| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: Beelzebub. And I was trying to remember how you did it. I knew
you made a ring of skulls, for I had seen that in the
Freischultz: and that you took off your coat and turned up your
sleeves, for I had seen Formes do that when he was playing
Kaspar, and you could see (by the way he went about it) it was a
business he had studied; and that you ought to have something to
kick up a smoke and a bad smell, I dare say a cigar might do, and
that you ought to say the Lord's Prayer backwards. Well, I
wondered if I could do that; it seemed rather a feat, you see.
And then I wondered if I would say it forward, and I thought I
did. Well, no sooner had I got to WORLD WITHOUT END, than I saw a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: she did not want to die! . . .
"At night she became delirious, her head
burned, at times a feverish paroxysm convulsed
her whole body. She talked incoherently about
her father, her brother; she yearned for the
mountains, for her home. . . Then she spoke
of Pechorin also, called him various fond names,
or reproached him for having ceased to love his
janechka.
He listened to her in silence, his head sunk
in his hands; but yet, during the whole time, I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: hurt in the least. The charge--if it amounted to a charge at
all--was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone of regret.
My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an
element of autobiography--and this can hardly be denied, since
the creator can only express himself in his creation--then there
are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant.
I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often
merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness.
It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to
see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter
or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason
A Personal Record |
