Resentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  I’ve known her for years, and yet he has the audacity to try and convince me that on the first night Sicofante slept with her, John Thomas had to force an entry into Castle Dusk, shedding blood in the process; but I say it is not true, on the contrary he made his way in with the greatest of ease, to the general pleasure of the garrison. The man is such a natural idiot that he firmly believes young girls are foolish enough to squander their opportunities whilst they are waiting for their fathers and brothers to marry them off, which in nine cases out of ten takes them three or four years longer than it should. God in Heaven, they’d be in a pretty plight if they waited all that long! I swear to Christ (which means that I know what I’m saying) that not a single one of the girls from my district went to her husband a virgin; and as for the married ones, I could tell you a thing or two about the clever tricks they play upon their husbands. Yet this great oaf tries to teach me about women, as though I were born yesterday.’ While Licisca was talking, the ladies were laughing so heartily that you could have pulled all their teeth out. Six times at least the queen had told her to stop, but all to no avail: she was determined to have her say. And when she had come to the end of her piece, the queen turned, laughing, to Dioneo, and said: ‘This is a dispute for you to settle, Dioneo. Be so good, therefore, when we come to the end of our storytelling, to pronounce the last word on the subject.’ ‘Madam,’ Dioneo swiftly replied, ‘the last word has already been spoken. In my opinion, Licisca is right. I believe it is just as she says; and Tindaro is a fool.’ Hearing this, Licisca burst out laughing, and, turning back to Tindaro, she said: ‘There! What did I tell you? Now get along, and stop thinking you know more than I do, when you’re hardly out of your cradle. Thanks be to God, I haven’t lived for nothing, believe you me!’ But for the fact that the queen sternly commanded her to be silent, told her not to shout or argue any more unless she wanted to be whipped, and sent her back to the kitchen with Tindaro, there would have been nothing else to do for the rest of the day but listen to her prattle. And when they had withdrawn, the queen enjoined Filomena to tell the first story, whereupon Filomena gaily began, as follows:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FIFTH STORY A jealous husband disguises himself as a priest and confesses his wife, by whom he is given to understand that she loves a priest who comes to her every night. And whilst the husband is secretly keeping watch for him at the front door, the wife admits her lover by way of the roof and passes the time in his arms . Thus Lauretta brought her tale to an end, and after everyone had commended the lady for treating her reprobate husband as he deserved, the king, not wanting to waste any time, turned to Fiammetta and graciously entrusted her with the telling of the next story; and she therefore began, as follows: Illustrious ladies, I too am prompted, after listening to the previous tale, to tell you about a jealous husband, for in my estimation they deserve all the suffering their wives may inflict upon them, especially when they are jealous without reason. And if the lawgivers had taken all things into account, I consider that in this respect the punishment they prescribed for wives should have been no different from that which they prescribe for the person who attacks another in self-defence. For no young wife is safe against the machinations of a jealous husband, who will stop at nothing to destroy her. After being cooped up for the whole week looking after the house and the family, like everyone else she yearns on Sundays for peace and comfort, and wants to enjoy herself a little, just as farm-labourers do, or the workers in the towns, or the magistrates on the bench; just as God did, in fact, when on the seventh day He rested from all His labours. And indeed, it is laid down in both canon and civil law, which aim to promote the glory of God and the common good of the people, that working days should be distinguished from days of rest. But jealous husbands will have none of this: on the contrary, when other women are enjoying their day of rest, their own wives are more wretched and miserable than ever, for they are kept more securely under lock and key; and only those poor creatures who have had to put up with this sort of treatment can describe how exhausting it all is. To sum up, therefore, no matter what a wife may do to a husband who is jealous without cause, she is surely to be commended rather than condemned. But turning now to the story, there once lived in Rimini a very rich merchant and landowner, who, having married an exceedingly beautiful woman, became inordinately jealous of her.

