Yearning

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 Fear of Flying (1973)

  I taught a couple of days a week and wrote the rest of the time. My teaching schedule was light, the writing was exhausting, and by the time Bennett came home, I was ready to go out and break loose. I had had plenty of solitude, plenty of long hours alone with my typewriter and my fantasies. And I seemed to meet men everywhere. The world seemed crammed with available, interesting men in a way it never had been before I was married. What was it about marriage anyway? Even if you loved your husband, there came that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the taste buds, no bittersweet edge, no danger. And you longed for an overripe Camembert, a rare goat cheese: luscious, creamy, cloven-hoofed. I was not against marriage. I believed in it in fact. It was necessary to have one best friend in a hostile world, one person you’d be loyal to no matter what, one person who’d always be loyal to you. But what about all those other longings which after a while marriage did nothing much to appease? The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the cunt, the longing to be filled up, to be fucked through every hole, the yearning for dry champagne and wet kisses, for the smell of peonies in a penthouse on a June night, for the light at the end of the pier in Gatsby.... Not those things really— because you knew that the very rich were duller than you and me—but what those things evoked. The sardonic, bittersweet vocabulary of Cole Porter love songs, the sad sentimental Rodgers and Hart lyrics, all the romantic nonsense you yearned for with half your heart and mocked bitterly with the other half. Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms! “Be kind to your behind.” “Blush like you mean it.” “Love your hair.” “Want a better body?

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A feast has been prepared in your honor. Everything has been elaborately coordinated—the flowers, the decorations, the selec- tion of guests, the dancers, the music, the five-course meal, the end- lessly flowing wine. The Banquet loosens your tongue, and also your inhibitions. Reversal T here is no reversal. Details are essential to any successful seduction, and cannot be ignored. Poeticize Your Presence Important things happen when your targets are alone: the slightest feeling of relief that you are not there, and it is all over. Fa- miliarity and overexposure will cause this reaction. Remain elusive, then, so that when you are away, they will yearn to see you again, and will associate you only with pleasant thoughts. Occupy their minds by alternating an excit- ing presence with a cool dis- tance, exuberant moments followed by calculated absences. Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo. The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelop you in seductive fantasies. Feed these fantasies by subtle inconsistencies and changes in your behavior. Poetic Presence/Absence I n 1943, the Argentine military overthrew the government. A popular forty-eight-year old colonel, Juan Perón, was named secretary of labor and social affairs. Perón was a widow who had a fondness for young girls; at the time of his appointment he was involved with a teenager whom he in- troduced to one and all as his daughter. One evening in January of 1944, Perón was seated among the other military leaders in a Buenos Aires stadium, attending an artists' festival. It was late and there were some empty seats around him; out of nowhere two beautiful young actresses asked his permission to sit down. Were they jok- ing? He would be delighted. He recognized one of the actresses—it was Eva Duarte, a star of radio soap operas whose photograph was often on the covers of the tabloids. The other actress was younger and prettier, but Perón could not take his eyes off Eva, who was talking to another colonel. She was really not his type at all. She was twenty-four, far too old for his taste; she was dressed rather garishly; and there was something a little icy in her manner. But she looked at him occasionally, and her glance excited him. He looked away for a moment, and the next thing he knew she had changed seats and was sitting next to him. They started to talk. She hung on his every word. Yes, everything he said was precisely how she felt—the poor, the workers, they were the future of Argentina.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Renée would have nothing to do with her. One evening at the opera, though, Natalie sat down beside her and gave her a poem she had written in her honor. She expressed her regrets for the past, and also a simple request: the two women should go on a pilgrimage to the Greek island of Lesbos, Sappho's home. Only there could they purify themselves and their relationship. Renée could not resist. would abandon their husbands, homes, children, to follow this Circe of Lesbos. • Circe's method was to concoct magic potions. Natalie preferred writing poems; she always knew how to blend the physical and the spiritual. —-JEAN CHALON, PORTRAIT OF A SEDUCTRESS: THE WORLD OF NATALIE BARNEY, TRANSLATED BY CAROL BARKO There once lived in the town of Gafsa, in Barbary, a very rich man who had numerous children, among them a lovely and graceful young daughter called Alibech. She was not herself a Christian, but there were many Christians in the town, and one day, having on occasion heard them extol the Christian faith and the service of God, she asked one of them for his opinion on the best and easiest way for a person to "serve God," as they put it. He answered her by saying that the ones who served God best were those who put the greatest distance between themselves and earthly goods, as happened in the case of people who had gone to live in the remoter parts of the Sahara. • She said no more about it to anyone, but next morning, being a very simple-natured creature of fourteen or thereabouts, Alibech set out all alone, in secret, and made her way toward the desert, prompted by nothing more logical than a strong adolescent impulse. A few days later, exhausted from fatigue and hunger, she arrived in the heart of the wilderness, Use Spiritual Lures • 363 On the island they retraced the poetess's steps, imagining they were trans- ported back into the pagan, innocent days of ancient Greece. For Renée, Natalie had become Sappho herself. When they finally returned to Paris, Renée wrote her, "My blond Siren, I don't want you to become like those who dwell on earth. ... I want you to stay yourself, for this is the way you cast your spell over me." Their affair lasted until Renée's death, in 1909. Interpretation. Liane de Pougy and Renée Vivien both suffered a similar oppression: they were self-absorbed, hyperaware of themselves. The source of this habit in Liane was men's constant attention to her body. She could never escape their looks, which plagued her with a feeling of heavi- ness. Renée, meanwhile, thought too much about her own problems— her repression of her lesbianism, her mortality. She felt consumed with self-hatred. Natalie Barney, on the other hand, was buoyant, lighthearted, absorbed in the world around her.