Love

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 The Decameron (1353)

  In answering the first of these charges, Ghismonda in effect enlarges with convincing eloquence upon the simple statement that Guiscardo has already uttered: ‘Amor può troppo piú che né voi né io possiamo.’ She is made of flesh and blood, not of stone or iron, she is still a young woman, subject to the laws of youth and full of amorous longings, intensified by her brief marriage, which had enabled her ‘to discover the marvellous joy that comes from their fulfilment’. It is only natural that a woman in her condition should have sought a lover. Nor did she choose a lover at random, as many another woman would have done, but she consciously and deliberately selected a man who, notwithstanding his humble origins, displayed all the qualities associated with true nobility. If Tancredi would abandon the notion that a man’s nobility is measured by the quality of his ancestry, and compare impartially the lives, customs and manners of each of his nobles with those of Guiscardo, he would be forced to conclude that Guiscardo alone is a patrician whilst all of his nobles are plebeians. The concept of nobility expounded here so lucidly by Ghismonda is not of course an invention of Boccaccio’s own, for it had been adumbrated in the thirteenth century by Guido Guinizzelli, the poet acknowledged by Dante as founder of the dolce stil novo , and thereafter it became a staple theme of the Italian lyric until well into the following century. For the stilnovisti , nobility of lineage counted less than what they termed nobility of the heart. The term ‘gentil core’ (‘noble heart’) became a recurrent feature of the poetic vocabulary of the period. The songs with which Boccaccio brings each of the ten days of the Decameron to a close are the last significant specimens of that great poetic tradition which stretches back, via Cino da Pistoia, Dante and Guido Cavalcanti, to Guido Guinizzelli. But whereas in the poetry of the stilnovisti the sophisticated définitions of love and nobility had assumed the character of a refined intellectual exercise, Boccaccio appears to accept their validity, and he proceeds to examine their practical implications within a series of carefully delineated contexts. It is above all in the story of Cimon and Iphigenia (V, I) that Boccaccio makes his most brilliant and original contribution to that tradition, by incorporating one of its principal themes (the ennobling power of feminine beauty) within the framework of a prose narrative. The story tells of Cimon, the uncouth and witless son of a noble and prosperous Cypriot gentleman, who is a source of so much affliction to his despairing father that he is sent away to live in the country, where the rusticity of his manners will attract less attention. One afternoon as he is shambling doltishly through a wood on one of his father’s estates, he comes upon a clearing surrounded by very tall trees, in a corner of which there is a lovely cool fountain.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘Yes, but don’t do that, will you, unless I ring up—I should hear you, of course, and that would wake me and start my head throbbing.’ Then as though impelled, in spite of herself, by the girl’s strange attraction, she lifted her face: ‘Kiss me . . . oh, God . . . Stephen!’ ‘I love you so much—so much—’ whispered Stephen. 2It was past ten o’clock when she got back to Morton: ‘Has Angela Crossby rung up?’ she inquired of Puddle, who appeared to have been waiting in the hall. ‘No, she hasn’t!’ snapped Puddle, who was getting to the stage when she hated the mere name of Angela Crossby. Then she added: ‘You look like nothing on earth; in your place I’d go to bed at once, Stephen.’ ‘You go to bed, Puddle, if you’re tired—where’s Mother? ‘In her bath. For heaven’s sake do come to bed! I can’t bear to see you looking as you do these days.’ ‘I’m all right.’ ‘No, you’re not, you’re all wrong. Go and look at your face.’ ‘I don’t very much want to, it doesn’t attract me,’ smiled Stephen. So Puddle went angrily up to her room, leaving Stephen to sit with a book in the hall near the telephone bell, in case Angela should ring. And there, like the faithful creature she was, she must sit on all through the night, patiently waiting. But when the first tinges of dawn greyed the window and the panes of the semi-circular fanlight, she left her chair stiffly, to pace up and down, filled with a longing to be near this woman, if only to stand and keep watch in her garden—Snatching up a coat she went out to her car. 3She left the motor at the gates of The Grange, and walked up the drive, taking care to tread softly. The air had an indefinable smell of dew and of very newly born morning. The tall, ornate Tudor chimneys of the house stood out gauntly against a brightening sky, and as Stephen crept into the small herb garden, one tentative bird had already begun singing—but his voice was still rather husky from sleep. She stood there and shivered in her heavy coat; the long night of vigil had devitalized her. She was sometimes like this now—she would shiver at the least provocation, the least sign of fatigue, for her splendid physical strength was giving, worn out by its own insistence.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  After, he walked me back to my car in the hotel parking lot. I said in a voice that sounded unusually husky, as if I were doing a Lauren Bacall imitation, “Your place or mine.” Sabina was in control. I seduced him that night, but he seduced me right back. I already knew there would never be another like him in my life. Together we felt mythic, our intimate parts keyed to engage by some Dionysian locksmith. That first night, and every night we were together, a volitionless wave of passion lifted and carried us, exploding into another dimension. After the first night with him, I was in love, as Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 says, “even to the edge of doom.” Neal stayed for morning coffee and moved into my single apartment that afternoon, not having any permanent digs of his own. Occasionally he bought groceries, but we basically lived off my scholarship