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 Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  As for Mr. Whitbread, he seemed to eye Dev’s festive ramblings as he might have a cockroach’s. He once made the boy cry by calling him—beyond my earshot, of course—an ignorant little crud. Dev’s teary response, which Warren reported—You’re a big fat man with a red nose—proved Dev had enough Texan in him to take the patriarch in a verbal tussle. Other couples in our orbit had such easeful abundance inside their families. One took a pensione in Rome owned by somebody’s aunt who’s married to Lord Suck-on-This of the foreign service. Another woman’s uncle gave her a house down payment. It’s the most amazing piece of luck… It’s not luck! I want to scream. You’re rich! You’re rich, and your parents are rich. Of course the Whitbreads were, too, and none of them ever had a cavity that ached in the mouth like a rotted cypress stump for weeks on end. Nor did they have to scrounge nursery furniture from a garage sale. The only clothes Dev gets are handed down from my sister’s kid. That Lecia sends her son’s outgrown slick leather jackets and that fancy loafers come free never strikes me as fortune. Nor does my subsidized rent. Nor the fancy Harvard doctors Dev has through Warren’s job. Nor the Minks’ ongoing calls and letters. I have a gaze that blanks out luck any time I face it, like a black box over the eyes of a porn star. Whap and thunk. I compose my Christmas list for my in-laws, who always give exactly what you ask for—nothing more, nothing less. This year I’ve asked for a crockpot, but I secretly long for a Smith & Wesson. The machine jams. I resist the urge to step back five yards and head-butt it repeatedly. By fumbling around on the side, I locate some kind of handle and pull. I stare at the machine’s innards. For one thousand years I could ponder here before any useful action came to me. There appears behind me another young poet with tortoiseshell glasses and a striped scarf. He’s a real professor with the right to get his copies done who therefore knows how to clear the machine jam with a few arcane moves. It hums to life again. Celery-green light starts sliding across my face, and I can feel how massive my pores must look—real moon craters. Exfoliate, I think. When did I last exfoliate? Buy a scrub or grind up some almonds—was it almonds? An autodidact from a poor Irish family, yards smarter than I am, this young prof sports the countenance of an choirboy. You can jump in, I say. But he says I should go ahead before the secretary gets in and runs me off.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Indeed, after the trial their views became more extreme. They felt embittered and nursed a deep grievance against mainstream culture. At Dayton, they had tried—badly—to fight the view of the more radical secularists that religion was an archaic irrelevance, and that only science was important. They could not express this point of view effectively and chose the wrong forum in which to do it. Bryan’s anti-German phobia was paranoid, and his demonizing of Darwin inaccurate. But the moral and spiritual imperatives of religion are important for humanity and should not be relegated unthinkingly to the scrap heap of history in the interests of an unfettered rationalism. The relationship between science and ethics has continued to be an issue of pressing concern. But the fundamentalists lost their case at Dayton, and it seemed to them that they had been treated with contempt and pushed to the margins of society. Fifty years earlier, the New Lights had constituted a majority in America; after the Scopes trial, they had become outsiders. But the ridicule of such secularist crusaders as Mencken was counterproductive. Fundamentalist faith was rooted in deep fear and anxiety that could not be assuaged by a purely rational argument. After Dayton, they became more extreme. 36 Before the trial, evolution had not been an important issue for them, and even such literalists as Charles Hodge had accepted that the age of the world was more than six thousand years, whatever it said in the Bible. Few fundamentalists had believed in the so-called “creation science,” which argued that Genesis was scientifically sound in every detail. But after Dayton, fundamentalists closed their minds even more, and Creationism and an unswerving biblical literalism became central to the fundamentalist mind-set. They also drifted to the far right of the political spectrum. Before the war, fundamentalists like Riley and John R. Straton (1875–1929) had been willing to work for social reform and with people on the left. Now the Social Gospel was tainted by its association with the liberals who had defeated them in the denominations. This will be a constant theme in our story. Fundamentalism exists in a symbiotic relationship with an aggressive liberalism or secularism, and, under attack, invariably becomes more extreme, bitter, and excessive. Darrow and Mencken were also wrong to assume that fundamentalists belonged entirely to the old world. In their way, fundamentalists were ardent modernists. By attempting to return to “fundamentals,” they were in line with other intellectual and scientific currents in the early twentieth century. 37 They were as addicted to scientific rationalism as any other modernists, even though they were Baconians rather than Kantians. As A. C. Dixon explained in 1920, he was a Christian “because I am a Thinker, a Rationalist, a Scientist.”

