Sadness

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 Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Both the form and the personal character of i John will be explained if we think of it as what someone has called `a loving and anxious sermon', written by a pastor who loved his people, and sent out to the various churches over which he had charge. Any such letter is produced by an actual situation apart from which it cannot be fully understood. If we wish to understand i John, we have first of all to try to reconstruct the situation which produced it, remembering that it was written in Ephesus a little after AD 100. The Falling Away By AD ioo, certain things had almost inevitably happened within the Church, especially in a place like Ephesus. (i) Many were now second- or even third-generation Christians. The thrill of the first days had, to some extent at least, passed away. In `The Prelude', Wordsworth said of one of the great moments of modern history: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. In the first days of Christianity, there was a glory and a splendour; but now Christianity had become a thing of habit, `traditional, half-hearted, nominal'. People had grown used to it, and something of the wonder had been lost. Jesus knew human nature, and he had said: `The love of many will grow cold' (Matthew 24:12). John was writing at a time when, for some at least, the first thrill had gone and the flame of devotion had died to a flicker. (2) One result was that there were members of the Church who found that the standards which Christianity demanded were becoming a burden and who were tired of making the effort. They did not want to be saints in the New Testament sense of the term. The New Testament word for saint is hagios, which is also commonly translated as holy. Its basic meaning is different. The Temple was hagios because it was different from other buildings; the Sabbath was hagios because it was different from other days; the Jewish nation was hagios because it was different from other nations; and Christians were called to be hagios because they were called to be different from other men and women. There was always a distinct division between Christians and the world. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus says: `If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world - therefore the world hates you' (John 15:19). `I have given them your word,' said Jesus in his prayer to God, `and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world' (John 17:14). All of this involved an ethical demand.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Who does she have to comfort her in the years following divorce? Or does she gradually learn to block her own feelings and needs because they are too painful? Karen told me how she liked to sit alone in her grandmother’s garden where it was quiet and she felt safe. I regretted that she didn’t have many friends but was pleased to hear she had at least this one oasis. I remember Karen years later telling me, “My grandmother saved my life.” There’s no way for a sensitive child to see her mother cry or her father fall into depression without worrying that she’s the cause of it—and so she takes full responsibility for her mother’s tears and father’s moods. I watched Karen with a feeling of great helplessness, realizing there was nothing I could do to alleviate her pain or slake her thirst for protection. I remember once asking her, “What will you be when you grow up, Karen?” She blushed. “I want to work with children who are blind or retarded or who can’t speak.” I thought of Karen’s mother who sat alone and cried, of her brother who was afraid of the dark, of all the sorrowful people in this family, including herself, whom this amazing child wanted to rescue and I almost cried. When a child forfeits her childhood and adolescence to take on responsibilities for a parent, her capacity to enjoy her life as a young person, develop close friendships, and cultivate shared interests is sacrificed. Beyond this loss, there is a major psychological hazard if the upside-down dependence goes on too long. The child may become trapped into feeling that she alone must rescue the troubled parent. When she attends to her own needs and wishes, she feels guilty and undeserving. This happens if the parent’s unhappiness continues for years and the parent comes to rely on the child for comfort or when the child herself assumes the role and won’t give it up. Whatever its origins, the child feels obliged to care for the parent in whatever capacity is needed—as caregiver, companion, mentor, or the person who keeps depression at bay. Karen said, “My mom has no one. Only me.” As strange as this sounds, many of these youngsters believe that it’s their duty to keep their parent alive. Without them, the parent would die. This is an awesome responsibility, especially for a child who has no one to confide in. It is far beyond the kind of help a devoted child gives to a parent in a temporary crisis, divorce or otherwise. It is an overburdening that seriously inhibits the child’s freedom to separate normally and to lead a healthy adolescence. Bound to the troubled parent by unbreakable strands of love, compassion, guilt, and self-sacrifice, the child is not free to leave home emotionally or to follow her heart in love or marriage.