Pride

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 Querelle (1953)

  Querelle stood there with his mouth half-open, his palate a little dry. "No, sure, that's all right. I'll take care of all that." Mario was wearing a very plainly cut double-breasted maroon suit, with a red tie. Like Querelle and Nono (Norbert) , he was drinking white wine, but like a true cop he seemed completely disinterested in their conversation. Querelle recognized the authority in the man's thighs and chest, the sobriety of movement that endows a man with total power: this, again, stemming from an undisputed moral authority, a perfect social organization, a gun, and the right to use it. Mario was one of the masters. Once more Querelle held out his hand, and then, turning up the collar of his peacoat, he headed for the back door: it was indeed better to leave through the small yard at the back of the house. "So long." Mario's voice, as we have observed, was loud and impassive. On hearing it, Querelle felt reassured in some strange way. As soon as he left the ho�se he compelled himself to be aware of his attire, his sailor's attributes: above all, of the stiff collar of the peacoat, which he felt protected his neck like armor. Within its seemingly massive enclosure he could feel how delicate his neck was, yet strong and proud, and at the base of that neck, the tender bones of the nape, the perfect point of vulnerability. Flexing his knees lightly he could feel them touching the fabric of his pants. Quereiie was stepping out like a true sailor who sees himself as one hundred per cent just that, a sailor. Rolling the shoulders, from left to right, but not excessively. He thought of hitching the coat up a bit and putting his hands in the vertical front pockets, but changed his mind and instead raised a finger to his beret and pushed it to the back of his head, almost to the nape of his neck, so that its edge brushed against the upturned collar. Such tangible certainty of being every inch a sailor reassured him and calmed him down. 32 I JEAN GENET

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Stay, stay,” he began, interrupting Oblonsky. “You talk of his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don’t. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother—God knows whom she wasn’t mixed up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that’s another matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while you make Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but you get rents from your lands and I don’t know what, while I don’t and so I prize what’s come to me from my ancestors or been won by hard work.... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful of this world, and who can be bought for twopence halfpenny.” “Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the class of those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Levin was reckoning him too. Levin’s warmth gave him genuine pleasure. “Whom are you attacking? Though a good deal is not true that you say about Vronsky, but I won’t talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back with me to Moscow, and....” “No; I don’t know whether you know it or not, but I don’t care. And I tell you—I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating reminiscence.” “What ever for? What nonsense!” “But we won’t talk about it. Please forgive me, if I’ve been nasty,” said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been in the morning. “You’re not angry with me, Stiva? Please don’t be angry,” he said, and smiling, he took his hand. “Of course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I’m glad we’ve spoken openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is unusually good—why not go? I couldn’t sleep the night anyway, but I might go straight from shooting to the station.” “Capital.” Chapter 18

• From Querelle (1953)

  A tinge of irony began to spread over his features, then over his entire body, giving him and his relaxed posture leaning back against the wall an air of amused sarcasm. Altered by the raising of an eyebrow, to match the crooked smile, his expression became somewhat malicious as he continued his scrutiny of the two young men. The smile vanished from Gil's lips, as if the entire ball of string had been unrolled, and at the same moment expired on Roger's face; but four seconds later, regaining his breath and taking up the song again, Gil, once more on top of the table, resumed his smile, which brought back and sustained, until the very last couplet of the song, the smile on Roger's lips. Not for a second did their eyes stray from the eyes of the other. Gil was singing. Quere11e shifted his shoulders against the wall of the bistro. He became aware of himself, felt himself pitting his own living mass, the powerful muscles of his l;>ack, against the black and indestructible matter of that wall. Those two shadowy substances struggled in silence. Quere11e knew the beauty of his back. We shall see how, a few days later, he was to secretly dedicate it to Lieutenant Seblon. Almost without moving, he let his shoulders ripple against the wa11, its stones. He was a strong man. One hand-the other remaining in the pocket of his peacoat-raised a half-smoked cigarette to his lips, still holding the half-smile. Robert and the two other sailors were oblivious to everything but the song. Querelle retained his smile. To use an expression much favored by soldiers, Quere11e shone by his absence. After letting a little smoke drift in the t4 I JEAN GENET

• From Querelle (1953)

