| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: fear; he cannot see the guardian who protects my door.' In fact, no
matter in what country he made his abode he never closed his doors,
and nothing was ever stolen from him. At Gottenburg--a town situated
some sixty miles from Stockholm--he announced, eight days before the
news arrived by courier, the conflagration which ravaged Stockholm,
and the exact time at which it took place. The Queen of Sweden wrote
to her brother, the King, at Berlin, that one of her ladies-in-
waiting, who was ordered by the courts to pay a sum of money which she
was certain her husband had paid before his death, went to Swedenborg
and begged him to ask her husband where she could find proof of the
payment. The following day Swedenborg, having done as the lady
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: your recollection."
"And you have proof of this?"
"Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or
shall we say Mrs. Herbert?"
"Where did you see her?"
"Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady
who lives in Ashley Street, Piccadilly. I saw her entering a
house in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in
Soho. In fact, I had made an appointment, though not with her,
and she was precise to both time and place."
"All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it
The Great God Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: you must look life in the face. I know it's hard, but . . ."
"I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,"
Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't
live with him. Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical
effect on me, it makes me beside myself. I can't, I can't live
with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think
one couldn't be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am
going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you
believe it, that knowing he's a good man, a splendid man, that
I'm not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for
his generosity. And there's nothing left for me but . . ."
Anna Karenina |