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Now the colored pencils in action. The green one, by a mere whirl of the wrist, could be made to produce a ruffled tree, or the eddy left by a submerged crocodile. The blue one drew a simple line across the page—and the horizon of all seas was there. A nondescript blunt one kept getting into one’s way. The brown one was always broken, and so was the red, but sometimes, just after it had snapped, one could still make it serve by holding it so that the loose tip was propped, none too securely, by a jutting splinter. The little purple fellow, a special favorite of mine, had got worn down so short as to become scarcely manageable. The white one alone, that lanky albino among pencils, kept its original length, or at least did so until I discovered that, far from being a fraud leaving no mark on the page, it was the ideal implement since I could imagine whatever I wished while I scrawled. Alas, these pencils, too, have been distributed among the characters in my books to keep fictitious children busy; they are not quite my own now. Somewhere, in the apartment house of a chapter, in the hired room of a paragraph, I have also placed that tilted mirror, and the lamp, and the chandelier drops. Few things are left, many have been squandered. Have I given away Box I (son and husband of Loulou, the housekeeper’s pet), that old brown dachshund fast asleep on the sofa? No, I think he is still mine. His grizzled muzzle, with the wart at the puckered corner of the mouth, is tucked into the curve of his hock, and from time to time a deep sigh distends his ribs. He is so old and his sleep is so thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside. Then a pneumatic door heaves and clangs in the vestibule. She has come after all; I had so hoped she would not.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  And make no mistake; you will be paid well not to feel, not to scrutinize the function of your differences and their meaning, until it will be too late to feel at all. You will be paid in insularity, in poisonous creature comforts, false securities, in the spurious belief that the midnight knock will always be upon somebody else’s door. But there is no separate survival. POETRY from The First Cities (1968) For Genevieve, Miriam, Clem, no more words For Marian, Neal, Ed, different ones. A Family Resemblance My sister has my hair my mouth my eyes And I presume her trustless. When she was young, and open to any fever Wearing gold like a veil of fortune on her face, She waited through each rain a dream of light. But the sun came up Burning our eyes like crystal Bleaching the sky of promise and My sister stood Black, unblessed and unbelieving Shivering in the first cold show of love. I saw her gold become an arch Where nightmare hunted Down the porches Of her restless nights. Now through the echoes of denial She walks a bleached side of reason Secret now My sister never waits, Nor mourns the gold that wandered from her bed. My sister has my tongue And all my flesh unanswered And I presume her trustless as a stone. Coal I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open. How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open Like a diamond on glass windows Singing out within the crash of passing sun Then there are words like stapled wagers In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart— And come whatever wills all chances The stub remains An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. Some words live in my throat Breeding like adders. Others know sun Seeking like gypsies over my tongue To explode through my lips Like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words Bedevil me. Love is a word another kind of open— As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth’s inside Take my word for jewel in your open light. Now that I Am Forever with Child How the days went While you were blooming within me I remember each upon each— The swelling changed planes of my body— And how you first fluttered, then jumped And I thought it was my heart. How the days wound down And the turning of winter I recall, with you growing heavy Against the wind. I thought Now her hands Are formed, and her hair Has started to curl Now her teeth are done Now she sneezes. Then the seed opened. I bore you one morning just before spring— My head rang like a fiery piston My legs were towers between which A new world was passing. From then

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  We argued for hours: I couldn’t convince him any more than he could persuade me; he tried his best to get me to stay two years at any rate and then go with full pockets: “you can easily spare two years”, he cried, but I retorted, “not even two days: I’m frightened of myself.” When he found that I wanted the money to go round the world with first, he saw a chance of delay and said I must give him some time to find out what was coming to me; I told him I trusted him utterly (as indeed I did) and could only give him the Saturday and Sunday, for I’d go on the Monday at the latest. He gave in at last and was very kind. I got a dress and little hat for Lily and lots of books beside a chinchilla cape for Rose and broke the news to Lily next morning, keeping the afternoon for Rose. To my astonishment I had most trouble with Lily: she would not hear any reason: “There is no reason in it”, she cried again and again, and then she broke down in a storm of tears: “What will become of me?” she sobbed, “I always hoped you’d marry me!” she confessed at last, “and now you go away for nothing, nothing—on a wild-goose chase—to study”, she added in a tone of absolute disdain, “just as if you couldn’t study here!” “I’m too young to marry, Lily,” I said, “and—” “You were not too young to make me love you”, she broke in, “and now what shall I do? Even Mamma said that we ought to be engaged and I want you so,—oh! oh!” and again the tears fell in a shower. I could not help saying at last that I would think it all over and let her know and away I went to Rose. Rose heard me out in complete silence and then with her eyes on mine in lingering affection, she said: “Do you know, I’ve been afraid often of some decision like this. I said to myself a dozen times, ‘why should he stay here? the wider world calls him’ and if I feel inclined to hate my work because it prevents my studying, what must it be for him in that horrible court, fighting day after day? I always knew I should lose you, dear!” she added, “but you were the first to help me to think and read, so I must not complain. Do you go soon?”