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  He met the woman where she was, and he treated her as if she were already where she now willed to be. In dealing with her he “believed” her into the fulfillment of her possibilities. He stirred her confidence into activity. He placed a crown over her head which for the rest of her life she would keep trying to grow tall enough to wear. Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last. The crucial question is, Can this attitude, developed in the white heat of personal encounter, become characteristic of one’s behavior even when the drama of immediacy is lacking? I think so. It has to be rooted in concrete experience. No amount of good feeling for people in general, no amount of simple desiring, is an adequate substitute. It is the act of inner authority, well within the reach of everyone. Obviously, then, merely preaching love of one’s enemies or exhortations—however high and holy—cannot, in the last analysis, accomplish this result. At the center of the attitude is a core of painstaking discipline, made possible only by personal triumph. The ethical demand upon the more privileged and the underprivileged is the same. There is another aspect of the problem which is crucial for the disinherited who is seeking in his love to overcome his hatred. The disinherited man has a sense of gross injury. He finds it well-nigh impossible to forgive, because his injury is often gratuitous. It is not for something that he has done, an action resulting from a deliberate violation of another. He is penalized for what he is in the eyes and the standards of another. Somehow he must free himself of the will to retaliation that keeps alive his hatred. Years ago I heard an American missionary to Arabia make a speech concerning the attitude of the people in that land toward the British. He said that he and an Arab friend were taking a boat ride down a certain river when a British yacht passed. With quiet fury the Arab friend said, “Damn the English.” “Why do you say that? They have done good service to your country in terms of health and so forth. I don’t understand.” “I said, ‘Damn the English,’ because they think they are better than I am.” Here was stark bitterness fed by the steady oozing of the will to resentment. It is clear that before love can operate, there is the necessity for forgiveness of injury perpetuated against a person by a group. This is the issue for the disinherited. Once again the answer is not simple. Perhaps there is no answer that is completely satisfying from the point of view of rational reflection. Can the mouse forgive the cat for eating him? It does seem that Jesus dealt with every act of forgiveness as one who was convinced that there is in every act of injury an element that is irresponsible and irrational.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Then in early 1517, he had unilaterally nominated and confirmed a priest to the benefice at Orlamiinde, a parish directly subject to the foundation of All Saints. Friedrich had taken umbrage because Karl- stadt had not asked his permission; the Elector even threatened that if he did not back down, he would appoint someone else and pay him from Karlstadt’s income. Relations were strained for some time thereafter.* And they were strained within the foundation of All Saints too. Although Karlstadt’s position as archdeacon was well paid, it involved spending a good deal of time saying Masses and officiating at church services, which he found difficult to combine with his academic pursuits. He had therefore long nursed the ambition to gain one of the highest-paid benefices, such as the office of provost of the founda- tion. He secured the doctorate in law that was necessary for the provostship, spending the years of 1515 and 1516 in Rome and Siena. Alienating the Elector yet again, Karlstadt’s Italian sojourn had lasted far longer than the agreed four months, he failed to provide a replace- ment at All Saints during his absence, and returned only when the provost threatened to imprison him. Money troubles apparently dogged him, and he had a ghoulish habit of lobbying for the benefices of recently deceased clerics.° He also had a weakness for fine clothes. Luther remembered that when Karlstadt returned from Italy, he sported strikingly beautiful outfits, and when in mid-1521 he was to be sent on a mission to Denmark, he asked for the chapter to provide 220 MARTIN LUTHER him with a ‘damask gown trimmed with a good lining’ and even a gown in black or purple — the most expensive colours — so that he would be worthy to appear before the Danish king.” Karlstadt was therefore in the unenviable position of being financially dependent upon the Elector, yet finding himself caught in positions where he had to assert himself against his ruler’s authority. The relationship with Luther was also complicated. Karlstadt, three years younger than Luther, had arrived at Wittenberg in 1507, and his first tract, De intentionibus, published in the same year, was also the first major book to be published by a member of the Wittenberg faculty. Christoph Scheurl lauded it in an oration at All Saints: ‘If we had a lot of Karlstadts, I think we could easily . . . be a match for the Parisians.’ A convinced Thomist at the time, Karlstadt was the new star of the university, and with the patronage of the rector, Martin Pollich von Mellerstadt, soon became archdeacon of All Saints. The archdeaconry also involved university duties, and Karlstadt speedily rose to the position of dean of theology. In this role he had taken Luther’s doctoral oath in 1512, presiding at his doctoral disputation.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  A member of the brotherhoods of St Anna and of St George, he also helped found the local Marian brotherhood, and a fragment of a horn from Aachen, found in the house, shows that someone in the family may have undertaken this famous seven-yearly pilgrimage: the horns were blown when the relics were displayed. But it is doubtful that Luther’s intense spirituality came from his father: Hans Luder was a man used to relying on his own ability to get things done, who had chosen not to work for others, but to assume responsibility himself, We know that Luther was surprised to find out about his extensive kinsfolk on his father’s side when he visited them in Méhra after the Diet of Worms in 1521, so Hans had evidently not kept in 32 MARTIN LUTHER 7. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Luder, 1527. touch with his wider family once he had struck out on his own.* He had acquired his skills and talents himself, and not through inherit- ance. Yet even if his family background gave him some basic know- ledge of mining, this could not have taught him how to run a substantial mining enterprise, manage large amounts of capital, or discipline a difficult workforce. This irascible, competitive man, who knew how to make his way in a rough man’s world, would have made an exacting father. It seems that he was unable to accept that his son wanted to pursue a path in life different from his own. The bitterness of the conflict between father and son that ensued when Martin entered the monastery suggests how closely Hans had identified with him, and how deeply he was hurt by Martin’s rejection of the life he had planned for him. Luther, who inherited his father’s determination to succeed, might seem like a classic eldest son, although he may have had an elder brother who died.* The Luder household was full of children.