| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: suspected rather than a seen presence--a movement and a voice
behind the draperies of fiction. In these personal notes there is
no such veil. And I cannot help thinking of a passage in the
"Imitation of Christ" where the ascetic author, who knew life so
profoundly, says that "there are persons esteemed on their
reputation who by showing themselves destroy the opinion one had
of them." This is the danger incurred by an author of fiction
who sets out to talk about himself without disguise.
While these reminiscent pages were appearing serially I was
remonstrated with for bad economy; as if such writing were a form
of self-indulgence wasting the substance of future volumes. It
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: should not be married if the queen pleased.
293. Cf. PURGATORIO, v. 133:
'Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma.'
307. _V._ St. Augustine's CONFESSIONS: 'to Carthage then I came,
where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears'.
308. The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which corresponds
in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken,
will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's _Buddhism
in Translation_ (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
The Waste Land |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: With the naming of a word.
It shall sing in your sleeping ears,
It shall hum in your waking head,
The name - Ticonderoga,
And the warning of the dead."
Now when the night was over
And the time of people's fears,
The Cameron walked abroad,
And the word was in his ears.
"Many a name I know,
But never a name like this;
Ballads |