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

  But Luther was cautious. He availed himself of the literary and political sympathy, but only as far as his theological and religious position allowed. He respected Reuchlin, Erasmus, Crotus, Mutian, Pirkheimer, Hutten, and the other humanists, for their learning and opposition to monkery and priestcraft; be fully shared the patriotic indignation against Romish tyranny: but he missed in them moral earnestness, religious depth, and that enthusiasm for the pure gospel which was his controlling passion. He aimed at reformation, they at illumination. He did not relish the frivolous satire of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum; he called them silly, and the author a Hans Wurst (Jack Sausage); he would grow indignant, and weep rather than laugh, over the obscurantism and secret vices of the monks, though he had as keen a sense of the ridiculous as Crotus and Hutten. He deprecated, moreover, the resort to physical force in a spiritual warfare, and relied on the power of the Word of God, which had founded the Church, and which must reform the Church. His letters to Hutten are lost, but he wrote to Spalatin (Jan. 16, 1521): "You see what Hutten wants. I would not have the gospel defended by violence and murder. In this sense I wrote to him. By the Word the world was conquered; by the Word the Church was preserved; by the Word she will be restored. Antichrist, as he began without violence, will be crushed without violence, by the Word." Hutten was impatient. He urged matters to a crisis. Sickingen attacked the Archbishop and Elector of Trier (Treves) to force the Reformation into his territory; but he was defeated, and died of his wounds in the hands of his enemies, May 7, 1522. Within one month all his castles were captured and mostly burnt by the allied princes; two of his sons were banished, a third was made prisoner. Luther saw in this disaster a judgment of God, and was confirmed in his aversion to the use of force.239 Hutten fled, a poor and sick exile, from Germany to Basel, and hoped to find a hospitable reception by Erasmus, his former friend and admirer; but he was coldly refused by the cautious scholar, and took bitter revenge in an unsparing attack on his character. He then went to Zürich, and was kindly and generously treated by Zwingli, who provided him with books and money, and sent him first to the hot bath of Pfeffers, and then to a quiet retreat on the island of Ufnau in the Lake of Zürich, under medical care. But he soon died there, of the incurable disease of his youth, in August, 1523, in the Prime of life (thirty-five years and four months of age), leaving nothing but his pen and sword, and the lesson: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zech. 4:6).

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The result was always far from becoming, so that Stephen would hastily plait it again. She now wore the plait screwed up very tightly in the nape of her neck with a bow of black ribbon. Anna hated this fashion and constantly said so, but Stephen was stubborn: ‘I’ve tried your way, Mother, and I look like a scarecrow; you’re beautiful, darling, but your young daughter isn’t, which is jolly hard on you.’ ‘She makes no effort to improve her appearance,’ Anna would reproach, very gravely. These days there was constant warfare between them on the subject of clothes; quite a seemly warfare, for Stephen was learning to control her hot temper, and Anna was seldom anything but gentle. Nevertheless it was open warfare, the inevitable clash of two opposing natures who sought to express themselves in apparel, since clothes, after all, are a form of self-expression. The victory would be now on this side, now on that; sometimes Stephen would appear in a thick woollen jersey, or a suit of rough tweeds surreptitiously ordered from the excellent tailor in Malvern. Sometimes Anna would triumph, having journeyed to London to procure soft and very expensive dresses, which her daughter must wear in order to please her, because she would come home quite tired by such journeys. On the whole, Anna got her own way at this time, for Stephen would suddenly give up the contest, reduced to submission by Anna’s disappointment, always more efficacious than mere disapproval. ‘Here, give it to me!’ she would say rather gruffly, grabbing the delicate dress from her mother. Then off she would rush and put it on all wrong, so that Anna would sigh in a kind of desperation, and would pat, readjust, unfasten and fasten, striving to make peace between wearer and model, whose inimical feelings were evidently mutual. Came a day when Stephen was suddenly outspoken: ‘It’s my face,’ she announced, ‘something’s wrong with my face.’ ‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Anna, and her cheeks flushed a little, as though the girl’s words had been an offence, then she turned away quickly to hide her expression.

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

  “But he will! I told him I’d be staying with you.” She berated me, “How could you be so careless? Right now Hugo could be phoning your apartment, and Neal might answer just like Ronnie did at Renate’s!” “I’m so sorry! I haven’t been thinking much since Neal moved in. My brain isn’t working well.” Anaïs gave an angry sigh. “Have you told Neal what to say if anyone calls for me?” “No. I didn’t want to tell him anything without your permission. I took an oath not to discuss it with anyone except Renate, remember?” She scowled. “We can’t take the chance of Neal being there if Hugo calls.” Did she expect me to tell Neal to move out? I would do almost anything for her, but not that. My resentment rose like a rogue wave. I’d tried to help her keep two husbands, and she expected me to give up my one lover? “I don’t want him to move out.” My voice quavered with defiance. She looked at me in surprise. A sequence played across her face—outrage, deliberation, resolve—before she said, “We need a creative solution, then.” She took a sip of her tea and closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, “Don’t tell Neal anything, not even that you know me.” “I did tell him that I went to Harlem with you once and we heard Mango Santamaria.” “Does he know anything about Hugo and Rupert?” “Nothing.” “Good. Change your phone number. Tell the phone company that you have a heckler threatening you. Call them right now from my phone.” I did as she said. It wasn’t easy to persuade the operator that the heckler was dangerous, but Anaïs knew exactly what to say. She rapidly scribbled on her pad of violet notepaper, tore the note off, and handed it to me. Thanks to the many phone pranks I’d pulled in grammar school and my high school dramatic training, I was able to do a convincing cold reading of her note. “He said he was going to break into my place and tie me up and whip me until I begged him to fuck me.” I sort of stammered on the “fuck me,” but it worked for the reading. The phone operator gasped. Anaïs handed me another square of violet paper. “He said he was going to get all his friends, and they were going to line up and do it to me all night.” I held the receiver so that Anaïs could hear the operator. “Did he say anything else?” She scribbled another note. “He said he would hang me from the rafters and force”—I couldn’t read the writing—“cunnifungus … on me.” “What?” Anaïs scribbled too fast now. “He said he was going to bring over three girls who would put a dildo in every horizon.” “Horizon?” Anaïs mouthed the right word. “Orifice,” I corrected. “What else?” the operator asked.

