I dream of a new faithfulness, with stimulation from others, imaginative living, and my body only for Hugo. I lie. That day in the café, sitting with Henry, seeing his hand tremble, hearing his words, I was moved. It was madness to read him my notes, but he incited me; it was madness to drink and to answer his questions while staring into his face, as I have never dared to look at any man. We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss. He spoke of “Hugo’s great kindness, but he is a boy, a boy.” Henry’s older mind, of course. I, too, am always waiting for Hugo, but leaping ahead, sometimes perfidiously, with the older mind. I try to leave my body out of it.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I add this last word, because his French freedom of speech came as pure spring water to my thirsty soul. A dozen of us were grouped about him one day, talking when one student with a remarkable gift for vague thought and highfalutin’ rhetoric, wanted to know what Taine thought of the idea that all the worlds and planets and solar systems were turning round one axis and moving to some divine fulfillment (accomplissement). Taine, who always disliked windy rhetoric, remarked quietly: “The only axis in my knowledge round which everything moves to some accomplishment is a woman’s cunt (le con d’une femme).” They laughed, but not as if the bold word had astonished them. He used it when it was needed, as I have often heard Anatole France use it since, and no one thought anything of it. In spite of the gorgeous installation of his brunette, Ned at the end of a week found out how blessed are those described in Holy Writ, who fished all night and caught nothing. He had caught a dreadful gonorrhea and was forbidden spirits or wine or coffee till he got well. Exercise, too, was only to be taken in small doses, so it happened that when I went out, he had to stay at home and the outlook on the rue St. Jacques was anything but exhilarating. This naturally increased his desire to get about and see things, and as soon as he began to understand spoken French and to speak it a little, he chafed against the confinement and a room without a bath; he longed for the centre, for the opera and the Boulevards, and nothing would do but we should take rooms in the heart of Paris: he would borrow money from his folks, he said. Like a fool I was willing and so we took rooms one day in a quiet street just behind the Madeleine, at ten times the price we were paying Marguerite. I soon found that my money was melting; but the life was very pleasant. We often drove in the Bois, went frequently to the Opera, the theatres and music-halls and appraised, too, the great restaurants, the Café Anglais and the Trois Frères as if we had been millionaires. As luck would have it, Ned’s venereal disease and the doctors became a heavy additional expense that I could ill afford. Suddenly one day I realised that I had only six hundred dollars in the bank: at once I made up my mind to stop and make a fresh start. I told my resolution to Bancroft: he asked me to wait: “he had written to his people for money”, he said, “he would soon pay his debt to me”; but that wasn’t what I wanted: I felt that I had got off the right road because of him and was angry with myself for having wasted my substance in profligate living and worst of all in silly luxury and brainless showing off.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I told him it was over. He was ready, believe me, there were no tears on that score. And so ends the saga of Ingrid and Klaus.” But all I could think of was the big man lifting me in and out of the surf. I could almost remember it. The feeling of the waves on my feet, bubbling like laughter. The smell of the sea, and the roar. “Did he ever try to see me, as I grew up?” “Why do you want to know all this useless history?” she snapped, pushing away from the tree. She squatted so she could look me in the eye. Sweat beaded her forehead. “It’s just going to hurt you, Astrid. I wanted to protect you from all this. For twelve years, I stood between you and these senseless artifacts of someone else’s past.” “My past,” I said. “My God, you were a baby,” she said, standing up again, smoothing the line of her denim dress over her hips. “Don’t project.” “Did he?” “No. Does that make you feel any better?” She walked to the fence, to look out at the road, the dirt and trash blowing in the wind, trash stuck in the weeds on the other side of the road. “Maybe once or twice, he came by to see if you were all right. But I let him know in no uncertain terms that his presence was no longer appreciated. And that was that.” I thought of him, his sheepish face, the long blond hair. He hadn’t meant to hurt me. She could have given him another chance. “You never thought maybe I’d like a father.” “In ancient times there were no fathers. Women copulated with men in the fields, and their babies came nine months later. Fatherhood is a sentimental myth, like Valentine’s Day.” She turned back to me, her aquamarine eyes pale behind her tanned face, like a crime in a lit room behind curtains. “Have I answered enough, or is there more?” “He never came back?” I asked quietly, praying it wasn’t true, that there was more, just a scrap more. “Never called you, later on, wanting to see me?” She squatted down again, put her arm around me, propped her head against mine. We sat like that for a while. “He called once when you were, I don’t know. Seven or eight?” She ran her fingers through my hair. “He was visiting from Denmark with his wife and his two small children. He wanted us to meet at a park, that I should sit on the park bench and play with you, so he could see you.” “Did we go?” I just wanted her to hold me. “It sounded like the plot of a bad movie,” she said. “I told him to go to hell.” He had called, he had wanted to see me, and she said no. Without asking me, without mentioning it. It struck me across the throat like a blow with a pipe.