| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: darkness any longer!"
She did not know what had prompted her passionate outburst,
but already she felt lighter, freer, as if at last the evil
spell were broken. "I want to know everything," she
repeated. "It's the only way to make me forget."
After she had ceased speaking Darrow remained where he was,
his arms folded, his eyes lowered, immovable. She waited,
her gaze on his face.
"Aren't you going to tell me?"
"No."
The blood rushed to her temples. "You won't? Why not?"
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: smart people sitting on the chairs, and one of the greatest geniuses
of the time, the unrecognized Orpheus of Modern Music, would perform
passages from his operas--pieces so remarkable that they would extract
a few half-pence from Parisian supineness. When some /dilettante/ of
comic operas happened to be sitting there and did not recognize from
what work they were taken, he would question the woman dressed like a
Greek priestess, who held out a bottle-stand of stamped metal in which
she collected charity.
"I say, my dear, what is that music out of?"
"The opera of /Mahomet/," Marianna would reply.
As Rossini composed an opera called /Mahomet II./, the amateur would
Gambara |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: central chamber and scattered over the surrounding eiderdown, while
the rest of the laying still consists of a compact mass of orange
eggs. The appearance of the younglings is not simultaneous; it
takes place with intermissions and may last a couple of weeks.
Nothing as yet suggests the future, richly-striped livery. The
abdomen is white and, as it were, floury in the front half; in the
other half it is a blackish-brown. The rest of the body is pale-
yellow, except in front, where the eyes form a black edging. When
left alone, the little ones remain motionless in the soft, russet
swan's-down; if disturbed, they shuffle lazily where they are, or
even walk about in a hesitating and unsteady fashion. One can see
The Life of the Spider |
