| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: statue as a masterpiece. Not without profound sorrow did the king's
sculptor witness the departure for Italy of a young man whose profound
ignorance of the things of life he had, as a matter of principle,
refrained from enlightening. Sarrasine was Bouchardon's guest for six
years. Fanatically devoted to his art, as Canova was at a later day,
he rose at dawn and went to the studio, there to remain until night,
and lived with his muse alone. If he went to the Comedie-Francaise, he
was dragged thither by his master. He was so bored at Madame
Geoffrin's, and in the fashionable society to which Bouchardon tried
to introduce him, that he preferred to remain alone, and held aloof
from the pleasures of that licentious age. He had no other mistresses
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: half-obliterated pages of the manuscript, never disclosed to mortal
the particulars of their conversation in the madhouse; and the
slightest allusion to it threw him into fits of rage and gloom
equally singular and alarming. He left the manuscript, however, in
the hands of the family, possibly deeming, from their incuriosity,
their apparent indifference to their relative, or their obvious
unacquaintance with reading of any kind, manuscript or books, his
deposit would be safe. He seems, in fact, to have acted like men,
who, in distress at sea, intrust their letters and dispatches to a
bottle sealed, and commit it to the waves. The last lines of the
manuscript that were legible, were sufficiently extraordinary. . .
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: gale of twenty-two years ago. It was wind, lightning,
sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were flying light, and
you may imagine how bad it was when I tell you we had
smashed bulwarks and a flooded deck. On the second
night she shifted her ballast into the lee bow, and by
that time we had been blown off somewhere on the Dogger
Bank. There was nothing for it but go below with
shovels and try to right her, and there we were in that
vast hold, gloomy like a cavern, the tallow dips stuck
and flickering on the beams, the gale howling above, the
ship tossing about like mad on her side; there we all
Youth |