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

  Lounging sinuously on the floor pillows, Renate explained, “Hugo would phone my number to reach Anaïs, and I would say that ranch guests were not allowed to come to the phone but that I would convey a message. Then I would phone Anaïs at the cabin, and when Rupert went out, Anaïs would drive to Sierra Madre, the nearby town, and phone Hugo collect from a pay phone. She’d told him that I, the ranch owner, wouldn’t let her use the ranch phone for long distance calls.” Anaïs sighed. “It worked well until Renate married Ronnie, and he moved in with her.” Renate seemed to take Anaïs’s words as an accusation, for she rose abruptly and strode back into her kitchen. Anaïs marched after her. I couldn’t make out their whole argument, but I overheard Renate snap, “The phone company promised to have my number changed next week. I can’t get them to do it any faster.” When they returned to the living room, Anaïs said, “Renate is going to explain to you about an unfortunate incident last month.” Renate straightened her posture. “Ronnie was already living with me when my son quit UCLA and moved back home. Anaïs and I didn’t tell either of them about Hugo’s calls to Rancho Sosegado.” Wincing, Anaïs massaged her temples while Renate elaborated. “Last month Hugo called here, and my husband answered. Hugo asked him, ‘Is this Rancho Sosegado?’ and Ronnie said, ‘Wrong number!’ and hung up.” Anaïs added in distress, “Hugo phoned back and Ronnie hung up on him again.” She stopped to slow her breathing. “Renate, tell what happened next.” Renate said with great dignity, “Several days later, Hugo phoned once more, and this time my son answered. Hugo insisted he speak to the woman who owned the place where Anaïs Nin stayed. Peter told Hugo he knew Anaïs, but that she never stayed here.” I asked Anaïs, “Is that why you don’t want to be here when Ronnie or Peter get home?” “Yes, they’re too young to understand,” Anaïs said, and Renate nodded in agreement. I was the same age as Renate’s son and nine years younger than her husband, but they evidently thought I was mature enough, which was flattering. “Tristine, do you understand? Now Hugo knows I’ve been lying to him about Rancho Sosegado for seven years!” Anaïs cried. I was stunned at the enormity of her deception, and at the same time impressed that she had been able to pull it off for so long. She eyed me sternly. “You will warn me before you let anyone move in with you?” I shrugged. “There’s no space for a roommate in my single anyway.” Renate rolled her eyes. “Anaïs means don’t let a man move in with you.” “I don’t even have a boyfriend.” “That won’t last,” Renate said, and Anaïs readily concurred. I grinned, delighted they thought so.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  For this reason, but for the fact that he was my father, I would be inclined to reproach him bitterly, considering (to say nothing of the affection he should have had for me, his own daughter, born neither of a serving-wench nor of any low-class woman) the ingratitude he displayed towards my mother. For she, prompted by her unswerving devotion, surrendered herself body and soul to this man, without so much as knowing who he was. ‘But never mind about all that. Wrongs committed in the distant past are far easier to condemn than to rectify. At all events, the fact is that he abandoned me when I was still a tiny child in Palermo, where I eventually grew up, and my mother, being a wealthy woman, married me off to a worthy nobleman from Girgenti, who out of affection for my mother and myself came to live in Palermo. Being a staunch supporter of the Guelphs, he began to intrigue on behalf of King Charles of Naples. But before the plot could be sprung, it reached the ears of King Frederick, 2 and we had to flee from Sicily just as I was about to become the greatest lady in the island. Of our huge store of possessions, we took away only those few things we were able to carry with us, and leaving behind our lands and palaces, we came as refugees to this country, where we found King Charles so well-disposed towards us that he made good some of the losses we had suffered on his account. He gave us estates and houses, and as you will see for yourself, he makes generous and regular provision for my husband, or in other words your brother- in-law. And that, my dear sweet brother, is how I came to be in Naples, where, thanks more to God than to yourself, I have met you at last.’ And having said all this, sobbing with affection, she embraced him a second time and kissed him once again on the forehead. She had told her tale very glibly and with great self-assurance, neither stammering at any point nor swallowing any of her words. For his part, Andreuccio remembered that his father really had been in Palermo, and he knew from his own experience how lightly young men are apt to regard the love of a woman. So what with her tears of affection, her fond embraces and her chaste kisses, he was more than satisfied that she was telling the truth. And when she had finished, he replied: ‘I beg you not to take my amazement too much to heart, madam, for to tell you the truth I have never had the slightest knowledge of your existence. For some reason or other, my father never spoke of you and your mother, or if he did I never came to hear of it.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  She was miserable practically the whole time, but one day, realizing that if she went on like this her days might well be ended before her husband’s ways were mended, she said to herself: ‘Since this miserable sinner deserts me to go clogging through the dry, 2 I’ll get someone else to come aboard for the wet. I married the wretch, and brought him a good big dowry, because I knew he was a man and thought he was fond of the kind of thing that other men like, as is right and proper that they should. If I hadn’t thought he was a man, I should never have married him. And if he found women so repugnant, why did he marry me in the first place, knowing me to be a woman? I’m not going to stand for it any longer, I have no desire to turn my back on the world, nor have I ever wanted to, otherwise I’d have gone into a nunnery; but if I have to rely on this fellow for my fun and games, the chances are that I’ll go on waiting until I’m an old woman. And what good will it do me then, in my old age, to look back and complain about the way I wasted my youth, which this husband of mine teaches me all too well how to enjoy? He has shown me how to lead a pleasurable life, but whereas in his case the pleasure can only be condemned, in my own it will commend itself to all, for I shall simply be breaking the laws of marriage, whereas he is breaking those of Nature as well.’ These, then, were the wife’s ideas, to which she doubtless gave further thought on other occasions, and in order to put them into effect, she made the acquaintance of an old bawd who to all outward appearances was as innocent as Saint Verdiana feeding the serpents, 3 for she made a point of attending all the religious services clutching her rosary, and never stopped talking about the lives of the Fathers of the Church and the wounds of St Francis, so that nearly everyone regarded her as a saint. Choosing the right moment, the wife took her fully into her confidence, whereupon the old woman said: ‘The Lord above, my daughter, who is omniscient, knows that you are very well advised, if only because you should never waste a moment of your youth, and the same goes for all other women. To anyone who’s had experience of such matters, there’s no sorrow to compare with that of having wasted your opportunities. After all, what the devil are we women fit for in our old age except to sit round the fire and stare at the ashes? No woman can know this better than I, or prove it to you more convincingly.