and the federal student loans I’d begun taking. We didn’t think much about money. We thought about sex. In bed, in the bathroom, on the floor, testing Kama Sutra positions, giggling at our pretzel bodies, and then just letting loose in lust. I was the happiest woman in the world to have Neal as my lover. The problem was that I wasn’t the only one to feel that way. Other women—just about every woman he met, from secretaries to the movie stars’ wives who would take a table at the hotel bar to ogle him—appreciated Neal’s talents. As Anaïs had predicted, when I fell in love, Sabina fled, taking all her self-possession with her. In her place I found the persona Anaïs had characterized in her novels as Stella, a vulnerable girl-woman who clung to her beloved. Neal found my unexpected possessiveness totally uncool. With the authority of someone who had read both Playboy and Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, he told me that my sexual jealousy was a remnant of the decadent need for private property. He warned me that my desire for monogamy was an impediment to our true love. It might even make it impossible for us to stay together. I tried valiantly to purge myself of my regressive bourgeois jealousy, but when I suspected Neal was in another woman’s bed, acid shot up my throat, scorching me from inside.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  A beautiful girl is lying asleep beside it, and her dress is so flimsy that scarcely an inch of her fair white body is concealed from Cimon’s admiring gaze. The effect of such wondrous beauty upon the boorish youth is electrifying. Not only does he fall deeply in love with, the girl, Iphigenia, but in order to win her hand in marriage he totally abandons all his former habits and becomes, within the space of four years, the most graceful, refined and versatile young man in the island of Cyprus. The violent manner in which Cimon eventually succeeds in his ambition to marry the fair Iphigenia carries distinct echoes of the myth of Pholus, the centaur named by Dante in Inferno (XII), who, at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, got drunk and attempted to rape the bride and other women present. In similar fashion, Cimon recruits an armed band to storm Iphigenia’s wedding banquet and carry her off after slaughtering all those, including her prospective bridegroom, who attempt to get in his way. The violence is paralleled in several of the stories of the Fourth Day. Apart from the tale of Tancredi and Ghismonda, two other stories (IV, 5 and IV, 9) owe their tragic conclusions to the blind and unthinking adherence to an outmoded concept of honour, the first within a bourgeois setting and the second in a context that is feudal and aristocratic. All three stories share one other element in common, namely the inclusion within the narrative of an incident or episode that is peculiarly horrifying and macabre. In the Ghismonda story, there is the structurally vital episode of the golden chalice containing the heart of her lover, over which she weeps copious tears that, mingled with a poisonous fluid, she eventually imbibes in the presence of her bewildered ladies-in-waiting. She then arranges herself decorously on her bed, holds the heart of her dead lover close to her own, and silently waits for death to release her from her suffering. The whole of this episode is so macabre that in the hands of a less shrewd and sensitive writer it would seriously have risked emerging as farce. But so skilfully does Boccaccio arrange his material, so carefully does he construct an atmosphere of ritual, that the tone of high seriousness is never unduly disturbed, and the final impression is one of poignant tragedy and mysterious grandeur. Boccaccio’s handling of the improbable tale of Lisabetta da Messina (IV, 5) is no less secure, and the tragic fate of the heroine is if anything even more compelling. The story is familiar to English readers from Keats’s romanticization of its details in a famous poem. 27 Boccaccio’s version is altogether more sinewy and straightforward, and the motives of the various characters are more clearly defined.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As for the young man himself, not being slow to take a hint, from the moment he perceived her interest in him he lost his heart to her so completely that he could think of virtually nothing else. And so they were secretly in love with each other. The young woman was longing to be with him, and being unwilling to confide in anyone on the subject of her love, she thought of a novel idea for informing him how they could meet. Having written him a letter, explaining what he was to do in order to be with her on the following day, she inserted it into a length of reed, which later on she handed to Guiscardo, saying as though for the fun of it: ‘Turn it into a bellows-pipe for your serving-wench, so that she can use it to kindle the fire this evening.’ Guiscardo took it and went about his business, reflecting that she could hardly have given it to him or spoken as she had without some special motive. As soon as he returned home, he examined the reed, saw that it was split, opened it, and found her letter inside. And when he had read it and taken careful note of what he was to do, he was the happiest man that ever lived, and set about making his preparations for going to see her in the way she had suggested. Inside the mountain on which the Prince’s palace stood, there was a cavern, formed at some remote period of the past, which was partially lit from above through a shaft driven into the hillside. But since the cavern was no longer used, the mouth of the shaft was almost entirely covered over by weeds and brambles. There was a secret staircase leading to the cavern from a room occupied by the lady, on the ground-floor of the palace, but the way was barred by a massive door. So many years had passed since the staircase had last been used, that hardly anybody remembered it was still there; but Love, to whose eyes nothing remains concealed, had reminded the enamoured lady of its existence. For several days, she had been struggling to open this door by herself, using certain implements of her own as picklocks so that no one should perceive what was afoot. Having finally got it open, she had descended alone into the cavern, seen the shaft, and written to Guiscardo, giving him a rough idea of the distance between the top of the shaft and the floor of the cavern, and telling him to try and use the shaft as his means of access.