  He had his arm round the girl's shoulders. She half turned and let herself be carried along by the powerful strides of this big brute. Querelle didn't even wait until they got out of the well-lit part of the street. In a patch of shadow between two shop fronts he pushed her up against the wall. Excited, hardly worried about being seen, the girl put her arms round his neck and held on to him. Querelle breathed into her hair, kissed her face, murmured obscenities into her ear which made her laugh, nervously. He wound his legs around hers. From time to time, he withdrew his face for a moment and glanced up and down the street. When he saw how busy it was, he grew even prouder. His triumph was a public one. That was the moment at which he saw, between two officers from another ship, Lieutenant Seblon come walking down the street. Querelle went on smiling at the girl. When the officers passed the shadowy area, 211 I QUERELLE Querelle hugged her harder and kissed her on the mouth, pushing his tongue into it: but first of all, and retaining an interior smile, he imbued his back, his shoulders, his buttocks, with the entire significance of the moment-his entire powers of seduction directed themselves to that side of his body, and it became his true face, his sailor face. He tried to make it smile, to excite. Querelle wished for this so fervently that an imperceptible shudder ran the length of his spine, from neck to tailbone. He dedicated his most precious parts to the officer. He was sure he had been recognized. The Lieutenant's first impulse was to challenge Querelle in order to punish him for making such an indecent exhibition of himself in public. His respect for discipline was closely connected with his taste for pomp and circumstance-and with his conviction that he owed his actuality to the rigors of an order without which neither his rank nor his authority was able to function-: thus, to betray this order, even just a little, meant self-destruction. Yet he didn't budge. He would not have acted even without the presence of his fellow officers; while he knew the inner need to enforce discipline, to infringe it, or to tolerate an infraction, could make him feel the pleasure of freedom and even complicity with the culprit. In fact, it seemed quite elegant and "really rich'' (those were the words in his mind ) to show a smiling indulgence toward such a ravishing couple of young lovers. Querelle let the girl go, but as he did not dare to walk on in the direction of the port, where the officers were heading, he slowly retraced his steps. He felt both happy and discontented. Soon after he had turned around, a young girl detached herself from a group of friends and came running toward him, a big smile on her face.

• From Querelle (1953)

  She was literally shedding it. First, her shoulders appeared, white and divided from her torso by the narrow straps of velvet or satin holding up her slip and her breasts under all that black lace and a pink bra; then Madame Lysiane stepped out of the dress, ready for the joys of the bed. Very upright on her extremely high and pointed Louis Quinze heels she advanced toward the bed on which Robert was already reclining. She gazed at him, not a thought in her head. Suddenly she turned round, exclaiming : ''Ah!" and headed for her mahogany dressing table. She took off the four rings she wore on her fingers, and then, with motions equaiiy well-rounded, but even more sweeping than befo e, she undid her hair. As the shivers running through a lion's body make desert or jungle vibrate from ground to sky, so her room shook, from the short-pile rug to the last fold of the window curtains, when Madame Lysiane shook her head, her angry mane, her shoulders white as alabaster (or mother-of-pearl ) : proudly she set out, every night, to vanquish the already conquered male. She came back to the bubbling brook under the palm trees where Robert went on smoking, oblivious to everything but the physical aspect of the ceiling. "\Von't you let me in?" Casuaiiy, he flicked aside the comer of the sheet, so that his mistress could join him on the bed. Such lack of gallantry hurt �1adame Lysiane, yet that hurt was one she delighted in every time, because it showed that there still were realms to conquer. She was a courageous, yet vanquished woman. Her physical splendor, the wealth of her breasts and her hair, the total opulence of her body, as it offered itself to men, was, by its very nature (because all opulence is virginal ) , easily conquered and enjoyed. It is not beauty we are talking about, in her case. 180 I JEAN GENET Beauty can be an obstacle more fearsome than barbed wire: it can be pointed and barbed, it can kill at a distance, like a burst of gunfire. The opulence of Madame Lysiane's flesh was the exact form of her innate generosity. Her skin was white and soft. As soon as she had stretched out (Madame Lysiane hated the expression "go to bed," and respecting her sense of propriety we won't use it when discussing her, but hope to say a word or two about the "delicacy" of forbidden words ) , stretched out, she looked around the room. With a slow, circu·

