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.

Page 89 of 212 · 20 per page

• 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.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  my American … dead love: “One of the few real, lyrical, heartfelt outbursts on H.H.’s part,” said Nabokov. CHAPTER 30pulled on … sweater: H.H. dons Quilty’s fate, as it were. genuflexion lubricity: worshipful lasciviousness or lewdness. he: Quilty. For allusions to him, see Quilty, Clare. shadowgraphs: see shadowgraphs. CHAPTER 31lithophanic: lithophane is porcelain impressed with figures made distinct by light (e.g., a lampshade). To quote an old poet: he is invented, but his “message” is signal. CHAPTER 32a garden and … a palace gate: one of those rare moments when H.H. is “so tired of being cynical.” He contemplates the hidden beauties of Lolita’s soul, and the mood prefigures his realization of Lolita’s loss, fully expressed here. stippled Hopkins: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), English poet. Stippled: dotted (see stippled). Its use refers to Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty” (1877): “Glory be to God for dappled things— … / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim.” shorn Baudelaire: H.H. is referring to what might be called the poet’s dramatic baldness. In the self-portrait c. 1860 and in Carjat’s photograph of 1863, his hair seems to have been torn from the head; and the sculpture by Raymond Duchamp Villon (1911) and the etched portrait by his brother Jacques Villon (1920) accentuate the great forehead and cranium. See oh Baudelaire!. God or Shakespeare: an echo of Stephen Dedalus’s invocation of “God, the sun, Shakespeare,” in the Nighttown section of Ulysses (1961 Random House edition, p. 505). For Joyce, see outspoken book: Ulysses. “The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays,” said Nabokov. “With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play” (Wisconsin Studies interview). Although the problem has not yet been submitted to a computer, Shakespeare would seem to be the writer Nabokov invokes most frequently in his novels in English. The title of his story “ ‘That in Aleppo Once …’ ” (1943) is drawn from Othello. Part of Chapter Ten of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and all of Chapter Seven of Bend Sinister are devoted to Shakespeare; he informs the center of Pale Fire, where streets of the Zemblan capital city are named Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley. “Help me, Will,” calls John Shade, searching for a title for his poem—and he does help, providing a passage from Timon of Athens. Nabokov translated into Russian Shakespeare’s Sonnets XVII and XXVII (The Rudder, September 18, 1927), two excerpts from Hamlet (Act IV, scene vii, and Act V, scene i [The Rudder, October 19, 1930]), and Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy (Act III, scene i [The Rudder, November 23, 1930]). Regarding Hamlet, see Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y.. For significant verbal play on Richard III, see coltish subteens … (all New England for a lady-writer’s pen!). pentapod: counting as fifth the monster’s “foot of engorged brawn.” turpid: rare; foul, disgraceful. mais … t’aimais: French; but I loved you, I loved you!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Joyce comes closest to this in Ulysses (1922), not in the coldly brilliant “Oxen of the Sun” section but in the “Cyclops” episode in Barney Kiernan’s pub, which oscillates between parodic passages and a straightforward rendering of the dialogue and action; in the “Nausicäa” episode on the beach, which first projects Gerty MacDowell’s point of view in a style parodying sentimental ladies; magazine fiction, and midway shifts to Bloom’s non-parodic stream-of-consciousness; and in parts of the “Hades” Nighttown section, especially the closing apparition of Bloom’s dead son, Rudy. Nabokov has gone beyond Joyce in developing parody as a novelistic form, for in Lolita and Pale Fire , which are totally parodic in form and may be the finest comic novels since Ulysses , the parody and pathos are always congruent, rather than adjacent to one another—as though the entire “Nausicäa” or “Cyclops” episodes were cast as parody, without in any way diminishing our sense of Bloom’s suffering, or that Joyce had been able to express something of the humanity of Bloom or Mrs. Purefoy in the “Oxen of the Sun” tour de force . Nabokov has summarized in a phrase his triumph in Lolita and Pale Fire . Just before Humbert takes Lolita into their room at The Enchanted Hunters hotel in what is to be the most crucial event in his life, Humbert comments, “ Parody of a hotel corridor. Parody of silence and death. ” To paraphrase Marianne Moore’s well-known line that poetry is “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” Nabokov’s “poem” is a parody of death with real suffering in it. With characteristic self-awareness, Nabokov defines in The Gift the essence of his own art: “The spirit of parody always goes along with genuine poetry.” This spirit in Nabokov represents not merely a set of techniques but, as suggested above, an attitude toward experience, a means of discovering the nature of experience.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  It was Friday, and in the dining-room the German watchmaker was winding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this punctual, bald watchmaker, “that the German was wound up for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches,” and he smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: “And maybe she will come round! That’s a good expression, ‘_come round,_’” he thought. “I must repeat that.” “Matvey!” he shouted. “Arrange everything with Darya in the sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna,” he said to Matvey when he came in. “Yes, sir.” Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the steps. “You won’t dine at home?” said Matvey, seeing him off. “That’s as it happens. But here’s for the housekeeping,” he said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. “That’ll be enough.” “Enough or not enough, we must make it do,” said Matvey, slamming the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps. Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the household cares which crowded upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, the English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay, and which only she could answer: “What were the children to put on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?” “Ah, let me alone, let me alone!” she said, and going back to her bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when talking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the conversation. “He has gone! But has he broken it off with her?” she thought. “Can it be he sees her? Why didn’t I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers—strangers forever!” She repeated again with special significance the word so dreadful to her. “And how I loved him! my God, how I loved him!... How I loved him! And now don’t I love him? Don’t I love him more than before? The most horrible thing is,” she began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in at the door. “Let us send for my brother,” she said; “he can get a dinner anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again, like yesterday.” “Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you send for some new milk?” And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and drowned her grief in them for a time. Chapter 5

