| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: of his wife seemed to him a thing "against nature." To declare his
fortune to his daughter, to give an inventory of his property, landed
and personal, for the purposes of division--
"Why," he cried aloud in the midst of a field where he was pretending
to examine a vine, "it would be cutting my throat!"
He came at last to a decision, and returned to Saumur in time for
dinner, resolved to unbend to Eugenie, and pet and coax her, that he
might die regally, holding the reins of his millions in his own hands
so long as the breath was in his body. At the moment when the old man,
who chanced to have his pass-key in his pocket, opened the door and
climbed with a stealthy step up the stairway to go into his wife's
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: Thus, we may distinguish two kinds of criticism, as in painting we may
distinguish art from practical dexterity. Criticism, after the pattern
of most contemporary leader-writers, is the expression of judgments
formed at random in a more or less witty way, just as an advocate
pleads in court on the most contradictory briefs. The newspaper critic
always finds a subject to work up in the book he is discussing. Done
after this fashion, the business is well adapted to indolent brains,
to men devoid of the sublime faculty of imagination, or, possessed of
it indeed, but lacking courage to cultivate it. Every play, every book
comes to their pen as a subject, making no demand on their
imagination, and of which they simply write a report, seriously or in
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: the wayside to think. There she remained long. Above the
dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontor-
ies of coppery cloud,bounding a green and pellucid expanse
in the western sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then,
and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting
prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating
stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of
space, but realised none at all. Her troubled spirit was far
away with Troy.
CHAPTER XXXII
NIGHT -- HORSES TRAMPING
Far From the Madding Crowd |