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  such a cool and who could best supply it. She set her sights on Napoleon early on. He was condescending manner that young, and had a brilliant future. Beneath his calm exterior, Josephine they are bound to notice sensed, he was highly emotional and aggressive, but this did not intimidate one is not doing it to please her—it only revealed his insecurity and weakness. He would be easy to en-them. The principle should always be not to make slave. First, Josephine adapted to his moods, charmed him with her femi-concessions to those who nine grace, warmed him with her looks and manner. He wanted to possess don't have anything to give her. And once she had aroused this desire, her power lay in postponing its but who have everything to gain from us. We can wait satisfaction, withdrawing from him, frustrating him. In fact the torture of The Coquette • 71 the chase gave Napoleon a masochistic pleasure. He yearned to subdue her until they are begging on independent spirit, as if she were an enemy in battle. their knees even if it takes a very long time. People are inherently perverse. An easy conquest has a lower value than a difficult one; we are only really excited by what is denied us, by what we —SIGMUND FREUD, IN A LETTER TO A PUPIL, QUOTED IN PAUL cannot possess in full. Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to ROAZEN, FREUD AND HIS turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction. Most FOLLOWERS people miscalculate and surrender too soon, worried that the other person will lose interest, or that giving the other what he or she wants will grant the giver a kind of power. The truth is the opposite: once you satisfy some-When her time was come, one, you no longer have the initiative, and you open yourself to the possi- that nymph most fair bility that he or she will lose interest at the slightest whim. Remember: brought forth a child with whom one could have vanity is critical in love. Make your targets afraid that you may be with- fallen in love even in his drawing, that you may not really be interested, and you arouse their innate cradle, and she called him insecurity, their fear that as you have gotten to know them they have be- Narcissus. . . . Cephisus's come less exciting to you. These insecurities are devastating. Then, once child had reached his sixteenth year, and could you have made them uncertain of you and of themselves, reignite their be counted as at once boy hope, making them feel desired again. Hot and cold, hot and cold—such and man. Many lads and coquetry is perversely pleasurable, heightening interest and keeping the ini- many girls fell in love with him, but his soft young tiative on your side. Never be put off by your target's anger; it is a sure sign body housed a pride so of enslavement.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  We didn’t talk for a while. My mind drifted back to Trevor, the way he unbuttoned his shirts and pulled at his tie, the gray drapes in his bedroom, the flare of his nostrils in the mirror when he clipped his nose hairs, the smell of his aftershave. I was grateful when Reva broke the silence. “Well, will you come out for drinks on Saturday at least? It’s my birthday.” “I can’t, Reva,” I said. “I’m sorry.” “I’m telling people to meet up at Skinny Kitty at nineish.” “I’m sure you’ll have a better time if I’m not there to bum you out.” “Don’t be that way,” Reva crooned drunkenly. “Soon we’ll be old and ugly. Life is short, you know? Die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Who said that?” “Someone who liked fucking corpses.” • • • REVA WAS ONLY a week older than me. On August 20, 2000, I turned twenty-five in my apartment in a medicated haze, smoking stale menthols on the toilet and reading an old Architectural Digest. At some point I fumbled in my makeup drawer for eyeliner to circle things on the pages that I found appealing—the blank corners of rooms, the sharp glass crystals hanging from a chandelier. I heard my cell phone ring but I didn’t answer it. “Happy birthday,” Reva said in her message. “I love you.” • • • AS SUMMER DWINDLED, my sleep got thin and empty, like a room with white walls and tepid air-conditioning. If I dreamt at all, I dreamt that I was lying in bed. It felt superficial, even boring at times. I’d take a few extra Risperdal and Ambien when I got antsy, thinking about my past. I tried not to think of Trevor. I deleted Reva’s messages without listening to them. I watched Air Force One twelve times on mute. I tried to put everything out of my mind. Valium helped. Ativan helped. Chewable melatonin and Benadryl and NyQuil and Lunesta and temazepam helped. My visit to Dr. Tuttle in September was also banal. Besides the sweltering heat I suffered walking from my building into a cab, and from the cab into Dr. Tuttle’s office, I felt almost nothing. I wasn’t anxious or despondent or resentful or terrified. “How are you feeling?” I stood and pondered the question for five minutes while Dr. Tuttle went around her office turning on an arsenal of fans, all the same make and model, two installed on the radiator under the windows, one on her desk, and two in the corners of the room on the floor. She was impressively nimble. She no longer wore the neck brace. “I’m fine, I think,” I yelled blandly over the roaring hum. “You look pale,” Dr. Tuttle remarked. “I’ve been keeping out of the sun,” I told her. “Good thing. Sun exposure promotes cellular collapse, but nobody wants to talk about that.