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Chapter 20 Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These principles laid down as invariable rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of principles did not fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the future difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no guiding clue. His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind clear and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the code of principles by which he was guided. She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him, and he loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who had a right to the same, or even more, respect than a lawful wife. He would have had his hand chopped off before he would have allowed himself by a word, by a hint, to humiliate her, or even to fall short of the fullest respect a woman could look for. His attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know, might suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any did so, he was ready to force all who might speak to be silent and to respect the non-existent honor of the woman he loved. His attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. From the moment that Anna loved Vronsky, he had regarded his own right over her as the one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a superfluous and tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable position, but how could that be helped? The one thing the husband had a right to was to demand satisfaction with a weapon in his hand, and Vronsky was prepared for this at any minute.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Architectural critics and urban theorists reprinted the photographs in books with names like God’s Own Junkyard . Forty years later, the same four photographs still stand for the places in which most of us live. The photographs were images of the developers’ crude pride. They report that the grid, briefly empty of associations, is just a pattern predicting itself. The theorists and critics did not look again, forty years later, to see the intersections or calculate in them the joining of interests, limited but attainable, like the leasing of chain stores in a shopping mall. 14 In the Los Angeles basin, the possibility of rain is ignored until the rain falls. Since it hardly ever rains, ignorance has prevailed as climate. 15 The local newspaper in 1956 used a picture to show how much had changed. This picture “Harvesting, 1900.” It shows a team of mules, a combine harvester, the field, and the men. The mules are sawteeth of black; the combine is a grand contraption in gray; the field is all design. You cannot make out the men. They are patterns in the photograph. 16 My father’s kindness was as pure and indifferent as a certain kind of saint’s. My father did not have a passion for his giving; it came from him, perhaps after much spiritual calculation, as a product might come from a conveyor belt. The houses in this suburb were built the same way. As many as a hundred a day were begun between 1950 and 1952, more than five hundred a week. No two floor plans were built next to each other; no neighbor had to stare into his reflection across the street. Teams of men built the houses. Some men poured concrete into the ranks of foundations from mixing trucks waiting in a mile-long line. Other men threw down floors nailed with pneumatic hammers, tilted up the framing, and scaled the rafters with cedar shingles lifted by conveyer belts from the beds of specially built trucks. You are mistaken if you consider this a criticism, either of my father or the houses. 17 Construction crews in thirty-man teams built the rows of houses. Each team of workmen was subdivided by specialty. One man with a pneumatic hammer nailed subfloors on five houses a day. The framers finished lengths of precut lumber with new, electric saws. Another crew operated a power door hanger. Rough plaster laid by one crew was smoothed a few minutes later by another. Subcontractors delivered construction materials in exact amounts directly to each building site. Expediters coordinated the work from radio-equipped cars. The foreman used a loudspeaker to direct the movement of his men. 18 Mr. F laid rafters for hundreds of these houses. According to Mr. F, it didn’t take much skill. The most experienced men did the framing, by assembling pieces that had been precut at the mill. Laying rafters only required knowing how to swing a hammer all day.

• From Querelle (1953)