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Karlstadt was fighting for his right to publish, preach and be heard. Having, as he saw it, won that right after meeting Luther at the Black Bear Inn, he set about rallying support. He now signed his letters and tracts as Andreas Karlstadt, ‘exiled on account of the truth without a hearing’, or ‘unheard and unvanquished’.» Luther commented wryly that ‘I who ought to have become a martyr have reached the point where | am now making martyrs of others’ — a comment which, despite its irony, betrays a recognition of how far things had moved.” In September 1524, however, a few weeks after the events at Jena, the Elector summoned Karlstadt to Weimar to inform him that he was being banished. Forced to leave Saxony, he embarked on a long pilgrimage through southern Germany, which Luther tracked with bitter precision through the letters of his various informants. He headed for Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Basle and Strasbourg, while his colleague and brother-in-law Gerhard Westerburg, travelled to Zurich and then Basle, where he was instrumental in getting Karlstadt’s work published.” Back in Orlamiinde, Karlstadt’s wife gave birth before being forced to leave as well, and she now joined her husband on his travels. Karlstadt certainly made use of his permission to publish, printing seven tracts in Basle when beyond Luther’s reach. Under Westerburg’s reassuringly patrician patronage, Karlstadt’s ideas gained a new read- ership; meanwhile his supporter Martin Reinhard had travelled to Cologne to spread his message there as well.” There were rumours that Karlstadt had got his views about the sacrament from Luther himself, in secret discussions, and that Luther, who did not yet dare to deny publicly that Christ was truly present in the bread and wine, would soon come out in support. In Strasbourg, Wolfgang Capito and 256 MARTIN LUTHER the humanist Otto Brunfels read Karlstadt’s works and agreed with his views on the sacrament; in Basle, the reformer and humanist Johannes Oecolampadius was taking Karlstadt’s side; in Nuremberg too, Karlstadt was finding readers, and in Magdeburg, Konigsberg and even the Netherlands, people were joining in what Luther and his followers would soon denounce as the ‘spirit of Miintzer and Karl- stadt’.® Luther's man in Strasbourg, Nikolaus Gerbel, warned that Karlstadt was distributing copies of his works printed in Basle and gaining supporters; apparently he was telling everyone that he had been banished by Luther because he could not overcome him with Scripture. The Strasbourg preachers wrote collectively to Luther, sending five of Karlstadt’s writings and asking for his advice.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  20 My Concept of Commitment My concept of commitment was to take all you could give. —Chris Smither, No Love Today I n the sunlit study of a couples’ counselor, huge potted plants are thriving—ficus and mother-in-law tongue and wandering Jew with shoots sending out small explosions of streaky green. Across from us, the therapist smiles from a moon-shaped face. In the next room, one of her bespectacled kids saws through violin scales. This doctor—in her loose muslin dress and Birkenstock sandals, her long wavy hair dragged into a bun with a pen stuck through it—appears to have cobbled together what I want: a happy family. I tell her about snapping at Dev and making him cry—the reason we’re here. She tries to reassure me that Dev’s childhood, however shadowed by our scratching at each other, doesn’t mirror my own. You’re both very worried about Dev’s feelings, she says, but he’s in no way neglected. (In some ways, true enough. But having your parents circle each other—I still contend—splits a child in two.) Warren’s just a better parent, I say. Is that true? she asks him. His long legs in khakis bend and unbend, mantislike. He says, Mary’s very loving, very good about seeing he plays with other kids all the time… He trails off, and she says, But? She gets very overwhelmed and snappish, he finishes. He’s perfectly patient with Dev, I say. Well, probably, she tells me with that smile, if Warren was up all night like you, he might be less perfect. I doubt that, I say. She asks me to say more, and I outline Warren’s steadiness. How his devotion to poetry has inspired me to strive for a higher bar in my work. I praise his integrity and self-discipline, saying, I wanted a solid family. That’s part of why I married him, for the stability he offered. She leads me on, but now the stabilization feels… Stultifying, I say. She eventually turns to Warren. Why’d you marry Mary? It seemed like time, he says. We’d been together three years. We loved each other—health insurance and so forth. She very much wanted a family. I stare at him, awaiting some of his former warmth for me to squeeze through the stone, but he ticks off what might be qualities in a personals ad—attractive, athletic, smart. She’s much more social than I, he adds, very loyal, a very devoted mother… Whoever you married would have those qualities, she says. I think he married me—I interrupt—to rebuke his upbringing. Now he resents my absorption with the baby or that his father chips in my rent! (These pet theories conveniently skim over my own—at this point—innately repellent disposition.) That’s so damned unfair, he says. It’s Warren’s turn, the therapist says levelly. Toward the end, when she asks how much I’m drinking, I halve it. Still she suggests I try out an evening support group for people trying to give up booze.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Any official doctrine would limit the essential mystery of God. The Rabbis pointed out that he was utterly incomprehensible. Not even Moses had been able to penetrate the mystery of God: after lengthy research, King David had admitted that it was futile to try to understand him, because he was too much for the human mind.83 Jews were even forbidden to pronounce his name, a powerful reminder that any attempt to express him was bound to be inadequate: the divine name was written YHWH and not pronounced in any reading of the scripture. We could admire God’s deeds in nature but, as Rabbi Huna said, this only gave us an infinitesimal glimpse of the whole reality: “Man cannot conceive the meaning of thunder, hurricane, storm, the order of the universe, his own nature; how then can he boast of being able to understand the ways of the King of all Kings?”84 The whole point of the idea of God was to encourage a sense of the mystery and wonder of life, not to find neat solutions. The Rabbis even warned the Israelites against praising God too frequently in their prayers, because their words were bound to be defective.85 How did this transcendent and incomprehensible being relate to the world? The Rabbis expressed their sense of this in a paradox: “God is the place of the world, but the world is not his place:”86 God enveloped and encircled the world, as it were, but he did not live in it as mere creatures did. In another of their favorite images, they used to say that God filled the world as the soul fills the body: it informs but transcends it. Again, they said that God was like the rider of a horse: while he is on the horse, the rider depends upon the animal, but he is superior to it and has control of the reins. These were only images and, inevitably, inadequate: they were imaginative depictions of a huge and indefinable “something” in which we live and move and have our being. When they spoke of God’s presence on earth, they were as careful as the biblical writers to distinguish those traces of God that he allows us to see from the greater divine mystery which is inaccessible. They liked the images of the “glory” (kavod) of YHWH and of the Holy Spirit, which were constant reminders that the God that we experience does not correspond to the essence of the divine reality.

