| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Chaerephon called me and said: What do you think of him, Socrates? Has he
not a beautiful face?
Most beautiful, I said.
But you would think nothing of his face, he replied, if you could see his
naked form: he is absolutely perfect.
And to this they all agreed.
By Heracles, I said, there never was such a paragon, if he has only one
other slight addition.
What is that? said Critias.
If he has a noble soul; and being of your house, Critias, he may be
expected to have this.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois regime
a class is being developed, which is destined to cut up root and
branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it
creates
a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive
measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite
their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden
apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth,
love,
The Communist Manifesto |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: he wrote the LARGE TESTAMENT five years after. On the latter
occasion nothing is too bad for his "damsel with the twisted
nose," as he calls her. She is spared neither hint nor
accusation, and he tells his messenger to accost her with the
vilest insults. Villon, it is thought, was out of Paris when
these amenities escaped his pen; or perhaps the strong arm of
Noe le Joly would have been again in requisition. So ends
the love story, if love story it may properly be called.
Poets are not necessarily fortunate in love; but they usually
fall among more romantic circumstances and bear their
disappointment with a better grace.
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