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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: All the differences assigned between the Old and New Laws are gathered from their relative perfection and imperfection. For the precepts of every law prescribe acts of virtue. Now the imperfect, who as yet are not possessed of a virtuous habit, are directed in one way to perform virtuous acts, while those who are perfected by the possession of virtuous habits are directed in another way. For those who as yet are not endowed with virtuous habits, are directed to the performance of virtuous acts by reason of some outward cause: for instance, by the threat of punishment, or the promise of some extrinsic rewards, such as honor, riches, or the like. Hence the Old Law, which was given to men who were imperfect, that is, who had not yet received spiritual grace, was called the “law of fear,” inasmuch as it induced men to observe its commandments by threatening them with penalties; and is spoken of as containing temporal promises. On the other hand, those who are possessed of virtue, are inclined to do virtuous deeds through love of virtue, not on account of some extrinsic punishment or reward. Hence the New Law which derives its pre-eminence from the spiritual grace instilled into our hearts, is called the “Law of love”: and it is described as containing spiritual and eternal promises, which are objects of the virtues, chiefly of charity. Accordingly such persons are inclined of themselves to those objects, not as to something foreign but as to something of their own. For this reason, too, the Old Law is described as “restraining the hand, not the will” [*Peter Lombard, Sent. iii, D, 40]; since when a man refrains from some sins through fear of being punished, his will does not shrink simply from sin, as does the will of a man who refrains from sin through love of righteousness: and hence the New Law, which is the Law of love, is said to restrain the will. Nevertheless there were some in the state of the Old Testament who, having charity and the grace of the Holy Ghost, looked chiefly to spiritual and eternal promises: and in this respect they belonged to the New Law. In like manner in the New Testament there are some carnal men who have not yet attained to the perfection of the New Law; and these it was necessary, even under the New Testament, to lead to virtuous action by the fear of punishment and by temporal promises. But although the Old Law contained precepts of charity, nevertheless it did not confer the Holy Ghost by Whom “charity . . . is spread abroad in our hearts” (Rom. 5:5).

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxv. 3) if He said, Other gifts are shared with you by those who are not mine; birth, life, sense, reason, and such good things as belong alike to man and brutes; nay, and tongues, sacraments, prophecy, knowledge, faith, bestowing of goods upon the poor, giving the body to be burned: but forasmuch as they have not charity, they are tinkling cymbals, they are nothing: nothing profits them. 13:36–3836. Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. 37. Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. 38. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxiii. 3) Great is love, and stronger than fire; nothing can stop its course. Peter the most ardent of all, as soon as he hears our Lord say, Whither I go ye cannot follow Me now, asks, Lord, whither goest Thou? AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxvi. 1) The disciple asks this, as if he were ready to follow. But our Lord saw his heart; Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now; He checks his forwardness, but does not destroy his hope; nay, confirms it; But thou shalt follow Me afterwards. Why hastenest thou, Peter? The Rock has not yet established thee with His spirit. Be not lifted up with presumptions, thou canst not now; be not cast down with despair, thou shalt follow Me afterwards. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxii. 1) Peter, on receiving this answer, does not check his desire, but hastily conceives favourable hopes from it, and having got rid of the fear of betraying our Lord, feels secure, and becomes himself the interrogator, while the rest are silent: Peter said unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake. What sayest thou, Peter? He hath said, thou canst not, and thou sayest, thou canst: wherefore thou shalt know by experience, that thy love is nothing, unless thou art enabled from above: Jesus answered him, Will thou lay down thy life for My sake? BEDE. Which sentence may be read in two ways: either as affirming, thou shalt lay down thy life for My sake, but now through fear of the death of the body, thou shalt incur spiritual death: or as mocking; as if He said,

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

  To some degree, the “shoulda, woulda, couldas” are normal, especially when we remember how we humans evolved in order to stay safe. Who hasn’t been a Monday-morning quarterback analyzing better outcomes in retrospect? We all do it. But when left unchecked, the Monday-morning quarterbacking makes it way harder to pick up the pieces and move forward. Which makes sense, as that retrospective focus is keeping us rooted in an unchangeable past. Yeah, I should have done all of those things, but the facts are clear: I didn’t, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Acceptance reminds us to be compassionate with ourselves. Some days, I’m on board with the limitations of my life; other days, not so much. Acceptance allows me to handle the highs, lows, and contradictions. To forgive life so I can spend more time healing. Even if you’ve lost something or someone so important that it feels impossible to ever be happy again, love is still waiting for you. In fact, love never dies. Tapping into that love is how we keep living fully. Loving ourselves through the pain. Through the difficult times and uncertainty. No matter what happens, choosing to love. People come, jobs go, money tightens, hearts get broken—love remains. This is how we survive and eventually thrive again. Life is a terminal condition. We’re all going to die, but how many of us will truly live? When you answer this question honestly, you will be changed in the best possible way, just like I have been. Acceptance is what will help you get there. CHAPTER 7REST IN LOVE [image file=image_rsrc1VT.jpg] The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. — ERNEST BECKER, THE DENIAL OF DEATH For most of us, death remains our number one fear. Yet end-of-life conversations are often taboo, which is ironic considering it’s the one thing every living being has in common. We’ll talk about other tough stuff like money, fear, and the chlamydia we got from that rugby player we met in a New York City bar in the ’90s (or is that just me?), before we’ll go near that which will remain unspeakable. Instead, we shove death under the rug with other unsightly things, like pennies and lint-covered Tic Tacs. Our fear of death starts at a young age. My friend Suzanne O’Brien, RN, founder of Doulagivers, an organization that offers end-of-life care training, says that our first experiences with death often shape our fears around it. (Anyone else completely traumatized as a kid by Bambi?)