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  In a dream it is June who has a penis. At the same time, I admit to Allendy, I have imagined that a freer life would be possible to me as a lesbian because I would choose a woman, protect her, work for her, love her for her beauty while she could love me as one loves a man, for his talent, his achievements, his character. (I was remembering Stephen in The Well of Loneliness , who was not beautiful, who was even scarred in the war, and who was loved by Mary.) This would be a relief from the torment of lack of confidence in my womanly powers. It would eliminate all concern with my beauty, health, or sexual potency. It would make me confident because everything would depend on my talent, inventiveness, artistry, in which I believe. At the same time I realized that Henry loved me for these last things, too, and I was becoming accustomed to it. Henry, also, gives a smaller importance to my physical charms. I could be healed by the sheer courage of continuing to live. I could heal myself. I don’t really need you, Allendy! Whenever he asks me to close my eyes and relax and talk, I go on with my own analysis. I say to myself, “He is telling me little that I do not know.” But this is not true, because he has made clear to me the idea of guilt. I understood suddenly why both Henry and I wrote love letters to June when we were falling in love with each other. He has also made clear the idea of punishment. I take Hugo to the rue Blondel and incite him to infidelity to punish myself for my own infidelities. I glorify June to punish myself for having betrayed her. I elude Allendy’s further questions. He fumbles. He can find nothing definite. He suggests many hypotheses. He also probes to discover my feelings about him, and I tell him about my interest in his books. I have a mischievous awareness that he expects me to become interested in him, and I don’t like playing the game while knowing it is a game. Yet my interest is sincere. I also tell him I don’t mind any more whether he admires me or not. And that is a victory over myself. It humiliates me to confess my doubts to him. So today I hated him. When I stood before him, ready to leave, I thought, “At this moment I have less confidence in myself than ever. It is intolerable.” With what joy I gave myself to Henry the following day. The house is asleep. The dogs are quiet. I feel the weight of solitude. I wish I were in Henry’s apartment, if only to dry the dishes he washes. I see his vest, unbuttoned, because the discarded suit given to him is too small for him.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Elisor took the ring, divided it in two, gave the queen one half, and kept the other. Then taking leave of her, more dead than those who have already given up the ghost, he went home to give orders for his departure. Sending his whole retinue to the country, he went away with only one attendant to a place so lonely and seques- tered that none of his relations and friends had any tidings of him for seven years. How he lived during that time, and what sorrow absence made him endure, are things beyond my telling ; but those who love can be at no loss to conceive them. Third day :\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 243 Precisely at the end of seven years, and at the mo- ment when the queen was going to mass, a hermit with a long beard came to her, kissed her hand, and presented to her a petition, which she did not peruse at once, though her custom was to receive all the petitions that were presented to her, however poor were the people who preferred them. When mass was half said, she opened the petition, and found enclosed in it the half of the ring she had given to Elisor. This was an agreea- ble surprise for her, and before she read the paper, she ordered her almoner to bring her straightway the hermit who had presented the petition. The almoner sought for him in all directions, but all he could learn was that he had been seen to mount and ride away, but no one could tell which way he had gone. While awaiting the return of her almoner, the queen read the petition, which turned out to be a letter, composed in the best possible manner, and, but for the desire I feel to make it intelli- gible to you, I should never have ventured to translate it ; for I must beg you to understand, ladies, that the Castilian is better adapted than the French tongue to express the emotions of love. The letter was as fol- lows : •' Time, a mighty teacher, gave me perfectly to know the nature of love. Time was afterwards assigned me, that the incredulous one might see by my protracted woe what love could not convince her of. Time hath shown me on what foundation my heart built its great love. That foundation was your beauty, which con- cealed great cruelty. Time teaches me that beauty is nothing, and that cruelty is the cause of my weal. Ex- iled by the beauty whose regards I so yearned for, I have come to be more conscious of your extreme un kindness. I obey your cruel order, however, and am 244 '^'^^^ JIEPTAMERON OF THE [Afm/el 24,

