| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: that I can discern two divisions of the imitative art, but I am not as yet
able to see in which of them the desired form is to be found.
THEAETETUS: Will you tell me first what are the two divisions of which you
are speaking?
STRANGER: One is the art of likeness-making;--generally a likeness of
anything is made by producing a copy which is executed according to the
proportions of the original, similar in length and breadth and depth, each
thing receiving also its appropriate colour.
THEAETETUS: Is not this always the aim of imitation?
STRANGER: Not always; in works either of sculpture or of painting, which
are of any magnitude, there is a certain degree of deception; for artists
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: That it went hand in hand, euen with the Vow
I made to her in Marriage; and to decline
Vpon a wretch, whose Naturall gifts were poore
To those of mine. But Vertue, as it neuer wil be moued,
Though Lewdnesse court it in a shape of Heauen:
So Lust, though to a radiant Angell link'd,
Will sate it selfe in a Celestiall bed, & prey on Garbage.
But soft, me thinkes I sent the Mornings Ayre;
Briefe let me be: Sleeping within mine Orchard,
My custome alwayes in the afternoone;
Vpon my secure hower thy Vncle stole
Hamlet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: lips.
He commenced operations with an easy-going "Let's see. H'm.
Suppose you tell me all you know of charter-parties." He kept it
up in that style all through, wandering off in the shape of
comment into bits out of his own life, then pulling himself up
short and returning to the business in hand. It was very
interesting. "What's your idea of a jury-rudder now?" he queried
suddenly, at the end of an instructive anecdote bearing upon a
point of stowage.
I warned him that I had no experience of a lost rudder at sea,
and gave him two classical examples of makeshifts out of a text-
Some Reminiscences |