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

  ALCUIN. He is called Simon, son of John, John being his natural father. But mystically, Simon is obedience, John grace, a name well befitting him who was so obedient to God’s grace, that he loved our Lord more ardently than any of the others. Such virtue arising from divine gift, not mere human will. AUGUSTINE. While our Lord was being condemned to death, he feared, and denied Him. But by His resurrection Christ implanted love in his heart, and drove away fear. Peter denied, because he feared to die: but when our Lord was risen from the dead, and by His death destroyed death, what should he fear? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. On this confession of his love, our Lord commends His sheep to him: He saith unto him, Feed My lambs: as if there were no way of Peter’s shewing his love for Him, but by being a faithful shepherd, under the chief Shepherd. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxxviii. 1) That which most of all attracts the Divine love is care and love for our neighbour. Our Lord passing by the rest, addresses this command to Peter: he being the chief of the Apostles, the mouth of the disciples, and head of the college. Our Lord remembers no more his sin in denying Him, or brings that as a charge against him, but commits to him at once the superintendence over his brethren. If thou lovest Me, have rule over thy brethren, shew forth that love which thou hast evidenced throughout, and that life which thou saidst thou wouldest lay down for Me, lay down for the sheep. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. cxxii) Well doth He say to Peter, Lovest thou Me (ἀγαπᾶς diligis), and Peter answer, Amo Te (φελῶ amo), and our Lord replies again, Feed My lambs. Whereby, it appears that amor and dilectio are the same thing: especially as our Lord the third time He speaks does not say, Diligis Me, but Amas Me. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? A third time our Lord asks Peter whether he loves Him. Three confessions are made to answer to the three denials; that the tongue might shew as much love as it had fear, and life gained draw out the voice as much as death threatened. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxxviii) A third time He asks the same question, and gives the same command; to shew of what importance He esteems the superintendence of His own sheep, and how He regards it as the greatest proof of love to Him. THEOPHYLACT. Thence is taken the custom of threefold confession in baptism.

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

  On the contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 5) that “goodwill is neither friendship nor love, but the beginning of friendship.” Now charity is friendship, as stated above ([2572]Q[23], A[1]). Therefore goodwill is not the same as to love considered as an act of charity. I answer that, Goodwill properly speaking is that act of the will whereby we wish well to another. Now this act of the will differs from actual love, considered not only as being in the sensitive appetite but also as being in the intellective appetite or will. For the love which is in the sensitive appetite is a passion. Now every passion seeks its object with a certain eagerness. And the passion of love is not aroused suddenly, but is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved; wherefore the Philosopher, showing the difference between goodwill and the love which is a passion, says (Ethic. ix, 5) that goodwill does not imply impetuosity or desire, that is to say, has not an eager inclination, because it is by the sole judgment of his reason that one man wishes another well. Again such like love arises from previous acquaintance, whereas goodwill sometimes arises suddenly, as happens to us if we look on at a boxing-match, and we wish one of the boxers to win. But the love, which is in the intellective appetite, also differs from goodwill, because it denotes a certain union of affections between the lover and the beloved, in as much as the lover deems the beloved as somewhat united to him, or belonging to him, and so tends towards him. On the other hand, goodwill is a simple act of the will, whereby we wish a person well, even without presupposing the aforesaid union of the affections with him. Accordingly, to love, considered as an act of charity, includes goodwill, but such dilection or love adds union of affections, wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 5) that “goodwill is a beginning of friendship.” Reply to Objection 1: The Philosopher, by thus defining “to love,” does not describe it fully, but mentions only that part of its definition in which the act of love is chiefly manifested. Reply to Objection 2: To love is indeed an act of the will tending to the good, but it adds a certain union with the beloved, which union is not denoted by goodwill. Reply to Objection 3: These things mentioned by the Philosopher belong to friendship because they arise from a man’s love for himself, as he says in the same passage, in so far as a man does all these things in respect of his friend, even as he does them to himself: and this belongs to the aforesaid union of the affections.