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  After love had dissipated this cloud, and when the lovers were beginning to take more pleasure than ever in each other's society, news came that the King of Spain was sending his whole army to Salces. Amadour, whose custom it was to be among the first to join the royal standards, would not miss this new opportunity of acquiring glory ; but it must be owned that he set out with unwonted regret, as well on account of the pleasure he lost, as because he was afraid of finding a change on his "return. He reflected that Florida was now fifteen, that many princes and great lords were seeking hei First day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. : g;^ hand, and that if she married during his absence he would have no more opportunity of seeing her, unless the Countess of Aranda should give her Aventurada for her companion. Accordingly, he managed so adroitly that the countess and Florida both promised him that, wherever the latter resided after her marriage, his wife should never leave her ; and as there was a talk then of her being married in Portugal, it was resolved that Aven- turada should accompany her to that country. Upon this assurance Amadour took his departure, not without extreme regret, and left his wife with the countess. Florida, left lonely by her lover's departure, lived in such a manner as she hoped would gain for her the reputation of the most perfect virtue, and make the whole world confess that she merited such a servant as Amadour. As for him, on arriving at Barcelona, he was cordially welcomed by the ladies ; but they found him so changed that they never could have believed that marriage could have such an effect upon a man. In fact, he was no longer the same ; he was even vexed at the sight of what he formerly desired ; and the Countess of Palamos, of whom he had been so enamoured, could never find means to make him even visit her. Being impatient to reach the spot where honour was to be gained, he made as short a stay as possible in Barcelona. He was no sooner arrived at Salces than war broke out with great fury between the two kings. I will not enter into details of the campaign, nor enumerate the heroic actions performed in it by Amadour, for then, instead of telling a tale, I should have to compose a great book. It is enough to say that his renown overtopped that of all his comrades in arms. The Duke of Nagyeres, who commanded two thousand men, arrived at Perpignan, and took Amadour for his lieutenant. He did his duty 84 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \^Nmel lo. SO well with his little corps that in every skirmish no other cry was heard than that of Nagyeres !

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  As the time drew on to the day when the boat was to start, Sophy grew thoughtful. I got her a pretty corn-colored dress that set off her beauty as golden sunlight a lovely woodland, and when she thanked and hugged me, I wanted to put my hand up her clothes for she had made a mischievous, naughty remark that amused me and reminded me we had driven all the previous day and I had not had her. To my surprise she stopped me: “I’ve not washed since we came in”, she explained. “Do you wash so often?” “Shuah,” she replied, fixing me. “Why?” I asked, searching her regard. “Because I’m afraid of nigger-smell,” she flung out passionately— “What nonsense!” I exclaimed. “’Tain’t either”, she contradicted me angrily, “My mother took me once to negro-church and I near choked: I never went again; I just couldn’t: when they get hot, they stink—pah!” and she shook her head and made a face in utter disgust and contempt. [Illustration] “That’s why you goin’ to leave me”, she added after a long pause, with tears in her voice; “if it wasn’t for that damned nigger blood in me, I’d never leave you: I’d just go on with you as servant or anything: ah God, how I love you and how lonely this Topsy’ll be!” and the tears ran down her quivering face. “If I were only all white or all black,” she sobbed: “I’m so unhappy!” My heart bled for her. If it had not been for the memory of Smith’s disdain, I would have given in and taken her with me. As it was, I could only do my best to console her by saying: “a couple of years, Sophy, and I’ll return; they’ll pass quickly: I’ll write you often, dear!” But Sophy knew better and when the last night came, she surpassed herself. It was warm and we went early to bed: “it’s my night!” she said: “you just let me show you, you dear! I don’t want you to go after any whitish girl in those Islands till you get to China and you won’t go with those yellow, slit-eyed girls—that’s why I love you so, because you keep yourself for those you like:—but you’re naughty to like so many—ma man!” and she kissed me with passion: she let me have her almost without response, but after the first orgasm she gripped my sex and milked me, and afterwards mounting me made me thrill again and again till I was speechless and like children we fell asleep in each other’s arms, weeping for the parting on the morrow.