• From Satyricon (1)

  At our first opportunity of exchanging confidences, she revealed to me what she had discovered and I candidly confessed, telling her of the coldness with which I had always met his advances. The far-sighted woman remarked that it would be necessary for us to use our wits. It turned out that her advice was sound, for I soon found out that complacency to the one meant possession of the other. Giton, in the meantime, was recruiting his exhausted strength, and Tryphaena turned her attention to me, but, meeting with a repulse, she flounced out in a rage. The next thing this burning harlot did was to discover my commerce with both husband and wife. As for his wantonness with me, she flung that aside, as by it she lost nothing, but she fell upon the secret gratifications of Doris and made them known to Lycas, who, his jealousy proving stronger than his lust, took steps to get revenge. Doris, however, forewarned by Tryphaena’s maid, looked out for squalls and held aloof from any secret assignations. When I became aware of all this, I heartily cursed the perfidy of Tryphaena and the ungrateful soul of Lycas, and made up my mind to be gone. Fortune favored me, as it turned out, for a vessel sacred to Isis and laden with prize-money had, only the day before, run upon the rocks in the vicinity. After holding a consultation with Giton, at which he gladly gave consent to my plan, as Tryphaena visibly neglected him after having sapped his virility, we hastened to the sea-shore early on the following morning, and boarded the wreck, a thing easy of accomplishment as the watchmen, who were in the pay of Lycas, knew us well. But they were so attentive to us that there was no opportunity of stealing a thing until, having left Giton with them, I craftily slipped out of sight and sneaked aft where the statue of Isis stood, and despoiled it of a valuable mantle and a silver sistrum. From the master’s cabin, I also pilfered other valuable trifles and, stealthily sliding down a rope, went ashore. Giton was the only one who saw me and he evaded the watchmen and slipped away after me. I showed him the plunder, when he joined me, and we decided to post with all speed to Ascyltos, but we did not arrive at the home of Lycurgus until the following day. In a few words I told Ascyltos of the robbery, when he joined us, and of our unfortunate love-affairs as well. He was for prepossessing the mind of Lycurgus in our favor, naming the increasing wantonness of Lycas as the cause of our secret and sudden change of habitation. When Lycurgus had heard everything, he swore that he would always be a tower of strength between us and our enemies.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Phileros had his say and Ganymedes exclaimed, “You gabble away about things that don’t concern heaven or earth: and none of you cares how the price of grain pinches. I couldn’t even get a mouthful of bread today, by Hercules, I couldn’t. How the drought does hang on! We’ve had famine for a year. If the damned AEdiles would only get what’s coming to them. They graft with the bakers, scratch-my-arse-and-I’ll-scratch-yours! That’s the way it always is, the poor devils are out of luck, but the jaws of the capitalists are always keeping the Saturnalia. If only we had such lion-hearted sports as we had when I first came from Asia! That was the life! If the flour was not the very best, they would beat up those belly-robbing grafters till they looked like Jupiter had been at them. How well I remember Safinius; he lived near the old arch, when I was a boy. For a man, he was one hot proposition! Wherever he went, the ground smoked! But he was square, dependable, a friend to a friend, you could safely play mora with him, in the dark. But how he did peel them in the town hall: he spoke no parables, not he! He did everything straight from the shoulder and his voice roared like a trumpet in the forum. He never sweat nor spat. I don’t know, but I think he had a strain of the Asiatic in him. And how civil and friendly-like he was, in returning everyone’s greeting; called us all by name, just like he was one of us! And so provisions were cheap as dirt in those days. The loaf you got for an as, you couldn’t eat, not even if someone helped you, but you see them no bigger than a bull’s eye now, and the hell of it is that things are getting worse every day; this colony grows backwards like a calf’s tall! Why do we have to put up with an AEdile here, who’s not worth three Caunian figs and who thinks more of an as than of our lives? He has a good time at home, and his daily income’s more than another man’s fortune. I happen to know where he got a thousand gold pieces. If we had any nuts, he’d not be so damned well pleased with himself! Nowadays, men are lions at home and foxes abroad. What gets me is, that I’ve already eaten my old clothes, and if this high cost of living keeps on, I’ll have to sell my cottages! What’s going to happen to this town, if neither gods nor men take pity on it? May I never have any luck if I don’t believe all this comes from the gods! For no one believes that heaven is heaven, no one keeps a fast, no one cares a hang about Jupiter: they all shut their eyes and count up their own profits. In the old days, the married women, in their stolas, climbed the hill in their bare feet, pure in heart, and with their hair unbound, and prayed to Jupiter for rain! And it would pour down in bucketfuls then or never, and they’d all come home, wet as drowned rats. But the gods all have the gout now, because we are not religious; and so our fields are burning up!”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It was also a town with turbulent internal politics. In 1509 there was a Citizen revolt, as Erfurt became split between the patrician elite, who mainly supported Saxony and wanted its protection, and the populace, who inclined to Archbishop Uriel of Mainz. The archbishop had his agents in the town who successfully fomented unrest amongst the citizenry, alienated by the high taxes and the city’s financial woes. Ruled over by a tiny oligarchy of patricians, neither the economically important woad merchants nor the guilds folk wielded real political power. When the populace realised the extent of the financial misery of the town, the mayor tried to ride the storm, insisting that ‘we are all one community’, pointing at himself. This was a major blunder — it looked as if the ‘common good’ meant his self-interest — and he soon met his end, strung up on the gallows outside the city.” Refused an honourable burial, he was left to swing in the wind in his fox fur coat — a final humiliation, for fox was the cheapest fur. In the following years, the agents of Saxony and of Mainz continued to fight for dominance, each manipulating the urban factions. For 54 MARTIN LUTHER their part, the Saxons tried to get the town put under imperial ban." The archbishop of Mainz, on the other hand, supported a new consti- tution that excluded the patricians, and in 1514 a much more radical council was able to secure the fall of a group of leading politicians.” The clergy and monastic institutions in the town were sucked into the turmoil, partly because they were major creditors and stood to lose financially if the town defaulted. During this unrelenting sequence of bloody infighting, most of the monasteries joined the town’s elite in supporting the Saxon interest, as these years revealed the archbishop of Mainz at his most vicious. All this would have done little to enthuse THE MONASTERY 55 8. Erfurt in Hartmann Schedel’s Weltchronik of 1493. The cathedral is the large building on the far left, with the steps leading up to it also visible; opposite is the Church of St Severus. Luther about the civic unity and urban freedoms on which Germany’s imperial cities prided themselves.”