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  He came immediately, on his bicycle, soft and anxious. I let him read over a long letter I wrote, containing all the things I told my journal. He did not protest. He laughed, half sadly. Then he sat on the couch, completely absorbed by the terror of knowing how easily everything could crumble. I waited, baffled by his brooding. Finally he awoke to say, “I am only what you imagine me to be.” I don’t know what else we said. I realized both the extent and the limits of Henry’s love, of his being possessed by June against his will, just as I am, and of his loving me deeply, as I do him. When he said to me, in torment, “I need to know what you want,” I told him, “Nothing more than this closeness. When all is right between us I can bear my life.” He said, “I realized that a holiday in Spain for a few months is no solution. And I know that if we took it, you would never return to Hugo. I would not let you return.” I answered, “And I cannot think any further than a holiday because of Hugo.” We looked at one another and knew how much each of us was paying for his weakness: he, for his slavery to passion, and I, for my slavery to pity. The days that followed were unique, resplendent. Talk and passion, work and passion. What I need to keep, to hold warmly against my breast, are the hours in that top-floor room. Henry could not leave me. He stayed two days, which culminated in such a burst of sexual frenzy that I was left burning for long afterwards. I have ceased worrying. I lie back and just love him, and I get such love from him as would justify my whole existence. I stutter when I mention his name. Each day he is a new man, with new depths and new sensibilities. I received a photograph of him today. It was a strange feeling to see so clearly the full mouth, the bestial nose, the pale, Faustian eyes—that mixture of delicacy and animalism, of toughness and sensibility. I feel that I have loved the most remarkable man of our age. Most of my life has been spent in enriching as well as I could the long, long waiting for the great events which fill me now so deeply that I am overwhelmed. Now I understand the terrific restlessness, the tragic sense of failure, the deep discontent. I was waiting. This is the hour of expansion, of true living. All the rest was a preparation. Thirty years of anguished watchfulness. And now these are the days I lived for. And to be aware of this, so fully aware, that is what is almost humanly unbearable. Human beings cannot bear the knowledge of the future. To me, the knowledge of the present is just as dazzling. To be so acutely rich and to know it\

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Yesterday Henry received a cable from June: “I miss you. I must join you soon.” And Henry is angry. “I don’t want June to come and torture me and hurt you, Anaïs. I love you. I don’t want to lose you. As soon as you left the other day I began to miss you. ‘Miss’ is not the word; to crave for you. I want to be married to you. You’re precious, rare. I see all of you now. I see the face of the child, the dancer, the sensual woman. You’ve made me happy. Terribly happy.” We come together with despair and frenzy. I am in such ecstasy I’m weeping. I want to be soldered to him. “It is not me,” he says. “It’s something you’ve created out of your own wonderful self.” I force him to admit it is he himself I love, a Henry I know well. But I know June’s power over both of us. I say to him, “June has power over me, but it is you I love. There is a difference. Do you see it?” “That is the way I love you,” he answers. “And you have power, too, of another kind.” “What I’m afraid of is that June will separate us not only physically but completely.” “Don’t give in to June,” says Henry. “Keep your wonderful mind. Be strong.” “I could say the same to you,” I answer. “Yet I know all of your mind will be of no use to you.” “It will be different this time.” The menace. We have talked. We are cpiiet. Fred has come into the room. We are plotting so I can spend a few days with Henry before I go away on vacation. Fred leaves us. Henry kisses me again. God, what kisses. I can’t sleep when I think of them. We lie close together. Henry says I am wrapped around him like a cat. I kiss his throat. When his throat shows in the open shirt I can’t talk, desire moves me so. I whisper hoarsely in his ear, “I love you,” three times in such a tone that he is frightened. “I love you so much I even want to give you women!” Today I can’t work because yesterday’s feelings lie ready to pounce on me out of the softness of the garden. They are in the air, in the smells, in the sun, on myself, like the clothes I wear. It is too much to love this way. I need him near me every moment—more than near, inside of me. I hate June, and yet there is her beauty. June and I melted together, as it should be. Henry must have both. I want both, too. And June? June wants everything; because her beauty demands it.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  One thing is certain, though: If one day I were forced to choose between Hugo and Henry, I would choose Hugo without hesitation. The liberty which I have given myself in Hugo’s name, like a gift from him, only increases the richness and potency of my love for him. Amorality, or a more complicated morality, aims at the ultimate loyalty and overlooks the immediate and literal one. I share with Henry an anger, not at the imperfections of women, but at the foulness of living itself, which perhaps this volume proclaims more loudly than all Henry’s curses. Henry threatened yesterday to make me absolutely drunk, which became effective only when I read Fred’s powdered and crystallized letters to Céline. Our talk breaks and splashes like a kaleidoscope. When Henry goes to the kitchen, Fred and I talk as if we had thrown a bridge from fortress to fortress and there is nothing we can hold back. Words, like a procession, rush across a bridge which is usually drawn up and has even grown rusted from the love of solitude. Then there is Henry, constantly in communication with the world, as if sitting forever at the head of a gigantic banquet. In the small kitchen, without moving, we three almost touch each other. Henry moved to put a hand on my shoulder and to kiss me, and Fred would not look at the kiss. I sat bowed under the two kinds of love. There was Henry’s warmth, his voice, his hands, his mouth. And there were Fred’s feelings for me, touching a more delicate region, so that while Henry kissed me I wanted to extend my hand to Fred and hold both loves. Henry was bursting with universal generosity: “I give you Anaïs, Fred. You see how I am. I want everybody to love Anaïs. She’s wonderful.” “She’s too wonderful,” said Fred. “You don’t deserve her.” “You are a wasp,” cried Henry, the hurt giant. “Besides,” said Fred, “you haven’t given me Anaïs. I have my own Anaïs, a different one from yours. I’ve taken her without asking either of you. Stay all night, Anaïs. We need you.” “Yes, yes,” cried Henry. I sit like an idol, and it is Fred who criticizes the giant because the giant does not worship me. “Curse it, Anaïs,” Henry says, “I don’t worship you, but I love you. I feel I can give you as much as Eduardo, for example. I could not hurt you. When I see you sitting there, so fragile, I know I won’t hurt you.” “I don’t want worship,” says the idol. “You give me—well, what you give me is better than worship.” Fred’s hand trembles when he offers me a glass of wine. The wine stirs the center of my body, and it is throbbing. Henry goes out for a moment. Fred and I are silent. It is Fred who has said, “No, I don’t like big banquets. I love a dinner like this, for two or three.