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next day I found out that the Vidals had come from Spain and were on their way to their hacienda near Chihuahua in Northern Mexico. They meant to rest in Chicago for three or four days because Señora Vidal had heart trouble and couldn’t stand much fatigue. I discovered besides that Señor Arriga was either courting his cousin or betrothed to her and at once I sought to make myself agreeable to the man. Señor Arriga was a fine billiard player and I took the nearest way to his heart by reserving for him the best table, getting him a fair opponent and complimenting him upon his skill. The next day Arriga opened his heart to me: “What is there to do in this dull hole? Did I know of any amusement? Any pretty women?” I could do nothing but pretend to sympathize and draw him out and this I easily accomplished, for Señor Arriga loved to boast of his name and position in Mexico and his conquests. “Ah, you should have seen her as I led her in the baile (dance)—an angel!” and he kissed his fingers gallantly. “As pretty as your cousin?” I ventured. Señor Arriga flashed a sharp suspicious glance at me, but apparently reassured by my frankness, went on: “In Mexico we never talk of members of our family,” he warned: “The Senorita is pretty, of course, but very young; she has not the charm of experience, the caress of—I know so little American, I find it difficult to explain.” But I was satisfied. “He doesn’t love her”, I said to myself; “loves no one except himself.” In a thousand little ways I took occasion to commend myself to the Vidals. Every afternoon they drove out and I took care they should have the best buggy and the best driver and was at pains to find out new and pretty drives, though goodness knows the choice was limited. The beauty of the girl grew on me in an extraordinary way: yet it was the pride and reserve in her face that fascinated me more even than her great dark eyes or fine features or splendid coloring. Her figure and walk were wonderful; I thought: I never dared to seek epithets for her eyes, or mouth or neck. Her first appearance in evening dress was a revelation to me: she was my idol, enskied and sacred. It is to be presumed that the girl saw how it was with me and was gratified. She made no sign, betrayed herself in no way, but her mother noticed that she was always eager to go downstairs to the lounge and missed no opportunity of making some inquiry at the desk. “I want to practice my English,” the girl said once and the mother smiled: “Los ojos, you mean your eyes, my dear,” and added to herself: “But why not? Youth—” and sighed for her own youth now foregone, and the petals already fallen.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I remember one evening I had waited for Jessie and she never came and just before going to bed, I went up into the bow of the ship where one was alone with the sea and sky, and swore to myself this great oath, as I called it in my romantic fancy: whatever I undertook to do, I would do it to the uttermost in me. If I have had any success in life or done any good work, it is due in great part to that resolution. I could not keep my thoughts from Jessie; if I tried to put her out of my head, I’d either get a little note from her, or Ponsonby would come begging me to leave him the cabin the whole day: at length in despair I begged her for her address in New York, for I feared to lose her forever in that maelstrom. I added that I would always be in my cabin and alone from one to half past if she could ever come. That day she didn’t come, and the old gentleman who said he would adopt me, got hold of me, told me he was a banker and would send me to Harvard, the University near Boston; from what the Doctor had said of me, he hoped I would do great things. He was really kind and tried to be sympathetic, but he had no idea that what I wanted chiefly was to prove myself, to justify my own high opinion of my powers in the open fight of life. I didn’t want help and I absolutely resented his protective airs. Next day in the cabin came a touch on the door and Jessie all flustered was in my arms. “I can only stay a minute”, she cried, “Father is dreadful, says you are only a child and won’t have me engage myself and he watches me from morning to night, I could only get away now because he had to go down to the machine-room.” Before she had finished, I had locked the cabin door. “Oh, I must go”, she cried, “I must really; I only came to give you my address in New York, here it is”, and she handed me the paper that I put at once in my pocket. And then I put both my arms under her clothes and my hands were on her warm hips, and I was speechless with delight; in a moment my right hand came round in front and as I touched her sex our lips clung together and her sex opened at once, and my finger began to caress her and we kissed and kissed again. Suddenly her lips got hot and while I was still wondering why, her sex got wet and her eyes began to flutter and turn up. A moment or two later she tried to get out of my embrace.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  On dark rainy evenings I would load the lamp of my bicycle with magical lumps of calcium carbide, shield a match from the gusty wind and, having imprisoned a white flame in the glass, ride cautiously into the darkness. [...] As I reached the top, my livid light flitted across the six-pillared white portico at the back of my uncle's mute, shuttered manor—as mute and shuttered as it may be today, half a century later. There, in a corner of that arched shelter, from where she had been following the zigzags of my ascending light, Tamara would be waiting, perched on the broad parapet with her back to a pillar. I would put out my lamp and grope my way toward her. One is moved to speak more eloquently about these things, about many other things that one always hopes might survive captivity in the zoo of words—but the ancient limes crowding close to the house drown Mnemosyne's monologue with their creaking and heaving in the restless night. Their sigh would subside. The rain pipe at one side of the porch, a small busybody of water, could be heard steadily bubbling. At times, some additional rustle, troubling the rhythm of the rain in the leaves, would cause Tamara to turn her head in the direction of an imagined footfall, and then, by a faint luminosity—now rising above the horizon of my memory despite all that rain—I could distinguish the outline of her face; but there was nothing and nobody to fear, and presently she would gently exhale the breath she had held for a moment and her eyes would close again.