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “Of course,” he said to Dorothy, “you know who is responsible for this. I would not have minded at all if you had discovered you didn’t love me, left me, gone to Robert. I knew you were attracted to him, I didn’t know how deeply. But I couldn’t forgive your keeping us both at the same time, in Paris. I must have taken you often a few minutes after he had. You asked for violence. I didn’t know you were asking me to surpass Robert, to try to efface him from your body. I thought you were merely in a frenzy of desire. So I responded. You know how I made love to you, I cracked your bones, I bent you, twisted you. Once I made you bleed. Then from me you would take a taxi and go to him. And you told me that after lovemaking you didn’t wash because you liked the smell that went through your clothes, you liked the smells that followed you for a day after. I nearly went crazy when I discovered all this, I wanted to kill you.” “I have been sufficiently punished,” said Dorothy violently. Donald looked at her. “What do you mean?” “Ever since I married Robert I have been frigid.” Donald’s eyebrows lifted. Then his face set in an ironical expression. “And why do you tell me this? Do you expect me to make you bleed again? So that you can go back to your Robert all wet between the legs, and enjoy him at last? God knows I still love you. But my life is changed. I do not go in for love anymore.” “How do you live?” “I have my little pleasures. I invite certain choice friends; I offer them drinks; they sit in my room—where you are sitting. Then I go into the kitchen to mix more drinks, and give them a little time alone. They already know my taste, my little predilections. “When I come back . . . well, she may be sitting in your armchair with her skirt lifted, and he kneeling before her looking at her or kissing her, or he may be sitting in the chair and she . . . “What I like is the surprise, and seeing them. They do not notice me. In a way, that is how it would have been with you and Robert if I could have witnessed your little scenes. Possibly a remembrance of some kind. Now if you like, you can wait for a few minutes. There is a friend coming. He is exceptionally attractive.” Dorothy wanted to leave. Then she observed something that made her stop. The door of Donald’s bathroom was open. It was covered with a mirror. She turned to Donald and said: “Listen, I’ll stay, but can I express a whim, too? One that will not in the least alter the satisfaction of yours.” “What is it?”

• From Satyricon (1)

  (“Lycas,” said he, “these unfortunates upon whom you intend to wreak your vengeance, implore your compassion and) have chosen me for this task. I believe that I am a man, by no means unknown, and they desire that, somehow, I will effect a reconciliation between them and their former friends. Surely you do not imagine that these young men fell into such a snare by accident, when the very first thing that concerns every prospective passenger is the name of the captain to whom he intrusts his safety! Be reasonable, then; forego your revenge and permit free men to proceed to their destination without injury. When penitence manages to lead their fugitives back, harsh and implacable masters restrain their cruelty, and we are merciful to enemies who have surrendered. What could you ask, or wish for, more? These well-born and respectable young men be suppliant before your eyes and, what ought to move you more strongly still, were once bound to you by the ties of friendship. If they had embezzled your money or repaid your faith in them with treachery, by Hercules, you have ample satisfaction from the punishment already inflicted! Look! Can you read slavery on their foreheads, and see upon the faces of free men the brand-marks of a punishment which was self-inflicted!” Lycas broke in upon this plea for mercy, “Don’t try to confuse the issue,” he said, “let every detail have its proper attention and first of all, why did they strip all the hair off their heads, if they came of their own free will? A man meditates deceit, not satisfaction, when he changes his features! Then again, if they sought reconciliation through a mediator, why did you do your best to conceal them while employed in their behalf? It is easily seen that the scoundrels fell into the toils by chance and that you are seeking some device by which you could sidestep the effects of our resentment. And be careful that you do not spoil your case by over-confidence when you attempt to sow prejudice among us by calling them well-born and respectable! What should the injured parties do when the guilty run into their own punishment? And inasmuch as they were our friends, by that, they deserve more drastic punishment still, for whoever commits an assault upon a stranger, is termed a robber; but whoever assaults a friend, is little better than a parricide!” “I am well aware,” Eumolpus replied, to rebut this damning harangue, “that nothing can look blacker against these poor young men than their cutting off their hair at night. On this evidence, they would seem to have come aboard by accident, not voluntarily. Oh how I wish that the explanation could come to your ears just as candidly as the thing itself happened! They wanted to relieve their heads of that annoying and useless weight before they came aboard, but the unexpected springing up of the wind prevented the carrying out of their wishes, and they did not imagine that it mattered where they began what they had decided to do, because they were unacquainted with either the omens or the law of seafaring men.” “But why should they shave themselves like suppliants?” demanded Lycas, “unless, of course, they expected to arouse more sympathy as bald-pates. What’s the use of seeking information through a third person, anyway? You scoundrel, what have you to say for yourself? What salamander singed off your eyebrows? You poisoner, what god did you vow your hair to? Answer!”