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  How the young are tempted and betrayed To slaughter or conformity Is a turn of the mirror Time’s question only. If You Come Softly If you come as softly As wind within the trees You may hear what I hear See what sorrow sees. If you come as lightly As threading dew I will take you gladly Nor ask more of you. You may sit beside me Silent as a breath Only those who stay dead Shall remember death. And if you come I will be silent Nor speak harsh words to you. I will not ask you why, now. Or how, or what you do. We shall sit here, softly Beneath two different years And the rich earth between us Shall drink our tears. Suffer the Children Pity for him who suffers from his waste. Water that flows from the earth For lack of roots to hold it And children who are murdered Before their lives begin. Who pays his crops to the sun When the fields are parched by drought Will mourn the lost water while waiting another rain. But who shall dis-inter these girls To love the women they were to become Or read the legends written beneath their skin? Those who loved them remember their child’s laughter. But he whose hate has robbed him of their good Has yet to weep at night above their graves. Years roll out and rain shall come again. But however many girls be brought to sun Someday A man will thirst for sleep in his southern night Seeking his peace where no peace is And come to mourn these children Given to the dust. A Lover’s Song Give me fire and I will sing you morning Finding you heart And a birth of fruit For you, a flame that will stay beauty Song will take us by the hand And lead us back to light. Give me fire and I will sing you evening Asking you water And quick breath No farewell winds like a willow switch Against my body But a voice to speak In a dark room. Suspension We entered silence Before the clock struck Red wine is caught between the crystal And your fingers The air solidifys around your mouth. Once-wind has sucked the curtains in Like fright, against the evening wall Prepared for storm​Before the room Exhales​Your lips unfold. Within their sudden opening I hear the clock Begin to speak again. I remember now, with the filled crystal Shattered, the wind-whipped curtains Bound, and the cold storm Finally broken, How the room felt When your word was spoken— Warm As the center of your palms And as unfree. from Cables to Rage (1970) for Elizabeth and Jonno my presents Rooming houses are old women Rooming houses are old women rocking dark windows into their whens waiting incomplete circles rocking rent office to stoop to community bathrooms to gas rings and under-bed boxes of once useful garbage city issued with a twice-a-month check

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Karen shook her head sadly. She was overburdened by her new responsibilities but felt that she had no choice but to forfeit her needs to the needs of her family. High school, she explained at our meeting several years later, was a blur because her home situation had hardly changed. At out last meeting, when she was twenty-five, I was very concerned about Karen’s inability to break free from a young man she was living with but did not love. She tried to explain: “You remember that when I was dating guys in college, I became very frightened that anyone I really liked would abandon me or be unfaithful, and that I would end up suffering like my mom or my dad? Well, choosing Nick was safe because he has no education and no plans, which means that he’ll always have fewer choices than me. I knew that if we lived together and maybe got married someday I wouldn’t ever have to worry about him walking out.” With tears in her eyes, she added, “Nick is very kind and caring. I’m not used to that.” Although I understood that Karen felt starved for kindness, it baffled me why a bright, attractive woman like her would feel she had so few options other than a loveless relationship. She cried bitterly as she described the loneliness of her life with Nick and the strain of his passive dependence on her. “I knew it was a mistake one day after we moved in together,” she said. “But I can’t leave him. There’s no way I could hurt him that way.” And that is how I left her, standing at a crossroads, struggling with a decision whether to leave or stay. Thus I awaited her arrival the following Thursday, two days before her wedding, with equal measures of hope and concern—hope that she had turned her life around and worry that she hadn’t. What had she done between age twenty-five and thirty-four? Had she broken free of her fears? Of her sorrow? Was she still taking care of her family while feeling guilty for never doing enough? Was the man she was marrying a good choice? Was she no longer afraid of loving and being loved? As Karen came through my front door, she looked radiant. I was suddenly aware that in all the years we’ve known each other, I had rarely seen her happy. She was dressed very simply in black wool slacks, white pullover, and herringbone suit jacket, and as always, she was beautiful. The last few years had made her somehow softer, more relaxed in her shoulders and arms.