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 Querelle (1953)

  66 I JEAN GENET to be an .. incident" in the courtroom. His lawyer rose to speak. Querelle wanted to lose consciousness for a moment, to take refuge in the droning in his ears. He felt he ought to delay the closing scene. Finally, the Court reconvened. Querelle felt himself grow pale . .. The Court pronounces the death sentence." Everything around him disappeared. He himself and the trees shrunk, and he was astonished to find that he was wan and weak with this new tum of events, just as startled as we are when we learn that Weidmann was not a giant who could tower above the tops of cedar trees, but a rather timid young man of waxen and pimply complexion, standing only 1.70 meters tall among the husky police officers. Ail Querelle was conscious of was his terrible misfortune of being certifiably alive, and of the loud buzzing in his ears. Quereiie shivered. His shoulders were getting a little cold, as were his thighs and feet. He was standing at the base of the tree, beret in hand, packe·t of opium under his arm, protected by the th ick cloth uniform and the stiff collar of his peacoat. He put on his beret. In some indefinite way he sensed that all was not yet finished. He still had to accomplish the last formality: his own execution. 44Gotta do it, I guess!" Saying "sensed," we intend to convey the kind of premoni tion one celebrated murderer, a short while after his apparently totally unexpected arrest, meant when he told the judge: "I sensed that I was about to be nabbed ... " Querelle shook him self, walked a few steps straight ahead, and, using his hands, scrambled back up the slope where the grass was singing. Some branches grazed against his cheeks· and hands: it was then that he felt a profound sadneSs, a longing for maternal caresses, because those thorny branches appeared gentle, velvety with the fog adhering to them, and they reminded him of the soft radiance of a woman's breast. A couple of seconds later he was back again on the path, then on the road, and he re-entered the

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  But just a year after Jemmy, York, and Fuegia had been returned to their people at Woollya cove, near the base of what is now called Mount Darwin, the Beagle and her crew returned to find the huts and gardens the British sailors had built for the three Fuegians deserted and overgrown. Eventually, Jemmy appeared and explained that he and the other Christianized Fuegians had reverted to their former way of living. Darwin, overcome with sadness, wrote in his journal that he’d never seen “so complete & grievous a change” and that “it was painful to behold him.” They brought Jemmy aboard the ship and dressed him for dinner at the captain’s table, much relieved to see that he at least remembered how to use a knife and fork properly. Captain FitzRoy offered to bring him back to England, but Jemmy declined, saying he had “not the least wish to return to England” as he was “happy and contented” with “plenty fruits,” “plenty fish,” and “plenty birdies.” Remember the Yucatán. What looks like even extreme poverty—“the bottom of the scale of human beings”—may contain unrecognizable forms of wealth. Recall the “starving” Australian Aboriginal people, happily roasting low-fat rats and noshing on juicy grubs as revolted Englishmen looked on, certain they were witnessing the last demented spasms of starvation. When we start detribalizing—peeling away the cultural conditioning that distorts our vision—“wealth” and “poverty” may reveal themselves where we least expect to find them.24 CHAPTER TWELVEThe Selfish Meme (Nasty?)Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, coined the term meme to refer to a unit of information that can spread through a community via learning or imitation the way a favored gene is replicated through reproduction. Just as egalitarianism and resource-and risk-sharing memes were favored in the prehistoric environment, the selfishness meme has flourished in most of the post-agricultural world. Even so, no less an authority on economics than Adam Smith insisted that sympathy and compassion come to human beings as naturally as self-interest.1 The faulty assumption that scarcity-based economic thinking is somehow the de-facto human approach to questions of supply, demand, and distribution of wealth has misled much anthropological, philosophical, and economic thought over the past few centuries. As economist John Gowdy explains, ‘“Rational economic behavior’ is peculiar to market capitalism and is an embedded set of beliefs, not an objective universal law of nature. The myth of economic man explains the organizing principle of contemporary capitalism, nothing more or less.”2 Homo Economicus We have a greed, with which we have agreed… “Society,” by EDDIE VEDDER

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  And it’s the residue of a childhood lived under the daily threat of thermonuclear war. That’s another reason not to be nostalgic about a 1950s boyhood. What has changed in Lakewood since 1996 ? I see the distance between the past and present in my town widening more, and more of the claims of the past resisted. The original residents of the 1950s are now the city’s “frail elderly.” As their role in my town diminishes, something tangible in our lives together is passing away. My suburb isn’t perfect. It isn’t a paradise or a utopia. Its failures as a place are corrected by those living here, and some of that involvement is harder to find. Life is more distracting now and coarser in some ways and less convivial. Making up what my town lacks takes even more effort than it did in the 1950s. But a large number of people still make the attempt. Those who do are increasingly men and women of color, just as the members of my parish church are. My community today is about as diverse as all of southern California is, meaning my suburb is one of the more ethnically and racially diverse places in the nation. My neighborhood has become somewhat younger. Many of its retired residents have left to return “home” to the Midwest and Border South communities