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  “I’m sending you my book on Lawrence and the cape. I love you, June, and you know how acutely, how desperately. You know that no one can say or do anything to shake my love. I have taken you into myself, whole. You need have no fear of being unmasked, only loved.” To Fred: “If you want to be good to me, don’t talk any more against June. Today I realized that your defense of me only engraves June more deeply into that groove of my being. Do you know how I learned this? Yesterday I listened to you, you remember, with a kind of gratitude. I didn’t say very much for June. And then this morning I wrote June a love letter, moved by a selfless instinct of protection, as if I were punishing myself for having listened to praise of myself that lessened June’s value. And Henry, I know, feels the same way and acts the same way. But I understand all you said and feel and are, and I like you for it, immensely.” Eduardo says to Dr. Allendy, his psychoanalyst, “I don’t know if Anaïs loved me or not, whether she fooled me or fooled herself about her feelings.” “She loved you,” said Allendy. “I can see that by her preoccupation with you.” “But you don’t know her,” said Eduardo. “You don’t know the extent of her sympathy for others, her power of < self-sacrifice.” To me Eduardo says, “What did happen, Anaïs? What intuition did you have at that moment when you asked me to let you go? What did you realize?” “Just as I wrote you—an awareness of the importance of your conquering me, to give you the self-confidence you lacked, a stirring of the old love, which we mistook . . .” Oh, I am slippery. So he rationalizes, in self-protection. “Then you, too, have a feeling of incest.” The frailty of his confidence (If I conquer Anaïs, I have conquered everything) is so pitiable. I acted for his needs. I didn’t obey my instincts, my imperative sureness that I want only Henry. But when I think I have done good and been utterly fair, it seems I have done evil, in a subtle, insidious way. I have suggested to Eduardo a doubt about his passion, which has been fostered by psychoanalysis, artificially stimulated by it. The scientific tampering with emotions. For the first time I am against analysis. Perhaps it did help Eduardo to realize his passion, but it does not add to his strength, basically. I feel it is a short-lived thing, something painfully squeezed out, a thin essence pressed out of herbs.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  And faithfulness is one of the perfections. It seems stupid and unintelligent to me now because I have bigger plans in mind. Perfection is static, and I am in full progress. The faithful wife is only one phase, one moment, one metamorphosis, one condition. I might have found a husband who loved me less exclusively, but it would not be Hugo, and whatever is Hugo, whatever Hugo is composed of, I love. We deal in different values. For his faithfulness, I give him my imagination—even my talent, if you will. I have never been satisfied with our accounts. But they must stand. He will come home tonight and I will watch him. Finer than any man I know, the nearly perfect man. Touchingly perfect. The hours I have spent in cafés are the only ones I call living, apart from writing. My resentment grows because of the stupidity of Hugo’s bank life. When I go home, I know I go back to the banker. He smells of it. I abhor it. Poor Hugo. Everything is made right by a talk with Henry all afternoon—that mixture of intellect and emotionalism which I like. He can be swept away completely. We talked without noticing the time until Hugo came home, and we had dinner together. Henry remarked on the green fat-bellied bottle of wine and the hissing of the slightly damp log in the fire. He thinks I must know about life because I posed for painters. The extent of my innocence would be incredible to him. How late I have awakened and with what furor! What does it matter what Henry thinks of me? He’ll know soon enough exactly what I am. He has a caricatural mind. I’ll see myself in caricature. Hugo says rightly that it takes great hate to make a caricature. Henry and my friend Natasha [Troubetskoi] have great hates. I do not. Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. For example now, I hate the bank and everything connected with it. I also hate Dutch paintings, penis-sucking, parties, and cold rainy weather. But I am more preoccupied with loving. I am absorbed by Henry, who is uncertain, self-critical, sincere. I get a tremendous and selfish pleasure out of our gift of money to him. What do I think of when I sit by the fire? To get a bunch of railroad tickets for Henry; to buy him Albertine disparue. Henry wants to read Albertine disparue ? Quick, I won’t be happy until he has the book. I am an ass. Nobody likes to have these things done for them, nobody but Eduardo, and even he, in certain moods, prefers utter indifference. I would like to give Henry a home, marvelous food, an income. If I were rich, I would not be rich very long. Drake no longer interests me in the least.