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  discontent to manipulate him. Inventing a story of the deceptions he had had to go through, he slowly drew Bouriscout into an affair that would last many years. (Bouriscout had had previous homosexual encounters, but considered himself heterosexual.) Eventually the diplomat was led into spying for the Chinese. All the while, he believed Shi Pei Pu was a woman—his yearning for adventure had made him that vulnerable. Repressed types are perfect victims for a deep seduction. People who repress the appetite for pleasure make ripe victims, particularly later in their lives. The eighth-century Chinese Emperor Ming Huang spent much of his reign trying to rid his court of its costly addiction to luxuries, and was himself a model of austerity and virtue. But the moment he saw the concubine Yang Kuei-fei bathing in a palace lake, everything changed. The most charming woman in the realm, she was the mistress of his son. Exerting his power, the emperor won her away—only to become her abject slave. The choice of the right victim is equally important in politics. Mass seducers such as Napoleon or John F. Kennedy offer their public just what it lacks. When Napoleon came to power, the French people's sense of pride was beaten down by the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution. He offered them glory and conquest. Kennedy recognized that Americans were bored with the stultifying comfort of the Eisenhower years; he gave them adventure and risk. More important, he tailored his appeal to the group most vulnerable to it: the younger generation. Successful politicians know that not everyone will be susceptible to their charm, but if they can find a group of believers with a need to be filled, they have supporters who will stand by them no matter what. Symbol: Big Game. Lions are dangerous— to hunt them is to know the thrill of risk. Leopards are clever and swift, offering the excitement of a difficult chase. Never rush into the hunt. Know your prey and choose it carefully. Do not waste time with small game— the rabbits that back into snares, the mink that walk into a scented trap. Challenge is pleasure. Choose the Right Victim • 175 Reversal There is no possible reversal. There is nothing to be gained from trying to seduce the person who is closed to you, or who cannot provide the pleasure and chase that you need. Create a False Sense of Security- Approach Indirectly If you are too direct early on, you risk stir- ring up a resistance that will never be lowered. At first there must be nothing of the seducer in your manner. The seduction should begin

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Most often the type is a composite made up of bits and pieces of different people from our youth, and even of characters in books and movies. People who influenced us inordinately—a teacher for instance—may also figure. The traits have nothing to do with superficial interests. Rather, they are unconscious, hard to verbalize. We searched hardest for this ideal type in our adolescence, when we were more idealistic. Often our first loves have more of these traits than our subsequent affairs. For Chateaubriand, living with his family in their se- cluded castle, his first love was his sister Lucile, whom he adored and ideal- ized. But since love with her was impossible, he created a figure out of his imagination who had all her positive attributes—nobility of spirit, inno- cence, courage. Madame Récamier could not have known about Chateaubriand's ideal type, but she did know something about him, well before she ever met him. She had read all of his books, and his characters were highly autobio- graphical. She knew of his obsession with his lost youth; and everyone knew of his endless and unsatisfying affairs with women, his hyperrestless spirit. Madame Récamier knew how to mirror people, entering their spirit, and one of her first acts was to take Chateaubriand to Vallée aux Loups, where he felt he had left part of his youth. Alive with memories, he re- gressed further into his childhood, to the days in the castle. She actively en- couraged this. Most important, she embodied a spirit that came naturally to her, but that matched his youthful ideal: innocent, noble, kind. (The fact that so many men fell in love with her suggests that many men had the same ideals.) Madame Récamier was Lucile/Sylphide. It took him years to realize it, but when he did, her spell over him was complete. It is nearly impossible to embody someone's ideal completely. But if you come close enough, if you evoke some of that ideal spirit, you can lead that person into a deep seduction. To effect this regression you must play the role of the therapist. Get your targets to open up about their past, par- ticularly their former loves and most particularly their first love. Pay atten- tion to any expressions of disappointment, how this or that person did not give them what they wanted. Take them to places that evoke their youth. In this regression you are creating not so much a relationship of depen- 346 • The Art of Seduction dency and immaturity but rather the adolescent spirit of a first love. There is a touch of innocence to the relationship. So much of adult life involves compromise, conniving, and a certain toughness. Create the ideal atmo- sphere by keeping such things out, drawing the other person into a kind of mutual weakness, conjuring a second virginity. There should be a dream- like quality to the affair, as if the target were reliving that first love but could not quite believe it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Because the responsibilities of adult life are a burden so oppressive at times that we secretly yearn for the dependency of childhood, for that per- son who looked after our every need, assumed our cares and worries. This daydream of ours has a strong erotic component, for the child's feeling of being dependent on the parent is charged with sexual undertones. Give people a sensation similar to that protected, dependent feeling of childhood and they will project all kinds of fantasies onto you, including feelings of love or sexual attraction that they will attribute to something else. We won't admit it, but we long to regress, to shed our adult exterior and vent the childish emotions that linger beneath the surface. Early in his career, Sigmund Freud confronted a strange problem: many of his female patients were falling in love with him. He thought he knew what was happening: encouraged by Freud, the patient would delve into her childhood, which of course was the source of her illness or neurosis. She would talk about her relationship with her father, her earliest experi- ences of tenderness and love, and also of neglect and abandonment. The process would stir up powerful emotions and memories. In a way, she would be transported back into her childhood. Intensifying this effect was the fact that Freud himself said little and made himself a little cold and dis- tant, although