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.

Page 27 of 48 · 20 per page

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  He wrote a book about it, and it hit the bestseller list. No kidding. A couple years later he moved to Baltimore and got married. I called him after the wedding and asked him how he got to know his wife without dating. He said they courted, which I understood to mean he had become Amish. But he explained courting is a lot like dating without the head games. He and his wife are also very happy. My friend Mike Tucker reads books about dating and knows a lot on the subject. He says things like “You know, Don, relationships are like rubber bands . . . When one person pulls away, the other is attracted, and when the other person pulls away, well, that just draws the other one even closer.” That sort of thing is interesting to a guy like me because I know nothing about dating. What little I know about dating is ridiculous and wouldn’t help rabbits reproduce. I know you shouldn’t make fun of a girl on a date and you shouldn’t eat spaghetti. Other than these two things I am clueless. Here’s a tip I’ve never used: I understand you can learn a great deal about girldom by reading Pride and Prejudice, and I own a copy, but I have never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little note inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring. Nobody dies at all. I keep the book on my shelf because girls come into my room, sit on my couch, and eye the books on the adjacent shelf. You have a copy of Pride and Prejudice, they exclaim in a gentle sigh and smile. Yes, I say. Yes, I do. [image "9780785263708_0153_004" file=Image00051.jpg] Not long ago I went to Yosemite with my Canadian friend Julie. I have a weakness for Canadian girls. I don’t know why, but when a Canadian girl asks me what I am thinking “aboat,” I go nuts. So I have had this secret crush on Julie for a while, but she likes guys who surf and skateboard and jump out of airplanes with snowboards. I pretty much don’t fit that description. I read books by dead guys. This is my identity. Besides, when Julie and I met I was in a relationship with a cute writer from the South, and Julie liked some other guy who could skateboard and play guitar. The thing with the writer didn’t work out, however, because though we had everything in common we could not connect in the soul. So it happened that I was speaking in San Francisco and Julie was traveling around California and happened to be in a hostel in the city while I was there.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  But it wasn't happy, it was full of desperate high spirits in its innermost being, the signals that sounded like cries of fear, and again and again between everything, in distorted and bizarre harmonies, tormenting, erratic and sweet, there was the motive, that first enigmatic motive to be heard … And now an unstoppable change of events began, the meaning and nature of which could not be guessed, a flight from adventures in sound, rhythm and harmony, over which Hanno was not master but rather under his working fingers and which he experienced without knowing them beforehand... He sat, hunched over the keys a little, with parted lips and distant, deep gaze, and his brown hair covered his temples in soft curls. What happened? What was experienced? Were there terrible obstacles overcome, dragons slain, rocks scaled, streams swum, flames traversed? And like a roar of laughter, or like an incomprehensibly blissful promise, the first motive wound its way through, this empty structure, this sinking from one key to the other ... yes, it was as if it provoked new, violent efforts, frantic attempts in Octaves followed it, ending in screams, and then a swell began, a slow, unstoppable build-up, a chromatic upward struggle of wild, irresistible longing, abruptly interrupted by sudden, terrifying and rousing pianissimi, like the ground slipping away from under one's feet and like a sinking in desire... Once upon a time, as if the first chords of the imploring, contrite prayer wanted to be heard in a distant and gentle admonition; Immediately, however, the tide of surging cacophonies rushed over it, which bunched up, rolled forward, receded, climbed up, sank and again struggled towards an ineffable goal that had to come, now had to come, at this moment, at this terrible climax, there the pangs of tribulation had become unbearable... And it came, it could no longer be held back, the spasms of longing could no longer have been prolonged, it came like a curtain ripped open, gates burst open, thorn hedges opened up, walls of flames collapsed... The solution, the dissolution, the fulfilment, complete satisfaction broke in, and with delighted exultations everything unraveled into a euphony that, in a sweet and longing ritardando, immediately changed into another sank over ... it was the motive, the first motive, that sounded! And what now began was a celebration, a triumph, an unbridled orgy of this very figure, who boasted in all shades of sound, poured through all octaves, cried, trembled in tremolando, sang, cheered, sobbed, filled with everything that roared, jingled, rippled , foaming splendor of the orchestral setting came victorious ... There was something brutal and dull and at the same time something ascetically religious, Hanno sat still for a moment, his chin on his chest, his hands in his lap. Then he got up and closed the grand piano. He was very pale, there was no strength in his knees, and his eyes burned.