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  I had a gold coin that I assumed would pay for our elopement. Where did I want to take her? Spain? America? The mountains above Pau? “Là-bas, là-bas, dans la montagne,” as I had heard Carmen sing at the opera. One strange night, I lay awake, listening to the recurrent thud of the ocean and planning our flight. The ocean seemed to rise and grope in the darkness and then heavily fall on its face. Of our actual getaway, I have little to report. My memory retains a glimpse of her obediently putting on rope-soled canvas shoes, on the lee side of a flapping tent, while I stuffed a folding butterfly net into a brown-paper bag. The next glimpse is of our evading pursuit by entering a pitch-dark cinéma near the Casino (which, of course, was absolutely out of bounds). There we sat, holding hands across the dog, which now and then gently jingled in Colette’s lap, and were shown a jerky, drizzly, but highly exciting bullfight at San Sebastián. My final glimpse is of myself being led along the promenade by Linderovski. His long legs move with a kind of ominous briskness and I can see the muscles of his grimly set jaw working under the tight skin. My bespectacled brother, aged nine, whom he happens to hold with his other hand, keeps trotting out forward to peer at me with awed curiosity, like a little owl. Among the trivial souvenirs acquired at Biarritz before leaving, my favorite was not the small bull of black stone and not the sonorous seashell but something which now seems almost symbolic—a meerschaum penholder with a tiny peephole of crystal in its ornamental part. One held it quite close to one’s eye, screwing up the other, and when one had got rid of the shimmer of one’s own lashes, a miraculous photographic view of the bay and of the line of cliffs ending in a lighthouse could be seen inside. And now a delightful thing happens. The process of recreating that penholder and the microcosm in its eyelet stimulates my memory to a last effort. I try again to recall the name of Colette’s dog—and, triumphantly, along those remote beaches, over the glossy evening sands of the past, where each footprint slowly fills up with sunset water, here it comes, here it comes, echoing and vibrating: Floss, Floss, Floss!

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Colette was back in Paris by the time we stopped there for a day before continuing our homeward journey; and there, in a fawn park under a cold blue sky, I saw her (by arrangement between our mentors, I believe) for the last time. She carried a hoop and a short stick to drive it with, and everything about her was extremely proper and stylish in an autumnal, Parisian, tenue-de-ville-pour-fillettes way. She took from her governess and slipped into my brother’s hand a farewell present, a box of sugar-coated almonds, meant, I knew, solely for me; and instantly she was off, tap-tapping her glinting hoop through light and shade, around and around a fountain choked with dead leaves, near which I stood. The leaves mingle in my memory with the leather of her shoes and gloves, and there was, I remember, some detail in her attire (perhaps a ribbon on her Scottish cap, or the pattern of her stockings) that reminded me then of the rainbow spiral in a glass marble. I still seem to be holding that wisp of iridescence, not knowing exactly where to fit it, while she runs with her hoop ever faster around me and finally dissolves among the slender shadows cast on the graveled path by the interlaced arches of its low looped fence. 81IAM going to show a few slides, but first let me indicate the where and the when of the matter. My brother and I were born in St. Petersburg, the capital of Imperial Russia, he in the middle of March, 1900, and I eleven months earlier. The English and French governesses we had in our childhood were eventually assisted, and finally superseded, by Russian-speaking tutors, most of them graduate students at the capital’s university. This tutorial era started about 1906 and lasted for almost a full decade, overlapping, from 1911 on, our high-school years. Each tutor, in turn, dwelt with us—at our St. Petersburg house during the winter, and the rest of the time either at our country estate, fifty miles from the city, or at the foreign resorts we often visited in the fall. Three years was the maximum it took me (I was better at such things than my brother) to wear out any one of those hardy young men. In choosing our tutors, my father seems to have hit upon the ingenious idea of engaging each time a representative of another class or race, so as to expose us to all the winds that swept over the Russian Empire. I doubt that it was a completely deliberate scheme on his part, but in looking back I find the pattern curiously clear, and the images of those tutors appear within memory’s luminous disc as so many magic-lantern projections.