he seemed to be caring—in other words, quite like the tradi- tional father figure. Meanwhile the patient was lying on a couch, in a helpless or passive position, so that the situation duplicated the roles of par- ent and child. Eventually she would begin to direct some of the confused emotions she was dealing with toward Freud himself. Unaware of what was happening, she would relate to him as to her father. She would regress and fall in love. Freud called this phenomenon "transference," and it would be- come an active part of his therapy. By getting patients to transfer some of their repressed feelings onto the therapist, he would bring their problems into the open, where they could be dealt with on a conscious level. The transference effect was so potent, though, that Freud was often un- able to move his patients past their infatuation. In fact transference is a powerful way of creating an emotional attachment—the goal of any seduc- [In Japan,] much in the traditional way of child- rearing seems to foster passive dependence. The child is rarely left alone, day or night, for it usually sleeps with the mother. When it goes out the child is not pushed ahead in a pram, to face the world alone, but is tightly bound to the mother's back in a snug cocoon.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  She knew he had other mistresses, but when she tried to put him out of her mind, a letter from him would arrive, and she would be back to square one. In truth, she had started the correspondence, haunted by his midnight visit. She had to see him again. Despite the risk of discovery, and the fact that her sister Kokiden, the emperor's wife, hated Genji, she arranged for fur- ther trysts in her apartment. But one night an envious courtier found them together. Word reached Kokiden, who naturally was furious. She de- manded that Genji be banished from court and the emperor had no choice but to agree. Genji went far away, and things settled down. Then the emperor died and his son took over. A kind of emptiness had come to the court: the dozens of women whom Genji had seduced could not endure his absence, and flooded him with letters. Even women who had never known him in- timately would weep over any relic he had left behind—a robe, for in- stance, in which his scent still lingered. And the young emperor missed his jocular presence. And the princesses missed the music he had played on the koto. And Oborozukiyo pined for his midnight visits. Finally even Kokiden broke down, realizing that she could not resist him. So Genji was sum- moned back to the court. And not only was he forgiven, he was given a hero's welcome; the young emperor himself greeted the scoundrel with tears in his eyes. The Natural • 65 The story of Genji's life is told in the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman of the Heian court. The character was most likely based on a real-life man, Fujiwara no Korechika. Indeed another book of the period, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, de- scribes an encounter between the female author and Korechika, and reveals his incredible charm and his almost hypnotic effect on women. Genji is a Natural, an undefensive lover, a man who has a lifelong obsession with women but whose appreciation of and affection for them makes him irre- sistible. As he says to Oborozukiyo in the novel, "I am always allowed my way." This self-belief is half of Genji's charm. Resistance does not make him defensive; he retreats gracefully, reciting a little poetry, and as he leaves, the perfume of his robes trailing behind him, his victim wonders why she has been so afraid, and what she is missing by spurning him, and she finds a way to let him know that the next time things will be different.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Finally, words are important in seduction, and have a great deal of power to confuse, distract, and boost the vanity of the target. But what is most seductive in the long run is what you do not say, what you communicate indirectly. Words come easily, and people distrust them. Anyone can say the right words; and once they are said, nothing is binding, and they may even be forgotten altogether. The gesture, the thoughtful gift, the little details seem much more real and substantial. They are also much more charming than lofty words about love, precisely because they speak for themselves and let the seduced read into them more than is there. Never tell someone what you are feeling; let them guess it in your looks and gestures. That is the more convincing language. 276 • The Art of Seduction Symbol: The Banquet. A feast has been prepared in your honor. Everything has been elaborately coordinated— the flowers, the decorations, the selection of guests, the dancers, the music, the five-course meal, the endlessly flowing wine. The Banquet loosens your tongue, and also your inhibitions. Reversal There is no reversal. Details are essential to any successful seduction, and cannot be ignored. Poeticize Your Presence Important things happen when your targets are alone: the slightest feeling of relief that you are not there, and it is all over. Fa- miliarity and overexposure will cause this reaction. Remain elusive, then, so that when you are away, they will yearn to see you again, and will associate you only with pleasant thoughts. Occupy their minds by alternating an excit- ing presence with a cool dis- tance, exuberant moments followed by calculated absences. Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo. The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelop you in seductive fantasies. Feed these fantasies by subtle inconsistencies and changes in your behavior. Poetic Presence/Absence In 1943, the Argentine military overthrew the government. A popular forty-eight-year old colonel, Juan Perón, was named secretary of labor and social affairs. Perón was a widow who had a fondness for young girls; at the time of his appointment he was involved with a teenager whom he introduced to one and all as his daughter. One evening in January of 1944, Perón was seated among the other military leaders in a Buenos Aires stadium, attending an artists' festival. It He who does not know how to encircle a girl so was late and there were some empty seats around him; out of nowhere two that she loses sight of beautiful young actresses asked his permission to sit down. Were they jok- everything he does not ing? He would be delighted. He recognized one of the actresses—it was want her to see, he who Eva Duarte, a star of radio soap operas whose photograph was often on the does not know how to poetize himself into a girl

