| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: merely a specialist, he has the gift of universality. Do you think
that an engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique could ever create
one of those miracles of architecture such as Leonardo da Vinci
knew how to build,--mechanician, architect, painter, inventor of
hydraulics, indefatigable constructor of canals that he was?
Trained from their earliest years to the baldness of axiom and
formula, the youths who leave the Ecole have lost the sense of
elegance and ornament; a column seems to them useless; they return
to the point where art begins, and cling to the useful.
But all this is nothing in comparison to the real malady which is
undermining me. I feel an awful transformation going on within me;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I explained it. "To corrupt."
She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh.
"Are you afraid he'll corrupt YOU?" She put the question with such a fine
bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own,
I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule.
But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped
up in another place. "What was the lady who was here before?"
"The last governess? She was also young and pretty--
almost as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you."
"Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!"
I recollect throwing off. "He seems to like us young and pretty!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: she was hiding some money from him."
Frenna did a big business all day long. The murder was the
one subject of conversation. Little parties were made up in
his saloon--parties of twos and threes--to go over and have
a look at the outside of the junk shop. Heise was the most
important man the length and breadth of Polk Street; almost
invariably he accompanied these parties, telling again and
again of the part he had played in the affair.
"It was about eleven o'clock. I was standing in front of
the shop, when Mrs. McTeague--you know, the dentist's wife--
came running across the street," and so on and so on.
McTeague |