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

  On Rupert’s chamber music night, she lit the house festively and set a fire blazing. Glancing up from her diary as the group played, she saw reflected in the glass doors multiple arms bowing, a violin and cello floating freely as in a Chagall painting, the grand piano permeable as a ghost. She looked past the floating musicians to the dark pool and lake beyond, shimmering in the moonlight. There was nothing in Paris that she wanted, she realized, more than she wanted the present to continue forever. CHAPTER 25 Silver Lake, California, 1965 TRISTINE “SO I’VE PUT OFF SAYING anything to Rupert about getting a divorce and moving to Paris,” Anaïs confessed to Renate and me. “Actually, you dropped your plan to move to Paris altogether,” Renate said. “The plan for which Tristine and I busted ourselves to help you.” “I suppose I have dropped it,” Anaïs responded warily. “And yet, Anaïs”—Renate sat with her back straight against the brick wall—“you did not bother to tell Tristine and me. For this entire week you have let us suffer agonies of guilt for failing you. Could you not have told us that you no longer were depending on that $50,000?” “No, because I do need it!” Anaïs protested. “I’m not getting an allowance from Hugo and there’s no capital to draw on. And I need money to help Hugo!” Renate scowled. “You’re still trapped between your two men.” “No, I’m not trapped. Now I know what makes me happy. I don’t have to be alone and I don’t have to leave either of my husbands and move to Paris; I just have to recognize that what I want is what I have. We get to choose what makes us happy, and we get to revise and choose again.” “You are only choosing what you see as possible now,” Renate said. “No, I’m choosing how to see my life. I’ve realized that all we have to do is get clear about what we want and recognize it when it shows up, even if it doesn’t look exactly as we thought it would.” Renate countered, “Like Alan Rosen? We wanted a producer, so we embraced a faux producer when he showed up.” “Yes, because a gardener-producer was just what we needed at the time,” Anaïs said. Renate looked startled. Anaïs’s smile was full of mischief. “He watered our dreams so they would grow. He fed my belief that I could make money from my writing. I needed that. He gave you just what you needed, too, Renate. He gave you back your libido.” “He did not! What are you saying?” “You were attracted to him.” Anaïs smiled. “You were! You had a crush on him,” I chimed in. “I did not.” Renate glowered at me. I shrugged. “He was charming.” I was thinking about what Alan Rosen had brought into my life: He’d given me a taste for the movie business, enough to make me want more.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  dispensations and privileges to Boccaccio, which would suggest that he had taken holy orders some little time before it was issued. The decade was notable also, from Boccaccio’s point of view, for the fleeting visit to Florence in 1355 of Niccola Acciaiuoli, by now universally known as the Grand Seneschal. It seems that during his visit, Acciaiuoli referred disparagingly to Boccaccio as Iohannes tranquillitatum, a label implying that he was a fair-weather friend whose support was not to be counted upon in times of political adversity such as Acciaiuoli had experienced during his exile from Naples to Avignon some years before. Far from being discouraged by this outward token of Acciaiuoli’s lack of esteem for the friend of his youth, Boccaccio continued to court his patronage almost up to the time of Acciaiuoli’s death on 8 November 1365, though his attitude to the Grand Seneschal was by no means always one of fawning subservience. In the eighth of the sixteen Latin eclogues that comprise, under the title of Buccolicum carmen, Boccaccio’s own contribution to that arcane and allusive genre of Latin poetry which both Dante and Petrarch had sought without success to revive, he complains of the indifference of Acciaiuoli during his Neapolitan journey of 1355. But it was only after yet another fruitless expedition to Naples that began in October 1362 and ended five months later that the full force of his invective was released, in a letter to Francesco Nelli. Having been expressly invited by Acciaiuoli to make his home in Naples, he had set off with his stepbrother Iacopo from Tuscany, in high hopes and with all of his books, only to discover upon his arrival that the lodging to which he had been allocated was quite unfit for human habitation. The shortcomings of the place are described in minute detail in the letter to Nelli, a fellow Florentine who occupied a prominent position at the Angevin court. The letter was probably never sent, however, for there is no record of any response in the correspondence of either Nelli or Acciaiuoli. Meanwhile, in 1359–60, Boccaccio had given a significant new impetus to humanistic studies by persuading the Florentine Studium to establish the first chair of Greek in non-Byzantine Europe, and to invite Leontius Pilatus to occupy it. Leontius had been a pupil of the celebrated Greek scholar Barlaam of Calabria, whom Boccaccio had known in Naples, once describing him as ‘tiny of body but very great in knowledge’, and who had attempted in vain to teach the rudiments of Greek to Petrarch in Avignon. During his brief tenure of the Florentine chair, Leontius, whose unkempt appearance and barbaric manners are described in a passage of the Genealogia deorum gentilium, was a guest in Boccaccio’s house, and it was Boccaccio who prodded him into completing the first, rudimentary translations into Latin of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, as well as some of the works of Euripides and Aristotle.