  The young boy turned rigid . He was waiting for Robert to defend his sullied honor until the blood flowed again . The big men would fight again . Nevertheless Querelle, as he went off to the right, was already thinking of ways to rub his brother's pale face in to some of his own medicine, so that, once they were quits in terms of their apparen t ( and real ) hatred, he might rejoin him within himself. His head held high, straight, rigid, staring straight ahead, his lips but a narrow line, h is elbows held close to the body-his entire bearing stiffer and more martinetlike than usual, he directed his steps toward the city ramparts, more exactly, toward the old wall in which he had hidden his treasure. The closer he got to his destination, the less bitter he felt. He did not, now, exactly remember the deeds of derring-do that had put him in possession of that treasure, but the jewels themselves-their mere proximity-were the effective proof of his courage and of his existence. Arrived on the slope facing the holy wall, invisible in the fog, Querelle stopped and stood still, legs wide apart, hands in the pockets of his peacoat : he knew himself to be very close to one of the hearths he had lit on the surface of the globe, he was enveloped by their sweet radiance. As his wealth, to him, was a refuge where he could feel comforted by his sense of power, Querelle was already making his hated brother the heir to it. Only one thing still bothered and depressed h im a little, the fact that Dcdc had been present at 140 I JEAN GENET the brawl. It wasn't shame, rather a vague notion that the kid wasn't to be trusted. Querelle knew that he had achieved a certain notoriety in this city of Brest. Night, facing the sea. Neither the sea nor the night can bring me peace of mind. On the contrary. It's enough for the shadow of a sailor to move past . . . In that shadow, and thanks to it, he can't help being anything but beautiful. Between its Banks this ship holds such delicious brutes, clad in white and azure. Whom to choose, from among these males? I could hardly let go of one before desiring another. The only reassuring thought: that there is only one sailor, the sailor. And each individual I see is merely the momentary representation-fragmentary as well, and diminished in scale-of The Sailor. He has all the characteristics: vigor, toughness, beauty, cruelty, etc.-all but one: multiplicity. Each sailor passing by may thus he compared to Him. Even if all sailors were to appear in front of me, alive and present, all of them-not one of them, separately, could he the sailor they jointly compose, who can only exist in my imagination, who can only live in me, and for me. This idea sets my mind a t rest.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  The bride may dispense with a tiara of orange blossoms securing her finger-tip veil, nor does she carry a white orchid in a prayer book. The bride’s little daughter might have added to the ceremonies uniting H. and H. a touch of vivid vermeil; but I knew I would not dare be too tender with cornered Lolita yet, and therefore agreed it was not worth while tearing the child away from her beloved Camp Q. My soi-disant passionate and lonely Charlotte was in everyday life matter-of-fact and gregarious. Moreover, I discovered that although she could not control her heart or her cries, she was a woman of principle. Immediately after she had become more or less my mistress (despite the stimulants, her “nervous, eager chéri ”—a heroic chéri! —had some initial trouble, for which, however, he amply compensated her by a fantastic display of old-world endearments), good Charlotte interviewed me about my relations with God. I could have answered that on that score my mind was open; I said, instead—paying my tribute to a pious platitude—that I believed in a cosmic spirit. Looking down at her fingernails, she also asked me had I not in my family a certain strange strain. I countered by inquiring whether she would still want to marry me if my father’s maternal grandfather had been, say, a Turk. She said it did not matter a bit; but that, if she ever found out I did not believe in Our Christian God, she would commit suicide. She said it so solemnly that it gave me the creeps. It was then I knew she was a woman of principle. Oh, she was very genteel: she said “excuse me” whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope an ahnvelope, and when talking to her lady-friends referred to me as Mr. Humbert. I thought it would please her if I entered the community trailing some glamor after me. On the day of our wedding a little interview with me appeared in the Society Column of the Ramsdale Journal , with a photograph of Charlotte, one eyebrow up and a misprint in her name (“Hazer”). Despite this contretemps, the publicity warmed the porcelain cockles of her heart—and made my rattles shake with awful glee. By engaging in church work as well as by getting to know the better mothers of Lo’s schoolmates, Charlotte in the course of twenty months or so had managed to become if not a prominent, at least an acceptable citizen, but never before had she come under that thrilling rubrique , and it was I who put her there, Mr. Edgar H. Humbert (I threw in the “Edgar” just for the heck of it), “writer and explorer.” McCoo’s brother, when taking it down, asked me what I had written.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was much under the influence of her _engouement_, as she called it, for Madame Stahl, and still more for Varenka. She saw that Kitty did not merely imitate Varenka in her conduct, but unconsciously imitated her in her manner of walking, of talking, of blinking her eyes. But later on the princess noticed that, apart from this adoration, some kind of serious spiritual change was taking place in her daughter. The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read a French testament that Madame Stahl had given her—a thing she had never done before; that she avoided society acquaintances and associated with the sick people who were under Varenka’s protection, and especially one poor family, that of a sick painter, Petrov. Kitty was unmistakably proud of playing the part of a sister of mercy in that family. All this was well enough, and the princess had nothing to say against it, especially as Petrov’s wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German princess, noticing Kitty’s devotion, praised her, calling her an angel of consolation. All this would have been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so indeed she told her. “_Il ne faut jamais rien outrer_,” she said to her. Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought that one could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was concerned. What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give one’s cloak if one’s coat were taken? But the princess disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact that she felt her daughter did not care to show her all her heart. Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not respect or did not love her mother, but simply because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone sooner than to her mother. “How is it Anna Pavlovna’s not been to see us for so long?” the princess said one day of Madame Petrova. “I’ve asked her, but she seems put out about something.” “No, I’ve not noticed it, maman,” said Kitty, flushing hotly. “Is it long since you went to see them?” “We’re meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,” answered Kitty. “Well, you can go,” answered the princess, gazing at her daughter’s embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment. That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow. And the princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Though Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could not exert any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt at reformation could lead to nothing but falsity; though in passing through these difficult moments he had not once thought of seeking guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it seemed to him, with the requirements of religion, this religious sanction to his decision gave him complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his peace of mind. He was pleased to think that, even in such an important crisis in life, no one would be able to say that he had not acted in accordance with the principles of that religion whose banner he had always held aloft amid the general coolness and indifference. As he pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his wife should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt, she could never regain his esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any sort of reason that his existence should be troubled, and that he should suffer because she was a bad and faithless wife. “Yes, time will pass; time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be reestablished,” Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; “so far reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.” Chapter 14 As he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered entirely to his decision, but was even composing in his head the letter he would write to his wife. Going into the porter’s room, Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at the letters and papers brought from his office, and directed that they should be brought to him in his study. “The horses can be taken out and I will see no one,” he said in answer to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his agreeable frame of mind, emphasizing the words, “see no one.” In his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had already been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He cracked his knuckles and sat down, sorting out his writing appurtenances. Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to write, without pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form of address to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural “_vous_,” which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding Russian form.

