| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: school of painting, it cannot be said that it is altogether good.
It is, of course, an advantage for the young artist sitting in his
studio to be able to isolate 'a little corner of life,' as the
French say, from disturbing surroundings, and to study it under
certain effects of light and shade. But this very isolation leads
often to mere mannerism in the painter, and robs him of that broad
acceptance of the general facts of life which is the very essence
of art. Model-painting, in a word, while it may be the condition
of art, is not by any means its aim.
It is simply practice, not perfection. Its use trains the eye and
the hand of the painter, its abuse produces in his work an effect
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: Merely to regard it in the abstract, apart from its functions,
its effects, and its influence, is enough to cast one into an
ocean of meditations? Are not most words colored by the idea they
represent? Then, to whose genius are they due? If it takes great
intelligence to create a word, how old may human speech be? The
combination of letters, their shapes, and the look they give to
the word, are the exact reflection, in accordance with the
character of each nation, of the unknown beings whose traces
survive in us.
"Who can philosophically explain the transition from sensation to
thought, from thought to word, from the word to its hieroglyphic
Louis Lambert |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: he came to the crown of the bridge, and there fell grovelling.
At this the Lady Beauvivante shrieked and wailed, but the damsel
Lirette cried loudly, "Up! Martimor, strike again!"
Then the courage came into his body, and with a great
might he abraid upon his feet, and smote the black and yellow
knight upon the helm by an overstroke so fierce that the sword
sheared away the third part of his head, as it had been a
rotten cheese. So he lay upon the bridge, and the blood ran
out of him. And Martimor smote off the rest of his head
quite, and cast it into the river. Likewise did he with the
other twain that lay dead beyond the bridge. And he cried to
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