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Tell me tales of thy first love— April hopes, the fools of chance; Till the graves begin to move, And the dead begin to dance. —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, The Vision of Sin
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. —C. S. LEWIS, A Grief Observed
That’s why she couldn’t throw away his possessions—by holding on to them, she could keep Sebastian alive, somehow, just a little bit—if she let go, she’d lose him entirely.
Freud’s writings about grief and loss. And he argued that, following the death of a loved one, the loss had to be psychologically accepted and that person relinquished, or else you ran the risk of succumbing to pathological mourning, which he called melancholia—and we call depression.
As a therapist, she knew a baby’s first sense of self comes through its parents’ gaze. We are born being watched—our parents’ expressions, what we see reflected in the mirror of their eyes, determines how we see ourselves.
Plato said the soul was a circle—which made sense to Mariana. Life was a circle too, wasn’t it?—from birth to death.
Boundaries, by definition, are the first thing to go when a child is abused.
After all, everyone’s entitled to be the hero of their own story. So I must be permitted to be the hero of mine. Even though I’m not. I’m the villain.
In many ways, Mariana’s and Sebastian’s lives began when they found each other—in that instant they first saw each other by the river. Mariana believed their love would go on forever. That it would never end— Looking back, was there something sacrilegious in that assumption? A kind of hubris? Perhaps.
In Greek, Persephone was known simply as Kore, meaning “maiden.”
She prayed for Sebastian and for herself—for their happiness—and for their love. And as she whispered this prayer, a cloud suddenly snaked in front of the sun—and for an instant, Sebastian’s body was thrown into darkness, silhouetted against the blue sky. Mariana shivered, and she felt afraid without knowing why. The moment passed as quickly as it arose. In a second, the sun came out, and Mariana forgot all about it. But she remembered it later, of course.
O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil…’”
I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all
My argument with so much of psychoanalysis is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people’s suffering. —ARTHUR MILLER
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops, And the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter, If you do not carry them within your soul, If your soul does not set them up before you. —C. P. CAVAFY, “Ithaca”
The killer could be any one of these people. He could be standing here right now. He could be watching her. How would she recognize him? Well, the simple answer was she couldn’t. And despite all of Julian’s claims of expertise, he couldn’t either. Mariana knew that, if asked about psychopathy, Julian would point to frontal or temporal lobe damage in the brain; or quote a series of meaningless labels—antisocial personality disorder, malignant narcissism—along with a glib set of characteristics like high intelligence, superficial charm, grandiosity, pathological lying, a contempt for
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Psychopathy or sadism never appeared from nowhere. It was not a virus, infecting someone out of the blue. It had a long prehistory in childhood.
“It doesn’t take much to save a childhood.” A little kindness, some understanding or validation: someone to recognize and acknowledge a child’s reality—and save his sanity.
After we die, Mariana thought, all that remains of us is a mystery; and our possessions, of course, to be picked over by strangers.
it’s Euripides. The Children of Heracles,
“Today,” he said, “I thought it would be a good idea to talk about, among other things, the liminal in Greek tragedy. What does that mean? Well, think of Antigone, pushed to a choice between death and dishonor; or Iphigenia, preparing herself to die for Greece; or Oedipus, deciding to blind himself and wander the highways. The liminal is between two worlds—on the very edge of what it means to be human—where everything is stripped away from you; where you transcend this life, and experience something beyond it. And when the tragedies are working, they give us a glimpse of what that feels like.”
She knows her husband wants a son—but secretly she prays it’s a girl. If it’s a boy, he’ll grow into a man. And men are not to be trusted.
The perfect plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue; the change in the hero’s fortunes must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part. —ARISTOTLE, Poetics
She remembered those faces—expressions of concern masking prurient excitement. God, she’d hated them—and now, seeing the same expressions here, she felt sick.
“Quite. Hence patron saint of the blind. She’s usually depicted like this, carrying her eyes on a platter.” Clarissa turned the postcard over. Her lips moved silently as she read the lines in Greek under her breath. “Well,” she said, “this time, it’s from Iphigenia in Aulis, by Euripides.” “What does it say?” “It’s about Iphigenia being led to her death.” Clarissa took a gulp of wine, and translated it: “‘Behold the maiden … with garlands in her hair, and holy water sprinkled upon her … walking to the sacrificial altar of the unspeakable goddess—which will flow with blood’—‘αἱματορρύτοις’ is
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She was looking into the eyes of a murderer.
And so, when a man comes along and talks like one’s own father and acts like him, even adults … will submit to this man, will acclaim him, allow themselves to be manipulated by him, and put their trust in him, finally surrendering entirely to him without even being aware of their enslavement. One is not normally aware of something that is a continuation of one’s own childhood. —ALICE MILLER, For Your Own Good
The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. —JOHN MILTON, Paradise Regained
The blood. And later on, when my mother and I carried Rex to the pit and threw him in, down into the depths, to rot with the other unwanted carcasses, I knew that part of me went down with him. The good part. I tried to summon up some tears for him, but I couldn’t cry. That poor animal never did me any harm—he showed me only love, only kindness. And yet I couldn’t cry for him. Instead, I was learning how to hate.
“Look. Say I’m the man you’re after. Say I’m extremely unwell, and highly dangerous. It’s entirely possible that I can hide all that from you.
“Alicia Berenson?” “The painter … who won’t talk.” “Oh—I remember.” Mariana gave him an encouraging smile. “Maybe you should apply for the job? Get her talking again?” “Perhaps.” Theo smiled, and thought about it for a moment. He nodded to himself. “Perhaps I will.”
One of the photos had a slightly faded look, as if it had been taken in the eighties: an attractive young man and woman, presumably Fred’s parents, standing in front of a picket fence and a meadow. The other photo was of a small boy with a dog; a little boy with a pudding-bowl haircut, and a serious look on his face.
Wait... Its Fred....
“It’s from Electra by Euripides.” “Tell me what it says.” Fosca smiled, and stared into Mariana’s eyes. “It means: ‘The gods have willed your death—and soon, from your throat, streams of blood shall gush forth at the sword.’”
Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind, And makes it fearful and degenerate; Think therefore on revenge, and cease to weep. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI, Part 2
she finally faced the terrible truth she had wanted to avoid seeing. There was a word for this moment in Greek tragedy: anagnorisis—recognition—the moment the hero finally sees the truth and understands his fate—and how it’s always been there, the whole time, in front of him. Mariana used to wonder what that moment felt like. Now she knew.
Ruth always said that forgiveness could not be coerced—it was experienced spontaneously, as an act of grace, appearing only when a person was ready.