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

  “But don’t you think the analysis of our charts was uncanny? She said we aligned like two adjoining pieces of a puzzle. She said my life’s work would be as a popularizer of your work.” “Exactly! She wrote that everything you accomplish will come from your association with me!” Anaïs sounded angrier than I had ever heard her. “You aren’t just my satellite!” I was surprised. I’d assumed Anaïs would be pleased about the astrologer’s emphasis on my devotion to her and her work. Was she now saying that I should not be too identified with her? Maybe this was an opening. “But, you know, I’ll be completely identified with you if I do your biography,” I began. “Oh, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” she interrupted. “I asked Evelyn Hinz to do it, and she said yes.” Evelyn Hinz? Anaïs had made a point of introducing me to Evelyn, an academic who’d recently visited Los Angeles from Ottawa, or was it Manitoba? Somewhere in Canada. At Anaïs’s request, I’d driven Evelyn from a downtown hotel to Anaïs’s house and dropped her off. Now I knew why and I felt used. I was startled by my sudden resentment and jealousy of Evelyn. My alarm must have been apparent because Anaïs went on to explain. “Evelyn is working for tenure at the University of Manitoba. She can get grants to keep her going. They are giving her a sabbatical to write.” A moment earlier all I’d wanted was to get out of writing the biography; now I was offended that Anaïs had asked someone else, someone with the security of a tenure-track position and paid sabbaticals, which I’d given up. Someone who wouldn’t be burdened by having to obscure the truth, because she didn’t know the truth. Anaïs was expert at reading me. She said, “You shouldn’t be writing my biography, Tristine. It would take up all your time. You have your own work to do. Movies to make. Your own books to write.” At the moment I didn’t want to do any of those things. “You have more faith in me than I have in myself,” I grumbled. “That’s because you have yet to become your own person.” She fixed me with her sea green eyes. “I can see the growth happening, though. You are stronger than you used to be. You are so much further along than I was at your age.” I was pleased that she thought I’d grown stronger, but she added, “You are still afraid of your power, though. That’s why you feel you need to wear a mask.” “I don’t wear a mask,” I protested. “Not with me, but around other people. Jamie Herlihy says you are trying to appear as something that you’re not. He’s very perceptive about people.” Jamie Herlihy! He’d seen me wearing Anaïs’s persona in Royce Hall and must have told her I was trying to usurp her. That was why she had changed her mind and chosen Evelyn.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  If you will only forgive me and allow me to descend, I am prepared to forsake that faithless youth entirely, and you alone will be my lover and my lord, even though you despise my beauty, showing it to be fleeting and of little worth. But whatever you may say about it, or indeed about the beauty of any other woman, I can at least tell you this: that our beauty should be prized, if for no other reason than because it brings sweetness, joy, and solace to a man’s youth; and you yourself are not old, by any means. Furthermore, however cruelly you treat me, I cannot believe that you would wish to see me suffer so ignominious a death as to throw myself down like a desperate woman before your very eyes – those eyes to which, unless you lied then as you do now, the sight of me was once so pleasing. Ah! in the name of God, have mercy on me, for pity’s sake! The sun is becoming unbearably hot, and just as I suffered from the intense cold during the night, so now does the heat begin to distress me exceedingly.’ ‘Madam,’ replied the scholar, who was only too delighted to converse with her, ‘it was not because you loved me that you took me into your confidence, but to recover the love that you had lost, and hence you deserve to be treated even more harshly. Moreover you are out of your mind if you suppose that this was the only way I had of obtaining the revenge that I coveted. I had a thousand others, and I had placed a thousand snares around your feet whilst pretending to love you, so that even if this one had failed, you would inevitably have stumbled into another before very long. True, you could not have chosen to fall into a trap which would bring you greater shame and suffering than this, but then I laid it in this way, not in order to spare your pain, but to enhance my pleasure. And even supposing that all my little schemes had failed, I should still have had my pen, with which I should have lampooned you so mercilessly, and with so much eloquence, that when my writings came to your notice (as they certainly would), you would have wished, a thousand times a day, that you had never been born. ‘The power of the pen is far greater than those people suppose who have not proved it by experience. I swear to God (and may He grant that my revenge will continue to be as sweet from now until its end as it has been in its beginning), that you yourself, to say nothing of others, would have been so mortified by the things I had written that you would have put out your eyes rather than look upon yourself ever again. It’s no use reproaching the sea for having grown from a tiny stream.