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Letter to Henry: “Last night I wondered how I could show you, by what it would cost me most to do, that I love you; and I could only think of sending you money to spend on a woman. I thought of the Negress. I like her because at least I can feel my own softness melting into her. Please don’t go to too cheap, too ordinary a woman. And then don’t tell me about it, since I am sure you have already done it. Let me believe I have given it to you.” At the same time with what joy I receive Hugo here. And I have found great pleasure, even frenzy in his love-making. Somehow, in a place like this, I cannot miss Henry, because Henry doesn’t belong with mountains, lakes, health, solitude, sleep. Hugo triumphs here, with his very beautiful legs in Tyrolean shorts. I rest here with him, and my life in Paris with Henry is like my night dreams. Hugo and I take up our tenderness and teasing. A week away from me matures him. I believe we cannot mature together. Together we are soft, weak, young. Depending on each other too much. Together we live in an unreal world. And we live in the outside world, as Hugo says, only because we have this one, ours, to fall back on. He was distressed by my perfect nose. “But I loved that funny little tilt. I don’t like to see you change.” Finally I convinced him of the aesthetic progress. I wonder what Henry will say. In a way I dread receiving a letter from him. It will bring fever. I have fallen back on the security of Hugo’s devotion. I rest on his big hairy chest. Occasionally I get a little bored and impatient, but I do not show it. We are happy together over little things. People take us, as always, for honeymooners. What I wonder about now is whether I stay in Hugo’s world because I lack courage to venture out completely, or is it that I have not yet loved anyone enough to want to give up my life with Hugo? If he were to die, I would not go to Henry; that is clear to me.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  “Only of my husband’s love.” “But you need more than one.” “Always his, and an older man’s.” I was amazed that a child’s confidence, once shaken and destroyed, should have such repercussions on a whole life. Father’s insufficient love and abandonment remain indelible. Why was it not effaced by all the loves I inspired since then? Eduardo wanted Dr. Allendy and me to talk for the sake of what I would write down. And I am willing, but on my own terms. That is, I go to him infrequently, which gives me time to absorb the material and work inspirationally and which also makes me less dependent. Yet yesterday when he said, “You seem very well equilibrated, and I don’t believe you need me,” I suddenly felt a great distress at being left alone again. My work stabilizes me, I utilize my sufferings, but I would like to confide to a human being what I confide to my journal. There is always something barred from my relationships. With Eduardo I cannot talk about Henry. I can only talk about my illness. With Henry I cannot talk about analysis. He is not an analyst, he is an epic writer, an unconscious Dostoevsky. With Fred I can be surrealistic but not the woman who wrote a study of Lawrence. Allendy said, “You acted beautifully towards Eduardo in all this, as few women would act, for, in general, a woman considers man as an enemy, and she is glad when she can humiliate him or demolish him.” Joaquin says that when he read my journal he became aware that there was more in Henry’s gift to me than just a sensual experience; that he did answer to some needs which Hugo could not satisfy. He still thinks that I lose myself in Henry, give myself to experiences which are not really true to my nature. Allendy, too, begins to imply that I normally should not love a Henry, and that the cause of my loving him must be removed. Here I turn fiercely against science and feel a great loyalty to my instincts. Psychoanalysis may force me to be more truthful. Already I realize certain feelings I have, like the fear of being hurt. When Henry calls up, I am suspended to every inflection of his voice. If he is busy at the newspaper office, if there is somebody there, or he sounds casual, I am immediately distressed. Today Henry awoke and said to himself, “To hell with angelical or literary women!” Then he tells me he has written me two letters since Sunday, which are waiting for me at Natasha’s, and I am so elated. I despise my own oversensitiveness, which requires so much reassurance, but which also makes me so aware of other people’s sensitivity. Hugo’s great love should have given me confidence, and my continued craving to be loved and understood is certainly abnormal.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Shades always down, windows never washed, atmosphere sepulchral. Floor constantly strewn with plaster of Paris, tools, paints, books, cigarette butts, garbage, soiled dishes, pots. Jean running around all day in overalls. June, always half naked and complaining of the cold. What is all that to me? A side of June I will never know. And the other side, which belongs to me, is full of magic and dazzling with beauty and fineness. These details only show me the two-sideness of all things, my own two-sideness, now craving abject living, animality. To Henry: “You say, ‘Gide has mind, Dostoevsky has the other thing, and it is what Dostoevsky has that really matters.’ For you and for me the highest moment, the keenest joy, is not when our minds dominate but when we lose our minds, and you and I both lose it in the same way, through love. We have lost our minds to June. . . . “Tell me something. You have a feeling for the macabre. Your imagination is attracted by certain grim images. Did you tell Bertha that living with June was like carrying a corpse about? Do you really mind June’s neuroses and illness, or are you merely cursing at what enslaves you?” I have an acute struggle to keep Henry, whom I don’t want to give up, and to keep the relationship between June and me a precious secret. Yesterday at the cafe he tore bits of our story from me. It hurt and maddened me. I came home and wrote him a long, feverish letter. If he showed this letter to June, I would lose her. Henry cannot make me love her less, but he can torment me by making her appear more unreal, more selfless, by proving that there is no June, only an image, invented by us, by Henry’s mind, and