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  idle than working men with careers, and therefore more defenseless against moment he saw Yang an ingenious seductress. On the other hand, you should generally avoid Kuei-fei bathing in the lake near his palace in the people who are preoccupied with business or work—seduction demands Li mountains, he was attention, and busy people have too little space in their minds for you to destined to sit at her feet, occupy. learning from her the According to Freud, seduction begins early in life, in our relationship emotional mysteries of what the Chinese call Yin. with our parents. They seduce us physically, both with bodily contact and — E L O I S E TALCOTT H I B B E R T , by satisfying desires such as hunger, and we in turn try to seduce them into EMBROIDERED GAUZE: paying us attention. We are creatures by nature vulnerable to seduction PORTRAITS OF FAMOUS throughout our lives. We all want to be seduced; we yearn to be drawn out CHINESE LADIES of ourselves, out of our routines and into the drama of eros. And what draws us more than anything is the feeling that someone has something we don't, a quality we desire. Your perfect victims are often people who think you have something they don't, and who will be enchanted to have it provided for them. Such victims may have a temperament quite the opposite of yours, and this difference will create an exciting tension. When Jiang Qing, later known as Madame Mao, first met Mao Tse-tung in 1937 in his mountain retreat in western China, she could sense how desperate he was for a bit of color and spice in his life: all the camp's women dressed like the men, and abjured any feminine finery. Jiang had been an actress in Shanghai, and was anything but austere. She supplied what he lacked, and she also gave him the added thrill of being able to educate her in communism, appealing to his Pygmalion complex—the desire to dominate, control, and remake a person. In fact it was Jiang Qing who controlled her future husband. The greatest lack of all is excitement and adventure, which is precisely what seduction offers. In 1964, the Chinese actor Shi Pei Pu, a man who had gained fame as a female impersonator, met Bernard Bouriscout, a young diplomat assigned to the French embassy in China. Bouriscout had come to China looking for adventure, and was disappointed to have little contact with Chinese people. Pretending to be a woman who, when still a child, had been forced to live as a boy—supposedly the family already had too many daughters—Shi Pei Pu used the young Frenchman's boredom and 174 • The Art of Seduction

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Lauzun proved more intelligent than she had imagined—they talked of the presumably she does playwright Corneille (her favorite), of heroism, and of other elevated top- perceive that on her ics. Now their encounters became more frequent. They had become horizon a new planet has friends. Anne Marie noted in her diary that her conversations with Lauzun, loomed, which in its course has encroached disturbingly when they occurred, were the highlight of her day; when he was not at upon hers in a curiously court, she felt his absence. Surely her encounters with him came frequently undisturbing way, but enough that they could not be accidental on his part, but he always seemed she has no inkling of the law underlying this surprised to see her. At the same time, she recorded feeling uneasy— movement. . . . Before I strange emotions were stealing up on her, she did not know why. begin my attack, I must 179 180 • The Art of Seduction first become acquainted Time passed, and the Grande Mademoiselle was to leave Paris for a with her and her whole week or two. Now Lauzun approached her without warning and made an mental state. emotional plea to be considered her confidante, the great friend who —SØREN KIERKEGAARD, THE would execute any commission she needed done while she was away. He SEDUCER'S DIARY, TRANSLATED BY H O W A R D V. H O N G AND was poetic and chivalrous, but what did he really mean? In her diary, Anne E D N A H . H O N G Marie finally confronted the emotions that had been stirring in her since their first conversation: "I told myself, these are not vague musings; there must be an object to all of these feelings, and I could not imagine who it was. . . . Finally, after troubling myself with this for several days, I realized No sooner had he spoken than the bullocks, driven that it was M. de Lauzun whom I loved, it was he who had somehow from their mountain slipped into my heart and captured it." pastures, were on their way Made aware of the source of her feelings, the Grande Mademoiselle to the beach, as Jove had directed; they were making became more direct. If Lauzun was to be her confidante, she could talk to for the sands where the him of marriage, of the matches that were still being offered to her. The daughter [ Europa] of the topic might give him a chance to express his feelings; perhaps he might great king used to play with the young girls of show jealousy. Unfortunately Lauzun did not seem to take the hint. In-Tyre, who were her com- stead, he asked her why she was thinking of marriage at all—she seemed panions. • . . . Aban-so happy. Besides, who could possibly be worthy of her? This went doning the dignity of his

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  charms. The right victims are those for whom you can fill a void, who see in you something exotic. They are often isolated or at least somewhat unhappy (perhaps because of recent adverse circumstances), or can easily be made so— for the completely contented person is almost impossible to seduce. The perfect victim has some natural quality that attracts you. The strong emotions this quality inspires will help make your seductive maneuvers seem more natural and dynamic. The perfect victim allows for the perfect chase. Preparing for the Hunt The young Vicomte de Valmont was a notorious libertine in the Paris of the 1770s, the ruin of many a young girl and the ingenious seducer of the wives of illustrious aristocrats. But after a while the repetitiveness of it all began to bore him; his successes came too easily So one year, during the sweltering, slow month of August, he decided to take a break from Paris and visit his aunt at her château in the provinces. Life there was not what The ninth • Have I he was used to—there were country walks, chats with the local vicar, card become blind? Has the games. His city