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  She had spent all her life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone gave her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity. Have I really salvaged her from fiction? Just before the rhythm I hear falters and fades, I catch myself wondering whether, during the years I knew her, I had not kept utterly missing something in her that was far more she than her chins or her ways or even her French—something perhaps akin to that last glimpse of her, to the radiant deceit she had used in order to have me depart pleased with my own kindness, or to that swan whose agony was so much closer to artistic truth than a drooping dancer’s pale arms; something, in short, that I could appreciate only after the things and beings that I had most loved in the security of my childhood had been turned to ashes or shot through the heart. There is an appendix to Mademoiselle’s story. When I first wrote it I did not know about certain amazing survivals. Thus, in 1960, my London cousin Peter de Peterson told me that their English nanny, who had seemed old to me in 1904 in Abbazia, was by now over ninety and in good health; neither was I aware that the governess of my father’s two youngest sisters, Mlle Bouvier (later Mme Conrad), survived my father by almost half a century. She had entered their household in 1889 and stayed six years, being the last in a series of governesses. A pretty little keepsake drawn in 1895 by Ivan de Peterson, Peter’s father, shows various events of life at Batovo vignetted over an inscription in my father’s hand: A celle qui a toujours su se faire aimer et qui ne saura jamais se faire oublier; signatures have been appended by four young male Nabokovs and three of their sisters, Natalia, Elizaveta, and Nadezhda, as well as by Natalia’s husband, their little son Mitik, two girl cousins, and Ivan Aleksandrovich Tihotski, the Russian tutor. Sixty-five years later, in Geneva, my sister Elena discovered Mme Conrad, now in her tenth decade. The ancient lady, skipping one generation, naïvely mistook Elena for our mother, then a girl of eighteen, who used to drive up with Mlle Golay from Vyra to Batovo, in those distant times whose long light finds so many ingenious ways to reach me.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  They are put into the mouths of great ones of the past, like Noah, Enoch, Isaiah, Moses, the Twelve Patriarchs, Ezra and Baruch. There is something rather sad about this. Those who wrote the apocalyptic literature had the feeling that greatness had gone from the earth; they did not have the confidence in their own position and authority to put their names to their works, and attributed them to the great figures of the past, thereby seeking to give them an authority greater than their own names could have given. As the New Testament scholar Adolf Julicher put it: `Apocalyptic is prophecy turned senile.' The Pattern of Apocalyptic Apocalyptic literature has a pattern: it seeks to describe the things which will happen at the last times and the blessedness which will follow; and the same pictures occur over and over again. It always, so to speak, worked with the same materials; and these materials find their place in our Book of Revelation. (i) In apocalyptic literature, the Messiah was a divine, pre-existent, other-worldly figure of power and glory, waiting to descend into the world to begin his all-conquering career. He existed in heaven before the creation of the world, before the sun and the stars were made; and he is preserved in the presence of the Almighty (i Enoch 48:3, 48:6, 62:7; 4 Ezra 13:25-6). He will come to put down the mighty from their seats, to dethrone the kings of the earth and to break the teeth of sinners (i Enoch 42:2-6, 48:2-9, 62:5-9, 69:26-9). In apocalyptic, there was nothing human or gentle about the Messiah; he was a divine figure of avenging power and glory before whom the earth trembled in terror. (2) The coming of the Messiah was to be preceded by the return of Elijah, who would prepare the way for him (Malachi 4:5-6). Elijah was to stand upon the hills of Israel, so the Rabbis said, and announce the coming of the Messiah with a voice so great that it would sound from one end of the earth to the other. (3) The last terrible times were known as `the travail of the Messiah'. The coming of the messianic age would be like the agony of birth. In the gospels, Jesus is depicted as foretelling the signs of the end and is reported as saying: `All this is but the beginning of the birth pangs' (Matthew 24:8; Mark 13:8). (4) The last days will be a time of terror.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Nowhere else, we are meant to understand, was personal freedom so treasured as it was in the American experience. The very act of migration claims to equalize the people involved, molding them into a homogeneous, effectively classless society. Stories of unity tamp down our discontents and mask even our most palpable divisions. And when these divisions are class based, as they almost always are, a pronounced form of amnesia sets in. Americans do not like to talk about class. It is not supposed to be important in our history. It is not who we are. Instead, we have the Pilgrims (a people who are celebrated at Thanksgiving, a holiday that did not exist until the Civil War), who came ashore at Plymouth Rock (a place only designated as such in the late eighteenth century). The quintessential American holiday was associated with the