• From Querelle (1953)

  181 I QUE.RELLE sexes-th ree feet joined together, embracing to the best of their clumsy ability. Robert crushed his cigarette out on the marble top of the night table, turned toward Lysiane, and kissed her; but after the first kiss she raised both her hands to his head, held it between them, pushed it back and gazed at it : "You know, you're beautiful." He smiled. As he had nothing to say, he attempted another kiss. He did not know how to look at her, not loving her, and this awkwardness resulted in his looking very severe and manly. At the same time, the tremulous intensity of the lovelorn look in his mistress' eyes-that seemed to shatter as it struck his face-made him feel big and strong. "He can afford to," Madame Lysiane thought. By wh ich she meant: he can afford to appear impassive, he is such a fiery one. And Robert remained impassive. The already voluptuous flames lit up in the woman's eyes went on battering against, yet caressing, the hard little stones in her lover's face. (Madame Lysiane had very beautiful eyes.) "My darling." She moved in for another kiss. Things began to stir in Robert. Gently, and providing him with the reassurance th at all th e treasures of the room were sti11 his to use, the temperature rose in his dong. Never again-that is to say, until he came would anyth ing be able to remind him that he had once been a lazy and skinny docker, bored with his job, and that he might well become one again. Forever now he was a king, a Caesar, well nourished and clad in a coronation robe, in the vestments of power that is calm and certain, thus differing from the con queror's breeches. He had a hard-on. Feeling the touch of his hard and vibrant member, Lysiane gave her blonde flesh the order to quiver. "You're so wonderfull" She was waiting for the preliminaries of the real work, from the moment Robert slipped under the covers and started n uzzling around like a truffie-pig in the rich-smelling, dark and