they gave up to make a life in southern California. Some have moved to the new suburbs of Los Angeles, which are now Las Vegas and Phoenix. If I were writing Holy Land today, these changes would be essential to the story, but I’d also note that ethnic and generational differences haven’t screened my new neighbors from the influences of the past. They seem to have acquired enough of the habits built into this suburb that make a dignified life possible. Can you describe your daily life today ? I can’t think of anything more ordinary. It’s exactly as described in Holy Land . The pedestrian and the sacred are both there. I still live alone. Critics —and they are many —describe lives of forced conformity and anonymity in the suburbs. Doesn’t conformity and anonymity dishonor the value of individuals and create a society that is neither healthy nor particularly creative ? Everyday life is mostly anonymous and unremembered wherever it’s lived. We’re always looking for a human-scale solution to an American problem: reconciling the autonomy of individuals and the shared obligations of a community. American places—from urban high-rises to “off-the-grid” rural escapes—offer a range of solutions, none of them completely satisfying and each requiring something that might be called conformity. Some of these American places are more benign than others, and some of them are suburban. Those critics have called suburban life “stratified, anesthetized, and standardized.” How do you understand that criticism ? Americans are always anxious about the ways we house ourselves.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Our bodies echo the same story. The human male has testicles far larger than any monogamous primate would ever need, hanging vulnerably outside the body where cooler temperatures help preserve stand-by sperm cells for multiple ejaculations. He also sports the longest, thickest penis found on any primate on the planet, as well as an embarrassing tendency to reach orgasm too quickly. Women’s pendulous breasts (utterly unnecessary for breastfeeding children), impossible-to-ignore cries of delight (female copulatory vocalization to the clipboard-carrying crowd), and capacity for orgasm after orgasm all support this vision of prehistoric promiscuity. Each of these points is a major snag in the standard narrative. Once people were farming the same land season after season, private property quickly replaced communal ownership as the modus operandi in most societies. For nomadic foragers, personal property—anything needing to be carried—is kept to a minimum, for obvious reasons. There is little thought given to who owns the land, or the fish in the river, or the clouds in the sky. Men (and often, women) confront danger together. An individual male’s parental investment, in other words—the core element of the standard narrative—tends to be diffuse in societies like those in which we evolved, not directed toward one particular woman and her children, as the conventional model insists. [image file=image_rsrc67X.jpg] But when people began living in settled agricultural communities, social reality shifted deeply and irrevocably. Suddenly it became crucially important to know where your field ended and your neighbor’s began. Remember the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s.” Clearly, the biggest loser (aside from slaves, perhaps) in the agricultural revolution was the human female, who went from occupying a central, respected role in foraging societies to becoming another possession for a man to earn and defend, along with his house, slaves, and livestock.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  And it’s the residue of a childhood lived under the daily threat of thermonuclear war. That’s another reason not to be nostalgic about a 1950s boyhood. What has changed in Lakewood since 1996 ? I see the distance between the past and present in my town widening more, and more of the claims of the past resisted. The original residents of the 1950s are now the city’s “frail elderly.” As their role in my town diminishes, something tangible in our lives together is passing away. My suburb isn’t perfect. It isn’t a paradise or a utopia. Its failures as a place are corrected by those living here, and some of that involvement is harder to find. Life is more distracting now and coarser in some ways and less convivial. Making up what my town lacks takes even more effort than it did in the 1950s. But a large number of people still make the attempt. Those who do are increasingly men and women of color, just as the members of my parish church are. My community today is about as diverse as all of southern California is, meaning my suburb is one of the more ethnically and racially diverse places in the nation. My neighborhood has become somewhat younger. Many of its retired residents have left to return “home” to the Midwest and Border South communities they gave up to make a life in southern California. Some have moved to the new suburbs of Los Angeles, which are now Las Vegas and Phoenix. If I were writing Holy Land today, these changes would be essential to the story, but I’d also note that ethnic and generational differences haven’t screened my new neighbors from the influences of the past. They seem to have acquired enough of the habits built into this suburb that make a dignified life possible. Can you describe your daily life today ? I can’t think of anything more ordinary. It’s exactly as described in Holy Land . The pedestrian and the sacred are both there. I still live alone. Critics —and they are many —describe lives of forced conformity and anonymity in the suburbs. Doesn’t conformity and anonymity dishonor the value of individuals and create a society that is neither healthy nor particularly creative ? Everyday life is mostly anonymous and unremembered wherever it’s lived. We’re always looking for a human-scale solution to an American problem: reconciling the autonomy of individuals and the shared obligations of a community. American places—from urban high-rises to “off-the-grid” rural escapes—offer a range of solutions, none of them completely satisfying and each requiring something that might be called conformity. Some of these American places are more benign than others, and some of them are suburban. Those critics have called suburban life “stratified, anesthetized, and standardized.” How do you understand that criticism ? Americans are always anxious about the ways we house ourselves.