native turkey to help promote the struggling poultry industry during the Civil War. The word “Pilgrim” was not even popularized until 1794. Nevertheless, the “first” Thanksgiving has been given a date of 1621, when well-meaning Pilgrims and fair-minded Wampanoags shared a meal. The master of ceremonies was their Indian interpreter, Squanto, who had helped the English survive a difficult winter. Left out of this story is the detail (not so minor) that Squanto only knew English because he had been kidnapped and sold as a slave to an English ship’s captain. (Coerced labor of this kind reminds us of how the majority of white servants came to America.) Squanto’s friendship, alas, was a far more complicated affair than the fairy tale suggests. He died of a mysterious fever the very next year while engaged in a power struggle with Massasoit, the “Great Sachem” of the Wampanoag confederation. 7 In spite of the obvious stature of a Washington and a Jefferson, and Virginia’s settlement thirteen years pre-Pilgrim, the southern states lagged behind the scribbling northerners in fashioning a comprehensive colonial myth to highlight their own cultural ascendancy in the New World. Here’s what we have: Less a story than a mystery, there persists to this day a morbid curiosity about the 1587 “Lost Colony” of Roanoke, a puzzle on the order of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance over the Pacific. A strange allure surrounds every vanishing people—recall the wildly popular television series Lost. Or Plato’s Atlantis. Ghost ships and ghost colonies invoke a marvelous sense of timelessness; they exist outside the normal rules of history, which explains why Roanoke’s mystery mitigates the harsh realities we instinctively know the early settlers were forced to face.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  After 1923, when she moved to Prague, and I lived in Germany and France, I was unable to visit her frequently; nor was I with her at her death, which occurred on the eve of World War Two. Whenever I did manage to go to Prague, there was always that initial pang one feels just before time, caught unawares, again dons its familiar mask. In the pitiable lodgings she shared with her dearest companion, Evgeniya Konstantinovna Hofeld (1884–1957), who had replaced, in 1914, Miss Greenwood (who, in her turn, had replaced Miss Lavington) as governess of my two sisters (Olga, born January 5, 1903, and Elena, born March 31, 1906), albums, in which, during the last years, she had copied out her favorite poems, from Maykov to Mayakovski, lay around her on odds and ends of decrepit, secondhand furniture. A cast of my father’s hand and a watercolor picture of his grave in the Greek-Catholic cemetery of Tegel, now in East Berlin, shared a shelf with émigré writers’ books, so prone to disintegration in their cheap paper covers. A soapbox covered with green cloth supported the dim little photographs in crumbling frames she liked to have near her couch. She did not really need them, for nothing had been lost. As a company of traveling players carry with them everywhere, while they still remember their lines, a windy heath, a misty castle, an enchanted island, so she had with her all that her soul had stored. With great clarity, I can see her sitting at a table and serenely considering the laid-out cards of a game of solitaire: she leans on her left elbow and presses to her cheek the free thumb of her left hand, in which, close to her mouth, she holds a cigarette, while her right hand stretches toward the next card. The double gleam on her fourth finger is two marriage rings—her own and my father’s, which, being too large for her, is fastened to hers by a bit of black thread. Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then—not in dreams—but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  And, really, her French was so lovely! Ought one to have minded the shallowness of her culture, the bitterness of her temper, the banality of her mind, when that pearly language of hers purled and scintillated, as innocent of sense as the alliterative sins of Racine’s pious verse? My father’s library, not her limited lore, taught me to appreciate authentic poetry; nevertheless, something of her tongue’s limpidity and luster has had a singularly bracing effect upon me, like those sparkling salts that are used to purify the blood. This is why it makes me so sad to imagine now the anguish Mademoiselle must have felt at seeing how lost, how little valued was the nightingale voice which came from her elephantine body. She stayed with us long, much too long, obstinately hoping for some miracle that would transform her into a kind of Madame de Rambouillet holding a gilt-and-satin salon of poets, princes and statesmen under her brilliant spell. She would have gone on hoping had it not been for one Lenski, a young Russian tutor, with mild myopic eyes and strong political opinions, who had been engaged to coach us in various subjects and participate in our sports. He had had several predecessors, none of whom Mademoiselle had liked, but he, as she put it, was “le comble.” While venerating my father, Lenski could not quite stomach certain aspects of our household, such as footmen and French, which last he considered an aristocratic convention of no use in a liberal’s home. On the other hand, Mademoiselle decided that if Lenski answered her point-blank questions only with short grunts (which he tried to Germanize for want of a better language), it was not because he could not understand French, but because he wished to insult her in front of everybody. I can hear and see Mademoiselle requesting him in dulcet tones, but with an ominous quiver of her upper lip, to pass her the bread; and, likewise, I can hear and see Lenski Frenchlessly and unflinchingly going on with his soup; finally, with a slashing “Pardon, monsieur,” Mademoiselle would swoop right across his plate, snatch up the breadbasket, and recoil again with a “Merci!” so charged with irony that Lenski’s downy ears would turn the hue of geraniums. “The brute! The cad! The Nihilist!” she would sob later in her room—which was no longer next to ours though still on the same floor.