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the 2nd of June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexey Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All attention was turned upon him. Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental and radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung to the quick, began defending himself, and altogether a stormy sitting followed; but Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the next day in a certain Petersburg circle nothing else was talked of but this sitting. Alexey Alexandrovitch’s success had been even greater than he had anticipated. Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up, recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent, when the chief secretary of his department, anxious to flatter him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning what had happened in the Commission.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed, beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces, with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for which she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety of the June morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay waltz then in fashion, and above all, the appearance of the healthy attendants, seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in conjunction with these slowly moving, dying figures gathered together from all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of pride and, as it were, of the return of youth, with his favorite daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost like a man not dressed in a crowd. “Present me to your new friends,” he said to his daughter, squeezing her hand with his elbow. “I like even your horrid Soden for making you so well again. Only it’s melancholy, very melancholy here. Who’s that?” Kitty mentioned the names of all the people they met, with some of whom she was acquainted and some not. At the entrance of the garden they met the blind lady, Madame Berthe, with her guide, and the prince was delighted to see the old Frenchwoman’s face light up when she heard Kitty’s voice. She at once began talking to him with French exaggerated politeness, applauding him for having such a delightful daughter, extolling Kitty to the skies before her face, and calling her a treasure, a pearl, and a consoling angel. “Well, she’s the second angel, then,” said the prince, smiling. “she calls Mademoiselle Varenka angel number one.” “Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she’s a real angel, allez,” Madame Berthe assented. In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly towards them carrying an elegant red bag. “Here is papa come,” Kitty said to her. Varenka made—simply and naturally as she did everything—a movement between a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began talking to the prince, without shyness, naturally, as she talked to everyone. “Of course I know you; I know you very well,” the prince said to her with a smile, in which Kitty detected with joy that her father liked her friend. “Where are you off to in such haste?” “Maman’s here,” she said, turning to Kitty. “She has not slept all night, and the doctor advised her to go out. I’m taking her her work.” “So that’s angel number one?” said the prince when Varenka had gone on.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Staying up to do it, then watching her deliver it on television, was a high I won’t forget. Second, I helped to found—and then campaigned with—women’s movement groups, for instance, the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), which supported pro-equality women for elected and appointed office, and then Voters for Choice, a political action committee that helped male and female candidates from either party who supported reproductive freedom. Ms. magazine rated presidential candidates on everything from pay equity and child care to the Machismo Factor—by which we meant support for the military and the death penalty. This did nothing to keep Richard Nixon out of the White House, but some Australian women who visited the Ms. office told us they used our rating system to help bring in the Labor Party. Also, the NWPC compiled the names of diverse women qualified for appointment to high office. More than forty years later, Mitt Romney would claim personal credit for having “binders full of women” as governor of Massachusetts, advancing it as one of his credentials for the presidency. In fact, those binders had been prepared and pressed on him by the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, as the group had done for decades. Only in my sixties did I arrive at my third and favorite form of campaigning, independent of any organization. With a few friends who were also activists and organizers, I rode cross-country in a van, found places to stay in swing states where local activists told us we were needed, and held meetings at school gyms, libraries, shopping centers, bowling alleys, rock concerts, backyard barbecues, campus rallies, subway stops, union halls, immigration lines, movie theaters, and bagel shops—all the places where voters are but candidates rarely go. Because I wasn’t a surrogate for any candidate, I didn’t have to say only what the candidate would say, or risk getting him or her into trouble by saying more. Because we all were free agents who paid our own way by raising small sums from friends, we could be trusted messengers, people who benefited in no way except as citizens and could say why we were supporting a candidate. By the time of Obama’s election campaign for the White House in 2008, we had extended these independent road trips to distant places. In the swing state of Colorado, which was crucial to Obama’s victory and also had some threatening ballot initiatives, we rented a house in Denver and, using it as a hub, traveled each day to different living rooms and community centers full of Independent or Republican women, the groups most likely to be neglected by the Democratic Party. They felt abandoned by the Republican War Against Women, yet were turned off by accusatory Democratic women saying, “How can you be a Republican?” Instead, we talked about the reasons to support political leaders who support us, never mind party labels. It was the kind of campaigning only a movement could do.