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she looked round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness, but wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law. “What, here already!” she said as she kissed her. “Dolly, how glad I am to see you!” “I am glad, too,” said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the expression of Anna’s face to find out whether she knew. “Most likely she knows,” she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna’s face. “Well, come along, I’ll take you to your room,” she went on, trying to defer as long as possible the moment of confidences. “Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he’s grown!” said Anna; and kissing him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and flushed a little. “No, please, let us stay here.” She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook her hair down. “You are radiant with health and happiness!” said Dolly, almost with envy. “I?... Yes,” said Anna. “Merciful heavens, Tanya! You’re the same age as my Seryozha,” she added, addressing the little girl as she ran in. She took her in her arms and kissed her. “Delightful child, delightful! Show me them all.” She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not but appreciate that. “Very well, we will go to them,” she said. “It’s a pity Vassya’s asleep.” After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the drawing-room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away from her. “Dolly,” she said, “he has told me.” Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort. “Dolly, dear,” she said, “I don’t want to speak for him to you, nor to try to comfort you; that’s impossible. But, darling, I’m simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!” Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered. She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigorous little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its frigid expression. She said: “To comfort me’s impossible. Everything’s lost after what has happened, everything’s over!” And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said: “But, Dolly, what’s to be done, what’s to be done? How is it best to act in this awful position—that’s what you must think of.” “All’s over, and there’s nothing more,” said Dolly. “And the worst of all is, you see, that I can’t cast him off: there are the children, I am tied. And I can’t live with him! it’s a torture to me to see him.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  162 I JEAN GENET Gil felt embarrassed by the misfired kiss. With ·a sneer in his voice, he said: "You don't feel too safe, hey, with a guy like me?" "Why shouldn't I? Sure I feel safe. I wouldn't come here, otherwise." "That's not what it looks like." Then, with an abrupt change to serious business, as if the idea to be expressed were so important as to make him brush all the previous nonsense aside: "Listen, you've got to go and talk to Robert. I've thought it over. There ain't nobody but him, and his buddies, can get me out of this mess." Naively, Gil believed that the local heavies would greet him with open arms and make him a member of their gang. He believed in the existence of such a gang, a dangerous one, another society that was fighting against society itself. That evening Roger left the penitentiary in a very confused state of mi nd. He was happy that Gil had felt desire for him, for a moment (even though it had been based on a confusion with his sister); he was annoyed with himself for having drawn back from Gil's kiss; he felt proud to know that the greatness of his friend was about to be recognized, and that it was he; Roger, who had been chosen to establish contact with the supreme powers . Now, whenever he had the oppo.rtunity, Querelle would go, round about dusk, for a walk, unobtrusively strolling in the direction of his hidden treasure. On these occasions he let sadness appear on his face. He felt himself already garbed in convict uniform, slowly meandering along, a ball and chain round his ankle, in a landscape of monstrous palm trees, a region of dream and deat h, from which neither morning nor any acquittal granted by men could ever save him again. The certainty of living in a world that is the silent double of the one in which you are actually moving about invested Querelle with a certain kind of disinterest, which endowed him, in its turn, with a spontaneous understanding of things. As a rule indiffer-

