| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: foul hands mould and gild porcelain, sew coats and dresses, beat out
iron, turn wood and steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal, imitate
flowers, work woolen things, break in horses, dress harness, carve in
copper, paint carriages, blow glass, corrode the diamond, polish
metals, turn marble into leaves, labor on pebbles, deck out thought,
tinge, bleach, or blacken everything--well, this middleman has come to
that world of sweat and good-will, of study and patience, with
promises of lavish wages, either in the name of the town's caprices or
with the voice of the monster dubbed speculation. Thus, these
/quadrumanes/ set themselves to watch, work, and suffer, to fast,
sweat, and bestir them. Then, careless of the future, greedy of
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: it in yours."
"Ours is so devilish difficult," I weakly observed.
"So's mine. We each choose our own. There's no compulsion. You
won't come down and smoke?"
"No. I want to think this thing out."
"You'll tell me then in the morning that you've laid me bare?"
"I'll see what I can do; I'll sleep on it. But just one word
more," I added. We had left the room - I walked again with him a
few steps along the passage. "This extraordinary 'general
intention,' as you call it - for that's the most vivid description
I can induce you to make of it - is then, generally, a sort of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and
deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual
disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself--still
ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of
conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears
itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, as
though it had been a voluntary blindness! In this transition one
punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures
one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience
to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitude
of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses upon
Beyond Good and Evil |
