'reality is lost to him forever'

It happens that a man sometimes sees such a thing in a dream, and afterwards he dwells on this dream all his life, reality is lost to him forever, and he is decidedly good for nothing anymore. Her name was Ulinka.

—Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1842, trans. 1996 Pevear and Volokhonsky)

Her moments were beautiful

She'd come at just the right time. This was her atmosphere. This was the light for her, for sad, pale skin below the tanned neck and above the rough elbows, for a virgin martyr's poise, for her unexpectant waiting--her right calf, rather thick and like a peasant's, dangling from the bed and the foot plunged into shadow near the floor, which was of old wood, the other leg akimbo and the sole of its foot against the other knee, making a number 4 with her legs as she lay back on the bed, her hand across her breasts, the other behind her head--pond-light, church-light. Had she known how he stared, she'd never have allowed it. But she turned her eyes to him and looked at him full on as if he didn't matter, without any change of her expression. She wasn't, herself, beautiful. Her moments were beautiful.

--Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (2007)

'There is no air in the city but there is breath'

Little of that makes for love, but it does pump desire. The woman who churned a man’s blood as she leaned all alone on a fence by a country road might not expect even to catch his eye in the City. But if she is clipping quickly down the big-city street in heels, swinging her purse, or sitting on a stoop with a cool beer in her hand, dangling her shoe from the toes of her foot, the man, reacting to her posture, to soft skin on stone, the weight of the building stressing the delicate, dangling shoe, is captured. And he’d think it was the woman he wanted, and not some combination of curved stone, and a swinging, high-heeled shoe moving in and out of sunlight. He would know right away the deception, the trick of shapes and light and movement, but it wouldn’t matter at all because the deception was part of it too. Anyway, he could feel his lungs going in and out. There is no air in the City but there is breath, and every morning it races through him like laughing gas brightening his eyes, his talk, and his expectations. In no time at all he forgets little pebbly creeks and apple trees so old they lay their branches along the ground and you have to reach down or stoop to pick the fruit. He forgets a sun that used to slide up like the yolk of a good country egg, thick and red-orange at the bottom of the sky, and he doesn’t miss it, doesn’t look up to see what happened to it or to stars made irrelevant by the light of thrilling, wasteful street lamps.

—Toni Morrison, Jazz (1992)

'the kind of feelings most foreign to love'

Supposing that what I felt for her was really love—which will appear at least doubtful to anyone who follows the story of our relationship—how could that passion have been accompanied from its birth with the kind of feelings most foreign to love, with peace of heart, calmness, serenity, security, confidence? How, on meeting a charming woman for the first time, a polished and attractive woman superior to myself in rank, a woman unlike any I had spoken to before, a woman on whom my fate to some extent hung—for I was dependent on the amount of interest she might feel in me—how was it then, taking all this into account, that I felt as carefree and as much at my ease as if I were perfectly certain to please her? Why did I not have a moment's embarrassment, timidity, or concern? I was bashful by nature, easily put out of countenance, and had never seen the world. How was it then that from the first day, the first instant, I assumed the easy manner, the affectionate language and familiar tone of ten years later, of a time when the greater intimacy had made it natural? Is there such a thing as love, not without desire—for desire I had—but without disquietude and jealousy? Does one not wish at least to learn from the woman one loves whether one is loved in return?

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1781; trans. J.M. Cohen 1953)

It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials

Tom stood looking in. Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and her strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sun-shine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.

--John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath (1939)

'the multitudinous beauties of her body'

. . . And he began to discover her. He had an inkling of the vastness of the unknown sensual store of delights she was. With a passion of voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny beauty, in a kind of frenzy of enjoyment, he lit upon her: her beauty, the beauties, the separate, several beauties of her body.

He was quite ousted from himself, and sensually transported by that which he discovered in her. He was another man reveling over her. There was no tenderness, no love between them any more, only the maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the sensual beauties of her body. And she was a store, a store of absolute beauties that it drove him to contemplate. There was such a feast to enjoy, and he with only one man’s capacity.

He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some time—it was a duel: no love, no words, no kisses even, only the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute through touch. He wanted to touch her, to discover her, maddeningly he wanted to know her. Yet he must not hurry, or he missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a time. And the multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little rapturous places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire to be able to know more, to have strength to know more. For all was there.

—D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)

'like a bottle of champagne on an empty stomach'

In 1953, the fashionable streets of New York bloomed with Belle Epoque nostalgia. Cristobal Balenciaga was enjoying the pinnacle of his career. Bustles, hoops, corsets, and crispy crinolines flared under his confections. Like the dressmakers of the nineteenth century, Balenciaga could actually cut and sew, and his refined technique reflected the era's desire for elegance. Christian Dior had ushered in this stylized, hyperfeminine silhouette in 1947 with his New Look. His boned bodices, nipped waists, and bouffant skirts hit the postwar generation like a bottle of champagne on an empty stomach. A New Look dress required dozens of meters of extra fabric--thrilling after years of wartime austerity.

—Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 (2013)

'all things end by becoming me'

Morning after morning, when I saw her kneel among the communicants waiting for the communion, I, who knelt behind her, wanted to stroke her ankle in her shoe. Her curls under her father's old hat became the curls of all the women in the world; her waist was the waist of a statue; she was losing her identity for me already, merged into myself. But that is the misfortune of my nature, that all things end by becoming me until now, nothing exists that is not me.

—Seán O'Faoláin, Bird Alone (1936)

'A real woman!'

SMIRNOV

That's a woman for you! That's the kind I appreciate! A real woman! Not one of these soft weak females, but a creature of fire, gunpowder, fireworks! I'm almost sorry to have to kill her!

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Bear" (1888) (trans. Elisaveta Fen 1954)