| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: have escaped death though we had lost our comrades, nor did we
leave till we had thrice invoked each one of the poor fellows
who had perished by the hands of the Cicons. Then Jove raised
the North wind against us till it blew a hurricane, so that land
and sky were hidden in thick clouds, and night sprang forth out
of the heavens. We let the ships run before the gale, but the
force of the wind tore our sails to tatters, so we took them
down for fear of shipwreck, and rowed our hardest towards the
land. There we lay two days and two nights suffering much alike
from toil and distress of mind, but on the morning of the third
day we again raised our masts, set sail, and took our places,
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: another time, he would be sitting in his own
room, and, if there was a breath of wind, he would
declare that he had caught cold; if the shutters
rattled against the window he would start and
turn pale: yet I myself have seen him attack a
boar single-handed. Often enough you couldn't
drag a word out of him for hours together; but
then, on the other hand, sometimes, when he
started telling stories, you would split your sides
with laughing. Yes, sir, a very eccentric man;
and he must have been wealthy too. What a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: The thoughts were strange to him now, like old friendships
impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy feeling that this
child was somehow a message come to him from that far-off life: it
stirred fibres that had never been moved in Raveloe--old
quiverings of tenderness--old impressions of awe at the
presentiment of some Power presiding over his life; for his
imagination had not yet extricated itself from the sense of mystery
in the child's sudden presence, and had formed no conjectures of
ordinary natural means by which the event could have been brought
about.
But there was a cry on the hearth: the child had awaked, and Marner
Silas Marner |