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The supper being now at an end, the King and his companions remounted their horses, and having taken their leave of Messer Neri, they returned, conversing on many different topics, to the royal lodge, where the King continued to harbour his secret passion; nor was he able, however weighty the affairs of state which supervened, to forget the charm and beauty of the lovely Ginevra, for whose sake he also loved the sister who resembled her so closely. Indeed, he could think of practically nothing else, so hopelessly had he become entangled in the snares of love; and in order to see Ginevra, he invented various pretexts for paying frequent visits to the delectable garden of Messer Neri, with whom he formed close ties of friendship. But eventually, having reached the end of his tether, he became convinced that he was left with no other alternative except to abduct not only Ginevra but both the girls from their father, and disclosed both his love and his intention to Count Guy, who, being a valiant nobleman, said to him: ‘My lord, I am greatly astonished by what you have told me, the more so because I feel that I am better acquainted with your ways than any other man alive, having known you intimately ever since you were a child. I do not recall that you were ever infected by any such passion in your youth, when Love should all the more easily have gripped you in its talons; and hence, to hear that you have fallen hopelessly in love now that you are approaching old age is so strange to me, so bizarre, as to seem little short of a miracle. Moreover, if I had the task of reproaching you for it, I know very well what I should say to you, seeing that you are still on a warlike footing in a kingdom newly acquired, among an alien people, full of deceits and treachery, and that you are preoccupied with matters of the gravest importance which prevent you from sitting comfortably upon your throne; yet despite all this you have succumbed to the temptations of love. ‘This is not the action of a magnanimous king, but rather of a weak-willed youth. But what is far more serious, you say you have decided that you must abduct his two daughters from this unfortunate knight, who honoured you in his house beyond his means, and in order to honour you the more, displayed them almost naked to you, thus testifying that he trusts you implicitly, and that he firmly believes you to be no ravening wolf, but a king.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “Fame is in your lifetime and disappears. Anaïs has had that. What she wants, what she has always wanted, is glory—to be remembered forever with admiration.” So when Anaïs turned her head to me on the starched pillow and pleaded, “I’m afraid I’m dying,” I promised, “You cannot die, because you will always be remembered.” I saw the corners of her thin lips curl slightly upward, so I continued, “Young women will read you for centuries to come. Over and over again, they’ll discover their sexuality through you. You are timeless because you have given voice to the eternal woman.” Seeing a glint in her eyes, I went on, not caring that I was repeating myself, not caring that I was gushing, trying to express my passion to her with my hyperbolic declarations of her undying glory, standing like an acolyte, hands at my sides, crying out what was in my heart. “Through you, women will find their inner life. Coming of age will not have to be so lonely for girls anymore. You will have daughters of daughters, who will find the second birth by reading your diaries.” She struggled to raise herself in the bed. “Prop up my pillow, please. I’m enjoying your company. I’ve been spending too much time with the wrong people.” By “the wrong people” she must have meant Evelyn Hinz and those hippie white light people. I was glad she saw she should be spending time with me instead, but that meant I had to keep coming up with things to inspire her. I wanted to exclaim my love for her, to cry out that I could not bear to lose her, but I was afraid it would quicken her fear that she was dying. I ventured, “I’ve been thinking about this card deck of women authors I had as a girl. There were cards for Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Edith Wharton. Now they’re going to have to add your picture, and even girls of seven will know who you are.” “What do girls do with the cards?” “You’re supposed to play a game like Fish, but we made them trading cards and begged or poached our favorite authors from each other.” “Did they have George Sand in the deck?” “I don’t think so. Maybe it was just American women. But you’re an American author.” “You see me as an American author, Tchrristine?” Her French accent was so pronounced that for a moment I doubted myself. But I answered, “Absolutely! You’re as all-American as F. Scott Fitzgerald!” As I said it, I realized how much like Fitzgerald’s mythic character of Jay Gatsby Anaïs was. She had Gatsby’s charm and generosity and his romantic readiness to stake all for the dream. She was looking much better. Her eyes would never again be turquoise, but the sea’s depth had returned to them. “Could you hand me that mirror?” she asked me. “And my makeup bag?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As you are aware, my daughter Spina, for whom you formed so loving but improper an attachment, is a widow, and she has a good, large dowry. You are acquainted with her ways, and with her father and mother; of your own present condition, I say nothing. Therefore, if you are agreeable, I am willing to convert a dishonourable friendship into an honourable marriage, and allow you to live with her here in my house for as long as you wish to remain, as though you were my own son.’ Giannotto’s fine physique had been wasted away by his imprisonment, but the innate nobility of his spirit was in no way impaired, and he still loved his lady as wholeheartedly as ever. So that, although he found himself in the other man’s power, and wished for nothing better than what Currado was proposing, he had not the slightest hesitation in following the promptings of his noble heart. ‘Currado,’ he replied, ‘neither the lust for power nor the desire for riches nor any other motive has ever led me to harbour treacherous designs against your person or property. I loved your daughter, I love her still, and I shall always love her, because I consider her a worthy object of my love. And if, in wooing her, I was acting in a manner that would commonly be regarded as dishonourable, the fault I committed was one which is inseparable from youth. In order to eradicate it, one would have to do away with youth altogether. Besides, it would not be considered half so serious as you and many others maintain, if old men would remember that they were once young, and if they would measure other people’s shortcomings against their own and vice versa. I committed this fault, not as your enemy, but as your friend. It has always been my wish to do what you are now proposing, and if I had thought your consent would be forthcoming, I would have asked you long ago for your daughter’s hand. Coming at this moment, when my expectations were at such a low ebb, your consent is all the more gratifying to me. But if your intentions do not match your words, please do not feed me with vain hopes. Send me back to my prison-cell and have me treated as cruelly as you like. Whatever you do to me, I shall always love Spina, and for her sake I shall always love and respect her father.’ Currado listened in amazement to Giannotto’s words, which convinced him of both his courage and the warmth of his love, increasing his esteem for the young man. He therefore rose to his feet, embraced and kissed him, and gave orders without further ado for Spina to be brought there in secret.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Anichino, my dearest, be of good cheer; many are those that have wooed me, and that woo me to this day, but neither gifts nor promises nor fine words have ever succeeded in persuading me to fall in love with a single one of my admirers, whether he was a nobleman or a mighty lord or any other man; yet within the brief space of these few words of yours, you have made me feel that I belong far more to you than to myself. I consider that you have well and truly earned my love. I therefore concede it to you, and before the coming night is over, I promise that it will be yours to enjoy. In order to bring this about, see that you come to my room towards midnight. I shall leave the door open. You know the side of the bed on which I sleep: come to me there, and if I should be asleep, touch me so that I wake up, and then I shall give you the solace that you have so long desired. So that you believe what I am saying, I want to give you a kiss by way of pledge.’ Whereupon, throwing her arms round his neck, she gave him an amorous kiss, and Anichino did the like to her. There, for the time being, the matter rested, and Anichino, having taken his leave of the lady, went off to attend to certain duties of his, ecstatically looking forward to the coming of the night. Egano returned home from his hawking, and as soon as he had supped, feeling weary, he retired to bed. The lady soon followed his example, and, as she had promised, she left the door of the bedroom ajar. Thither, at the appointed hour, Anichino came, and having crept quietly into the room and bolted the door behind him, he made his way to the side of the bed where the lady usually slept. Placing his hand on her bosom, he found that she was not asleep, for she promptly clasped his hand between both her own, and, holding it tightly, she twisted and turned in the bed until she succeeded in waking Egano, to whom she said: ‘I didn’t want to say anything of this last night, because you seemed so tired; but tell me truthfully, of all the servants you have in the house, which do you regard as the finest, the most loyal, and the most deeply attached to his master?’ ‘My dear,’ Egano replied, ‘why do you ask such a question when you know very well that I have never had anyone I could trust so completely, or respect so profoundly, as I trust and respect Anichino?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FIRST STORY Cimon 1 acquires wisdom through falling in love with Iphigenia, whom he later abducts on the high seas. After being imprisoned at Rhodes, he is released by Lysimachus, with whom he abducts both Iphigenia and Cassandra whilst they are celebrating their nuptials. They then flee with their ladies to Crete, whence after marrying them they are summoned back with their wives to their respective homes . Delectable ladies, I can think of many stories with which I could aptly make a beginning to so joyful a day as this. But there is one in particular that strikes me as specially pleasing, for not only will it enable you to perceive the happy goal to which our discussions will from now on be directed, but it will also allow you to appreciate the sacredness, the power, and the beneficial effects of the forces of Love, which so many people, ignorant of what they are saying, mistakenly treat with contempt and abuse. All of which, unless I am mistaken, you will find most agreeable, for I take it that you are yourselves in love. In the chronicles of the ancient Cypriots, then, we read that there once lived in the island of Cyprus a very noble gentleman, Aristippus by name, who was richer in worldly possessions than any other man in the country. And if Fortune had not presented him with one particular source of affliction, he would have accounted himself the happiest man alive. This consisted in the fact that one of his children, a youth of outstandingly handsome appearance and perfect physique, was to all intents and purposes an imbecile, whose case was regarded as hopeless. His true name was Galesus, but since the sum total of his tutor’s persistent efforts, his father’s cajolings and beatings, and all the ingenuity of various others, had failed to drum a scrap of