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  On the other hand, he told of his peregrinations during the lost fortnight, [316] and gave all sorts of details about the Norristown episode. The whole thing was prosaic enough; and the Brown- personality seems to be nothing but a rather shrunken, dejected, and amnesic extract of Mr. Bourne himself. He gives no motive for the wandering except that there was 'trouble back there' and he 'wanted rest.' During the trance he looks old, the corners of his mouth are drawn down, his voice is slow and weak, and he sits screening his eyes and trying vainly to remember what lay before and after the two months of the Brown experience. "I'm all hedged in," he says: "I can't get out at either end. I don't know what set me down in that Pawtucket horse-car, and I don't know how I ever left that store, or what became of it." His eyes are practically normal, and all his sensibilities (save for tardier response) about the same in hypnosis as in waking. I had hoped by suggestion, etc., to run the two personalities into one, and make the memories continuous, but no artifice would avail to accomplish this, and Mr. Bourne's skull to-day still covers two distinct personal selves. The case (whether it contain an epileptic element or not) should apparently be classed as one of spontaneous hypnotic trance, persisting for two months. The peculiarity of it is that nothing else like it ever occurred in the man's life, and that no eccentricity of character came out. In most similar cases, the attacks recur, and the sensibilities and conduct markedly change. [317] 3. In 'mediumships' or 'possessions' the invasion and the passing away of the secondary state are both relatively abrupt, and the duration of the state is usually short—i.e., from a few minutes to a few hours. Whenever the secondary state is well developed no memory for aught that happened during it remains after the primary consciousness comes back. The subject during the secondary consciousness speaks, writes, or acts as if animated by a foreign person, and often names this foreign person and gives his history. In old times the foreign 'control' was usually a demon, and is so now in communities which favor that belief. With us he gives himself out at the worst for an Indian or other grotesquely speaking but harmless personage. Usually he purports to be the spirit of a dead person known or unknown to those present, and the subject is then what we call a 'medium.' Mediumistic possession in all its grades seems to form a perfectly natural special type of alternate personality, and the susceptibility to it in some form is by no means an uncommon gift, in persons who have no other obvious nervous anomaly.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The writer being confounded by this latter fact, the lady, though fully satisfied of the accuracy of her statement, promised to look at the note she had made ten years previously of the transaction. The note was examined, and was found to contain the distinct statement that the table rapped when the hands of six persons rested on it! The lady's memory as to all other points proved to be strictly correct; and in this point she had erred in entire good faith." [297] It is next to impossible to get a story of this sort accurate in all its details, although it is the inessential details that suffer most change. [298] Dickens and Balzac were said to have constantly mingled their fictions with their real experiences. Every one must have known some specimen of our mortal dust so intoxicated with the thought of his own person and the sound of his own voice as never to be able even to think the truth when his autobiography was in question. Amiable, harmless, radiant J. V.! mayst thou ne'er wake to the difference between thy real and thy fondly-imagined self! [299] 2. When we pass beyond alterations of memory to abnormal alterations in the present self we have still graver disturbances. These alterations are of three main types, from the descriptive point of view. But certain cases unite features of two or more types; and our knowledge of the elements and causes of these changes of personality is so slight that the division into types must not be regarded as having any profound significance. The types are: (1) Insane delusions; (2) Alternating selves; (3) Mediumships or possessions. 1) In insanity we often have delusions projected into the past, which are melancholic or sanguine according to the character of the disease. But the worst alterations of the self come from present perversions of sensibility and impulse which leave the past undisturbed, but induce the patient to think that the present me is an altogether new personage. Something of this sort happens normally in the rapid expansion of the whole character, intellectual as well as volitional, which takes place after the time of puberty. The pathological cases are curious enough to merit longer notice. The basis of our personality, as M. Ribot says, is that feeling of our vitality which, because it is so perpetually present, remains in the background of our consciousness.