my poetry. He talked about influences on her. The influence of Jean, the woman in New York. This was torture to me. And then he said, “You mystify me.” And I said nothing. Is he going to hate me? When we first met he was so warm and so responsive to my presence. His whole body was aware of me. We leaned over eagerly to look at the book I had brought him. We were both exultant. He forgot to drink his coffee. I am trapped, between the beauty of June and the genius of Henry. In a different way, I am devoted to both, a part of me goes out to each of them. But I love June madly, unreasoningly. Henry gives me life, June gives me death. I must choose, and I cannot. For me to give Henry all the feelings I have had about June is exactly like giving my body and soul to him. To Henry: “Perhaps you didn’t realize it, but for the first time today you shocked and startled me out of a dream. All your notes, your stories of June never hurt me.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  And yet Hugo has grown these days. We laugh together about it. Now that we are both free of fears, we are living easily. He has been traveling with a man from the bank, a plain, simple, joyous man. And they have drunk together, exchanged obscene stories, and danced in cabarets. Hugo has at last been taken up by men. He has loved it. And I say: “Go away, travel a great deal. We both need that. We can’t have it together. We can’t give it to each other.” I think of Fred observing Henry’s sacrileges against good taste: lighting a match on the sole of his shoe, putting salt on the pâté de foie gras, drinking the wrong wines, eating sauerkraut. And I love it all. Yesterday Henry received a cable from June: “I miss you. I must join you soon.” And Henry is angry. “I don’t want June to come and torture me and hurt you, Anaïs. I love you. I don’t want to lose you. As soon as you left the other day I began to miss you. ‘Miss’ is not the word; to crave for you. I want to be married to you. You’re precious, rare. I see all of you now. I see the face of the child, the dancer, the sensual woman. You’ve made me happy. Terribly happy.” We come together with despair and frenzy. I am in such ecstasy I’m weeping. I want to be soldered to him. “It is not me,” he says. “It’s something you’ve created out of your own wonderful self.” I force him to admit it is he himself I love, a Henry I know well. But I know June’s power over both of us. I say to him, “June has power over me, but it is you I love. There is a difference. Do you see it?” “That is the way I love you,” he answers. “And you have power, too, of another kind.” “What I’m afraid of is that June will separate us not only physically but completely.” “Don’t give in to June,” says Henry. “Keep your wonderful mind. Be strong.” “I could say the same to you,” I answer. “Yet I know all of your mind will be of no use to you.” “It will be different this time.” The menace. We have talked. We are cpiiet. Fred has come into the room. We are plotting so I can spend a few days with Henry before I go away on vacation. Fred leaves us. Henry kisses me again. God, what kisses. I can’t sleep when I think of them. We lie close together. Henry says I am wrapped around him like a cat. I kiss his throat. When his throat shows in the open shirt I can’t talk, desire moves me so. I whisper hoarsely in his ear, “I love you,” three times in such a tone that he is frightened. “I love you so much I even want to give you women!”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  When I say I love him sensually, I do not altogether mean that; I love him in many other ways—when he is laughing at the movies, or talking very quietly in the kitchen; I love his humility, his sensitiveness, the core of bitterness and fury in him. He was going to write June a crushing letter, full of accusations. And at that moment I brought him a document which justifies all her actions. It was as if he had raised his hand to strike her and I had to stop him. I know now June is a drug addict. I have found descriptions in a book that verify what I have vaguely sensed. Henry was overwhelmed. He can be so easily duped. June talked constantly about drugs, like the criminal who returns to the scene of the crime. She needed to mention the subject while violently denying ever taking drugs (two or three times, perhaps). Henry began to piece the fragments together. When I saw his despair, I grew frightened. “You must not be too sure of what I say. I am sometimes too quick to synthesize.” But I felt I was right. Here, he passed the only ethical judgment I have ever heard him pass on self-destruction, that taking drugs denoted a deficiency in one’s nature. This is what made the relationship hopeless. I felt such pity for him when he began to question how much June loved him, comparing her love with mine. I defended her, saying she loves him in her own way, which is inhuman and fantastic. But it is true that I would not leave him as she does. It is true, as he says, that her greatest love is self-love. But it is her self-love that has made her a great character. Henry is sometimes amazed by my admiration of June. Last night he said, “At the beginning you very much wanted June to come back. Am I right in thinking you don’t want it now?” “Yes.” And I have also admitted other things, after never answering his questions about lovers. Once, in his arms, he pressed me so feelingly, saying, “Tell me you haven’t deceived me; it would hurt me terribly, tell me,” that I told him I had not. I gave away my mystery, knowing I shouldn’t, yet incapable of anything else. To exasperate a man may be a pleasure; but to lie in Henry’s arms and surrender to him so entirely seemed a greater pleasure to me—to feel his body relaxing and to see him falling asleep with his happiness. The day after, I can always recover my feminine shield, take up the unnecessary and hateful war. In broad daylight I can give him back a little anguish, jealousy, fear, because he wants them, Henry, the Eternal Husband. He loved his suffering with June, even though he also loves his relief from suffering with me.