learning or good manners into his head, on the contrary leaving him coarsely inarticulate and with the manners rather of a wild beast than a human being, he had earned himself the unflattering nickname of Cimon, which in their language has the same sort of meaning as ‘simpleton’ in ours. His hopeless condition was a matter of very grave concern to his father, who, despairing of any improvement and not wishing to have the source of his affliction constantly before him, ordered him to go and live with his farm-workers in the country. Cimon was only too pleased to obey, for to his way of thinking the customs and practices of country yokels were far more congenial than life in the city. So Cimon went away to the country, where one afternoon, whilst going about his rustic business on one of his father’s estates, with a stick on his shoulder, he chanced to enter a wood, renowned in those parts for its beauty, the trees of which were thickly leaved as it happened to be the month of May.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Some years ago, in Barletta, there was a priest called Father Gianni di Barolo,1 who, because he had a poor living and wished to supplement his income, took to carrying goods, with his mare, round the various fairs of Apulia, and to buying and selling. In the course of his travels, he became very friendly with a man called Pietro da Tresanti,2 who practised the same trade as his own, but with a donkey, and in token of his friendship and affection he always addressed him, in the Apulian fashion, as Neighbour Pietro. And whenever Pietro came to Barletta, Father Gianni always invited him to his church, where he shared his quarters with him and entertained him to the best of his ability. For his own part, Neighbour Pietro was exceedingly poor and had a tiny little house in Tresanti, hardly big enough to accommodate himself, his donkey, and his beautiful young wife. But whenever Father Gianni turned up in Tresanti, he took him to his house and entertained him there as best he could, in appreciation of the latter’s hospitality in Barletta. However, when it came to putting him up for the night, Pietro was unable to do as much for him as he would have liked, because he only had one little bed, in which he and his beautiful wife used to sleep. Father Gianni was therefore obliged to bed down on a heap of straw in the stable, alongside his mare and Pietro’s donkey. Pietro’s wife, knowing of the hospitality which the priest accorded to her husband in Barletta, had offered on several occasions, when the priest came to stay with them, to go and sleep with a neighbour of hers called Zita Carapresa di Giudice Leo, so that the priest could sleep in the bed with her husband. But the priest wouldn’t hear of it, and on one occasion he said to her: ‘My dear Gemmata, don’t trouble your head over me. I am quite all right, because whenever I choose I can transform this mare3 of mine into a fair young maid and turn in with her. Then when it suits me I turn her back into a mare. And that is why I’d never be without her.’ The young woman was astonished, believed every word of it, and told her husband, adding: ‘If he’s as good a friend as you say, why don’t you get him to teach you the spell, so that you can turn me into a mare and run your business with the mare as well as the donkey? We should earn twice as much money, and when we got home you could turn me back into a woman, as I am now.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  At this time many gentle and friendly things began to bear witness to Mary’s presence. There were flowers in the quiet old garden for instance, and some large red carp in the fountain’s basin, and two married couples of white fantail pigeons who lived in a house on a tall wooden leg and kept up a convivial cooing. These pigeons lacked all respect for Stephen; by August they were flying in at her window and landing with soft, heavy thuds on her desk where they strutted until she fed them with maize. And because they were Mary’s and Mary loved them, Stephen would laugh, as unruffled as they were, and would patiently coax them back into the garden with bribes for their plump little circular crops. In the turret room that had been Puddle’s sanctum, there were now three cagefuls of Mary’s rescues—tiny bright coloured birds with dejected plumage, and eyes that had filmed from a lack of sunshine. Mary was always bringing them home from the terrible bird shops along the river, for her love of such helpless and suffering things was so great that she in her turn must suffer. An ill-treated creature would haunt her for days, so that Stephen would often exclaim half in earnest: ‘Go and buy up all the animal shops in Paris . . . anything, darling, only don’t look unhappy!’ The tiny bright coloured birds would revive to some extent, thanks to Mary’s skilled treatment; but since she always bought the most ailing, not a few of them left this disheartening world for what we must hope was a warm, wild heaven—there were several small graves already in the garden. Then one morning, when Mary went out alone because Stephen had letters to write to Morton, she chanced on yet one more desolate creature who followed her home to the Rue Jacob, and right into Stephen’s immaculate study. It was large, ungainly and appallingly thin; it was coated with mud which had dried on its nose, its back, its legs and all over its stomach. Its paws were heavy, its ears were long, and its tail, like the tail of a rat, looked hairless, but curved up to a point in a miniature sickle. Its face was as smooth as though made out of plush, and its luminous eyes were the colour of amber. Mary said: ‘Oh, Stephen—he wanted to come. He’s got a sore paw; look at him, he’s limping!’ Then this tramp of a dog hobbled over to the table and stood there gazing dumbly at Stephen, who must stroke his anxious, dishevelled head: ‘I suppose this means that we’re going to keep him.’ ‘Darling, I’m dreadfully afraid it does—he says he’s sorry to be such a mongrel.’ ‘He needn’t apologize,’ Stephen smiled, ‘he’s all right, he’s an Irish water-spaniel, though what he’s doing out here the Lord knows; I’ve never seen one before in Paris.’