friends, particularly his fellow libertine and confidante the inner eye of the soul lost its power? I have seen her, but Marquise de Merteuil, expected him to hurry back. it is as if I had seen a There were other guests at the château, however, including the Prési- heavenly revelation—s o dente de Tourvel, a twenty-two-year-old woman whose husband was tem- completely has her image vanished again for me. In porarily absent, having work to do elsewhere. The Présidente had been vain do I summon all the languishing at the château, waiting for him to join her. Valmont had met powers of my soul in order her before; she was certainly beautiful, but had a reputation as a prude who to conjure up this image. If I ever see her again, I shall was extremely devoted to her husband. She was not a court lady; her taste be able to recognize her in clothing was atrocious (she always covered her neck with ghastly frills) instantly, even though she and her conversation lacked wit. For some reason, however, far from Paris, stands among a hundred others. Now she has fled, Valmont began to see these traits in a new light. He followed her to the and the eye of my soul tries chapel where she went every morning to pray. He caught glimpses of her at in vain to overtake her dinner, or playing cards. Unlike the ladies of Paris, she seemed unaware of with its longing. I was her charms; this excited him. Because of the heat, she wore a simple linen walking along Langelinie, seemingly nonchalantly

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  One lusty lady who had juice and joy and love and talent too? Where could we turn for guidance? Colette, under her Gallic Afro? Sappho, about whom almost nothing is known? “I famish/and I pine,” she says in my handy desk translation. And so did we! Almost all the women we admired most were spinsters or suicides. Was that where it all led? So the search for the impossible man went on. Pia never married. I married twice—but still the search went on. Any one of my many shrinks could tell you that I was looking for my father. Wasn’t everyone? The explanation didn’t quite content me. Not that it seemed wrong; it just seemed too simple. Perhaps the search was really a kind of ritual in which the process was more important than the end. Perhaps it was a kind of quest. Perhaps there was no man at all, but just a mirage conjured by our longing and emptiness. When you go to sleep hungry, you dream of eating. When you go to sleep with a full bladder, you dream of getting up to pee. When you go to sleep horny, you dream of getting laid. Maybe the impossible man was nothing more than a specter made of our own yearning. Maybe he was like the fearless intruder, the phantom rapist women expect to find under their beds or in their closets. Or maybe he was really death, the last lover. In one poem, I imagined him as the man under the bed.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  loved, and a week later he fant. And as he went deeper into his character, something strange hapis living in hope. The pened: the character and the real-life man began to merge. Although he following week he has been had had a troubled childhood, he was obsessed with it. (For his film Easy snubbed into despair, and Street he built a set in Hollywood that duplicated the London streets he had the week afterwards he has gone mad. known as a boy.) He mistrusted the adult world, preferring the company of — S T E N D H A L , LOVE, the young, or the young at heart: three of his four wives were teenagers TRANSLATED BY GILBERT AND when he married them. SUZANNE SALE More than any other comedian, Chaplin aroused a mix of laughter and sentiment. He made you empathize with him as the victim, feel sorry for The Natural • 59 him the way you would for a lost dog. You both laughed and cried. And "Geographical" escapism audiences sensed that the role Chaplin played came from somewhere deep has been rendered ineffective by the spread of inside—that he was sincere, that he was actually playing himself. Within air routes. What remains is a few years after Making a Living, Chaplin was the most famous actor "evolutionary" escapism— in the world. There were Chaplin dolls, comic books, toys; popular songs a downward course in one's development, back to the and short stories were written about him; he became a universal icon. In ideas and emotions of 1921, when he returned to London for the first time since he had left it, he "golden childhood," which was greeted by enormous crowds, as if at the triumphant return of a great may well be defined as general. "regress towards infantilism," escape to a personal world of childish The greatest seducers, those who seduce mass audiences, nations, the ideas. • In a strictly-world, have a way of playing on people's unconscious, making them react regulated society, where life follows strictly-defined in a way they can neither understand nor control. Chaplin inadvertently hit canons, the urge to escape on this power when he discovered the effect he could have on audiences by from the chain of things playing up his weakness, by suggesting that he had a child's mind in an adult "established once and for all" must be felt body. In the early twentieth century, the world was radically and rapidly particularly strongly. . . . • changing. People were working longer and longer hours at increasingly And the most perfect of mechanical jobs; life was becoming steadily more inhuman and heartless, as them [ comedians] does this the ravages of World War I made clear. Caught in the midst of revolution- with utmost perfection, for he [ Chaplin] serves this ary change, people yearned for a lost childhood that they imagined as a principle . . . through the golden paradise. subtlety of his method