• From Another Country (1962)

  They reached the park. Old, slatternly women from the slums and from the East Side sat on benches, usually alone, sometimes sitting with gray-haired, matchstick men. Ladies from the big apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, vaguely and desperately elegant, were also in the park, walking their dogs; and Negro nursemaids, turning a stony face on the grown-up world, crooned anxiously into baby carriages. The Italian laborers and small-business men strolled with their families or sat beneath the trees, talking to each other; some played chess or read L’Espresso. The other Villagers sat on benches, reading—Kierkegaard was the name shouting from the paper-covered volume held by a short-cropped girl in blue jeans—or talking distractedly of abstract matters, or gossiping or laughing; or sitting still, either with an immense, invisible effort which all but shattered the benches and the trees, or else with a limpness which indicated that they would never move again. Rufus and Vivaldo—but especially Vivaldo—had known or been intimate with many of these people, so long ago, it now seemed, that it might have occurred in another life. There was something frightening about the aspect of old friends, old lovers, who had, mysteriously, come to nothing. It argued the presence of some cancer which had been operating in them, invisibly, all along and which might, now, be operating in oneself. Many people had vanished, of course, had returned to the havens from which they had fled. But many others were still visible, had turned into lushes or junkies or had embarked on a nerve-rattling pursuit of the perfect psychiatrist; were vindictively married and progenitive and fat; were dreaming the same dreams they had dreamed ten years before, clothed these in the same arguments, quoted the same masters; and dispensed, as they hideously imagined, the same charm they had possessed before their teeth began to fail and their hair began to fall. They were more hostile now than they had been, this was the loud, inescapable change in their tone and the only vitality left in their eyes. Then Vivaldo was stopped on the path by a large, good-natured girl, who was not sober. Rufus and Leona paused, waiting for him. “Your friend’s real nice,” said Leona. “He’s real natural. I feel like we known each other for years.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  Ah, yes, thought Cass, I don’t doubt it, for both of you. But suddenly she felt weary and inexplicably sad. What in the world was she doing here, and why was she needling this absurd little woman? The music changed, becoming louder and swifter and more raucous; and all their attention returned, with relief, to the dance floor. Ida and Ellis had begun a new dance; or, rather, Ida had begun a new cruelty. Ida was suddenly dancing as she had probably not danced since her adolescence, and Ellis was attempting to match her—he could certainly not be said to be leading her now, either. He tried, of course, his square figure swooping and breaking, and his little boy’s face trying hard to seem abandoned. And the harder he tried—the fool! Cass thought—the more she eluded him, the more savagely she shamed him. He was not on those terms with his body, or with hers, or anyone’s body. He moved his buttocks by will, with no faintest memory of love, no hint of grace; his thighs were merely those of a climber, his feet might have been treading grapes. He did not know what to do with his arms, which stuck out at angles to his body as though they were sectioned and controlled by strings, and also as though they had no communion with his hands—hands which had grasped and taken but never caressed. Was Ida being revenged? or was she giving him warning? Ellis’ forehead turned slick with sweat, his short, curly hair seemed to darken, Cass almost heard his breathing. Ida circled around him, in her orange dress, her legs flashing like knives, and her hips cruelly grinding. From time to time she extended to him, his fingers touched, her lean, brown, fiery hand. Others on the floor made way for them—for her: it must have seemed to Ellis that the music would never end. But the juke box fell silent, at last, and the colored lights stopped whirling, for the band was coming on again. Ida and Ellis returned to the table. The lights began to dim. Cass stood up. “Ida,” she said, “I promised to have one drink, and I have, and now I must go. I really must. Richard will kill me if I stay out any longer.” Her voice unaccountably shook, and she felt herself blushing as she said this. At the same time, she realized that Ida was in an even more dangerous mood now than she had been before her dance. “Oh, call him up,” Ida said. “Even the most faithful of wives deserves a night out.”

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  As no conversation was possible because of Mademoiselle’s deafness, my friend and I decided to bring her next day the appliance which we gathered she could not afford. She adjusted the clumsy thing improperly at first, but no sooner had she done so than she turned to me with a dazzled look of moist wonder and bliss in her eyes. She swore she could hear every word, every murmur of mine. She could not for, having my doubts, I had not spoken. If I had, I would have told her to thank my friend, who had paid for the instrument. Was it, then, silence she heard, that Alpine Silence she had talked about in the past? In that past, she had been lying to herself; now she was lying to me. Before leaving for Basle and Berlin, I happened to be walking along the lake in the cold, misty night. At one spot a lone light dimly diluted the darkness and transformed the mist into a visible drizzle. “Il pleut toujours en Suisse” was one of those casual comments which, formerly, had made Mademoiselle weep. Below, a wide ripple, almost a wave, and something vaguely white attracted my eye. As I came quite close to the lapping water, I saw what it was—an aged swan, a large, uncouth, dodo-like creature, making ridiculous efforts to hoist himself into a moored boat. He could not do it. The heavy, impotent flapping of his wings, their slippery sound against the rocking and plashing boat, the gluey glistening of the dark swell where it caught the light—all seemed for a moment laden with that strange significance which sometimes in dreams is attached to a finger pressed to mute lips and then pointed at something the dreamer has no time to distinguish before waking with a start. But although I soon forgot that dismal night, it was, oddly enough, that night, that compound image—shudder and swan and swell—which first came to my mind when a couple of years later I learned that Mademoiselle had died.