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kitty felt how distasteful her father’s warmth was to Levin after what had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to Vronsky’s bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why anyone could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed. “Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Countess Nordston; “we want to try an experiment.” “What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,” said the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his suggestion. “There’s some sense in that, anyway.” Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and, with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of the great ball that was to come off next week. “I hope you will be there?” he said to Kitty. As soon as the old prince turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the last impression he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky’s inquiry about the ball. Chapter 15 At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her conversation with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt for Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had received an _offer_. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father, and glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him that tears came into her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his manly, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the good nature conspicuous in everything towards everyone. She remembered the love for her of the man she loved, and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on the pillow, smiling with happiness. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; but what could I do? It’s not my fault,” she said to herself; but an inner voice told her something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won Levin’s love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts. “Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us!” she repeated to herself, till she fell asleep. Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince’s little library, one of the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account of their favorite daughter.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself, for the weakness. Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill. “Well, how are all of you?” asked her mother. “Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I’m afraid it’s scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if—God forbid—it should be scarlatina.” The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor’s departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few words to her, he turned to his wife: “How have you settled it? you’re going? Well, and what do you mean to do with me?” “I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander,” said his wife. “That’s as you like.” “Mamma, why shouldn’t father come with us?” said Kitty. “It would be nicer for him and for us too.” The old prince got up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She lifted her head and looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he understood her better than anyone in the family, though he did not say much about her. Being the youngest, she was her father’s favorite, and she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing within her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said: “These stupid chignons! There’s no getting at the real daughter. One simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,” he turned to his elder daughter, “what’s your young buck about, hey?” “Nothing, father,” answered Dolly, understanding that her husband was meant. “He’s always out; I scarcely ever see him,” she could not resist adding with a sarcastic smile.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English governess. Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that they had acute senses, and felt that Anna was quite different that day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she was not now interested in them,—but they had abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indifferent that she was going away. Anna was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly knew well with herself, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Anna went up to her room to dress, and Dolly followed her. “How queer you are today!” Dolly said to her. “I? Do you think so? I’m not queer, but I’m nasty. I am like that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It’s very stupid, but it’ll pass off,” said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually swimming with tears. “In the same way I didn’t want to leave Petersburg, and now I don’t want to go away from here.” “You came here and did a good deed,” said Dolly, looking intently at her. Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears. “Don’t say that, Dolly. I’ve done nothing, and could do nothing. I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to forgive....” “If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How happy you are, Anna!” said Dolly. “Everything is clear and good in your heart.” “Every heart has its own _skeletons_, as the English say.” “You have no sort of _skeleton_, have you? Everything is so clear in you.” “I have!” said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly, ironical smile curved her lips. “Come, he’s amusing, anyway, your _skeleton_, and not depressing,” said Dolly, smiling. “No, he’s depressing. Do you know why I’m going today instead of tomorrow? It’s a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to you,” said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and looking straight into Dolly’s face. And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.