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) Thus then John proclaims the Lord not yet as God, or the Son of God, but only as a man mightier than himself. For his ignorant hearers were not yet capable of receiving the hidden things of so great a Sacrament, that the eternal Son of God, having taken upon Him the nature of man, had been lately born into the world of a virgin; but gradually by the acknowledgment of His glorified lowliness, they were to be introduced to the belief of His Divine Eternity. To these words, however, he subjoins, as if covertly declaring that he was the true God, I baptize you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. For who can doubt, that none other but God can give the grace of the Holy Ghost. JEROME. For what is the difference between water and the Holy Ghost, who was borne over the face of the waters? Water is the ministry of man; but the Spirit is ministered by God. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Now we are baptized by the Lord in the Holy Ghost, not only when in the day of our baptism, we are washed in the fount of life, to the remission of our sins, but also daily by the grace of the same Spirit we are inflamed, to do those things which please God. 1:9–119. And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. 10. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: 11. And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. PSEUDO-JEROME. Mark the Evangelist, like a hart, longing after the fountains of water, leaps forward over places, smooth and steep; and, as a bee laden with honey, he sips the tops of the flowers. Wherefore he hath shewn us in his narrative Jesus coming from Nazareth, saying, And it came to pass in those days, &c. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) Forasmuch as He was ordaining a new baptism, He came to the baptism of John, which, in respect of His own baptism, was incomplete, but different from the Jewish baptism, as being between both. He did this that He might shew, by the nature of His baptism, that He was not baptized for the remission of sins, nor as wanting the reception of the Holy Ghost: for the baptism of John was destitute of both these. But He was baptized that He might be made known to all, that they might believe on Him and fulfil all righteousness, which is keeping of the commandments: for it had been commanded to men that they should submit to the Prophet’s baptism.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  With the coming of winter our reckless romance was transplanted to grim St. Petersburg. We found ourselves horribly deprived of the sylvan security we had grown accustomed to. Hotels disreputable enough to admit us stood beyond the limits of our daring, and the great era of parked amours was still remote. The secrecy that had been so pleasurable in the country now became a burden, yet neither of us could face the notion of chaperoned meetings at her home or mine. Consequently, we were forced to wander a good deal about the town (she, in her little gray-furred coat, I, white-spatted and karakul-collared, with a knuckle-duster in my velvet-lined pocket), and this permanent quest for some kind of refuge produced an odd sense of hopelessness, which, in its turn, foreshadowed other, much later and lonelier, roamings. [...] We haunted museums. They were drowsy and deserted on weekday mornings, and very warm, in contrast to the glacial haze and its red sun that, like a flushed moon, hung in the eastern windows. There we would seek the quiet back rooms, the stopgap mythologies nobody looked at, the etchings, the medals, the paleographic items, the Story of Printing—poor things like that. Our best find, I think, was a small room where brooms and ladders were kept; but a batch of empty frames that suddenly started to slide and topple in the dark attracted an inquisitive art lover, and we fled. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg's Louvre, offered nice nooks, especially in a certain hall on the ground floor, among cabinets with scarabs, behind the sarcophagus of Nana, high priest of Ptah.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  On our other side is the straight-up rock; And a path is kept ’twixt the gorge and it By boulder-stones where lichens mock The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block (“By the Fire-side”) It is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies. “None,” calmly replied that sturdy Swiss hiker with Camus in his rucksack when purposely asked by me for the benefit of my incredulous companion if he had seen any butterflies while descending the trail where, a moment before, you and I had been delighting in swarms of them. It is also true that when I call up the image of a particular path remembered in minute detail but pertaining to a summer before that of 1906, preceding, that is, the date on my first locality label, and never revisited, I fail to make out one wing, one wingbeat, one azure flash, one moth-gemmed flower, as if an evil spell had been cast on the Adriatic coast making all its “leps” (as the slangier among us say) invisible. Exactly thus an entomologist may feel some day when plodding beside a jubilant, and already helmetless botanist amid the hideous flora of a parallel planet, with not a single insect in sight; and thus (in odd proof of the odd fact that whenever possible the scenery of our infancy is used by an economically minded producer as a ready-made setting for our adult dreams) the seaside hilltop of a certain recurrent nightmare of mine, whereinto I smuggle a collapsible net from my waking state, is gay with thyme and melilot, but incomprehensibly devoid of all the butterflies that should be there.