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

  He attacked its loose penitential discipline, and called the Roman bishop (probably Zephyrinus), in irony and mockery, "pontifex maximus" and "episcopus episcoporum." Cyprian. Cyprian is clearest, both in his advocacy of the fundamental idea of the papacy, and in his protest against the mode of its application in a given case. Starting from the superiority of Peter, upon whom the Lord built his church, and to whom he intrusted the feeding of his sheep, in order to represent thereby the unity in the college of the apostles, Cyprian transferred the same superiority to the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, and accordingly called the Roman church the chair of Peter, and the fountain of priestly unity,223 the root, also, and mother of the catholic church.224 But on the other side, he asserts with equal energy the equality and relative independence of the bishops, as successors of the apostles, who had all an equally direct appointment from Christ. In his correspondence he uniformly addresses the Roman bishop as "brother" and "colleague," conscious of his own equal dignity and authority. And in the controversy about heretical baptism, he opposes Pope Stephen with almost Protestant independence, accusing him of error and abuse of his power, and calling a tradition without truth an old error. Of this protest he never retracted a word. Firmilian. Still more sharp and unsparing was the Cappadocian bishop, Firmilian, a disciple of Origen, on the bishop of Rome, while likewise implying a certain acknowledgment of his primacy. Firmilian charges him with folly, and with acting unworthily of his position; because, as the successor of Peter, he ought rather to further the unity of the church than to destroy it, and ought to abide on the rock foundation instead of laying a new one by recognizing heretical baptism. Perhaps the bitterness of Firmilian was due partly to his friendship and veneration for Origen, who had been condemned by a council at Rome. Nevertheless, on this question of baptism, also, as on those of Easter, and of penance, the Roman church came out victorious in the end. Comparative Insignificance of the first Popes. From these testimonies it is clear, that the growing influence of the Roman see was rooted in public opinion and in the need of unity in the ancient church. It is not to be explained at all by the talents and the ambition of the incumbents.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  We left the hospital as soon as possible. My son would flourish on beans and cornbread, and on the dreams and stories we fed him. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] My mother-in-law blamed me for the fix her son was in. He had returned from his studies in the postgraduate program at Indian school with no job prospects and with yet another pregnant teenage wife who shifted his fortunes. I was the other woman in her life, the reason for his lack of success, for her suffering. I had the one man bound to her by blood and guilt, a sticky bond. Every man she had been with had given her a child, then abandoned her, including her son, who had left her with his daughter while he went to school in the Southwest. I was now in the way, and she took every opportunity to remind me. She threw nothing away. Every item of clothing that her children had ever worn, every toy they had ever played with, every piece of paper with their names on it, she packed into boxes she piled high in her house, to the ceiling. She would not throw away her son because of a strange, foolish girl. I wasn’t pleased about the situation either. None of this had figured into my map for a life, though I must admit the map was never clearly drawn. My path meandered according to the whim of failed adults and chance. It headed wanly toward the life of a painter, like my Aunt Lois, who traveled from the Creek Nation all over the country without the encumbrance of a husband or children and had the money to buy paint, canvas, and a car. Living as an artist was as close to my now limited universe as the planet Mars. Despite all my attempts at flight, I couldn’t afford art supplies, not even a junked car. Strange things would happen around the house in the dark. One night one of my mother-in-law’s enemies came to her as a bird. It sat in a tree outside the living room window. I’ll always remember the haunting cry, like the peculiar howl of the dog in my family that always foretold a death. It sent shivers through all of us. When I heard the bird calling and calling, I picked up my newly born son and took his older sister into my arms, while my mother-in-law sent out her son with a gun. She told him to get rid of it, that she knew who it was. I hummed to the children louder and louder. We heard the shot fired into the tree. The haunting singing abruptly stopped. Shortly after, my husband, the children, and I moved to Tulsa. My mother-in-law followed with her daughter and moved in next door. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] Each day was predictable.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  my life.’ ‘Oh, come now,’ said Messer Ricciardo. ‘Take a good look at me, and if you choose to remember properly, you will soon see that I am your husband, Ricciardo di Chinzica.’ ‘You will forgive me for saying so, sir,’ said the lady, ‘but it is not so proper as you imagine for me to stare at you. And in any case, I have already looked at you sufficiently to know that I have never seen you before.’ Messer Ricciardo supposed her to be doing this because she was afraid of Paganino, in whose presence she was perhaps reluctant to admit that she recognized him. And so, after a while, he asked Paganino if he would kindly allow him to speak with her alone in her room. Paganino agreed, on condition that he made no attempt to kiss her against her will, and he told the lady to go with Messer Ricciardo into her room, listen to what he had to say, and reply as freely as she pleased. Thus the lady and Messer Ricciardo went into her room, closed the door behind them, and sat down. ‘Oh, my dearest,’ said Messer Ricciardo, ‘my dear, sweet darling, my treasure, now do you remember your Ricciardo who loves you more than life itself? No? How is this possible? Can I have changed so much? Oh, my pretty one, do take another little look at me.’ The lady, who had begun to laugh, interrupted his babbling, saying: ‘You are well aware that I possess a sufficiently good memory to know that you are my husband, Messer Ricciardo di Chinzica. But you showed very little sign of knowing me, when I was living with you, because if, either then or now, you were as wise as you wish to pretend, you should certainly have had the gumption to realize that a fresh and vigorous young woman like myself needs something more than food and clothes, even if modesty forbids her to say so. And you know how little of that you provided. ‘If you were more interested in studying the law than in keeping a wife, you should never have married in the first place. Not that you ever seemed to me to be a judge. On the contrary, you had such an expert knowledge of feasts and festivals, to say nothing of fasts and vigils, that I thought you must be a town-crier. And I can tell you this, that if you had given as many holidays to the workers on your estates as you gave to the one whose job it was to tend my little field, you would never have harvested a single ear of corn.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  97 o This southern viewpoint will lay the groundwork for Judah, the one remaining tribe, to take on the mantle of “all Israel” during the Babylonian Exile. Stresses of Assyrian Domination • The period of Assyrian domination over Israel and Judah created multiple stress points in both kingdoms. • First, there were political costs. In Israel, we find tremendous political instability during the Assyrian period, and there were political costs in the relationship between Israel and Judah. Political friction and gamesmanship resulted in Israel attacking Jerusalem and Judah calling in Assyria as an ally against Israel. • We can also document economic costs—significant hardship related to paying tribute to Assyria. • Finally, there were significant social costs. We see the breakup of family and village life as sons were required to fight battles and wealth was exacted from villages to the crown to pay ever-growing burdens of tribute and taxes to Assyria. • Once Israel was conquered and deported, each of these stress points only increased for Judah as it continued to struggle with Assyrian control. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, pp. 320–344. Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC, pp. 216–252. Suggested Reading 98 Lecture 13: assyrian Incursion into Israel and Judah 1. How do images of Assyrian warfare alter your perspective on biblical history? 2. What were the political and military objectives of the Assyrian deportation policy that involved scattering conquered peoples and resettling their land with other conquered peoples? Questions to Consider