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

  So much for the transitive states. But there are other unnamed states or qualities of states that are just as important and just as cognitive as they, and just as much unrecognized by the traditional sensationalist and intellectualist philosophies of mind. The first fails to find them at all, the second finds their cognitive function , but denies that anything in the way of feeling has a share in bringing it about. Examples will make clear what these inarticulate psychoses, due to waxing and waning excitements of the brain, are like.[230] Suppose three successive persons say to us: 'Wait!' 'Hark!' 'Look!' Our consciousness is thrown into three quite different attitudes of expectancy, although no definite object is before it in any one of the three cases. Leaving out different actual bodily attitudes, and leaving out the reverberating images of the three words, which are of course diverse, probably no one will deny the existence of a residual conscious affection, a sense of the direction from which an impression is about to come, although no positive impression is yet there. Meanwhile we have no names for the psychoses in question but the names hark, look, and wait. Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of Spalding, my consciousness is far removed from what it is when I vainly try to recall the name of Bowles. Here some ingenious persons will say: "How can the two consciousnesses be different when the terms which might make them different are not there? All that is there, so long as the effort to recall is vain, is the bare effort itself. How should that differ in the two cases? You are making it seem to differ by prematurely filling it out with the different names, although these, by the hypothesis, have not yet come. Stick to the two efforts as they are, without naming them after facts not yet existent, and you'll be quite unable to designate any point in which they differ," Designate, truly enough. We can only designate the difference by borrowing the names of objects not yet in the mind.

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

  Carpenter's words, "we mispronounce or misspell a word, by introducing into it a letter or syllable of some other, whose turn is shortly to come; or, it may be, the whole of the anticipated word is substituted for the one which ought to have been expressed."[232] In these cases one of two things must have happened: either some local accident of nutrition blocks the process that is due , so that other processes discharge that ought as yet to be but nascently aroused; or some opposite local accident furthers the latter processes and makes them explode before their time. In the chapter on Association of Ideas, numerous instances will come before us of the actual effect on consciousness of neuroses not yet maximally aroused. It is just like the 'overtones' in music. Different instruments give the 'same note,' but each in a different voice, because each gives more than that note, namely, various upper harmonics of it which differ from one instrument to another. They are not separately heard by the ear; they blend with the fundamental note, and suffuse it, and alter it; and even so do the waxing and waning brain-processes at every moment blend with and suffuse and alter the psychic effect of the processes which are at their culminating point. Let us use the words psychic overtone, suffusion , or fringe , to designate the influence of a faint brain-process upon our thought, as it makes it aware of relations and objects but dimly perceived.[233] If we then consider the cognitive function of different states of mind, we may feel assured that the difference between those that are mere 'acquaintance,' and those that are 'knowledges-about ' (see p. 148) is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence of psychic fringes or overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare impression which it makes. Of most of its relations we are only aware in the penumbral nascent way of a 'fringe' of unarticulated affinities about it. And, before passing to the next topic in order, I must say a little of this sense of affinity, as itself one of the most interesting features of the subjective stream. In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or subject about which all the members of the thought revolve. Half the time this topic is a problem, a gap we cannot yet fill with a definite picture, word, or phrase, but which, in the manner described some time back, influences us in an intensely active and determinate psychic way. Whatever may be the images and phrases that pass before us, we feel their relation to this aching gap. To fill it up is our thought's destiny. Some bring us nearer to that consummation.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  6The summer evenings of my boyhood when I used to ride by her cottage speak to me in that voice of hers now. On a road among fields, where it met the desolate highway, I would dismount and prop my bicycle against a telegraph pole. A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky. Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could pick out brightly stained structural details of celestial organisms, or glowing slits in dark banks, or flat, ethereal beaches that looked like mirages of desert islands. I did not know then (as I know perfectly well now) what to do with such things—how to get rid of them, how to transform them into something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver—and this inability enhanced my oppression. A colossal shadow would begin to invade the fields, and the telegraph poles hummed in the stillness, and the night-feeders ascended the stems of their plants. Nibble, nibble, nibble—went a handsome striped caterpillar, not figured in Spuler, as he clung to a campanula stalk, working down with his mandibles along the edge of the nearest leaf out of which he was eating a leisurely hemicircle, then again extending his neck, and again bending it gradually, as he deepened the neat concave. Automatically, I might slip him, with a bit of his plantlet, into a matchbox to take home with me and have him produce next year a Splendid Surprise, but my thoughts were elsewhere: Zina and Colette, my seaside playmates; Louise, the prancer; all the flushed, low-sashed, silky-haired little girls at festive parties; languorous Countess G., my cousin’s lady; Polenka smiling in the agony of my new dreams—all would merge to form somebody I did not know but was bound to know soon. I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle bell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black stratus, the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the spare parts of this or any other sunset. It occupied a very small sector of the enormous sky and had the peculiar neatness of something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There it lay in wait, a family of serene clouds in miniature, an accumulation of brilliant convolutions, anachronistic in their creaminess and extremely remote; remote but perfect in every detail; fantastically reduced but faultlessly shaped; my marvelous tomorrow ready to be delivered to me.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  My passion for good writing put me in close contact with various Russian authors abroad. I was young in those days and much more keenly interested in literature than I am now. Current prose and poetry, brilliant planets and pale galaxies, flowed by the casement of my garret night after night. There were independent authors of diverse age and talent, and there were groupings and cliques within which a number of young or youngish writers, some of them very gifted, clustered around a philosophizing critic. The most important of these mystagogues combined intellectual talent and moral mediocrity, an uncanny sureness of taste in modern Russian poetry and a patchy knowledge of Russian classics. His group believed that neither a mere negation of Bolshevism nor the routine ideals of Western democracies were sufficient to build a philosophy upon which émigré literature could lean. They thirsted for a creed as a jailed drug addict thirsts for his pet heaven. Rather pathetically, they envied Parisian Catholic groups for the seasoned subtleties that Russian mysticism so obviously lacked. Dostoevskian drisk could not compete with neo-Thomist thought; but were there not other ways? The longing for a system of faith, a constant teetering on the brink of some accepted religion was found to provide a special satisfaction of its own. Only much later, in the forties, did some of those writers finally discover a definite slope down which to slide in a more or less genuflectory attitude. This slope was the enthusiastic nationalism that could call a state (Stalin’s Russia, in this case) good and lovable for no other reason than because its army had won a war. In the early thirties, however, the nationalistic precipice was only faintly perceived and the mystagogues were still enjoying the thrills of slippery suspension. In their attitude toward literature they were curiously conservative; with them soul-saving came first, logrolling next, and art last. A retrospective glance nowadays notes the surprising fact of these free belles-lettrists abroad aping fettered thought at home by decreeing that to be a representative of a group or an epoch was more important than to be an individual writer.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The marquis and marchioness were made acquainted with this event, and were so much surprised at it that they could hardly believe it. Pauline, to show that she was without passion, did her best to dissemble her regret for her lover, and succeeded so well that everybody said she had forgotten him, whilst all the time she would fain have fled to some hermitage, to shun all commerce with the world. But one day, when she went to hear mass at the Observance with her mistress, when the priest, the deacon, and the sub-deacon issued from the vestry to go to the high altar, her lover, who had not yet completed the year of his noviciate, served as acolyte, and led the pro- cession, carrying in both hands the two canettes covered with silk-cloth, and walking with downcast eyes. Pau- line, seeing him in that garb, which augmented rather Second day^ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. l8 1 than diminished his good looks, was so surprised and confused that, to conceal the real cause of her heightened colour, she began to cough. At that sound, which he recognized better than the bells of his monastery, the poor lover durst not turn his head ; but as he passed before her, he could not hinder his eyes from taking the direction to which they had been so long used. Whilst gazing sadly on his mistress, the fire he had thought al- most extinct blazed up so fiercely within him that, mak- ing an effort beyond his strength to conceal it, he fell full leno-th on the floor. His fear lest the cause of this accident should be known prompted him to say that the floor of the church, which was broken at that spot, had thrown him down. Pauline perceived from this circum- stance that he had not changed his heart along with his habit ; and believing that, as it was now so long since he had retired from the world, everyone imagined she had forgotten him, she resolved to put into execution her long-meditated design of following her lover's example.