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  4And now comes that bicycle act—or at least my version of it. The following summer, Yuri did not visit us at Vyra, and I was left alone to cope with my romantic agitation. On rainy days, crouching at the foot of a little-used bookshelf, in a poor light that did all it could to discourage my furtive inquiry, I used to look up obscure, obscurely tantalizing and enervating terms in the Russian eighty-two-volume edition of Brockhaus’ Encyclopedia, where, in order to save space, the title word of this or that article would be reduced, throughout a detailed discussion, to its capitalized initial, so that the columns of dense print in minion type, besides taxing one’s attention, acquired the trumpery fascination of a masquerade, at which the abbreviation of a none too familiar word played hide and seek with one’s avid eyes: “Moses tried to abolish P. but failed … In modern times, hospitable P. flourished in Austria under Maria Theresa … In many parts of Germany the profits from P. went to the clergy … In Russia, P. has been officially tolerated since 1843 … Seduced at the age of ten or twelve by her master, his sons or one of his menials, an orphan almost invariably ends in P.”—and so forth, all of which went to enrich with mystery, rather than soberly elucidate, the allusions to meretricious love that I met with during my first immersions in Chekhov or Andreev. Butterfly hunting and various sports took care of the sunny hours, but no amount of exercise could prevent the restlessness which, every evening, launched me on vague voyages of discovery. After riding on horseback most of the afternoon, bicycling in the colored dusk was a curiously subtle, almost discarnate feeling. I had turned upside down and lowered to subsaddle level the handlebars of my Enfield bicycle, converting it into my conception of a racing model. Along the paths of the park I would skim, following yesterday’s patterned imprint of Dunlop tires; neatly avoiding the ridges of tree roots; selecting a fallen twig and snapping it with my sensitive front wheel; weaving between two flat leaves and then between a small stone and the hole from which it had been dislodged the evening before; enjoying the brief smoothness of a bridge over a brook; skirting the wire fence of the tennis court; nuzzling open the little whitewashed gate at the end of the park; and then, in a melancholy ecstasy of freedom, speeding along the hard-baked, pleasantly agglutinate margins of long country roads.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Automatically, I might slip him, with a bit of his plantlet, into a matchbox to take home with me and have him produce next year a Splendid Surprise, but my thoughts were elsewhere: Zina and Colette, my seaside playmates; Louise, the prancer; all the flushed, low-sashed, silky-haired little girls at festive parties; languorous Countess G., my cousin's lady; Polenka smiling in the agony of my new dreams—all would merge to form somebody I did not know but was bound to know soon.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  and their palmetto bug cousins aggressive ridged slowness the obstinacy of living fossils. Sweet ugly-fruit​avocados​tomatoes and melon in the mango slot hibiscus spread like a rainbow of lovers arced stamens waving but even the jacaranda only last a day. Crescent moon walking my sheets at midnight lonely in the palmetto thicket​counting persistent Canaveral lizards launch themselves through my air conditioner chasing equally determined fleas. In Gainesville the last time there was only one sister present who said​“I’m gonna remember your name and the next time you come there’ll be quite a few more of us, hear?” and there certainly was​a warm pool of dark women’s faces in the sea of listening. The first thing I did when I got home after kissing my honey was to wash my hair with small flowers and begin a five-day fast. Political Relations In a hotel in Tashkent the Latvian delegate from Riga was sucking his fishbones as a Chukwu woman with hands as hot as mine caressed my knee beneath the dinner table her slanted eyes were dark as seal fur we did not know each other’s tongue. “Someday we will talk through our children” she said “I spoke to your eyes this morning you have such a beautiful face” thin-lipped Moscow girls translated for us smirking at each other. And I had watched her in the Conference Hall ox-solid​black electric hair straight as a deer’s rein​fire-disc eyes sweeping over the faces like a stretch of frozen tundra we were two ends of one taut rope stretched like a promise from her mouth singing the friendship song her people sang for greeting There are only fourteen thousand of us left it is a very sad thing​it is a very sad thing when any people​any people​dies [image file=image_rsrc6HF.jpg] “Yes, I heard you this morning” I said​reaching out from the place where we touched poured her vodka​an offering which she accepted like roses leaning across our white Russian interpreters to kiss me softly upon my lips. Then she got up and left with the Latvian delegate from Riga. There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women What do we want from each other after we have told our stories do we want to be healed​do we want mossy quiet stealing over our scars do we want the powerful unfrightening sister who will make the pain go away mother’s voice​in the hallway you’ve done it right the first time​darling you will never need to do it again. Thunder grumbles on the horizon I buy time with another story a pale blister of air cadences of dead flesh obscure the vowels. from The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance (1993) To My Sister Pat Parker, Poet and Comrade-in-Arms In Memoriam and to my blood sisters Mavis Jones Marjorie Jones Phyllis Blackwell Helen Lorde Making Love to Concrete An upright abutment in the mouth of the Willis Avenue bridge a beige Honda leaps the divider like a steel gazelle​inescapable sleek leather boots on the pavement rat-a-tat-tat​best intentions