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I still didn’t know whether to believe her. In her published diaries it certainly had sounded as if she and June Miller were in a passionate sexual relationship, but perhaps her love for June had been as my love for Clara: undeclared, unconsummated, and even more intense for that. Standing in the hallway, Anaïs put her hands on my shoulders and brought her face close to mine. I thought she was going to kiss me on the mouth and I didn’t know what to do. It felt aberrant because she was so much older than I, but I loved her too much to pull away. She didn’t kiss me. She whispered, “In my next life, I will love women.” I heard my own husky voice: “There will be a place in my house for you.” I was glad that, for once, without thinking, I’d found the right words. I’d found a way to tell Anaïs I loved her, even if inexactly as in a foreign language. The words of erotic desire could only approximate my passion for her, which was so much larger and more enduring. In the two years between that intimate conversation at her house and my visit to the hospital, I’d learned that switching one’s sexuality was not really a matter of choice. Yet that day in her hospital room, I realized also that no relationship I’d ever had with a man was as intense as my ardor for Anaïs. Feeling shy suddenly, I told her, “You know, you’re the star pioneer of the book I’m doing on diary writing. That astrologer had it right, Anaïs. Everything I do, everything I accomplish, came from you. I am continuing your work, only in my own way.” Anaïs gave me her glorious smile of approval. She said, “You are my best daughter.” Without modesty, I crowed, “I think so, too!” “But I don’t see how you can say I write anything like Fitzgerald.” “Not stylistically, but you both believe in the American dream, that we have the right to re-invent ourselves—” Just then the hospital room door opened. I turned, thinking it was Rupert. But the tall, stooped figure in the doorway, leaning on an ebony cane—was Hugo! My eyes swung back to Anaïs, who was so panicked that she tried to climb out of her hospital bed but was pinned there by the stretched tubing. She scolded Hugo, “I told you not to come!” The disappointment on his long hound’s face was hard to witness. “Anaïs,” he pleaded, “why do you refuse to see me? I know how ill you are.” “How do you know?” She focused past him and I did, too, knowing that Rupert could arrive any minute. “I spoke with your doctor,” Hugo said gently. “You didn’t have my permission!” she cried. “Anaïs, I’m your husband.” He had tears in his eyes. “Do you want me to leave?” he offered pitifully.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now, it so happened that while the King of France and his son were away at the wars we have mentioned, Walter’s wife died, leaving him a widower with two small children, a boy and a girl. And whilst he was continuing to hold court with the aforesaid ladies, frequently sounding out their opinions on weighty matters of state, the wife of the King’s son cast her eyes upon him, and being hugely taken with his handsome looks and agreeable manners, she fell violently and secretly in love. Considering her own unspoilt, youthful appearance and the fact that he was not tied to any woman, she thought it would be an easy matter to obtain what she wanted, and since only her shame seemed to be standing in her way, she decided to be rid of it and lay her cards on the table. So one day, finding herself alone and feeling the time to be ripe, she summoned him to her room under the pretext of discussing affairs of state. Being quite unprepared for what was to follow, the Count answered her summons without the slightest delay. Having entered the room, he found himself alone with the lady, and at her request he sat down beside her on a sofa. He then asked her, twice, why she had summoned him, but each time the lady remained silent. Finally, driven on by her passion, she blushed a deep crimson and, almost on the point of tears, trembling from head to toe, she started hesitantly to speak: ‘Sweet friend and master, dearest one of all, since you are wise you will readily acknowledge that men and women are remarkably frail, and that, for a variety of reasons, some are frailer than others. It is therefore right and proper that before an impartial judge, people of different social rank should not be punished equally for committing an identical sin. For nobody would, I think, deny that if a member of the poorer classes, obliged to earn a living through manual toil, were to surrender blindly to the promptings of love, he or she would be far more culpable than a rich and leisured lady who lacked none of the necessary means to gratify her tiniest whim. ‘I consider, then, that circumstances such as these must go a long way towards excusing any woman who allows herself to be enmeshed in the toils of love; and if, in addition, she has chosen a judicious and valiant lover on whom to bestow her affection, she no longer needs any justification whatever. Now, since it is my opinion that both of these prerequisites are present in my own case, and since, moreover, I possess additional incentives for loving, such as my youth and my husband’s absence, they must inevitably operate in my favour and elicit your sympathy for my impetuous passion.