• From Querelle (1953)

  He did not want to become one of them. His joining the Navy had undoubtedly been due to that recruitment poster, but only because it had suddenly revealed to him the possibility of an easy life. We shaH have more to say about posters. Just as he was about to get on the train to Nantes, from the track side, the detectives grabbed Gil Turko. They had been tipped off by a phone call from one of the pay telephones in 239 I QUERELLE the station : an individual resembling the murderer of the sailor and the mason, though in disguise, would try to get on that train. It was Dede who made the call. The detectives found only a minimal amount of money on Gil's person. They took the young man down to the station, where they interrogated him on his doings during the time elapsed between the second murder and the moment of his arrest. Gil claimed to have been sleeping here and there, in the dockyards, out by the ramparts. Quereiie experienced a feeling of pain when the papers informed him of Gil's arrest and subsequent transfer to the prison in Rennes. The movement of this book has to be speeded up. It will be necessary to pare down the narrative to its bare bones. However, mere noteS won't be sufficient. Let us give some explanations : if the reader feels surprised ( we say surprised rather than moved or indignant, in order to stress the fact that this novel deals with exhibits ) by the pain Quereiie felt upon learning of Gil's arrest which he himself had engineered the day before, we would like him to review the development of Quereiie's career. Quereiie is a kiiier for gain. Once the murder has been committed, the theft does not become justified by the murder (in tenns of justification, it would rather be the other way round : the theft justifying the blood ) , but sanctified by it. It appears that it was a mere accident which made Quereiie aware of the moral strength to be gained from a theft or robbery when it was dignified (and thus obliterated ) by murder. While the act of stealing, when enhanced and magnified by blood, seems to lose its importance to the point of sometimes being completely obscured by the pomp and glory of murder ( yet not withering away altogether but by its nauseating exhalations corroding the purity of the kiiiing) , it strengthens the wiiipower of the criminal, when the victim is a friend. The danger he exposes himself to (his own head at stake ) is in itself enough to establish a sense 240 I JEAN GENET of fittingness in him against which few arguments remain.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Mario's eyebrows troubled the young fellow, as he saw so light a color casting such shadows, over so dark and stormy an expression. Desolation appears greater when pinpointed by light. And the whiteness of the brows troubled his peace of mind, the purity of it: not beca�e he knew that Mario went in fear of his life because of the return of a certain stevedore he had once arrested, but because he was watching the detective manifest unmistakable signs of acute mental struggle-by making him understand, in some indefinite way, that there was hope of seeing joy return to his friend's face as long as it still showed signs of su�h brightness. That "ray of light" on Mario's face was, in point of fact, a shadow. Dede put a bare forearm-his shirtsleeves were rolled up above the elbow-on Mario's shoulder and gazed attentively at his ear. For a moment he contemplated the attractions of Mario's hair, razor-cut from the nape of the neck to the temples : recently cut, it gave off a delicate, silky light. He blew gently on the ear, to free it of some blond hairs, longer ones, that fell from the forehead. None of this caused Mario's expression to change. "What a drag, you looking so grouchy! What do you think they're going to do, those guys?'' For a couple of seconds he was silent, as if reflecting; then he added : "And it's really . too damn bad you didn't think of having them arrested. Why didn't you?" He leant back a little way to get a better view of Mario's profile, whose face and eyes did not move. Mario was not even thinking. He was simply allowing his stare to lose itself, to dissolve, and to let his whole body be carried away in this dissolution. Only a short while ago Robert had informed him that five of the most detennined characters among the dockers had sworn they'd "get" him. Tony, whom he had arrested in a manner these sons of Brest regarded as unfair, had been released from the prison of Bougen the previous evening. 49 I QUERELLE "\Vhat would you like me to do?" Without shifting his knees, Dede had managed to lean back even farther. He now had the posture of a young female saint at the very moment of a visitation, fa11en on her knees at the foot of an oak tree, crushed by the revelation, by the splendor of Grace, then bending over backwards in order to save her face from a vision that is searing her eyelashes, her very eyeballs, blinding her. He smiled. Gently he put his arm round the detective's neck. With little kisses he pecked at, without ever touching them, his forehead, temples, and eyes, the rounded tip of the nose, his lips, yet always without actually touching them; Mario felt like being subjected to a thousand prickly points of flame, darting and flickering to and fro. He thought :

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  The draft took the unlucky when college deferments ran out; enlistment took those who were patriotic or rebellious. By 1973 there were thirty-two names on the city’s plaque. 157 Because new names were added to the plaque each year, every Memorial Day between 1967 and 1973 included unveiling the plaque and reading all the names again. By 1977, when I began to work for the city, the reason for unveiling the plaque and reading the names was forgotten. There were no new names to add. Each Memorial Day, city council members took down a black drape that covered the Vietnam plaque and read the names. The audience of veterans and their wives had seen the city council members do the same for years. [image "Image" file=Image00012.jpg] 158 The Vietnam plaque, with its names attached by aluminum rivets, was next to a playground. Sometimes, someone would pry a name off. City council members, reading the names aloud during Memorial Day ceremonies, would notice the gap. Later, the city’s purchasing office would order a replacement. The list of names became increasingly inaccurate. One name was missing for years. Another name was repeated. When council members read that name a second time on Memorial Day, they did not ask why one man was named twice. Finally in 1982, I had the plaque taken down and replaced with one cast in solid bronze. The thirty-two names would not change. One name is now permanently misspelled; another name is still missing. City council members read them that way on Memorial Day. 159 Of those who have received the Medal of Honor since 1941, only 194 men are still living. Mr. C is not one of them. He never received the Medal of Honor. He wears one, however, at meetings of the veterans’ organizations to which he belongs. He says he earned the Medal of Honor on his seventeenth birthday—on March 18, 1945—aboard the carrier Franklin . He says he has a book with the whole story in it, which he cannot find among the stacks of war memorabilia that fill his house. 