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

  b. When the rock was smitten by Moses the water flowed to quench the thirst of the people. As water quenches a raging flame, so the Blood of Jesus, signified by water, quenches the burning of anger, of avarice, of sinful love, and of sinful desire. St. Augustin says, ‘Write, O Lord Jesus Christ, Thy wounds on my heart in Thy Precious Blood, that I may so read in them Thy sorrow, as to bear all sorrow for Thee; and that I may so read in them Thy love, as to despise all wrong love for Thee.’ Thus it is seen that the Blood of Jesus, like water, quenches evil flames in the soul. c. Elias went in the strength of his miraculous food to the mount of God, that is Horeb. Drink carries food to the members, and moves them to go or to do; so a draught of the Blood of Jesus carries to the heart the word of God or His commandments, that all the powers of the soul and all the members of the body may live by that word, may be ruled by it, and by it may do good works. The Wise Man says that we have to eat and drink and leave childish things; that is to say, we must eat, for food, the word of God and His commandments, and drink the Blood of Jesus. Then He will bring home that commandment to our heart, our senses, and our members. So by His warning we shall leave all that is bad, and cleave to all that is good. 2. The Blood of Jesus is the wine of the Spirit. Looked at in this light it has three effects: a, it washes; b, it warms; c, it gladdens. It washes away the filth of guilt; it warms hearts with love; and it gladdens them with the sweetness of God. a. Jesus washes His garments in the blood of the grape. His garments are faithful souls in which He is clothed. We have now fellowship with God, being brought from darkness to light, for the Blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from our sins. b. In the sweet Body of Jesus, received in the Sacred Host, we eat the marrow of wheat and drink the grape’s purest blood. That Blood is pure and warm: pure, to take away all stain of sin; warm, to inflame the heart with love. The cellar of wine, spoken of in Scripture, is the Church of God, where is set forth the warm wine of the Blood of Jesus, to kindle our hearts with love for God and for our neighbour.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  There was a queen in France who had in her house- hold several young ladies of good birth, and among the rest one named Rolandine, who was her near relation. But the queen, being displeased with this young lady's father, punished the innocent for the guilty, and behaved not very well to Rolandine. Though this young lady was neither a great beauty nor the reverse, such was the propriety of her demeanour and the sweetness of her disposition, that many great lords sought her in mar- riage, but obtained no reply, for Rolandine's father was so fond of his money that he neglected the establish- ment of his daughter. On the other hand, she was so little in favour of her mistress that she was not wooed by those who wished to ingratiate themselves with the queen. Thus, through the negligence of her father and the disdain of her mistress, this poor young lady remained long unmarried. At last she took this sorely to heart, not so much from eagerness to be married, as from shame at not being so. Her grief reached such a pitch that she forsook the pomp and mundane pursuits of the court to occupy herself only with prayer and some little handiworks. In this tranquil manner she passed her youth, leading the most blameless and devout of lives. When she was approaching her thirtieth year, she became acquainted with a gentleman, a bastard of an nirdday.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 1 93

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY VOLUME 1 of 2 BY WILLIAM JAMES A Digireads.com Book Digireads.com Publishing Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-3822-7 Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-1674-4 This edition copyright © 2011 Please visit www.digireads.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR WILLIAM JAMES William James was a man who had a profound influence in the 19th century in the fields of both philosophy and psychology. Being a physician, he contributed to the growing field of psychology in its earliest days, assisting to certain branches of the field such as behaviorism, clinical psychology, and others. Another notable contribution of his was to religious psychology. Additionally, he conformed to the school of thought known as pragmatism, making multiple commentaries and notes on the subject. Even towards the end of his life, he had significant influence on other pioneers of the fields of psychology and philosophy. William James was born January 11, 1842 in New York City. His siblings included Henry, who would go on to become a prominent writer of novels, and Alice, who would posthumously become famous for her diary writings. He also had two other younger brothers. James and his brothers and sister received a fine education, being taught in trans-Atlantic schools and becoming fluent in languages such as French and German. The family would often takes trips across the Atlantic for vacation in Europe, and these types of trips would continue for the young William into his adulthood. Originally, the young boy pursued artistic endeavors, gaining an apprenticeship at a Rhode Island studio in Newport. This interest waned over time, and by the age of 19, he had decided to pursue a more active role in the scientific community by enrolling in college at Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School. As a young adult, James was plagued with a number of physical illnesses. He suffered a wide array of symptoms and was diagnosed as having a condition known as neurasthenia. Neurasthenia, though no longer an included diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association, included symptoms such as fatigue, depression, anxiety, digestive disorders, and headaches, among other symptoms. James often suffered from bouts of depression in his young adulthood, contemplating suicide at some points. This ailment came on at the start of America's Civil War, and though two of his other brothers enlisted, William did not, citing his neurasthenia as the cause. This period in his life very likely had a profound impact on his eventual contribution to the field of psychology. While still in college, James began studying the field of medicine in 1864. He took a break the following year to join an expedition along the Amazon.