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Staring at the girl she would see the strange resemblance, the invidious likeness of the child to the father, she would notice their movements so grotesquely alike; their hands were alike, they made the same gestures, and her mind would recoil with that nameless resentment, the while she reproached herself, penitent and trembling. Yet penitent and trembling though Anna might be, she would sometimes hear herself speaking to Stephen in a way that would make her feel secretly ashamed. She would hear herself covertly, cleverly gibing, with such skill that the girl would look up at her bewildered; with such skill that even Sir Philip himself could not well take exception to what she was saying; then, as like as not, she would laugh if off lightly, as though all the time she had only been jesting, and Stephen would laugh too, a big, friendly laugh. But Sir Philip would not laugh, and his eyes would seek Anna’s, questioning, amazed, incredulous and angry. That was why she now went so seldom to the study when Sir Philip and his daughter were together. But sometimes, when she was alone with her husband, Anna would suddenly cling to him in silence. She would hide her face against his hard shoulder clinging closer and closer, as though she were frightened, as though she were afraid for this great love of theirs. He would stand very still, forbearing to move, forbearing to question, for why should he question? He knew already, and she knew that he knew. Yet neither of them spoke it, this most unhappy thing, and their silence spread round them like a poisonous miasma. The spectre that was Stephen would seem to be watching, and Sir Philip would gently release himself from Anna, while she, looking up, would see his tired eyes, not angry any more, only very unhappy. She would think that those eyes were pleading, beseeching; she would think: ‘He’s pleading with me for Stephen.’ Then her own eyes would fill with tears of contrition, and that night she would kneel long in prayer to her Maker: ‘Give me peace,’ she would entreat, ‘and enlighten my spirit, so that I may learn how to love my own child.’