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

  St, Gregory, in the second part of his second homily (super Ezech.), speaks thus: “He who leads a contemplative life, turns his whole mind to the love of God and of his neighbour. He ceases from external work, and is engrossed by a desire for his Creator, which leaves him capable of, no other activity. He forgets all other cares, and yearns only to behold God face to face.” Hence perfectly contemplative souls withdraw themselves from exterior occupations. Again, the Gloss thus comments on the words (Luke x.): “Lord, have you no care that my sister has left me alone to serve?” “Such” (says the Gloss) “are the words of those who, understanding nothing of the nature of true contemplation, consider that charity to our neighbour is the only work pleasing to God.” Those who hold that religious are bound to labour with their hands, consider that this is an obligation imposed on them by brotherly love, in order that by their work they may have something to bestow in alms. They quote the words of St.Paul (Ephes. iv.28), “Let him labour with his hands that he may have something to give to him who suffers need.” They, therefore, who desire to see religious obliged to work, join in the murmur of Martha. But the Lord made excuse for the idleness of Mary. We can prove our point by the following example. St. Benedict, as we are told by St. Gregory (II Dial.), lived for three years in a cave, not working with his hands, and unknown to any save to the monk Romanus who brought him food. But who will dare to say that he was not in a state of salvation, when the Lord spoke of him to a certain priest, saying: “My servant in such a place is dying of hunger”? Both in the Dialogue and in the lives of the Fathers we find many other examples of saints who passed their lives without working with their hands. Manual labour is either a precept or a counsel. If it is a counsel, no one is bound to observe it, unless obliged thereto by vow. Hence manual labour is no duty for religious whose rule does not prescribe it, If, on the other hand, manual labour is a precept, it is incumbent alike on seculars and on religious, since both laymen and religious are equally bound to obey the Divine and Apostolic precepts. Hence if a layman, before his entrance into religion, was free to live in the world without work, he would, on becoming a religious, be equally exempt from the necessity of labour.

