| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: ever and ever in that inner harbor, a derision and a by-
word to generations of long-shore loafers and dishonest
boatmen. I obtained three months' pay and a five days'
leave, and made a rush for London. It took me a day
to get there and pretty well another to come back--but
three months' pay went all the same. I don't know what
I did with it. I went to a music-hall, I believe, lunched,
dined, and supped in a swell place in Regent Street, and
was back to time, with nothing but a complete set of
Byron's works and a new railway rug to show for three
months' work. The boatman who pulled me off to the
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: SOCRATES: And is not our fire small and weak and mean? But the fire in
the universe is wonderful in quantity and beauty, and in every power that
fire has.
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: And is the fire in the universe nourished and generated and
ruled by the fire in us, or is the fire in you and me, and in other
animals, dependent on the universal fire?
PROTARCHUS: That is a question which does not deserve an answer.
SOCRATES: Right; and you would say the same, if I am not mistaken, of the
earth which is in animals and the earth which is in the universe, and you
would give a similar reply about all the other elements?
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: discussed so coolly, as though she, too, had sacrificed what Mary
herself had sacrificed. The swinging of the gloves ceased, and
Katharine, after ten minutes, began to make movements preliminary to
departure. At the sight of this, Mary was aware--she was abnormally
aware of things to-night--of another very strong desire; Katharine was
not to be allowed to go, to disappear into the free, happy world of
irresponsible individuals. She must be made to realize--to feel.
"I don't quite see," she said, as if Katharine had challenged her
explicitly, "how, things being as they are, any one can help trying,
at least, to do something."
"No. But how ARE things?"
|
