| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: drawing made by an able draftsman, ending around the neck in an oblong
curve, adorned at the edges with a slight embroidery in brown silks,
leaving to view as much of the bare throat as was needed to show the
beauty of her womanhood, but not enough to awaken desire. A full brown
skirt, continuing the lines already drawn by the velvet waist, fell to
her feet in narrow flattened pleats. Her figure was so slender that
Gabrielle seemed tall; her arms hung pendent with the inertia that
some deep thought imparts to the attitude. Thus standing, she
presented a living model of those ingenuous works of statuary a taste
for which prevailed at that period,--works which obtained admiration
for the harmony of their lines, straight without stiffness, and for
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: No trouble caused by Gods or wrought by mortal man from any
side
o'ertaketh him.
7 May we by thine own fires be well supplied with fire, O Son
of
Strength, O Lord of Might:
Thou as our Friend hast worthy men.
8 Agni, who praises like a guest of friendly mind, is as a
car that
brings us gear.
Also in thee is found perfect security thou art the Sovran
The Rig Veda |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in
comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and
emasculate. Life imposes by brute energy, like inarticulate
thunder; art catches the ear, among the far louder noises of
experience, like an air artificially made by a discreet musician.
A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a
proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work
of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both
inhere in nature, neither represents it. The novel, which is a
work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are
forced and material, as a shoe must still consist of leather, but
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