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

  The same is the case with our minds. Our intellect has a natural potency with regard to certain intelligible objects, namely, those that can be reduced to act by the agent intellect. We possess this faculty as an innate principle that enables us to understand in actuality. However, we cannot attain our ultimate end by the actuation of our intellect through the instrumentality of the agent intellect. For the function of the agent intellect consists in rendering actually intelligible the phantasms that of themselves are only potentially intelligible. This was explained above. These phantasms are derived from the senses. Hence the efficacy of the agent intellect in reducing our intellect to act is restricted to intelligible objects of which we can gain knowledge by way of sense perception. Man’s last end cannot consist in such cognition. The reason is that, once the ultimate end has been reached, natural desire ceases. But no matter how much we may advance in this kind of understanding, whereby we derive knowledge from the senses, there still remains a natural desire to know other objects. For many things are quite beyond the reach of the senses. We can have but a slight knowledge of such things through information based on sense experience. We may get to know that they exist, but we cannot know what they are, for the natures of immaterial substances belong to a different genus from the natures of sensible things and excel them, we may say, beyond all proportion. Moreover, as regards objects that fall under sense experience, there are many whose nature we cannot know with any certainty. Some of them, indeed, elude our knowledge altogether; others we can know but vaguely. Hence our natural desire for more perfect knowledge ever remains. But a natural desire cannot be in vain. Accordingly we reach our last end when our intellect is actualized by some higher agent than an agent connatural to us, that is, by an agent capable of gratifying our natural, inborn craving for knowledge. So great is the desire for knowledge within us that, once we apprehend an effect, we wish to know its cause. Moreover, after we have gained some knowledge of the circumstances investing a thing, our desire is not satisfied until we penetrate to its essence. Therefore our natural desire for knowledge cannot come to rest within us until we know the first cause, and that not in any way, but in its very essence. This first cause is God. Consequently the ultimate end of an intellectual creature is the vision of God in His essence. CHAPTER 105

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I looked around my untidy bedroom, and was surprised to find I missed the invitation that the Nantwich book had offered for the past few weeks. I had played hard to get without ever envisaging an outcome such as this. ‘I’d love to see you, too. We must all get together. Now that I’m not writing a book I’ll have so much more time.’ Gavin made a miraculous little humming sound, in which sympathy and scepticism were perfectly combined. ‘He must have known gay people—he was a cultured man. What did he think he was playing at?’ ‘Well I’m too young to know. But I suspect it really was a different world—not only the law, of course, but political pressures, and we just don’t know. It’s Uncle Will. Yes, you can. Hold on, Will, I’ve got your nephew here to speak to you. Very important, right … See you soon, my dear!’ There was a plonk and a series of rustlings and a protest of ‘Daddy’ before Rupert came on the line: ‘Hello, this is Rupert,’ in his serious treble. ‘Roops, how nice to hear you. How are things.’ ‘All right, thank you. I’ve got to wait before Daddy goes out of the room.’ This took a while, as apparently he came back for something, and was, as I pictured it, being expelled from his own study and his important work on Romano-British drains. ‘It must be jolly secret,’ I said encouragingly. ‘It’s that boy,’ he hissed. ‘Arthur, you mean? Have you seen him then?’ And looking across the empty bed and out into the hazy sky, chimneypots among still trees, I felt a sudden plunging need for him, a Straussian phrase sweeping from the top to the bottom of the orchestra. ‘Yes, I have. It was in the road, yesterday.’ ‘It was jolly clever of you to spot him.’ ‘Well, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for him, you know.’ ‘What a good spy you are. What was he doing, did he recognise you?’ I tried to repress my eagerness and anxiety: to think of him being so close to here … ‘I saw him walking along the road first of all, and I thought it was him, so I followed him.’ ‘Good boy! Now what did he have on?’ ‘Um—trousers. And a shirt.’ ‘Terrific.’ I wanted to know if his tight cords cut into the crack of his bum, if you could make out his nipples through his T-shirt; but I made do with the more general answer. ‘Go on.’ ‘Well, he went along our road, and then turned right, and when I went round the corner he was coming back again. So I went into a house and hid behind the hedge, I was pretending that it was my house, you see. I’m sure he didn’t recognise me. Then he shouted when he was just outside the hedge, and there was another man.’ ‘Did you see him?’

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  At four o'clock lunch was eaten. Gerda Buddenbrook, little Johann and Fraulein Clementine were alone. Later Hanno made the preparations for making music in the salon and waited for his mother at the grand piano. They played Beethoven's Opus 24 Sonata. In the Adagio the violin sang like an angel; but Gerda, dissatisfied, took the instrument from her chin, looked at it sullenly, and said that it wasn't in the right mood. She stopped playing and went upstairs to rest. Hanno stayed behind in the drawing room. He went to the glass door that opened onto the narrow porch and gazed out at the sodden front yard for a few minutes. Suddenly, however, he took a step backwards, violently pulled the cream-colored curtain in front of the door so that the room lay in a yellowish semidarkness, and started toward the grand piano. There he stood again for a while, and his gaze, fixed and vaguely fixed on one point, slowly darkened, became veiled, blurred... He sat down and began one of his fantasies. It was a very simple motif that he imagined, a nothing, the fragment of a non- existent melody, a figure of a bar and a half, and when he first played it in a low register with a power that one would not have credited him with single voice sounded as if it should be announced by trumpets unanimously and authoritatively as the primeval substance and starting point of everything to come, it was impossible to foresee what was actually meant. But when he repeated it harmonized in the treble, in a timbre of dull silver, it proved to consist essentially of a single resolution, a yearning and painful sinking from one key to the other... a short-lived, poor invention, but which a strange, mysterious, and significant value was created by the precious and solemn decisiveness with which it was presented and presented. And now agitated walks began, a restless coming and going of syncopation, searching, wandering, and torn with screams, as if a soul were troubled at what it heard, and what did not want to fall silent, but repeated itself in ever-changing harmonies, questioning, lamenting, dying, longing, full of promise. And the syncopations became more and more violent, pushed around helplessly by hasty triplets; but the cries of fear that sounded within took form, they joined, they became melody, and the moment came when, like a fervent and pleading chant of the brass choir emerging, strong and humble, they came to rule. The unstoppable urge, the heaving, straying and slipping away had fallen silent and conquered, and this contrite and childishly praying chorale resounded in an unwaveringly simple rhythm...