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE TENTH. “What should I have done, you triple fool, when I was dying of hunger? I suppose I should have listened to opinions as much to the purpose as the tinkle of broken glass or the interpretation of dreams. By Hercules, you are much more deserving of censure than I, you who will flatter a poet so as to get an invitation to dinner!” Then we laughed ourselves out of a most disgraceful quarrel, and approached more peaceably whatever remained to be done. But the remembrance of that injury recurred to my mind and, “Ascyltos,” I said, “I know we shall not be able to agree, so let us divide our little packs of common stock and try to defeat our poverty by our individual efforts. Both you and I know letters, but that I may not stand in the way of any undertaking of yours, I will take up some other profession. Otherwise, a thousand trifles will bring us into daily collision and furnish cause for gossip through the whole town.” Ascyltos made no objection to this, but merely remarked, “As we, in our capacity of scholars, have accepted an invitation to dinner, for this date, let us not lose our night. Since it seems to be the graceful thing to do, I will look out for another lodging and another ‘brother,’ tomorrow.” “Deferred pleasures are a long time coming,” I sighed. It was lust that made this separation so hasty, for I had, for a long time, wished to be rid of a troublesome chaperon, so that I could resume my old relations with my Giton. (Bearing this affront with difficulty, Ascyltos rushed from the room, without uttering a word. Such a headlong outburst augured badly, for I well knew his ungovernable temper and his unbridled passion. On this account, I followed him out, desirous of fathoming his designs and of preventing their consequences, but he hid himself skillfully from my eyes, and all in vain, I searched for him for a long time.) CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH. “Don’t be so down in the mouth,” chimed in Echion, the ragman; “if it wasn’t that it’d be something else, as the farmer said, when he lost his spotted pig. If a thing don’t happen today, it may tomorrow. That’s the way life jogs along. You couldn’t name a better country, by Hercules, you couldn’t, if only the men had any brains. She’s in hot water right now, but she ain’t the only one. We oughtn’t to be so particular; heaven’s as far away everywhere else. If you were somewhere else, you’d swear that pigs walked around here already roasted. Think of what’s coming! We’ll soon have a fine gladiator show to last for three days, no training-school pupils; most of them will be freedmen. Our Titus has a hot head and plenty of guts and it will go to a finish. I’m well acquainted with him, and he’ll not stand for any frame-ups. It will be cold steel in the best style, no running away, the shambles will be in the middle of the amphitheatre where all the crowd can see. And what’s more, he has the coin, for he came into thirty million when his father had the bad luck to die. He could blow in four hundred thousand and his fortune never feel it, but his name would live forever. He has some dwarfs already, and a woman to fight from a chariot. Then, there’s Glyco’s steward; he was caught screwing Glyco’s wife. You’ll see some battle between jealous husbands and favored lovers. Anyhow, that cheap screw of a Glyco condemned his steward to the beasts and only published his own shame. How could the slave go wrong when he only obeyed orders? It would have been better if that she-piss-pot, for that’s all she’s fit for, had been tossed by the bull, but a fellow has to beat the saddle when he can’t beat the jackass. How could Glyco ever imagine that a sprig of Hermogenes’ planting could turn out well? Why, Hermogenes could trim the claws of a flying hawk, and no snake ever hatched out a rope yet! And look at Glyco! He’s smoked himself out in fine shape, and as long as he lives, he’ll carry that stain! No one but the devil himself can wipe that out, but chickens always come home to roost. My nose tells me that Mammaea will set out a spread: two bits apiece for me and mine! And he’ll nick Norbanus out of his political pull if he does; you all know that it’s to his interest to hump himself to get the best of him. And honestly, what did that fellow ever do for us? He exhibited some two cent gladiators that were so near dead they’d have fallen flat if you blew your breath at them. I’ve seen better thugs sent against wild beasts! And the cavalry he killed looked about as much like the real thing as the horsemen on the lamps; you would have taken them for dunghill cocks! One plug had about as much action as a jackass with a pack-saddle; another was club-footed; and a third who had to take the place of one that was killed, was as good as dead, and hamstrung into the bargain. There was only one that had any pep, and he was a Thracian, but he only fought when we egged him on. The whole crowd was flogged afterwards. How the mob did yell ‘Lay it on!’ They were nothing but runaways. And at that he had the nerve to say, ‘I’ve given you a show.’ ‘And I’ve applauded,’ I answered; ‘count it up and you’ll find that I gave more than I got! One hand washes the other.’”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  1524; and Gerbel reported that in Strasbourg Karlstadt was blaming Luther for his expulsion, complaining that he had been neither heard nor warned. WB 3, 858, Strasbourg, April(?) 1525, 477:29-3I. Valentin Ickelsamer, Clag ettlicher Brieder, an alle Christen, von der grofien Ungerechtigkeyt und Tyranney, so Endressen Bodenstein . . . vom Luther. gechicht [Augsburg] [1525] [VD 16 I 32]. Ickelsamer was a supporter of Karlstadt. LW 40, 204; WS 18, 194. Luther also accuses Karlstadt of “envy and vain ambition’, and ‘envious hatred’ in Against the Heavenly Prophets, and, in an extended passage, accuses him of being subservient to ‘Frau Hulda’, or Reason, a capricious elfin figure of folklore. Natural reason, Luther argues, is ‘the Devil's prostitute’, and he condemns Karlstadt as a clever sophist who cannot see the plain meaning of Scripture, “This is my body’. For his part, Karlstadt would accuse Luther of delighting in trying to make him feel ‘gramschaft/neyd/hass/vngnad’ (anxiety, envy, hatred, and disgrace), Anzeyg, fo. E [iv] (v). WS 15, 391-7, 14-15 Dec. 1525. WS 15, 384, 31 Dec. 1524 (Capito to Zwingli). WS 15, 394:12-17; 24; in typical fashion, Luther argued that the more Karlstadt ‘schwermet’ (enthused) about the idea that there was no Real Presence, the stronger Luther’s conviction that he was wrong. WB 3, 779, 3 Oct. 1524, 354:15. A year later, writing about Duke Georg, and echoing his earlier language, Luther compared him to Karlstadt, who along with the sacramentarians were ‘the sons of my womb’; WB 4, 973, 20 Jan. 1526, 18:7. This was powerful language indeed. WS 18, 66:19-20. Furcha (ed. and tr.), Carlstadt, 366, 367, 369; Karlstadt, Anzeyg, fos. E ii (v), E iii (r-v), F [i] (x). Furcha (ed. and tr.), Carlstadt, 370; Karlstadt, Anzeyg, fo. F i (v). 