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  realized that I had been celibacy and spiritual virtue would have created disciples but not physical slighted, but on the other I love. The combination of these traits, however, both drew people in and felt a reverence for Socrates' frustrated them, a coquettish dynamic that created an emotional and physical character, his self-control and courage . . . The result attachment to a man who shunned such things. His withdrawal from the was that I could neither world had the effect of only heightening the devotion of his followers. bring myself to be angry Coquetry depends on developing a pattern to keep the other person off with him and tear myself balance. The strategy is extremely effective. Experiencing a pleasure once, away from his society, nor find a way of subduing we yearn to repeat it; so the Coquette gives us pleasure, then withdraws it. him to my will. . . . I was The alternation of heat and cold is the most common pattern, and has sev-utterly disconcerted, and eral variations. The eighth-century Chinese Coquette Yang Kuei-Fei to-wandered about in a state of enslavement to the man tally enslaved the Emperor Ming Huang through a pattern of kindness and the like of which has never bitterness: having charmed him with kindness, she would suddenly get an-been known. gry, blaming him harshly for the slightest mistake. Unable to live without —ALCIBIADES, QUOTED IN the pleasure she gave him, the emperor would turn the court upside down PLATO, THE SYMPOSIUM to please her when she was angry or upset. Her tears had a similar effect: what had he done, why was she so sad? He eventually ruined himself and his kingdom trying to keep her happy. Tears, anger, and the production of guilt are all the tools of the Coquette. A similar dynamic appears in a lover's quarrel: when a couple fights, then reconciles, the joys of reconciliation only make the attachment stronger. Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic—it makes people come to you. Coquettes are never jealous—that would undermine their image of fundamental self-sufficiency. But they are masters at inciting jealousy: by paying attention to a third party, creating a triangle of desire, they signal to their victims that they may not be that interested. This triangulation is extremely seductive, in social contexts as well as erotic ones. Interested in narcissistic women, Freud was a narcissist himself, and his aloofness drove his disciples crazy. (They even had a name for it—his "god complex.") Behaving like a kind of messiah, too lofty for petty emotions, Freud always maintained a distance between himself and his students, hardly ever inviting them over for dinner, say, and keeping his private life shrouded in mystery.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Our ideal may be buried in disappointment, but it lurks underneath, waiting to be sparked. If another person seems to have that ideal quality, or to have the ability to bring it out in us, we fall in love. That is the response to Ideal Lovers. Attuned to what is missing inside you, to the fantasy that will stir you, they reflect your ideal—and you do the rest, projecting on to them your deepest desires and yearnings. Casanova and Madame de Pompadour did not merely seduce their targets into a sexual affair, they made them fall in love. The key to following the path of the Ideal Lover is the ability to observe. Ignore your targets' words and conscious behavior; focus on the tone of their voice, a blush here, a look there—those signs that betray what their words won't say. Often the ideal is expressed in contradiction. King Louis XV seemed to care only about chasing deer and young girls, but that in fact covered up his disappointment in himself; he yearned to have his nobler qualities flattered. Never has there been a better moment than now to play the Ideal Lover. That is because we live in a world in which everything must seem elevated and well-intentioned. Power is the most taboo topic of all: although it is the reality we deal with every day in our struggles with people, there is nothing noble, self-sacrificing, or spiritual about it. Ideal Lovers make you feel nobler, make the sensual and sexual seem spiritual and aesthetic. Like all seducers, they play with power, but they disguise their manipulations behind the facade of an ideal. Few people see through them and their seductions last longer. Some ideals resemble Jungian archetypes—they go back a long way in our culture, and their hold is almost unconscious. One such dream is that of the chivalrous knight. In the courtly love tradition of the Middle Ages, a troubadour/knight would find a lady, almost always a married one, The Ideal Lover • 37 and would serve as her vassal. He would go through terrible trials on her behalf, undertake dangerous pilgrimages in her name, suffer awful tortures to prove his love. (This could include bodily mutilation, such as tearing off of fingernails, the cutting of an ear, etc.) He would also write poems and sing beautiful songs to her, for no troubadour could succeed without some kind of aesthetic or spiritual quality to impress his lady. The key to the archetype is a sense of absolute devotion. A man who will not let matters of warfare, glory, or money intrude into the fantasy of courtship has limitless power. The troubadour role is an ideal because people who do not put themselves and their own interests first are truly rare. For a woman to attract the intense attention of such a man is immensely appealing to her vanity.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Belt and cartridge case of leather. Leggings. Bayonet in its scabbard. A palm tree. A tent. The face was hard, scornful. Scorning death. At eighteen! "To gently order these strong, proud boys to advance to their deaths! The torpedoed ship sinking slowly, with only myselfperhaps supported by this one Marine who cannot die without me next to him-standing in the prow, watching these beautiful boys c1Iown !" In French, the sinking of a ship is sombrer. Somberly. Are the other officers aware of my state, my emotional turmoil? I'm afraid of some of it seeping through even during my fulfilment of my duties, my contacts with them. This morning, my mind was literally haunted by notions such as young boys have, there were robbers, warriors of savage tribes, tough pimps, grinning and blood-spattered looters, and so forth. I didn't really visualize them so much as sensing them within me. All of a sudden they arranged themselves in tableaux that faded away again vezy quickly. These were, as I've said, young boys' fantasies, invading my mind for a second or two. To have him spread his thighs so that I can sit down between them, resting my arms on them as in a comfortable chair! 