160 My job at city hall occasionally involves listening to the complaints of residents. The street light across from their house is burned out, or the city’s parkway tree needs to be trimmed. Before they complain, callers often begin by telling me how long they have lived here. 161 Some residents tell me the year they moved into their house because they think the city should take better care of original property owners. Some tell me how long they have lived here because they think the city owes them something for persistence. Most callers tell me out of habit. 162 A woman calls repeatedly about her Christmas tree. The city’s trash hauler picks up the discarded trees. If a tree is taller than four feet, it must be cut in half before the trash hauler will pick it up. The woman’s tree is over four feet.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Well, tell me all about it.” And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story. On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her hand, and set off to his office. Chapter 19 When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the little drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his father, giving him a lesson in French reading. As the boy read, he kept twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly off his jacket. His mother had several times taken his hand from it, but the fat little hand went back to the button again. His mother pulled the button off and put it in her pocket. “Keep your hands still, Grisha,” she said, and she took up her work, a coverlet she had long been making. She always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether his sister came or not, she had made everything ready for her arrival, and was expecting her sister-in-law with emotion. Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it. Still she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one of the most important personages in Petersburg, and was a Petersburg _grande dame_. And, thanks to this circumstance, she did not carry out her threat to her husband—that is to say, she remembered that her sister-in-law was coming. “And, after all, Anna is in no wise to blame,” thought Dolly. “I know nothing of her except the very best, and I have seen nothing but kindness and affection from her towards myself.” It was true that as far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at the Karenins’, she did not like their household itself; there was something artificial in the whole framework of their family life. “But why should I not receive her? If only she doesn’t take it into her head to console me!” thought Dolly. “All consolation and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought over a thousand times, and it’s all no use.” All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way or another she would tell Anna everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought of speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her humiliation with her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases of good advice and comfort. She had been on the lookout for her, glancing at her watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip just that minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the bell.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you: tell me about it.” Dolly looked at her inquiringly. Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna’s face. “Very well,” she said all at once. “But I will tell you it from the beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma gave us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva”—she corrected herself—“Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You’ll hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I lived eight years. You must understand that I was so far from suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then—try to imagine it—with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror, all the loathsomeness.... You must try and understand me. To be fully convinced of one’s happiness, and all at once....” continued Dolly, holding back her sobs, “to get a letter ... his letter to his mistress, my governess. No, it’s too awful!” She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her face in it. “I can understand being carried away by feeling,” she went on after a brief silence, “but deliberately, slyly deceiving me ... and with whom?... To go on being my husband together with her ... it’s awful! You can’t understand....” “Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do understand,” said Anna, pressing her hand. “And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?” Dolly resumed. “Not the slightest! He’s happy and contented.” “Oh, no!” Anna interposed quickly. “He’s to be pitied, he’s weighed down by remorse....” “Is he capable of remorse?” Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into her sister-in-law’s face. “Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him. We both know him. He’s good-hearted, but he’s proud, and now he’s so humiliated. What touched me most....” (and here Anna guessed what would touch Dolly most) “he’s tortured by two things: that he’s ashamed for the children’s sake, and that, loving you—yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,” she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would have answered—“he has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. ‘No, no, she cannot forgive me,’ he keeps saying.” Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she listened to her words. “Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for the guilty than the innocent,” she said, “if he feels that all the misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just because I love my past love for him....” And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each time she was softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.