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  We passed and re-passed through the whole gamut of American roadside restaurants, from the lowly Eat with its deer head (dark trace of long tear at inner canthus), “humorous” picture post cards of the posterior “ Kurort” type, impaled guest checks, life savers, sunglasses, adman visions of celestial sundaes, one half of a chocolate cake under glass, and several horribly experienced flies zigzagging over the sticky sugar-pour on the ignoble counter; and all the way to the expensive place with the subdued lights, preposterously poor table linen, inept waiters (ex-convicts or college boys), the roan back of a screen actress, the sable eyebrows of her male of the moment, and an orchestra of zoot-suiters with trumpets. We inspected the world’s largest stalagmite in a cave where three southeastern states have a family reunion; admission by age; adults one dollar, pubescents sixty cents. A granite obelisk commemorating the Battle of Blue Licks, with old bones and Indian pottery in the museum nearby, Lo a dime, very reasonable. The present log cabin boldly simulating the past log cabin where Lincoln was born. A boulder, with a plaque, in memory of the author of “Trees” (by now we are in Poplar Cove, N.C., reached by what my kind, tolerant, usually so restrained tour book angrily calls “a very narrow road, poorly maintained,” to which, though no Kilmerite, I subscribe). From a hired motor-boat operated by an elderly, but still repulsively handsome White Russian, a baron they said (Lo’s palms were damp, the little fool), who had known in California good old Maximovich and Valeria, we could distinguish the inaccessible “millionaires’ colony” on an island, somewhere off the Georgia coast. We inspected further: a collection of European hotel picture post cards in a museum devoted to hobbies at a Mississippi resort, where with a hot wave of pride I discovered a colored photo of my father’s Mirana, its striped awnings, its flag flying above the retouched palm trees. “So what?” said Lo, squinting at the bronzed owner of an expensive car who had followed us into the Hobby House. Relics of the cotton era. A forest in Arkansas and, on her brown shoulder, a raised purple-pink swelling (the work of some gnat) which I eased of its beautiful transparent poison between my long thumbnails and then sucked till I was gorged on her spicy blood. Bourbon Street (in a town named New Orleans) whose sidewalks, said the tour book, “may [I liked the “may”] feature entertainment by pickaninnies who will [I liked the “will” even better] tap-dance for pennies” (what fun), while “its numerous small and intimate night clubs are thronged with visitors” (naughty). Collections of frontier lore. Ante-bellum homes with iron-trellis balconies and hand-worked stairs, the kind down which movie ladies with sun-kissed shoulders run in rich Technicolor, holding up the fronts of their flounced skirts with both little hands in that special way, and the devoted Negress shaking her head on the upper landing.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Nabokov’s father was an outspoken foe of anti-Semitism. He wrote “The Blood Bath of Kishinev,” a famous protest against the 1903 pogrom, and was fined by the tsarist government for the fiery articles he wrote about the Beiliss trial (Maurice Samuel mentions him several times in his book on the Beiliss case, Blood Accusation [1966]—coincidentally published at the same time as Bernard Malamud’s novel based on it, The Fixer—and quotes from Nabokov’s reportage). Nabokov fils was also outraged by anti-Semitism, and, because his wife is Jewish, was sensitive to it in a most acutely personal way (witness the empathy for “poor Irving” [Irving]). Nabokov recalled going into a New England inn years ago, accompanied by his son and his son’s friend. Opening the menu, Nabokov noticed therein the succinct stipulation “Gentiles Only.” He called over the waitress and asked her what the management would do if there appeared at the door that very moment a bearded and berobed man, leading a mule bearing his pregnant wife, all of them dusty and tired from a long journey. “What … what are you talking about?” the waitress stammered. “I am talking about Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Nabokov, as he pointed to the phrase in question, rose from the table, and led his party from the restaurant. “My son was very proud of me,” said Nabokov. In Pale Fire, Kinbote and Shade discuss prejudice at length (note to line 470; pp. 216–218). Reader! Bruder!: German; “brother.” An echo of the last line of Au Lecteur, the prefatory poem in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1857): “—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable, —monfrère!” (“Hypocrite reader —my fellow man—my brother.”). See oh Baudelaire!. the Gazette’s … Dr. Braddock and his group: see here. Gazette was not italicized in the 1958 edition; the error has been corrected. portrait … as a … brute: an obvious play on Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). In searching for a title for his manuscript, the narrator of Despair considers “Portrait of the Artist in a Mirror,” but rejects it as “too jejune, too à la mode” (p. 201). For Joyce, see outspoken book: Ulysses. Brute Force: the actual title of a movie released by Universal Pictures in 1947, directed by Jules Dassin, and starring Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, and Yvonne De Carlo. Possessed was released in 1947 by Warner Brothers, directed by Curtis Bernhardt, and starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, and Raymond Massey. The titles gloss H.H.’s circumstances, and Brute Force—a prison film, which Nabokov thought he had seen—is thematically apt. Omen Faustum: Latin; Lucky Omen, or Lucky Strike cigarettes (pointed out to me by the philologist and Latinist, Professor F. Colson Robinson), a companion to “Dromes”; related to dies faustus, “a day of favorable omen,” or, specifically, “a day on which Roman religious law permitted secular activities.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  211 I QUERELLE th e Commissioner. He so to speak slapped him in the fa ce. He knew that the creation of grave beauty that characterizes a true work of art often begins in the most despicable kind of ham acting. He caught up with Gil, surpassed him. The same mechanism that had made it possible for Lieutenant Seblon to say it wasn't Gil who attacked him, had formerly caused him to appear cowardly and mean in regard to Quere11e. "Come on, buddy! Cough it up, or I'll strangle you! Jewish combat. Five against one." He particularly liked th at last expression. It fit in perfectly with his present state of mind. He felt proud of not fearing anything, of standing there, so safe from reprisals, in his gold braided uniform. Such cowardice is a great force. But only a slight twist is needed for it to turn around to find another adversary, then finding it in the coward himself. The way he punished or maltreated Quere11e without reason was no doubt cowardly, but even while he was committing such acts, he was aware of the presence of a will, or strength-his strength: and it wa s this force (discovered, then cultivated, in the center of his cowardice ) that enabled him ·to insult the police officer. F�ally, ca rried away on his own generous breath and sustained by the luminous presence of the actual criminal, he ended up by accus ing himself for the theft of the money in question. When he heard the Commissioner give the detective the order to arrest him, Seblon hoped they would recognize his prestige as an offic er, but as soon as he found himself in the lockup, feeling certain th at there would be an incredible scandal, he was happy. Ever since he slew the Armenian, Querelle had always clea ned out the corpses. It is rare not to find the idea of robbery following the idea and the act of murder (and of those two, the ac t often is the less despicable one). When a young tough hits a homosexual who has accosted him, he as often as not gets his