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  us more than the pity of others, the measured love of others, the selflessness of others. I will not tear her to pieces as Henry has done. I will love her. I will enrich her. I will immortalize her. Henry sends a desperate letter from Dijon. Dostoevsky in Siberia, only Siberia was far more interesting, from what poor Henry says. I send him a telegram: “Resign and come home to Versailles.” And I send him money. I think about him most of the day. But I would never let Henry touch me. I struggle to find the exact reason, and I can only find it in his own language. “I don’t want just to be pissed on.” Do you do such things, June, do you? Or does Henry caricature your desires? Are you half sunk in such sophisticated, such obscure, such tremendous feelings that Henry’s bordellos seem almost laughable? He counts on me to understand, because, like him, I am a writer. I must know. It must be clear to me. To his surprise I tell him just what you say: “It is not the same thing.” There is one world forever closed to him—the world which contains our abstract talks, our kiss, our ecstasies. He senses uneasily that there is a certain side of you he has not grasped, everything that is left out of his novel. You slip between his fingers! The richness of Hugo. His power to love, to forgive, to give, to understand. God, but I am a blessed woman. I will be home tomorrow night. I am finished with hotel life and solitude at night. February Louveciennes. I came home to a soft and ardent lover. I carry about rich, heavy letters from Henry. Avalanches. I have tacked up on the wall of my writing room Henry’s two big pages of words, culled here and there, and a panoramic map of his life, intended for an unwritten novel. I will cover the walls with words. It will be la chambre des mots. Hugo found my journals on John Erskine and read them while I was away, with a last pang of curiosity. There was nothing in them he did not know, but he suffered. I would live through it again, yes, and Hugo knows it. Also while I was away, he found my black lace underwear, kissed it, found the odor of me, and inhaled it with such joy.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  After the soft, easy way Henry slips into my body, Hugo is terrible to bear. At such moments I feel I may go mad and reveal everything. Henry has a picture of Mona Paiva, the dancer, tacked over his washstand, along with two photos of June, one of me, and some of his watercolors. I give him a tin box for his letters and manuscripts, and inside the lid he pastes the program of Joaquin’s concert. On his door he tacks notes on Spain. I cut out the top of my box of powder— N’aimez que Moi, Caron, Rue de la Paix. He carries this in his vest pocket. He also carries one of my wine-colored handkerchiefs. Last night he said, “I am so rich because I have you. I feel that there will always be a lot doing between us, that there will always be changes and novelties.” He almost said, “We’ll be connected and interested in each other beyond the connection of the moment.” And at this thought, my heart tightened, and I felt the need to touch his suit, his arm, to know he was there and, temporarily, all mine. I float along, basking in memories of Henry—how his face looks at certain moments, the mischief of his mouth, the exact sound of his voice, at times husky, the firm square hold of his hand, how he looked in Hugo’s discarded green coat, his laughter at the movies. He cannot make a movement which does not reverberate in my body. He is no taller than I am. Our mouths are on the same level. He rubs his hands when he is excited, repeats words, shakes his head like a bear. He has a serious, chaste look on his face when he works. In a crowd, I guess at his presence before I see him. I realized today, with great amusement, the extent to which Henry has shaken down my old gravity, with his literary pranks, his crazy manifestos, his contradictions, his changes of mood, his grotesque humor. I can see myself as a ridiculous person, because of my constant efforts to understand others. We heard that Richard Osborn had gone mad. “Hurrah!” said Henry. “Let’s go and see him. Let’s have a drink first. This is rare, superb; it doesn’t happen every day. I hope he is really insane.” I was at first a bit disconcerted, but very quickly I caught the flavor of the humor, and I asked for more. Henry has taught me to play. I had played before, in my own way, with sandal-footed humor, but his is a lusty humor, which I have enjoyed to the point of hysteria—like the morning the dawn caught us still talking. Henry and I fell on his bed, exhausted, but he was still talking deliriously about the strainer that was thrown by mistake in the water closet, about black lace underwear and coral, etc., out of which he later created that inimitable parody of my novel.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Henry would understand my abandoning him out of consideration for Hugo, but to do so would be hypocritical of me. One thing is certain, though: If one day I were forced to choose between Hugo and Henry, I would choose Hugo without hesitation. The liberty which I have given myself in Hugo’s name, like a gift from him, only increases the richness and potency of my love for him. Amorality, or a more complicated morality, aims at the ultimate loyalty and overlooks the immediate and literal one. I share with Henry an anger, not at the imperfections of women, but at the foulness of living itself, which perhaps this volume proclaims more loudly than all Henry’s curses. Henry threatened yesterday to make me absolutely drunk, which became effective only when I read Fred’s powdered and crystallized letters to Céline. Our talk breaks and splashes like a kaleidoscope. When Henry goes to the kitchen, Fred and I talk as if we had thrown a bridge from fortress to fortress and there is nothing we can hold back. Words, like a procession, rush across a bridge which is usually drawn up and has even grown rusted from the love of solitude. Then there is Henry, constantly in communication with the world, as if sitting