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  SIXTH STORYTwo young men lodge overnight at a cottage, where one of them goes and sleeps with their host’s daughter, whilst his wife inadvertently sleeps with the other. The one who was with the daughter clambers into bed beside her father, mistaking him for his companion, and tells him all about it. A great furore then ensues, and the wife, realizing her mistake, gets into her daughter’s bed, whence with a timely explanation she restores the peace. As on previous occasions, so also on this, the company was heartily amused by Calandrino’s doings, which the ladies had no sooner finished debating than the queen called on Panfilo to address them; and he began as follows: Laudable ladies, the name of Calandrino’s lady-love reminds me of a tale about another Niccolosa, which I should now like to relate to you, for as you will see, it shows us how a good woman’s presence of mind averted a serious scandal. * Not long ago, there lived in the valley of the Mugnone1 a worthy man who earned an honest penny by supplying food and drink to wayfarers; and although he was poor, and his house was tiny, he would from time to time, in cases of urgent need, offer them a night’s lodging, but only if they happened to be people he knew. Now, this man had a most attractive wife, who had borne him two children, the first being a charming and beautiful girl of about fifteen or sixteen, as yet unmarried, whilst the second was an infant, not yet twelve months old, who was still being nursed at his mother’s breast. The daughter had caught the eye of a lively and handsome young Florentine gentleman who used to spend much of his time in the countryside, and he fell passionately in love with her. Nor was it long before the girl, being highly flattered to have won the affection of so noble a youth, which she strove hard to retain by displaying the greatest affability towards him, fell in love with him. And neither of the pair would have hesitated to consummate their love, but for the fact that Pinuccio (for such was the young man’s name) was not prepared to expose the girl or himself to censure. At length however, his ardour growing daily more intense, Pinuccio was seized with a longing to consort with her, come what may, and it occurred to him that he must find some excuse for lodging with her father overnight, since, being conversant with the layout of the premises, he had good reason to think that he and the girl could be together without anyone ever being any the wiser. And no sooner did this idea enter his head than he promptly took steps to carry it into effect.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  After my son’s father left to go to work, I was taken to a room to be prepped for birth. The room was painted government green. It reeked with antiseptic. The hospital was built because of the U.S. government’s treaty responsibility to provide health care to Indian people. Birth is one of the most sacred acts we take part in and witness in our lives. But sacredness appeared to be far from my labor room in the Indian hospital. It was difficult to bear the actuality of it, and to bear it alone. A woman screamed in pain and fear as she labored in the next room. I wanted to comfort her. The nurse used her as a bad example for the rest of us, who were struggling to keep our suffering silent. The doctor was a military man who had signed on the watch not for the love of healing or in awe of the miracle of birth but to fulfill a contract for medical school payments. I was a statistic to him. He touched me mechanically. When it was time, I was wheeled to the delivery room. I was given a spinal, which sent fire into my legs. My body instinctively tried to sit up, to get on all fours. “If you don’t stop moving around,” warned the nurse, “we’re going to use the restraints.” She yanked up one of the restraints and shook it. It is natural to sit or squat to give birth. Lying down forces the body to work harder, against the tremendous flow of muscle and the urge to live. In the bag of memories that I am carrying into the next world is a living image of my son covered with blood, amniotic fluid, and vernix. He has taken his first breath, and the doctor is stitching me up. The nurse is checking vitals. My son and I stare at each other in the stunning moment of that sacred vow. His eyes are black and knowing. He looks to me with full knowledge of his place in this story. He will soon forget it. I look at him with an unbearable love, and with troubling questions: What have I gotten myself into? How will we ever make it through? I have never felt so vulnerable. We both slept hard, the weight of chemicals heavy in our bodies. We were exhausted from the journey. When I woke early the next morning, I yearned to hold and nurse my child. I was not allowed to sit up or walk because of the possibility of paralysis (one of the drug’s side effects). When I finally got to hold my boy, the nurse stood guard as if I would hurt him. I was young and Indian and therefore ignorant. I bent my mind around her judgment and cradled my son, checking out his perfect little body. I was proud of what my body and spirit had accomplished despite the alienation of giving birth in a hospital.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I treated you as a friend, and it was your duty as my servant never to do anything that would undermine my honour, or that of my family. Many another man, in my place, would have had you ignominiously put to death, but I could not bring myself to do such a thing. Now, since what you say is true, and you are a man of gentle birth, I desire with your consent to put an end to your suffering and release you from your wretched, captive existence, at the same time restoring both your own reputation and mine. As you are aware, my daughter Spina, for whom you formed so loving but improper an attachment, is a widow, and she has a good, large dowry. You are acquainted with her ways, and with her father and mother; of your own present condition, I say nothing. Therefore, if you are agreeable, I am willing to convert a dishonourable friendship into an honourable marriage, and allow you to live with her here in my house for as long as you wish to remain, as though you were my own son.’ Giannotto’s fine physique had been wasted away by his imprisonment, but the innate nobility of his spirit was in no way impaired, and he still loved his lady as wholeheartedly as ever. So that, although he found himself in the other man’s power, and wished for nothing better than what Currado was proposing, he had not the slightest hesitation in following the promptings of his noble heart. ‘Currado,’ he replied, ‘neither the lust for power nor the desire for riches nor any other motive has ever led me to harbour treacherous designs against