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxi. 4) As if she said, Thou canst not say that Jacob gave us this spring, and used another himself; for he and they that were with him drank thereof, which would not have been done, had he had another better one. Thou canst not then give me of this spring; and Thou hast not another better spring, unless Thou confess Thyself greater than Jacob. Whence then hast Thou the water, which Thou promisest to give us? THEOPHYLACT. The addition, and his cattle, shews the abundance of the water; as if she said, Not only is the water sweet, so that Jacob and his sons drank of it, but so abundant, that it satisfied the vast multitude of the Patriarchs’ cattle. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxi. 4) See how she thrusts herself upon the Jewish stock. The Samaritans claimed Abraham as their ancestor, on the ground of his having come from Chaldea; and called Jacob their father, as being Abraham’s grandson. BEDE. Or she calls Jacob their father, because she lived under the Mosaic law, and possessed the farm which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ORIGEN. (t. xiii. 6) In the mystical sense, Jacob’s well is the Scriptures. The learned then drink like Jacob and his sons; the simple and uneducated, like Jacob’s cattle. 4:13–1813. Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 15. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. 16. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. 17. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: 18. For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxii. 1) To the woman’s question, Art Thou greater than our father Jacob? He does not reply, I am greater, lest He should seem to boast; but His answer implies it; Jesus answered and said to her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; as if He said, If Jacob is to be honoured because he gave you this water, what wilt thou say, if I give thee far better than this? He makes the comparison however not to depreciate Jacob, but to exalt Himself. For He does not say, that this water is vile and counterfeit, but asserts a simple fact of nature, viz. that whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I picked on something which must have come from the ex-governor’s bequest: a schools edition of Pope, with notes by A. M. Niven, MA—one of those frustrating near-palindromes with which life is strewn. It had seen active service, and words such as ‘zeugma’ filled the margins in a round, childish script. I had not read Pope since I was a child myself, but I had a sudden keen yearning for his order and lucidity, which was connected in my mind with a vision of eighteenth-century England, and rides cut through woodland, and Polesden and all my literate country origins. The book contained the ‘Epistle to a Lady’ and various other shorter poems; of the longer works it gave only ‘The Rape of the Lock’ complete, and I fastened on this poem, and on Mr Niven’s account of how it had been designed to laugh two families out of a feud, as the flashings and gleams of a civilised world, where animosities were melted down and cast again as glittering artefacts. I determined to learn it all by heart, and put away twenty lines a day. The discipline, and the brilliance of the work itself, were a kind of invisible enrichment to me—though, lest I should feel like an actor learning a great part with no prospect of a performance, I had Bill hear my lines each time I mastered a new canto; and he seemed to enjoy it. Tempting though it was to retire into this inner world, there were always visits to look forward to—and to regret, for their cruel brevity and for the new firmness with which, afterwards, the door was shut, the walls of the cell confined one. The visitors carried their horror of the place about them and for a while after they had gone left one with an anguished vacancy of a kind I had never known before. All one’s little accommodations were laid bare.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  More silence followed, and Raymond felt moved to add: ‘I saw Derek this week, as a matter of fact, sir. He seems all right again now …’ but he trailed off as Nantwich was evidently not hearing him. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he added inconsequently. ‘Now what’s Abdul got for us today?’ Nantwich ruminated. ‘Pork’d be very nice, sir,’ said Raymond dispassionately. ‘I will have the pork, Raymond—with carrots, have you got? And the boiled potatoes—and I want a whole estuary of applesauce.’ ‘See what I can do, sir. And for your guest, sir. Any starter at all, sir?’ My mind recoiled from Brown Windsor soup to prawn cocktail to melon. ‘No, I think I’ll just have the trout—with peas and potatoes.’ ‘Bring a bottle of hock, too, Raymond,’ my host requested; ‘cheapest you’ve got.’ And the moment the boy turned away, added, ‘Delightful child, isn’t he. Quite a little Masaccio, wouldn’t you say? Nothing compared to Derek, mind you, but I like to see a nice little bumba when I’m eating.’ I smiled and felt oddly bashful; and the boy was pretty ordinary. I also felt a guest’s obligation to charm, and was aware that I was giving nothing. How loaded dirty talk is between strangers, seeming to imply some sexual rapport between them, removing barriers which in this case I was interested in preserving. ‘Do you live in London all the time?’ I asked him partyishly. He thought about this: ‘I do, though I’m often elsewhere—in my thoughts. At my age it doesn’t matter where you live. Passent les jours, passent les semaines , as the Frenchman said. I blank a lot, you know. Do you blank?’ ‘You mean, just let your mind go blank? Yes, I suppose I do. Or at least, I like letting my mind wander.’ ‘There you are. You see, I’ve had such an interesting life and now it’s so bloody dull and everyone’s dead and I can’t remember what I’m saying and all that sort of thing.’ He seemed to lose his thread. ‘What is it you think about mostly?’ ‘Ooh, you know …’ he muttered broodily. I crudely assumed he meant sex. ‘I’m eighty-three,’ he said, as if I had asked him. ‘And how old are you?’ ‘Twenty-five,’ I said with a laugh, but he looked sad. ‘When I was your age,’ he said, ‘I was hard at work. When I stopped working you hadn’t even been born.’ His eyes seemed to unveil in the curious way they had, and to concentrate on my face—or rather on my head, which he held in his gaze as if in his hands; it was with the appraisal of a connoisseur that he pronounced his expert, cupidinous sentence: ‘Youth!’ One younger yet arrived at this point, with wine. It was a very inferior stuff, though Nantwich knocked it back with enthusiasm.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This might seem a far cry from the convent. But in my own way, I shared what Savage calls the “first time intensity” of my generation. The raw, disturbing beat of rock ’n’ roll had penetrated my convent school, even though I was neither able nor equipped to answer its summons. I did not like being a teenage girl in the 1950s. I was awkward, plain, bookish, and unpopular with boys. I looked absurd in the fashions of the day: the wide, swirling skirts, pert ponytails, and back-combed beehives. In 1961, the year before I entered the convent, my parents tried to entice me from my intended course by talking me into joining a young people’s group at the Birmingham Catholic Ball. It was a ghastly affair. Encased in a stiff brocaded dress with a skirt that stuck out aggressively, my feet squeezed into an agonizing pair of pink satin shoes with long pointed toes, I was hobbled. On the few occasions when I was invited to dance, and grimly quickstepped, waltzed, and fox-trotted with a herd of others, I felt like a prisoner going round and round the exercise yard. At one point my partner and I left the main room and for ten blissful minutes managed to escape. We weren’t doing anything unlawful; we weren’t smoking, drinking alcohol, or kissing—just sitting on the stairs and talking—but a friend of my mother’s pounced on me and frog-marched me back into the ballroom. I felt like a Victorian girl who had been compromised in some way. There had to be more to life than this. Of course, there were alternatives to the convent. Young girls were told that, within reason, they could do anything they wanted: they could study, travel, and have a career—until they got married. But even though I shrank from the appalling prospect of being an old maid, marriage did not look particularly appealing either, since most of the women I knew spent their lives ceaselessly cleaning, baking, and washing, chores that I detest to this day. When my father had business problems, my mother took a job and started an interesting career in the medical school of Birmingham University. I could see how she blossomed in this new environment, but the cooking and washing up still had to be done. By contrast, the nuns seemed remarkably unencumbered. They had no men to tell them what to do, ran their own lives, and were, presumably, engaged in the higher things of life. I wanted that radical freedom.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I had lived with this text all my lif e, which made encoun tering it on the screen of the Lincoln Theater absolutely astounding: and I had lived with the people of A Tale of TJVo Cities for very nearly as lo ng. I had no idea what TJVo Cities was really about, any more than I knew what Uncle Tom's Cabin was really about, which was why I had read them both so obsessively: they had something to tell me. It was this par ticular child's way of circling around the question of what it meant to be a nigger. It was the reason that I was reading Dostoevsky, a writer-or, rather, for me, a messenger-whom I would have had to understand, obviously, even less: my re lentless pursuit of Crime and Punishment made my father (vo cally) and my mother (silently) consider the possibility of brain fever. I was intrigued, but not misled, by the surface of these novels-Sydney Carton's noble renunciation of his lif e on the spectacular guillotine, Tom's forbearance before Simon Le gree, the tracking down of Raskol nikov: the time of my time was to reduce all these images to the angel dancing on the edge of the junkie's needle: I did not believe in any of these people so much as I believed in their situation, which I sus pected, dreadfully, to have something to do with my own. And it had clearly escaped everyone's notice that I ha d al ready been bull-w hipped through the Psalms of David and The Book of Job, to say nothing of the arrogant and loving Isaiah, the doomed Ezekiel, and the helpl essly paranoiac Saint Paul: such a forced march, designed to prepare the mind for conciliation and safety, can also prepare it for subversion and THE DE VI L FIND S WORK danger. For, I was on Job's side, for example, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him, and I ll'ilt maintain mine own ways befo1'e Him-You will not talk to me from the safety of your whirlwind, never-an d, yet, something in me, out of the un believable pride and sorrow and beauty of my father's face, caused me to understand-! did not understand, perhaps I still do not understand, and never will-caused me to begin to accept the f.1 tality and the inexorability of that voice out of the whirlwind, for if one is not able to live with so crushing and continuing a mystery, one is not able to live. The pride and sorrow and beauty of my father's face: for that man I called my father really was my father in every sense except the biological, or lit eral one.