• From Querelle (1953)

  For a moment Gil dreamt that the power of his thought, being so obstinately aimed at the mason, might bother him, cause him trouble, drive him crazy. Roger would not be coming along now. It was too late. Even if he came, G'il would never see him in this dense fog. Almost sleepwalking, Gil stepped into a bistro. "Shot of brandy, please." The sight of the bottles provided diversion. He read the labels. "Another one." Drinking only red or white wine as a rule, Gil was not accus· tamed to hard liquor. "Another, please." He knocked back half a dozen in all. Little by little, an arrogant, vigorous lucidity began to dispel his confusion, his sadness, to dissipate the heavy atmosphere in which his brain had been breathing and '"Yhich he normally took to be that of "clear reasoning." He went outside again. Already he was able to think about his desire for Roger without ambiguity . . A couple of times he evoked the pale, matte inner surfaces of Paulette's thighs, but then arrived quickly at the boy's smile. Yet he was still dependent on Thea, the thought of whom became all the more aggravating as its power waned while refusing to be obliterated altogether. "That assholel" He was thinking about Roger as he walked on down toward Recouvrance. "It's that easy," he said to himself, vaguely musing over Thea's diminished stature. "I can make him disappear, whenever I want to." Tears were running down his cheeks. And now he saw quite III I QUERELLE dearly that the mason was interfering with his love for Roger. He also realized that this love rid him of Theo, but not completely. Minuscule as Theo now was, he was still lurking in a corner of his mind. By compressing his love like a gas, Gil hoped to crush, to stifle what remained of the idea of Theoand that Idea, fading into Theo's physical presence,. now grew ever smaller in relation to Gil. Climbing the steps up from the Rue Casse would have sobered him up, most probably, had he not run into the boy right in the middle of the fog. He might well have resumed his lugubrious existence among the other masons. As it was, he uttered a joyful shout, quickly wiping off the tears with the back of his hand. "Roger, my buddy, let's go have a drink!" He put his ann round the boy's neck. Roger smiled. He looked at the cold and damp face separated from his own by a thin curtain of fog they were both breathing through. "You all right, Gil?"

