| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: within two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the
voices of mocking fiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage
might well regard as the utterances of his other self.
[162] Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of
these Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body
by some spirit or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy,
ekstasis, a displacement or removal of the soul from the body,
into which the demon enters and causes strange laughing,
crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but the literal
belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to such words
as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself or
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: resigned assent, and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: "My
dear sir, my wife considers Siena a most salubrious spot, and is
favorably impressed by the cheapness of the marketing; but she
deplores the total absence of muffins and cannel coal, and cannot
resign herself to the Italian method of dusting furniture."
"But they don't, you know--they don't dust it!" Mrs. Lombard
protested, without showing any resentment of her husband's
manner.
"Precisely--they don't dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we
have not once seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of
the Mangia. Can you conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: orchard to pick cherries--they had neither of
them had the patience to grow an orchard of their
own--and Annie went down to gossip with
Alexandra's kitchen girls while they washed the
dishes. She could always find out more about
Alexandra's domestic economy from the prat-
tling maids than from Alexandra herself, and
what she discovered she used to her own advan-
tage with Lou. On the Divide, farmers' daugh-
ters no longer went out into service, so Alex-
andra got her girls from Sweden, by paying
O Pioneers! |