• From Querelle (1953)

  269 I QUERELLE ence of realizing th at it was th anks to Querelle that she, like l\1 ario and like Norbert, had emerged from her solitude, into wh ich his departure would again plunge all of them. He had appeared among them with the suddenness and elegance of the joker in a pack. He scrambled the pattern, yet gave it meaning. As for Querelle, he experienced a strange sensation as he left Madame Lysiane's room: he was sorry to leave her. Wh i le he was putting on his clothes again, slowly, a little sadly, his gaze came to rest on the photograph of Nona that hung in a frame on the wall. One after another he saw his friends' faces pass: Nona, Robert, Mario, Gil. He felt a kind of melancholy, a hardly conscious fear that they would not grow much older wi thout him; vaguely, and lulled almost to the point of sicken ing by �1adame Lysiane's sighs as she stood dressing herself with those overemphatic gestures he could observe in the mirror on the wardrobe door, he wished he were able to drag them all down into murder, to fix them there, so that they would never more experience love elsewhere or otherwise, only through him. When he went over to her, Madame Lysiane had cried herself dry. Strands of her disheveled hair were glued to her face by tears, and the rouge on her lips was running a little. Querelle hugged her, pressed her against his own body, already hard in it s navy-blue armor, and kissed her on the cheeks. This may throw some light on Querelle's later treatment of the Lieu tenant, first, and Mario, second. The Venge�r's stay in Brest was drawing to a close. The crew was aware that they would be ready to leave in a few days' time. The idea of departure gave rise to a confused anguish in Querelle. He would be rid of the dry land with all its tangled and dangerous adventures, but he would also lose all its joys. Every moment that turned him into more of a stranger in the city attached him more strongly to life on the ship. Querelle had a foreboding of the exceptional importance of th at enormous steel construction. The idea that it was preparing for a cruise to the Baltic, or perhaps even farther, to the White Sea, made him feel uneasy. Without

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  She would probably qualify as an alcoholic. But she was right about me. I was “on drugs.” I took upwards of a dozen pills a day. But it was all very regulated, I thought. It was all totally aboveboard. I just wanted to sleep all the time. I had a plan. “I’m not a junkie or something,” I said defensively. “I’m taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.” “Lucky you,” Reva said. “I wouldn’t mind taking time off from work to loaf around, watch movies, and snooze all day, but I’m not complaining. I just don’t have that luxury.” Once she was drunk, she’d put her feet up on the coffee table, scooching my dirty clothes and unopened mail to the floor, and she’d go on and on about Ken and catch me up on the latest episode of their soap opera drama, Office Romance. She’d brag about all the fun things she was going to do over the weekend, complain that she’d gone off her most recent diet and had to do overtime at the gym to make up for it. And eventually, she’d cry about her mother. “I just can’t talk to her like I used to. I feel so sad. I feel so abandoned. I feel very, very alone.” “We’re all alone, Reva,” I told her. It was true: I was, she was. This was the maximum comfort I could offer. “I know I have to prepare for the worst with my mom. The prognosis isn’t good. And I don’t even think I’m getting the full story about her cancer. It just makes me feel so desperate. I wish there was someone to hold me, you know? Is that pathetic?” “You’re needy,” I said. “Sounds frustrating.” “And then there’s Ken. I just can’t stand it. I’d rather kill myself than be all alone,” she said. “At least you have options.” If I was up for it, we’d order salads from the Thai place and watch movies on pay-per-view. I preferred my VHS tapes, but Reva always wanted to see whatever movie was “new” and “hot” and “supposed to be good.” She took it as a source of pride that she had a superior knowledge of pop culture during this period. She knew all the latest celebrity gossip, followed the newest fashion trends. I didn’t give a shit about that stuff. Reva, however, studied Cosmo and watched Sex and the City. She was competitive about beauty and “life wisdom.” Her envy was very self-righteous. Compared to me, she was “underprivileged.” And according to her terms, she was right: I looked like a model, had money I hadn’t earned, wore real designer clothing, had majored in art history, so I was “cultured.” Reva, on the other hand, came from Long Island, was an 8 out of 10 but called herself “a New York three,” and had majored in economics. “The Asian nerd major,” she named it.

