Nothing is Dearer

The goddess Calypso kept me with her in her cave, and wanted me to marry her, as did also the cunning Aeaean goddess Circe; but they could neither of them persuade me, for there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents, and however splendid a home he may have in a foreign country, if it be far from father or mother, he does not care about it.

—Homer, The Odyssey (8th Century BC)

For this buttoned-up age...

As always, he longed for Margaret. She was out of the city but due back for the opening. "I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open.

—Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (2004)

'Already!'

At last we came in sight of the coast [...]

Immediately everybody was happy [...]

I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest whose God has been snatched from him, I could not without heartbreaking bitterness tear myself away from the sea, so monotonously seductive, so infinitely varied in her terrible simplicity and seeming to contain and to represent by all her changing moods, the angers, smiles, humors, agonies and ecstasies of all the souls who have lived, who live, or who will someday live!

In saying farewell to this incomparable beauty, I was sad unto death; and that is why when all my companions were saying, "At last!" I could only cry, "Already!"

—Charles Baudelaire, "Already!" Paris Spleen (1869) (trans. Louise Varèse 1947)

'successful and decided action'

Dreams! Always dreams! And the more ambitious and delicate the soul, all the more impossible the dreams. Every man possesses his own dose of natural opium, ceaselessly secreted and renewed, and from birth to death how many hours can we reckon of positive pleasure, of successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in, be part of, that picture my imagination has painted, and that resembles you?

—Charles Baudelaire, "L'Invitation Au Voyage," Paris Spleen (1869) (trans. Louise Varèse 1947)

Jewels on a Skull

During their courtship she became ill with tuberculosis. The disease rapidly gained ground, but Root remained committed to the engagement, even though it was clear to everyone he was marrying a dead woman. The ceremony was held in the house Root had designed. A friend, the poet Harriet Monroe, waited with the other guests for the bride to appear on the stairway. Monroe s sister, Dora, was the sole bridesmaid. "A long wait frightened us," Harriet Monroe said, "but at last the bride, on her father's arm, appeared like a white ghost at the hallway landing, and slowly, oh, so hesitatingly dragging her heavy satin train, stepped down the wide stairway and across the floor to the bay window which was gay with flowers and vines. The effect was weirdly sad." Root's bride was thin and pale and could only whisper her vows. "Her gayety," Harrier Monroe wrote, "seemed like jewels on a skull."

—Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (2004)

We must have bodies.

Just three weeks later the physicians of Louisville were at it again. They attempted to rob a grave at the State Asylum for the Insane in Anchorage, Kentucky, this time on behalf of the University of Louisville. "Yes, the party was sent out by us," a senior school official said. "We must have bodies, and if the State won't give them to us we must steal them. The winter classes were large and used up so many subjects that there are none for the spring classes." He saw no need to apologize. "The Asylum Cemetery has been robbed for years," he said, "and I doubt if there is a corpse in it. I tell you we must have bodies. You cannot make doctors without them, and the public must understand it. If we can't get them any other way we will arm the students with Winchester rifles and send them to protect the body-snatchers on their raids."

—Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (2004)

'Multitude, solitude: identical terms'

It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has bestowed the love of masks and masquerading, the hate of home, and the passion for roaming.

Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet. The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd.

—Charles Baudelaire, "Crowds," Paris Spleen (1869) (trans. Louise Varèse 1947)

'must one eternally suffer, or else eternally flee beauty?'

And now the profound depth of the sky dismays me; its purity irritates me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the whole spectacle revolt me ... Ah! must one eternally suffer, or else eternally flee beauty? Nature, pitiless sorceress, ever victorious rival, do let me be! Stop tempting my desires and my pride! The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist shrieks with terror before being overcome.

—Charles Baudelaire, "Artist's Confiteor," Paris Spleen (1869) (trans. Louise Varèse 1947)

Maybe Awful Things Is How God Speaks To Us

Vernon studied his father in the milky light, searching for something in his face, or the way he held his body, that was evidence of the good man he knew as a child. If God didn't want Mr. Augusto dead, why'd he let Pop kill him? With all the killing in the world, did one more man really matter?

Vernon crossed the room and crawled from the shimmering cavern. Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel.  Maybe folks don't trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God's got to remind us he's alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Vernon pushed on toward the light of day. He stepped out onto the ledge and into the heat, and it felt like leaving a theater after the matinee had shown a sad film, the glare of sunshine after the darkness far too real to suffer.

--Alan Heathcock, "Smoke," Volt (2011)

'I value invention highly, and hardly anyone else does.'

INTERVIEWER

What sets you apart, do you think, from other American writers? 

VIDAL

My interest in Western civilization. Except for Thornton Wilder, I can think of no contemporary American who has any interest in what happened before the long present he lives in, and records. Also, perhaps paradoxically, I value invention highly, and hardly anyone else does. I don’t think I have ever met an American novelist who didn’t, sooner or later, say when discussing his own work, “Well, I really knew someone exactly like that. That was the way it happened, the way I wrote it.” He is terrified that you might think he actually made up a character, that what he writes might not be literally as opposed to imaginatively true. I think part of the bewilderment American book-chat writers have with me is that they realize that there’s something strange going on that ought not to be going on—that Myra Breckinridge might just possibly be a work of the imagination. “You mean you never knew anyone like that? Well, if you didn’t, how could you write it?”

—Gore Vidal, The Art of Fiction, The Paris Review (No. 59, Fall 1974)