12. The Peasants’ War There is a vast literature on the Peasants’ War, starting with Engels, Peasant War in Germany. See, in particular, Blickle, Revolution of 1525; oy AV es 10. NOTES TO PAGES 256—266 489 Bak (ed.), German Peasant War; Scribner and Benecke (eds), German Peasant War; Sreenivasan, Peasants of Ottobeuren; and the collection of documents by Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg. Scott and Scribner, German Peasants’ War, 254; www.stadtarchiv. memmingen.de/918.html. LW 46, 4-45; WS 18, 279-334, Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwolf Artikel der Bauerschaft in Schwaben, 325. LW 46, 20-1; WS 18, 296b:20-3. WS 18, 342:28—32; 343:7-9. Scott and Scribner, German Peasants’ War, 14-19. Ibid., esp. 1-64. WB 3, 874, 23 May 1525; Luther knew that Friedrich had written in these terms to Duke Johann, 508:26-7, n.7, 508-9.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “Of course, the sex remained unpainted. Bijou was going entirely naked but for the semblance of a fig leaf. I was allowed to kiss the unpainted sex—carefully, or I would have swallowed jade green and Chinese red. And Bijou was so proud of her African tattoo designs. Now she looked like the queen of the desert. Her eyes had a hard, lacquered glow. She shook her earrings, laughed, covered herself with a cape and left me. I was in such a state that it took me hours to prepare myself for the ball—merely a coat of brown paint. “I told you Bijou was a faithless one. She did not even allow the paint to dry. When I arrived I could see that more than one man had braved the dangers of being painted with her own designs. The tattoos were completely blurred. The ball was at its height. The boxes were filled with tangled couples. It was one collective orgasm. And Bijou had not waited for me. As she walked about she left a tiny trail of semen, by which I could have followed her easily anywhere.” Hilda and RangoHilda was a beautiful Parisian model who fell deeply in love with an American writer, whose work was so violent and sensual that it attracted women to him immediately. They would write him letters or try for an introduction through his friends. Those who succeeded in meeting him were always amazed by his gentleness, his softness. Hilda had the same experience. Seeing that he remained impassive, she began to court him. It was only when she had made the first advances, caressed him, that he began making love to her as she had expected to be made love to. But each time, she would have to begin all over. First she had to tempt him in some way—fix a loosened garter, or talk about some experience in the past, or lie on his couch, throw back her head and thrust her breasts forwards, stretching herself like an enormous cat. She would sit on his lap, offer her mouth, unbutton his pants, excite him. They lived together for several years, deeply attached to each other. She became accustomed to his sexual rhythm. He lay back waiting and enjoying himself. She learned to be active, bold, but she suffered, because she was by nature extraordinarily feminine. Deep down she had the belief that woman could easily control her desire, but that man could not, that it was even harmful for him to try to. She felt that woman was meant to respond to man’s desire. She had always dreamed of having a man who would force her will, rule her sexually, lead.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH. “Don’t be so down in the mouth,” chimed in Echion, the ragman; “if it wasn’t that it’d be something else, as the farmer said, when he lost his spotted pig. If a thing don’t happen today, it may tomorrow. That’s the way life jogs along. You couldn’t name a better country, by Hercules, you couldn’t, if only the men had any brains. She’s in hot water right now, but she ain’t the only one. We oughtn’t to be so particular; heaven’s as far away everywhere else. If you were somewhere else, you’d swear that pigs walked around here already roasted. Think of what’s coming! We’ll soon have a fine gladiator show to last for three days, no training-school pupils; most of them will be freedmen. Our Titus has a hot head and plenty of guts and it will go to a finish. I’m well acquainted with him, and he’ll not stand for any frame-ups. It will be cold steel in the best style, no running away, the shambles will be in the middle of the amphitheatre where all the crowd can see. And what’s more, he has the coin, for he came into thirty million when his father had the bad luck to die. He could blow in four hundred thousand and his fortune never feel it, but his name would live forever. He has some dwarfs already, and a woman to fight from a chariot. Then, there’s Glyco’s steward; he was caught screwing Glyco’s wife. You’ll see some battle between jealous husbands and favored lovers. Anyhow, that cheap screw of a Glyco condemned his steward to the beasts and only published his own shame. How could the slave go wrong when he only obeyed orders? It would have been better if that she-piss-pot, for that’s all she’s fit for, had been tossed by the bull, but a fellow has to beat the saddle when he can’t beat the jackass. How could Glyco ever imagine that a sprig of Hermogenes’ planting could turn out well? Why, Hermogenes could trim the claws of a flying hawk, and no snake ever hatched out a rope yet! And look at Glyco! He’s smoked himself out in fine shape, and as long as he lives, he’ll carry that stain! No one but the devil himself can wipe that out, but chickens always come home to roost. My nose tells me that Mammaea will set out a spread: two bits apiece for me and mine! And he’ll nick Norbanus out of his political pull if he does; you all know that it’s to his interest to hump himself to get the best of him. And honestly, what did that fellow ever do for us? He exhibited some two cent gladiators that were so near dead they’d have fallen flat if you blew your breath at them. I’ve seen better thugs sent against wild beasts! And the cavalry he killed looked about as much like the real thing as the horsemen on the lamps; you would have taken them for dunghill cocks! One plug had about as much action as a jackass with a pack-saddle; another was club-footed; and a third who had to take the place of one that was killed, was as good as dead, and hamstrung into the bargain. There was only one that had any pep, and he was a Thracian, but he only fought when we egged him on. The whole crowd was flogged afterwards. How the mob did yell ‘Lay it on!’ They were nothing but runaways. And at that he had the nerve to say, ‘I’ve given you a show.’ ‘And I’ve applauded,’ I answered; ‘count it up and you’ll find that I gave more than I got! One hand washes the other.’”