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

  ALCUIN. And to exalt the miracle of the manna, they quote the Psalm, As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xlv. 1) Whereas many miracles were performed in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the desert, they remembered this one the best of any. Such is the force of appetite. They do not mention this miracle as the work either of God, or of Moses, in order to avoid raising Him on the one hand to an equality with God, or lowering Him on the other by a comparison with Moses; but they take a middle ground, only saying, Our fathers did eat manna in the desert. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxv. s. 12) Or thus; Our Lord sets Himself above Moses, who did not dare to say that He gave the meat which perisheth not. The multitude therefore remembering what Moses had done, and wishing for some greater miracle, say, as it were, Thou promisest the meat which perisheth not, and doest not works equal to those Moses did. He gave us not barley loaves, but manna from heaven. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxv. 1) Our Lord might have replied, that He had done miracles greater than Moses: but it was not the time for such a declaration. One thing He desired, viz. to bring them to taste the spiritual meat: then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. Did not the manna come from heaven? True, but in what sense did it? The same in which the birds are called, the birds of heavenk; and just as it is said in the Psalm, The Lord thundered out of heaven. (Ps. 17) He calls it the true bread, not because the miracle of the manna was false, but because it was the figure, not the reality. He does not say too, Moses gave it you not, but I: but He puts God for Moses, Himself for the manna. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxv. 13.) As if He said, That manna was the type of this food, of which I just now spoke; and which all my miracles refer to. You like my miracles, you despise what is signified by them. This bread which God gives, and which this manna represented, is the Lord Jesus Christ, as we read next, For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. BEDE. Not to the physical world, but to men, its inhabitants.

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

  5. Nothing else moves God to the production of creatures but His own goodness, which He has wished to communicate to other beings according to the manner of their assimilation to Himself (B. I, Chap.LXXXVII). Now the likeness of one thing may be found in another in two ways: in one way in point of natural being, as the likeness of heat is found in the body heated; in another way in point of knowledge, as the likeness of fire (perceived) is in sight or touch. In order then that the likeness of God might be in creatures in such modes as were possible, it was necessary that the divine goodness should be communicated to creatures, not only by likeness in being, but also by likeness in knowing. But mind alone can know the divine goodness. Therefore there needed to be intelligent creatures. 6. In all comely arrangements of things, the attitude of the secondary to the last imitates the attitude of the first to all, as well secondary as last, though the imitation is not always perfect. Now God comprehends in Himself all creatures (B. I, Chapp.XXV,LI,LIV); and this is represented in material creatures, although in another way: for the higher body comprehends and contains the lower, according to quantitative extension; whereas God contains all creatures in simple mode, and not by quantitative extension. In order then that an imitation of God might not be wanting to creatures even in this mode of containing, there were made intellectual creatures to contain material creatures, not by any extension of quantity, but simply by mode of intelligence: for what is understood is in the mind that understands it, and is comprehended in its intellectual activity. CHAPTER XLVII THAT SUBSISTENT INTELLIGENCES ARE VOLUNTARY AGENTSGOOD is what all things yearn after, and in all beings there is a craving (appetitus) for good. In beings unendowed with any sort of cognition, this craving is called physical appetite’ (appetitus naturalis). In beings that have sensitive cognition it is called animal appetite,’ and is divided into concupiscible’ and irascible.’ In intelligent beings it is called the intellectual’ or rational appetite,’ otherwise the will.’ CHAPTER XLVIII THAT SUBSISTENT INTELLIGENCES HAVE FREE WILLTHEY must be free, if they have dominion over their own acts.

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

  Some have been moved by these and the like arguments to lay down the statement that God is never to be seen by any created intelligence. But this position, besides taking away the true happiness of the rational creature, which cannot be except in the vision of the divine substance, as has been shown (Chap.LI), is also in contradiction with the authority of Holy Scripture, and is to be rejected as false and heretical. CHAPTER LV THAT THE CREATED INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT COMPREHEND THE DIVINE SUBSTANCETHE aforesaid light is a principle of divine knowledge, since by it the created intelligence is elevated to see the divine substance. Therefore the mode of divine vision must be commensurate with the intensity of the aforesaid light. But the aforesaid light falls far short in intensity of the brightness of the divine understanding. It is impossible therefore for the divine substance to be seen by such light so perfectly as the divine understanding sees it. The divine understanding sees that substance as perfectly as it is perfectly visible: for the truth of the divine substance and the clearness of the divine understanding are equal, nay are one. It is impossible therefore for created intelligence through the aforesaid light to see the divine substance as perfectly as it is perfectly visible. But everything that is comprehended by any knowing mind is known by it as perfectly as it is knowable. Thus he who knows that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles, taking it as a matter of opinion on probable grounds because wise men say so, does not yet comprehend that truth: he alone comprehends it, who knows it as matter of science, through the medium of a demonstration showing cause. It is impossible therefore for any created intelligence to comprehend the divine substance. 2. Finite power cannot compass in its activity an infinite object. But the divine substance is infinite in comparison with every created intellect, since every created intellect is bounded within the limits of a certain species. When it is said that the divine substance is seen but not comprehended by created intelligence, the meaning is not that something of it is seen and something not seen, since the divine substance is absolutely simple: what is meant is that it is not seen perfectly so far as it is visible. In the same way he who holds a demonstrable conclusion as a matter of opinion, is said to know it but not to comprehend it, because he does not know it perfectly, that is, scientifically, though there is no part of it that he does not know. CHAPTER LVI