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “All the same he’s a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line,” Anna said to herself going back to her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one could not love him. “But why is it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?” Precisely at twelve o’clock, when Anna was still sitting at her writing-table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her. “It’s time, it’s time,” said he, with a meaning smile, and he went into their bedroom. “And what right had he to look at him like that?” thought Anna, recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch. Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away. Chapter 34 When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky. Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve o’clock from the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s voice. “If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!” Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from duty, were sitting each side of her. “Bravo! Vronsky!” shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair. “Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee pot. Why, we didn’t expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with the ornament of your study,” he said, indicating the baroness. “You know each other, of course?” “I should think so,” said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing the baroness’s little hand. “What next! I’m an old friend.” “You’re home after a journey,” said the baroness, “so I’m flying. Oh, I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the way.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other—in loss, in death—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one must act,” said he, as though guessing her thought. “One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live _à trois_.” “I understand, I quite understand that,” said Dolly, and her head sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. “But wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?” “I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great deal,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. “That was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would not regard the slightest request—that she should observe decorum,” he said, getting heated. “One may save anyone who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what’s to be done?” “Anything, only not divorce!” answered Darya Alexandrovna “But what is anything?” “No, it is awful! She will be no one’s wife, she will be lost!” “What can I do?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. “I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,” he said, getting up. “No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.... But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on.... I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!” Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice:

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  She took notes for me while I was away, and when I came back, she wasn’t afraid to ask questions. In class, she diverged from the curriculum to ask, in halting, bad French, how I was doing, what had happened, if I felt sad or angry, if I wanted to get together outside of class to speak in English. I agreed. She wanted to know every detail of the whole ordeal with my parents, hear the deep insights I had gleaned, how I felt, how I’d mourned. I gave her the basic gist. Talking to Reva about misery was insufferable. “Look on the bright side,” was what she wanted everyone to do. But at least she cared. Senior year, I moved out of the sorority house and into a two-bedroom suite with Reva in an off-campus dorm. Living together solidified our bond. I was the vacant, repressed depressive, and she was the obsessive blabbermouth, always knocking on my door, asking random questions, looking for any excuse to talk. I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling that year, trying to cancel out thoughts about death with thoughts about nothingness. Reva’s frequent interruptions probably kept me from jumping out the window. Knock, knock. “Chat break?” She liked to look through my closet, turning over price tags, checking the sizes of all the clothes I’d bought with the money I’d inherited. Her obsession with the material world pulled me out of whatever existential wormhole I’d wandered into. I never confronted Reva about the fact that I could hear her vomiting when she came back from the dining hall each night. All she ate at home were sugar-free mini yogurts and baby carrots, which she dressed with yellow mustard. The palms of her hands were orange from all the carrots she ate. Dozens of mini yogurt containers cluttered the recycling bin. That spring, I went for long walks around the city with earplugs in. I felt better just listening to the echoing sounds of my breathing, the phlegm roiling in my throat when I swallowed, my eyes blinking, the weak ticking of my heart. Gray days spent staring down at sidewalks, skipping classes, shopping for things I’d never wear, paying through the nose for a gay guy to put a tube up my asshole and rub my stomach, tell me how much better I would feel once my colon was clean. Together we watched little flakes of shit flowing through the outgoing tube. His voice was soft but enthusiastic.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Stepan Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same surprise continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing what to say. This silence was so awkward for both of them that Stepan Arkadyevitch’s lips began twitching nervously, while he still gazed without speaking at Karenin’s face. “That’s what I wanted to say to her,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, turning away. “Yes, yes....” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for the tears that were choking him. “Yes, yes, I understand you,” he brought out at last. “I want to know what she would like,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not a judge,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. “She is crushed, simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read this letter, she would be incapable of saying anything, she would only hang her head lower than ever.” “Yes, but what’s to be done in that case? how explain, how find out her wishes?” “If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies with you to point out directly the steps you consider necessary to end the position.” “So you consider it must be ended?” Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted him. “But how?” he added, with a gesture of his hands before his eyes not usual with him. “I see no possible way out of it.” “There is some way of getting out of every position,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. “There was a time when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced now that you cannot make each other happy....” “Happiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I agree to everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting out of our position?” “If you care to know my opinion,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with the same smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he had been talking to Anna. His kindly smile was so winning that Alexey Alexandrovitch, feeling his own weakness and unconsciously swayed by it, was ready to believe what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying. “She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible, one thing she might desire,” he went on, “that is the cessation of your relations and all memories associated with them. To my thinking, in your position what’s essential is the formation of a new attitude to one another. And that can only rest on a basis of freedom on both sides.” “Divorce,” Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of aversion. “Yes, I imagine that divorce—yes, divorce,” Stepan Arkadyevitch repeated, reddening. “That is from every point of view the most rational course for married people who find themselves in the position you are in. What can be done if married people find that life is impossible for them together? That may always happen.” Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Moans and whimpers commenced from those who struggled in spite of their gags to make their plight known, their muffled cries became a lamentation. They seemed as beautiful as any slaves Beauty had seen, and as they writhed now, some of them dropping on their knees before the Prince, she saw here and there a lovely peach-colored sex beneath curls of pubic hair, or breasts quivering with crying. The Princes were many of them painfully erect as if they could not control it. And one of them had pressed his lips to the rough ground as the Prince and Lord Stefan, and Lady Juliana with Beauty at her side drew up to the little fence to inspect them. The Prince's eyes were angry and cold, but Lord Stefan appeared shaken. And Beauty perceived that his gaze was fixed on one very dignified Prince who neither wailed or bowed, nor in any way begged for mercy. He was as fair, as was the young lord, his eyes very blue, and though the mean little gag distorted his mouth, his face was otherwise serene as ever she had seen Prince Alexi's. He looked down humbly enough, and Beauty tried to conceal her fascination with his exquisitely sculpted limbs and his swelling organ. He seemed in great distress, however, behind his indifferent expression. Lord Stefan suddenly turned his back as if he could not quite contain himself. "Don't be so sentimental. He deserves his time in the village," the Prince said coldly. And with an imperious gesture he ordered the other wailing Princes and Princesses to be silent. The guards watched all with folded arms, smiling at the spectacle, and Beauty dared not look at them for fear their eyes would meet hers, giving further humiliation. But the Prince ordered her to come forward and to kneel up and listen to his instruction. "Beauty, look on these unfortunates," the Prince said with obvious disapproval. They are going to the Queen's Village, which is the largest and most prosperous in the country. It houses the families of all those who serve here; the craftsmen there make our linen, our simple furniture, supply us with wine, food, milk, and butter. There is a dairy there and the fowl are raised on the little farms, and there are all those who make up a town in any location." Beauty stared at the captive Princes and Princesses, who though they could no longer beg with groans and cries, still bowed before the Prince who seemed indifferent to them.

• From Querelle (1953)

  But never for a moment did he think of doing so. It was too late for that. The phrase had a soothing effect on him. He heard himself saying it very calmly. The rage became transformed into a great sorrow, heavy and solemn, emanating from his chest to wrap his entire body and spirit into an infinite sadness that was to be his permanent condition. He walked on a while in the midst of the fog, hands in pockets, always certain of the elegance of his bearing, glad to retain it even in this solitude. There wasn't much of a chance of his meeting Roger. They had not agreed on a meeting. Gil thought of the kid. He saw his face, lit up with that smile that always appeared when he was listening to a song. The face was not quite the same as Paulette's, whose s1nile was not so clear, but' was troubled by her femininity, which destroyed the natural ease in the smiles of Gil and Roger. " 'Twixt her thighs, oh wowl La Paulette, what hasn't she got there, between her thighs!" And went on, almost murmuring it out loud : 108 I JEAN GENET 41Her pussy! Her little pussy! Her cunt!" · He thought of it, imbuing the words with a tenderness that turned them into a desperate incantation. "Her damp little pussy! Her little thighs." He continued the line of thought : 44Mustn't call them her 'little thighs,' she's got beautiful thighs, Paulette has. She's got nice fat thighs, and up there between them there's that little furry pussy." He had a hard-on. In the midst of his sadness-or shame-and obliterating it, he now recognized the existence of a new, yet already proven certainty. He was discovering himself again. All his being was now running down into his prick, to make it hard. It was just a part of him, but it had this providential vigor that was capable of keeping his shame at bay. By siphoning off the shame which was oozing from his body, into the prick, replenishing its spongy tissues, Gil felt himself growing harder, stronger, prouder again. There could be no doubt that it was a moment to call to his aid all the fluids which bathed his internal organs. Instinctively he looked for the darkest and most out-of-the-way spot on the esplanade. Paulette's smile was alternating with that of her brother. In a state of extreme animation Gil's mind's eye wandered down the thighs, raised the skirt, there were her garters. Above those (his thoughts slowed down a little) there wa_s white skin, suddenly darkened by the presence of a fleece which he just couldn't get a stationary, a fixed image of, under the spotlight of his desire. And in one go, after running up under her dress and lingerie, his prick came out again at just about the level of Paulette's breasts : he would be able to see better with the tip of his prick.