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  80 Missionaries also lamented the catastrophic influence of the veil, which, they believed, buried a woman alive and reduced her to the status of a prisoner or a slave. It showed how greatly the people of Egypt needed the benevolent supervision of the Western colonialists. 81 Amin had accepted this somewhat cynical European assessment of veiling at face value. There is nothing feminist about Tahrir al-Mara. Amin presented Egyptian women as dirty and ignorant; with such mothers, how could Egypt be anything other than a backward, lazy nation? Did Egyptians imagine that the men of Europe, who have attained such completeness of intellect and feeling that they were able to discover the force of steam and electricity, ... those souls who daily risk their lives in the pursuit of knowledge and honor above the pleasures of life,... these intellects and these souls that we so admire,... would have abandoned veiling after it had been in use among them if they had seen any good in it? 82 Not surprisingly, this sickly sycophancy inspired a backlash. Arab writers refused to accept this estimate of their society, and in the course of this heated debate the veil turned into a symbol of resistance to colonialism. And so it has remained. Many Muslims now consider the veil de rigueur for all women, and a sign of true Islam. By using feminist arguments, for which most had little or no sympathy, as part of their propaganda, the colonialists tainted the cause of feminism in the Muslim world, and helped to distort the faith by introducing an imbalance that had not existed before. 83 The modern ethos was changing religion. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were Jews, Christians, and Muslims who believed that their faith was in danger of being obliterated. To save it from this fate they had resorted to a number of stratagems. Some had retreated from modern society altogether and had built their own militant institutions as a sacred bastion and refuge; some were planning a counteroffensive, others were beginning to create a counterculture and a discourse of their own to challenge the secularist bias of modernity. There was a growing conviction that religion had to become as rational as modern science. In the early years of the twentieth century, a new defensiveness would lead to the first clear manifestation of the embattled religiosity that we now call fundamentalism. 6. Fundamentals (1900–25) THE GREAT WAR, which broke out in Europe in 1914 and reduced the landscape of France to a nightmarish inferno, showed the lethal and self-destructive tendency of the modern spirit. By decimating a generation of young men, the war damaged Europe at its core, so that it would, perhaps, never quite recover.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  34. WB 1, 187, July 20, 1519, 423:107; though Luther apparently cared nothing for clothing, cloth and its procurement recurs in the correspondence. So, for example, Luther thanked the Elector’s confessor for procuring cloth for him from the Elector, WB 1, 30, Dec. 14, 1516; and thanked the Elector again for cloth, WB 1, 55, Dec. 20, 1517. He noticed the arrival of cloth at Cranach’s establishment, WB 2, 287, May 13, 1520. But he also liked to reminisce that his old cassock was so full of holes that Dr. Hieronymus Schurf used to offer him money for a new one. He found it difficult to finally give up his monastic habit. When Frederick read his On Monastic Vows, Luther recalled, he sent him fine cloth on condition that he use it for a new cowl or gown, and joked that he should have it made in Spanish style, that is, in the latest fashion. WT 5, 6430; WT 4, 4414; WT 4, 5034. 35. Eck wanted, he wrote in 1545, to gain glory and favor with the Pope, and “to ruin me with hate and envy.” LW 34, 333; WS 54, 179–87, 183:16. 36. Eck, Epistola. 37. Vandiver, Keen, and Frazel, eds. and trans., Luther’s Lives, 68–69. 38. Rubius also wrote a longer pamphlet, the Solutiones, intended as a report on the debate for the bishop of Würzburg: Rummel, Confessionalization of Humanism, 20. 39. WS 59, 429; Brecht, Luther, I, 337–38: Luther wrote a threatening letter to Erfurt when he heard a rumor that the decision would go against him; Lang apparently also worked to get the university to refuse to judge. 40. WS 2, 241–49; 246:17–18; 244:29–30. 41. WS 2, 253; 388–435: “Resolutiones Lutherianae super propositionibus suis Lipsiae disputatis.” 42. Rummel, Confessionalization of Humanism, 19–22, for an account of this part of the debate. 43. Eck, Doctor Martin ludders. 44. Best, ed., Eccius dedolatus, 40–50. The scene of Candida the witch riding to Leipzig on her goat is reminiscent of Dürer’s Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, of 1500. 45. Eck is shaved, like a witch about to undergo torture, to remove the “sophisms, syllogisms, major and minor propositions, corollaries, porisms and so on,” that is, all the techniques of scholastic argument that swarm like lice in his hair, and he “vomits up” the commentaries on Aristotle’s works that he had written. Next he is made to defecate—and coins appear, an allusion to his employment by Jakob Fugger, “the one you hired out your tongue to” to defend usury. When that tongue turns out to be black and forked (like the Devil’s) the surgeon chops it in half, before removing Eck’s “carbuncle of Vainglory” and his “carcinoma of slander”: Best, ed., Eccius dedolatus, 63–71.