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In his educational work he enjoyed the assistance of the accomplished poet Wulfin. Theodulph was himself a scholar, well read both in secular and religious literature.1150 He had also a taste for architecture, and restored many convents and churches and built the splendid basilica at Germigny, which was modelled after that at Aix la Chapelle. His love for the Bible comes out not only in the revision of the Vulgate he had made, and practically in his exhortation to his clergy to expound it, but also in those costly copies of the Bible which are such masterpieces of calligraphy.1151 He was moreover the first poet of his day, which however is not equivalent to saying that he had much genius. His productions, especially his didactic poems, are highly praised and prized for their pictures of the times, rather than for their poetical power. From one of his minor poems the interesting fact comes out that he had been married and had a daughter called Gisla,

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Father,’ said the lady, ‘it’s a mystery to me how the priest manages to do it, but there isn’t a door in the house that is so securely locked that it doesn’t spring open the moment he touches it. He tells me that before opening the door of my bedroom, he recites a certain formula that sends my husband straight off to sleep, and as soon as he hears him snoring, he opens the door, comes into the bedroom, and lies down at my side. And the system never fails.’ ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘this is an evil business, and you must put a stop to it at all costs.’ ‘Father,’ said the lady, ‘I don’t think I could ever do that, for I love him too dearly.’ ‘Then I cannot give you absolution,’ he said. ‘I am sorry about that,’ said the lady. ‘But I didn’t come here to tell lies, and if I thought I could do as you are asking, I should tell you so.’ ‘I am truly sorry for you, madam,’ he said, ‘for I see that your soul will be lost if this is allowed to continue. But I will do you a favour, and go to the trouble of saying certain special prayers to God on your behalf, which may possibly assist you. I shall send one of my seminarists to call on you, and you are to tell him whether or not my prayers have had any effect. And if they achieve their object, we can go on from there.’ ‘Oh, Father,’ she said, ‘don’t send anyone to the house, because if my husband were to hear about it, he is so madly jealous that nothing in the world could dissuade him from believing that some great evil was afoot, and he’d be impossible to live with for a whole year.’ ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said, ‘for I shall make sure that everything is so discreetly arranged that you won’t hear a word out of him.’ ‘If you can manage to do that,’ said the lady, ‘then I have no objection.’ And after reciting the Confiteor and receiving her penance, she got up from where she was kneeling at his feet and went off to listen to the mass. Fuming with rage, the luckless husband went away, abandoned his priestly disguise, and returned home, determined to find a way of catching this priest and his wife together, so that he could bring the pair of them to book. When his wife came back from the church, she saw from the expression on her husband’s face that she had spoilt his Christmas for him; but he tried as best he could to conceal what he had done and what he thought he had discovered. After breakfast, having made up his mind to spend the following night lying in wait near the front door to see whether the priest would turn up, he said to his wife:

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Not long after Rainy Dawn was born on a hot July day in Albuquerque when everyone was wishing for rain. I can still close my eyes and open them four floors up looking south and west from the hospital in the approximate direction of Acoma— and farther on to the roofs of the houses of the gods who have learned there are no endings, only beginnings. That day so hot, heat danced in waves off bright car tops, we both stood poised at that door from the east, listened for a long time to the sound of our grandmothers’ voices the brushing wind of sacred wings, the rattle of rain drops in dry gourds. I had to participate in the dreaming of you into memory, cupped your head in the bowl of my body as ancestors lined up to give you a name made of their dreams cast once more into this stew of precious spirit and flesh. And let you go, as I am letting you go once more in this ceremony of the living. And when you were born I held you wet and unfolding, like a butterfly newly born from the chrysalis of my body. And breathed with you as you breathed your first breath. Then was your promise to take it on like the rest of us, this immense journey, for love, for rain. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] I felt close to my ancestors when I painted. This is how I came to know my grandmother Naomi Harjo Foster intimately. I never got to know her in person because she died long before I was born. Throughout childhood I studied her drawing of two horses running in a storm, which lived on the wall of our living room. And now, as an art major at the university, I found her in the long silences, in between the long, meditative breaths that happen when you interact with the soul of creation. I began to know her within the memory of my hands as they sketched. Bones have consciousness. Within marrow is memory. I heard her soft voice and saw where my father got his sensitive, dreaming eyes. Like her, he did not like the hard edges of earth existence. He drank to soften them. She painted to make a doorway between realms. As I moved pencil across paper and brush across canvas, my grandmother existed again. She was as present as these words. I saw a woman who liked soft velvets, a clean-cut line. She was often perceived as “strange” because she appeared closer to death than to life. I felt sadness as grief in her lungs. The grief came from the tears of thousands of our tribe when we were uprooted and forced to walk the long miles west to Indian Territory. They were the tears of the dead and the tears of those who remained to bury the dead. We had to keep walking.