| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: but desirable incident, such as we love to prefigure for ourselves;
and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give
the preference to either. The one may ask more genius - I do not
say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the
memory.
True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It
reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not
refuse the most pedestrian realism. ROBINSON CRUSOE is as
realistic as it is romantic; both qualities are pushed to an
extreme, and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the
material importance of the incidents. To deal with strong and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: depths my body would drop to be crushed to a shapeless pulp should
Thurid reach the rope now.
At last my hand closed upon the ship's rail and that very
instant a horrid shriek rang out below me that sent my blood cold
and turned my horrified eyes downward to a shrieking, hurtling,
twisting thing that shot downward into the awful chasm beneath me.
It was Matai Shang, Holy Hekkador, Father of Therns, gone to
his last accounting.
The Warlord of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: My uncle Rivers talk'd how I did grow
More than my brother. 'Ay,' quoth my uncle Gloucester
'Small herbs have grace: great weeds do grow apace.'
And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast,
Because sweet flow'rs are slow and weeds make haste.
DUCHESS. Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold
In him that did object the same to thee.
He was the wretched'st thing when he was young,
So long a-growing and so leisurely
That, if his rule were true, he should be gracious.
ARCHBISHOP. And so no doubt he is, my gracious madam.
Richard III |