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  My passion for good writing put me in close contact with various Russian authors abroad. I was young in those days and much more keenly interested in literature than I am now. Current prose and poetry, brilliant planets and pale galaxies, flowed by the casement of my garret night after night. There were independent authors of diverse age and talent, and there were groupings and cliques within which a number of young or youngish writers, some of them very gifted, clustered around a philosophizing critic. The most important of these mystagogues combined intellectual talent and moral mediocrity, an uncanny sureness of taste in modern Russian poetry and a patchy knowledge of Russian classics. His group believed that neither a mere negation of Bolshevism nor the routine ideals of Western democracies were sufficient to build a philosophy upon which émigré literature could lean. They thirsted for a creed as a jailed drug addict thirsts for his pet heaven. Rather pathetically, they envied Parisian Catholic groups for the seasoned subtleties that Russian mysticism so obviously lacked. Dostoevskian drisk could not compete with neo-Thomist thought; but were there not other ways? The longing for a system of faith, a constant teetering on the brink of some accepted religion was found to provide a special satisfaction of its own. Only much later, in the forties, did some of those writers finally discover a definite slope down which to slide in a more or less genuflectory attitude. This slope was the enthusiastic nationalism that could call a state (Stalin’s Russia, in this case) good and lovable for no other reason than because its army had won a war. In the early thirties, however, the nationalistic precipice was only faintly perceived and the mystagogues were still enjoying the thrills of slippery suspension. In their attitude toward literature they were curiously conservative; with them soul-saving came first, logrolling next, and art last. A retrospective glance nowadays notes the surprising fact of these free belles-lettrists abroad aping fettered thought at home by decreeing that to be a representative of a group or an epoch was more important than to be an individual writer.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  (It was such a delicate subject, Stasia.) Or perhaps it was the Jew, Sid Essen, and the stir of racial memories. Or perhaps nothing more than the lightness of our quarters, the feeling of snugness, cosiness, at-homeness. Anyway, as she was clearing the table, I said: “If only one could write as one talks … write like Gorky, Gogol or Knut Hamsun!” She gave me a look such as a mother sometimes directs at the child she is holding in her arms. “Why write like them?” she said. “Write like you are, that’s so much better.” “I wish I thought so. Christ! Do you know what’s the matter with me? I’m a chameleon. Every author I fall in love with I want to imitate. If only I could imitate myself!” “When are you going to show me some pages?” she said. “I’m dying to see what you’ve done so far.” “Soon,” I said. “Is it about us?” “I suppose so. What else could I write about?” “You could write about anything, Val.” “That’s what you think. You never seem to realize my limitations. You don’t know what a struggle I go through. Sometimes I feel thoroughly licked. Sometimes I wonder what ever gave me the notion that I could write. A few minutes ago, though, I was writing like a madman. In my head, again. But the moment I sit down to the machine I become a clod. It gets me. It gets me down.” “Did you know,” I said, “that toward the end of his life Gogol went to Palestine? A strange fellow, Gogol. Imagine a crazy Russian like that dying in Rome! I wonder where I’ll die.” “What’s the matter with you, Val? What are you talking about? You’ve got eighty more years to live. Write! Don’t talk about dying.” I felt I owed it to her to tell her a little about the novel. “Guess what I call myself in the book!” I said. She couldn’t. “I took your uncle’s name, the one who lives in Vienna. You told me he was in the Hussars, I think. Somehow I can’t picture him as the colonel of a death’s head regiment. And a Jew. But I like him…. I like everything you told me about him. That’s why I took his name….” Pause. “What I’d like to do with this bloody novel—only Pop might not feel the same way—is to charge through it like a drunken Cossack. Russia, Russia, where are you heading? On, on, like the whirlwind! The only way I can be myself is to smash things. I’ll never write a book to suit the publishers. I’ve written too many books. Sleep-walking books. You know what I mean. Millions and millions of words—all in the head. They’re banging around up there, like gold pieces. I’m tired of making gold pieces. I’m sick of these cavalry charges … in the dark. Every word I put down now must be an arrow that goes straight to the mark.