0 - 0 0 - 143 I QUERELLE A Navy Officer. As an adolescen t, even as an Ensign, I didn't realize what a perfect alibi a Navy career would give me. Remaining a bachelor seems so perfectly understandable. \Vomen don't ever ask you why you aren't married. They pity you for only knowing those brief affairs, never the durable fire. The sea. The solitude. "A woman in every port." No one bothers to enquire whether I have a fiancee. Not my fellow officers, nor my mother. We are traveling men. From the time I fell in love with Querelle I have become less of a disciplinarian. My love makes me more pliable. The more I love Querelle, the more the woman in me defines and refines herself and grieves over her lack of fulfilment. Faced with anything that has no bearing on my relationship with Querelle, my own misery, my secret frustrations cause m e just to stare at it and say: "What's the use of that?" Saw Admiral A . . . again. It seems he is a widower, has been so for more than twenty years. The big guy who fo11ows him around (it is his chauffeur, not an orderly ) is the glorious resurrection of his flesh. I come back from a ten-day mission. My meeting with Querene gave me a shock-I felt it even around m e, in the sunny air -a delicately tragic trauma. The entire day revolves, floats around a cen ter of luminous vapor: the gravity of this re-turn.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  It’s possible to answer with fury or neglect. It’s possible to be so assured of privilege that contempt for a place like mine is the only answer. It’s possible to be so rootless that the questions are merely ironic. You once said that you wrote Holy Land to counterbalance the willful ignorance some prefer to have about suburban life. Do you think that we’re ready to reconsider that bias ? I want the day to come when writers deal honestly with the divided heart that’s in every story of every American place. We hunger for a home but doubt its worth when we have it. We long to acquire a sense of place but dislike its claims on us. This essential American contradiction isn’t going to change. No place is immune from the peculiarly American certainty that something better is just beyond the next bend in the road or waiting to be realized in the next utopia. How can a home —four walls, a ceiling, and a floor —affect our values? And if it can, doesn’t this leave room for a certain amount of manipulation? And is that necessarily bad ? Holy Land is, in part, a meditation on the fate of the things we touch and the corresponding effects of their touch on us. Manipulation is precisely what happens, but it works both ways. I can’t call this either good or bad, but only inevitable. What we hope for, I think, is tenderness in this encounter. Holy Land is the story of growth as a reflection of optimism . In southern California today, growth is the prime source for pessimism. Can we conclude that the suburban experiment has failed ? The builders of my suburb turned lima bean fields into housing tracts with an astonishing degree of good luck and wisdom. Some of the good luck has run out of suburban development, and much of the wisdom in the building of Lakewood has been ignored. Have suburbs failed as a result? In Los Angeles, suburbs like mine are all we have. They’d better not fail, or 13 million of us will be homeless. Of course, new suburbs can be made better, and what we value in older suburbs can be preserved. The preference of a majority of people for neighborhoods that look remarkably like mine won’t go away, however, even though the suburban frontier has grown harsher. Optimism still makes bearable the risks of our lives together. Los Angeles is often described as an increasingly polarized community from which people “in the middle” are being squeezed out, leaving a great many working poor and the few who are relatively wealthy. If that’s so, what is in store for the kind of homeowner Holy Land describes ? The suburb described in Holy Land depended then—and depends now—on jobs that let men and women with ordinary skills make a living. Once those jobs were riveting jets together at Douglas and cracking crude oil into gasoline at Shell and Texaco.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Maybe. But still it’s queer to me, just as at this moment it seems queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over as soon as we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here are we trying to drag out our meal as long as possible, and with that object eating oysters....” “Why, of course,” objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But that’s just the aim of civilization—to make everything a source of enjoyment.” “Well, if that’s its aim, I’d rather be a savage.” “And so you are a savage. All you Levins are savages.” Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt ashamed and sore, and he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of a subject which at once drew his attention. “Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the Shtcherbatskys’, I mean?” he said, his eyes sparkling significantly as he pushed away the empty rough shells, and drew the cheese towards him. “Yes, I shall certainly go,” replied Levin; “though I fancied the princess was not very warm in her invitation.” “What nonsense! That’s her manner.... Come, boy, the soup!... That’s her manner—_grande dame,_” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I’m coming, too, but I have to go to the Countess Bonina’s rehearsal. Come, isn’t it true that you’re a savage? How do you explain the sudden way in which you vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys were continually asking me about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I know is that you always do what no one else does.” “Yes,” said Levin, slowly and with emotion, “you’re right. I am a savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in coming now. Now I have come....” “Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!” broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch, looking into Levin’s eyes. “Why?” “‘I know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know a youth in love,’” declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Everything is before you.” “Why, is it over for you already?” “No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine, and the present—well, it’s not all that it might be.” “How so?” “Oh, things go wrong. But I don’t want to talk of myself, and besides I can’t explain it all,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well, why have you come to Moscow, then?... Hi! take away!” he called to the Tatar. “You guess?” responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed on Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I guess, but I can’t be the first to talk about it. You can see by that whether I guess right or wrong,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, gazing at Levin with a subtle smile. “Well, and what have you to say to me?” said Levin in a quivering voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too. “How do you look at the question?” Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking his eyes off Levin.