• From Querelle (1953)

  32 I JEAN GENET Nevertheless, he felt sad, and mean. He was not wearing that habitual smile. The fog dampened his nostrils, refreshed his eyelids and his chin. He was walking straight ahead, punching his weighty body through the softness of the fog. The greater the distance he put between himself and La Feria, the more he fortified himself with all the might of the police force, believing himself to be under their friendly protection now, and endow ing the idea of "police" with the muscular strength of Nona, and with Mario's good looks. This had been his first encounter with a police officer. So he had met a cop, at last. He had walked up to him. He had shaken hands with him. He had just signed an agreement that would protect both of them against treachery. He had not found his brother there, but instead of him those two monsters of certainty, those two big shots. Nevertheless, while gaining strength from the might of the Police as he drew away from La Feria, he did not for one moment cease to be a sailor. Quere11e, in some obscure way, knew that he was coming close to his own point of perfection: clad in his blue garb, cloaked in its prestige, he was no longer a simple murderer, but a seducer as well. He proceeded down the Rue de Siam with giant strides. The fog was chilling. Increas ingly the forms of Mario and Nono merged and insti11ed in him a feeling of submission, and of pride-for deep down the sailor in him strongly opposed the policeman: and so he fortified himself with the full might of the Fighting Navy, as well. Appearing to be running after his own form, ever about to overtake it, yet in pursuit, he walked on fast, sure of himself, with a firm stride. His body armed itself with cannon, with a hull of steel, with torpedoes, with a crew who were agile and strong, bellicose and precise. Querelle became "Le Querelle," a giant destroyer, warlord of the seas, an �ntelligent and invincible mass of metal. "Watch your step, you assholel" His voice cut through the fog like a siren in the Baltic. "But it was you who . . ."

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, mercy on us! I thought we weren’t going,” his wife answered crossly. “What, when....” He coughed and waved his hand. The prince took off his hat and moved away with his daughter. “Ah! ah!” he sighed deeply. “Oh, poor things!” “Yes, papa,” answered Kitty. “And you must know they’ve three children, no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something from the Academy,” she went on briskly, trying to drown the distress that the queer change in Anna Pavlovna’s manner to her had aroused in her. “Oh, here’s Madame Stahl,” said Kitty, indicating an invalid carriage, where, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue was lying under a sunshade. This was Madame Stahl. Behind her stood the gloomy, healthy-looking German workman who pushed the carriage. Close by was standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count, whom Kitty knew by name. Several invalids were lingering near the low carriage, staring at the lady as though she were some curiosity. The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that disconcerting gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Stahl, and addressed her with extreme courtesy and affability in that excellent French that so few speak nowadays. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,” he said, taking off his hat and not putting it on again. “Prince Alexander Shtcherbatsky,” said Madame Stahl, lifting upon him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty discerned a look of annoyance. “Delighted! I have taken a great fancy to your daughter.” “You are still in weak health?” “Yes; I’m used to it,” said Madame Stahl, and she introduced the prince to the Swedish count. “You are scarcely changed at all,” the prince said to her. “It’s ten or eleven years since I had the honor of seeing you.” “Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it. Often one wonders what is the goal of this life?... The other side!” she said angrily to Varenka, who had rearranged the rug over her feet not to her satisfaction. “To do good, probably,” said the prince with a twinkle in his eye. “That is not for us to judge,” said Madame Stahl, perceiving the shade of expression on the prince’s face. “So you will send me that book, dear count? I’m very grateful to you,” she said to the young Swede. “Ah!” cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow colonel standing near, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he walked away with his daughter and the Moscow colonel, who joined them. “That’s our aristocracy, prince!” the Moscow colonel said with ironical intention. He cherished a grudge against Madame Stahl for not making his acquaintance. “She’s just the same,” replied the prince. “Did you know her before her illness, prince—that’s to say before she took to her bed?” “Yes. She took to her bed before my eyes,” said the prince.