| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: another personage, an acquaintance not to be forgotten, and his
apparition there was like a streak of lurid light. The /procureur-
general/ came suddenly to a perception of the truth; the part that he
had played to Madame Graslin unrolled itself before him; he divined it
to its fullest extent. Less influenced, as a son of the nineteenth
century, by the religious aspect of the matter, Monsieur de
Grandville's heart was filled with an awful dread; for he saw before
him, he contemplated the drama of that woman's hidden self at the
hotel Graslin during the trial of Jean-Francois Tascheron. That tragic
period came back distinctly to his memory,--lighted even now by the
mother's eyes, shining with hatred, which fell upon him where he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: repartee. On the previous night numerous messengers had hastened to
advise Buck Patterson, the city marshal, of Calliope's impending
eruption. The patience of that official, often strained in extending
leniency toward the disturber's misdeeds, had been overtaxed. In
Quicksand some indulgence was accorded the natural ebullition of human
nature. Providing that the lives of the more useful citizens were not
recklessly squandered, or too much property needlessly laid waste, the
community sentiment was against a too strict enforcement of the law.
But Calliope had raised the limit. His outbursts had been too frequent
and too violent to come within the classification of a normal and
sanitary relaxation of spirit.
Heart of the West |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room."
--And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.
"You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
Prufrock/Other Observations |
