| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: hustling about, scuffling, and struggling he managed at last to tear
away a sleeve, to slit a petticoat, until he was able to place his
hand upon his own property. This bold endeavour brought Madame to her
feet and drawing the king's dagger, "What would you with me?" she
cried.
"Everything," answered he.
"Ha! I should be a great fool to give myself against my inclination!
If you fancied you would find my virtue unarmed you made a great
error. Behold the poniard of the king, with which I will kill you if
you make the semblance of a step towards me."
So saying, she took a cinder, and having still her eyes upon her lord
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: ION: There again you are right.
SOCRATES: Then you are the interpreters of interpreters?
ION: Precisely.
SOCRATES: I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I am going to ask of
you: When you produce the greatest effect upon the audience in the
recitation of some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus
leaping forth on the floor, recognized by the suitors and casting his
arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles rushing at Hector, or
the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam,--are you in your right mind?
Are you not carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in an ecstasy
seem to be among the persons or places of which you are speaking, whether
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: a huge dam across the ravine; till, the "Ice age" past, a more
genial climate succeeded, and neve and glacier melted away: but
the "moraine" of stones did not, and remains to this day, as the
dam which keeps up the waters of the lake.
There is my explanation. If you can find a better, do: but
remember always that it must include an answer to - "How did the
stones get across the lake?"
Now, reader, we have had no abstruse science here, no long words,
not even a microscope or a book: and yet we, as two plain
sportsmen, have gone back, or been led back by fact and common
sense, into the most awful and sublime depths, into an epos of the
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