| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: is a fine thing or not, when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric is?
POLUS: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience?
SOCRATES: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a slight
gratification to me?
POLUS: I will.
SOCRATES: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery?
POLUS: What sort of an art is cookery?
SOCRATES: Not an art at all, Polus.
POLUS: What then?
SOCRATES: I should say an experience.
POLUS: In what? I wish that you would explain to me.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: to me, Gravener entertained the idea of annexing Mr. Saltram. Such
a project was delusive, for the discovery of analogies between his
body of doctrine and that pressed from headquarters upon
Clockborough--the bottling, in a word, of the air of those lungs
for convenient public uncorking in corn-exchanges--was an
experiment for which no one had the leisure. The only thing would
have been to carry him massively about, paid, caged, clipped; to
turn him on for a particular occasion in a particular channel.
Frank Saltram's channel, however, was essentially not calculable,
and there was no knowing what disastrous floods might have ensued.
For what there would have been to do THE EMPIRE, the great
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: "And where are they, the men of your youth? You mad woman!"
retorted Babalatchi, angrily. "Killed by the Dutch. Aha! But I
shall live to deceive them. A man knows when to fight and when
to tell peaceful lies. You would know that if you were not a
woman."
But Mrs. Almayer did not seem to hear him. With bent body and
outstretched arm she appeared to be listening to some noise
behind the shed.
"There are strange sounds," she whispered, with evident alarm.
"I have heard in the air the sounds of grief, as of a sigh and
weeping. That was by the riverside. And now again I heard--"
Almayer's Folly |