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  168 Lecture 23: National Identity—Twins and Enemies • In the adulthood of the twins, Jacob supplants Esau in three separate incidents. o He first tricks Esau out of his birthright, convincing him to trade the firstborn’s portion of their father’s estate for a bowl of lentil stew (Gen. 25). This story presents a caricature of the Edomites as descendants of a hairy, red hunter who is ruled by his stomach rather than his head. o The second act of supplanting takes place at the deathbed of their father, Isaac. Rebekah and Jacob conspire to have Isaac pronounce the blessing of the firstborn on Jacob rather than Esau (Gen. 27). Esau’s fury is so great that he plans to kill Jacob, which is why Jacob must flee to Mesopotamia and spend decades of his adult life there. o In the third episode of supplanting, Jacob returns home to Canaan and goes out of his way to reconcile with his brother (Gen. 36). Gone now are the references to Esau’s redness, his hairiness, and his stupidity. Instead, Esau is presented as a gracious and forgiving host who welcomes his brother home. By this time, Esau had become powerful and has taken up residence across the Jordan in the land that became known as Edom. • Thus, the prediction that Rebekah heard when she was carrying these twins—“two nations are in your womb”—is born out in the return of Jacob as Israel and in Esau’s move to Edom. Preserving Jacob’s Story • If the returning exiles hated Edom, why did they preserve the story in this form? These stories recognize not only the humanity of Esau but the shared origins of Israel and Edom as twins. They also show Jacob reconciling with an Esau who is gracious, powerful, and giving.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘The worthy gentleman, to whom I had the misfortune to be given by you in marriage, who calls himself a merchant and wants people to think that he is more temperate than a monk and more chaste than a virgin (as indeed he should be) goes carousing nearly every night in the taverns, and consorting with one harlot after another; and meanwhile I have to sit here, as you found me when you arrived, and wait up half the night for him, and sometimes he never comes home at all until morning. It’s my belief that he got himself blind drunk and bedded down with some strumpet or other, then woke up to find the string attached to her foot, after which he performed all those brave exploits he’s been telling you about, and finally returned to his doxy, beat her up, and cut off her hair. Since he was still in his cups, he believed (as I’m sure he still does) that he’d done all this to me; and if you take a good look at his face, you’ll see that he is still half drunk even now. But all the same, whatever he may have said about me, I would not want you to take it as anything other than the lunatic ravings of someone who is full of Dutch courage. And since I am prepared to forgive him, you must do the same.’ Having heard what her daughter had said, the mother now began to raise a clamour, saying:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Such a view draws some support from several other stories in the Decameron , for instance the tales of Paganino of Monaco (II, 10), of the anonymous lady who uses a priest as her unwitting go-between (III, 3), of Zima and the wife of Francesco Vergellesi (III, 5), of Ricciardo Minutolo and Catella Sighinolfo (III, 6), of Teodoro and Violante (V, 7), and of the wife of Pietro di Vinciolo (V, 10). Other stories that are relevant in this connection are the tales of the Seventh Day in general, the tale of the three beds (IX, 6), and the prolix account of the remarkable friendship of Titus and Gisippus (X, 8). In several of these stories, the Christian view of marriage is questioned just as vigorously and outrageously as in Madonna Filippa’s spirited defence of her adultery. In the tale of Paganino, the Monegasque pirate, for instance, the beautiful young wife of a senile Pisan judge, who with the aid of a calendar of Saints has accustomed her to a frugal sexual regime matching his own limited physical powers, is seized by a dashing young pirate who wastes no time in supplying her with a more wholesome diet. The judge discovers where she is living, and goes to fetch her home, but she refuses to return with him, treating him to a torrent of vulgar abuse for his failure to satisfy her natural needs. When he appeals to her sense of honour, she replies that she will defend what remains of her honour as jealously as anyone, adding that she wishes that her parents had shown an equal regard for her honour when they bestowed her in marriage on an impotent and elderly husband. The allusion to honour is interesting, for it triggers a powerful attack on the hypocrisy of a society in which the institution of marriage has been reduced to the status of a commercial transaction, no attention being paid to the natural inclinations or aspirations of the prospective bride. This of course is the standard way of justifying adulterous relationships in such a society. But it is also worth noting that Boccaccio is sufficiently sensitive towards generally accepted social conventions as to conclude his tale, as in the resolution of the story of Nastagio degli Onesti, with a reference to the marriage of the two protagonists, an outcome made possible in this case by the death of the disillusioned senex . In most, but not all, of Boccaccio’s stories of adulterous love (and it should be noticed incidentally that, contrary to popular belief, they account for only about a quarter of the hundred novelle ) the senility of the husband is a major contributory factor. But the exceptions to this general rule should place us on our guard against concluding too readily that the author’s object is purely the polemical one of calling into question the morality of the arranged marriages that were a common feature of the society in which he lived.