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable boy, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses in their separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a very tall chestnut horse, had been brought there, and must be standing among them. Even more than his mare, Vronsky longed to see Gladiator, whom he had never seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of the race course it was not merely impossible for him to see the horse, but improper even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing along the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box on the left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with white legs. He knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man turning away from the sight of another man’s open letter, he turned round and went into Frou-Frou’s stall. “The horse is here belonging to Mak... Mak... I never can say the name,” said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger and dirty nail towards Gladiator’s stall. “Mahotin? Yes, he’s my most serious rival,” said Vronsky. “If you were riding him,” said the Englishman, “I’d bet on you.” “Frou-Frou’s more nervous; he’s stronger,” said Vronsky, smiling at the compliment to his riding. “In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck,” said the Englishman. Of pluck—that is, energy and courage—Vronsky did not merely feel that he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was firmly convinced that no one in the world could have more of this “pluck” than he had. “Don’t you think I want more thinning down?” “Oh, no,” answered the Englishman. “Please, don’t speak loud. The mare’s fidgety,” he added, nodding towards the horse-box, before which they were standing, and from which came the sound of restless stamping in the straw.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  This tension was symbolized by the distance between the posh oceanfront hotel where many Democratic officials, media people, and Friedan were staying, and the tacky motel where NWPC headquarters were located and where most of us slept. As Nora Ephron would report, “Every day, Friedan would call N.W.P.C. headquarters at the dingy Betsy Ross Hotel downtown and threaten to call a press conference to expose the caucus; every day…movement leaders would watch with a kind of horrified fascination to see what Betty Friedan would do next.” But women’s new presence and activism in and around that convention created enough good news to make up for all the worry. More than a third of the delegates were women—up from 13 percent four years earlier—surpassing even Eleanor Roosevelt’s record of 15 percent in 1936; not her (or our) goal of 50/50, but a record. There was a strong women’s plank in the platform, where four years ago there had been none. Our only serious failure was our inability to get a plank supporting reproductive freedom included—because Senator George McGovern, the probable nominee, feared running on it. Still, it was the first time this human right had been raised as an issue and voted on by a major party. We also saw our NWPC co-founder Shirley Chisholm receive a roll call vote of 151 delegates for her symbolic run for political equality and against the Vietnam War, which she had opposed in her first speech in Congress.6 Shirley’s mere presence in the race brought the NWPC goals to national attention, and although her total campaign budget was probably what other presidential campaigns spent on take-out food, she had just kept going. Indeed, she might have received more delegate votes if McGovern hadn’t passed the victory point before the roll call was completed. Even Theodore White, a chronicler of presidential campaigns who was rarely interested in the nonpowerful, reported that the NWPC had put women on the political map. About our impoverished headquarters at what he called the “derelict” Betsy Ross Hotel, he wrote: “One might be amused by the high-octave span of women’s voices gathered together, or the rooms with the unmade beds, half-unpacked suitcases, yogurt cartons, chests covered with blue jeans and bras—but only briefly. The Betsy Ross Hotel was a power center. Mimeograph and Xerox machines spewed out leaflets…the switchboard jammed; fuses blew; and each night, after dark, couriers boarded buses to travel north on Collins Avenue and persuade night clerks of the forty or more major hotels to stuff mailboxes or let them slip leaflets under delegates’ doors….When the convention broke up, women power 1972 was real.” That was the beginning of campaigning from inside a movement rather than on a candidate’s turf. Up until then I had supported campaigns by writing about them or volunteering in them.