| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: unconscionably stout /abbati/; but luckily he was quite near the
stage. The curtain rose. For the first time in his life he heard the
music whose charms Monsieur Jean-Jacques Rousseau had extolled so
eloquently at one of Baron d'Holbach's evening parties. The young
sculptor's senses were lubricated, so to speak, by Jomelli's
harmonious strains. The languorous peculiarities of those skilfully
blended Italian voices plunged him in an ecstasy of delight. He sat
there, mute and motionless, not even conscious of the crowding of the
two priests. His soul poured out through his ears and his eyes. He
seemed to be listening with every one of his pores. Suddenly a
whirlwind of applause greeted the appearance of the prima donna. She
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Ye kindly muses, rest,
And cease at length to roam?
1800.*
------
FOUND.
ONCE through the forest
Alone I went;
To seek for nothing
My thoughts were bent.
I saw i' the shadow
A flower stand there
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: others, which, by reason of the great number of poor that was left out
of business, as above, was not hard to do. This occasioned, that
notwithstanding the infinite number of people which died and were
sick, almost all together, yet they were always cleared away and
carried off every night, so that it was never to be said of London that
the living were not able to bury the dead.
As the desolation was greater during those terrible times, so the
amazement of the people increased, and a thousand unaccountable
things they would do in the violence of their fright, as others did the
same in the agonies of their distemper, and this part was very
affecting. Some went roaring and crying and wringing their hands
A Journal of the Plague Year |