forever at the head of a gigantic banquet. In the small kitchen, without moving, we three almost touch each other. Henry moved to put a hand on my shoulder and to kiss me, and Fred would not look at the kiss. I sat bowed under the two kinds of love. There was Henry’s warmth, his voice, his hands, his mouth. And there were Fred’s feelings for me, touching a more delicate region, so that while Henry kissed me I wanted to extend my hand to Fred and hold both loves. Henry was bursting with universal generosity: “I give you Anaïs, Fred. You see how I am. I want everybody to love Anaïs. She’s wonderful.” “She’s too wonderful,” said Fred. “You don’t deserve her.” “You are a wasp,” cried Henry, the hurt giant. “Besides,” said Fred, “you haven’t given me Anaïs. I have my own Anaïs, a different one from yours. I’ve taken her without asking either of you. Stay all night, Anaïs. We need you.” “Yes, yes,” cried Henry. I sit like an idol, and it is Fred who criticizes the giant because the giant does not worship me. “Curse it, Anaïs,” Henry says, “I don’t worship you, but I love you. I feel I can give you as much as Eduardo, for example. I could not hurt you. When I see you sitting there, so fragile, I know I won’t hurt you.” “I don’t want worship,” says the idol. “You give me—well, what you give me is better than worship.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  My strength, as Hugo tells me later when I discover he hates June, is soft, indirect, delicate, insinuating, creative, tender, womanly. Hers is like that of a man. Hugo tells me she has a mannish neck, a mannish voice, and coarse hands. Don’t I see? No, I do not see, or if I see, I don’t care. Hugo admits he is jealous. From the very first minute they hated each other. “Does she think that with her woman’s sensibility and subtlety she can love anything in you that I have not loved?” It is true. Hugo has been infinitely tender with me, but while he talks of June I think of our hands locked together. She does not reach the same sexual center of my being that man reaches; she does not touch that. What, then, has she moved in me? I have wanted to possess her as if I were a man, but I have also wanted her to love me with the eyes, the hands, the senses that only women have. It is a soft and subtle penetration. I hate Henry for daring to injure her enormous and shallow pride in herself. June’s superiority arouses his hatred, even a feeling of revenge. He eyes my gentle, homely maid, Emilia. His offense makes me love June. I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her. She will be June plus all that I contain. January 1932 We met, June and I, at American Express. I knew she would be late, and I did not mind. I was there before the hour, almost ill with tenseness. I would see her, in full daylight, advance out of the crowd. Could it be possible? I was afraid that I would stand there exactly as I had stood in other places, watching a crowd and knowing no June would ever appear because June was a product of my imagination. I could hardly believe she would arrive by those streets, cross such a boulevard, emerge out of a handful of dark, faceless people, walk into that place. What a joy to watch that crowd scurrying and then to see her striding, resplendent, incredible, towards me. I hold her warm hand. She is going for mail. Doesn’t the man at American Express see the wonder of her? Nobody like her ever called for mail. Did any woman ever wear shabby shoes, a shabby black dress, a shabby dark blue cape, and an old violet hat as she wears them?

• From Henry and June (1986)

  When we walked together through the streets, bodies close together, arm in arm, hands locked, I could not talk. We were walking over the world, over reality, into ecstasy. When she smelled my handkerchief, she inhaled me. When I clothed her beauty, I possessed her. She said, “There are so many things I would love to do with you. With you I would take opium.” June, who does not accept a gift which has no symbolical significance; June, who washes laundry to buy herself a bit of perfume; June, who is not afraid of poverty and drabness and who is untouched by it, untouched by the drunkenness of her friends; June, who judges, selects, discards people with severity, who knows, when she is telling her endless anecdotes, that they are ways of escape, keeping herself all the more secret behind that profuse talk. Secretly mine. Hugo begins to understand. Reality exists only between him and me, in our love. All the rest, dreams. Our love is solved. I can be faithful. I was terrifyingly happy during the night. But I must kiss her, I must kiss her. If she had wanted to, yesterday I would have sat on the floor, with my head against her knees. But she would not have it. Yet at the station while we wait for the train she begs for my hand. I call out her name. We stand pressed together, faces almost touching. I smile at her while the train leaves. I turn away. The stationmaster wants to sell me some charity tickets. I buy them and give them to him, wishing him luck at the lottery. He gets the benefit of my wanting to give to June, to whom one cannot give anything. What a secret language we talk, undertones, overtones, nuances, abstractions, symbols. Then we return to Hugo and to Henry, filled with an incandescence which frightens them both. Henry is uneasy. Hugo is sad. What is this powerful magical thing we give ourselves to, June and I, when we are together? Wonder! Wonder! It comes with her. Last night, after June, filled with June, I could not bear Hugo reading the newspapers and talking about trusts and a successful day. He understood—he does understand—but he couldn’t share, he could not grasp the incandescent. He teased me. He was humorous. He was immensely lovable and warm. But I could not come back. So I lay on the couch, smoking, and thinking of June. At the station, I had fainted. The intensity is shattering us both. She is glad to be leaving. She is less yielding than I am. She really wants to escape from that which is giving her life. She does not like my power, whereas I take joy in submitting to her.