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

  CHAPTER XVI THAT THE END IN VIEW OF EVERYTHING IS SOME GOOD CHAPTER XVII THAT ALL THINGS ARE ORDAINED TO ONE END, WHICH IS GOD CHAPTER XVIII HOW GOD IS THE END OF ALL THINGS CHAPTER XIX THAT ALL THINGS AIM AT LIKENESS TO GOD CHAPTER XX HOW THINGS COPY THE DIVINE GOODNESS CHAPTER XXI THAT THINGS AIM AT LIKENESS TO GOD IN BEING CAUSES OF OTHER THINGS CHAPTER XXIV THAT ALL THINGS SEEK GOOD, EVEN THINGS DEVOID OF CONSCIOUSNESS CHAPTER XXV THAT THE END OF EVERY SUBSISTENT INTELLIGENCE IS TO UNDERSTAND GOD CHAPTER XXVI THAT HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN ANY ACT OF THE WILL CHAPTER XXVII THAT THE HAPPINESS OF MAN DOES NOT CONSIST IN BODILY PLEASURES CHAPTER XXVIII, XXIX THAT HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN HONOURS NOR IN HUMAN GLORY CHAPTER XXX THAT MAN’S HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN RICHES CHAPTER XXXI THAT HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN WORLDLY POWER CHAPTER XXXII THAT HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN THE GOODS OF THE BODY CHAPTER XXXIV THAT THE FINAL HAPPINESS MAN DOES NOT CONSIST IN ACTS OF THE MORAL VIRTUES CHAPTER XXXVII THAT THE FINAL HAPPINESS OF MAN CONSISTS IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD CHAPTER XXXVIII THAT HUMAN HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN SUCH KNOWLEDGE OF GOD AS IS COMMON TO THE MAJORITY OF MANKIND CHAPTER XXXIX THAT HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD WHICH IS TO BE HAD BY DEMONSTRATION CHAPTER XL THAT HAPPINESS DOES NOT CONSIST IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD BY FAITH CHAPTERS XLI-XLV CHAPTER XLVI THAT THE SOUL IN THIS LIFE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ITSELF BY ITSELF CHAPTER XLVII THAT WE CANNOT IN THIS LIFE SEE GOD AS HE ESSENTIALLY IS CHAPTER XLVIII THAT THE FINAL HAPPINESS OF MAN IS NOT IN THIS LIFE CHAPTER XLIX THAT THE KNOWLEDGE WHICH PURE SPIRITS HAVE OF GOD THROUGH KNOWING THEIR OWN ESSENCE DOES NOT CARRY WITH IT A VISION OF THE ESSENCE OF GOD CHAPTER L THAT THE DESIRE OF PURE INTELLIGENCES DOES NOT REST SATISFIED IN THE NATURAL KNOWLEDGE WHICH THEY HAVE OF GOD CHAPTER LI HOW GOD IS SEEN AS HE ESSENTIALLY IS CHAPTER LII THAT NO CREATED SUBSTANCE CAN OF ITS NATURAL POWER ARRIVE TO SEE GOD AS HE ESSENTIALLY IS CHAPTER LIII THAT A CREATED INTELLIGENCE NEEDS SOME INFLUX OF DIVINE LIGHT TO SEE GOD IN HIS ESSENCE CHAPTER LIV ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE AFORESAID STATEMENTS, AND THEIR SOLUTIONS CHAPTER LV THAT THE CREATED INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT COMPREHEND THE DIVINE SUBSTANCE CHAPTER LVI THAT NO CREATED INTELLIGENCE IN SEEING GOD SEES ALL THINGS THAT CAN BE SEEN IN HIM CHAPTER LVII THAT EVERY INTELLIGENCE OF EVERY GRADE CAN BE PARTAKER OF THE VISION OF GOD CHAPTER LVIII THAT ONE MAY SEE GOD MORE PERFECTLY THAN ANOTHER CHAPTER LIX HOW THEY WHO SEE THE DIVINE SUBSTANCE SEE ALL THINGS CHAPTER LX THAT THEY WHO SEE GOD SEE ALL THINGS IN HIM AT ONCE CHAPTER LXI THAT BY THE SIGHT OF GOD ONE IS PARTAKER OF LIFE EVERLASTING