| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men
hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so
acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the
historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have
passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made
others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations
were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine
were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue,
of larger scope.
The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured
into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: convulsed mass of iron wreckage over which
the angry river continually spat up its yellow
foam.
"Those poor women out there, do they
blame him very much?" she asked, as she
handed the coffee-cup back to Horton.
"Nobody blames him, Mrs. Alexander.
If any one is to blame, I'm afraid it's I.
I should have stopped work before he came.
He said so as soon as I met him. I tried
to get him here a day earlier, but my telegram
Alexander's Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: Terry told them. "We do not have the wretched paupers and beggars
of the older countries, I assure you. Why, European visitors tell
us, we don't know what poverty is."
"Neither do we," answered Zava. "Won't you tell us?"
Terry put it up to me, saying I was the sociologist, and I
explained that the laws of nature require a struggle for existence,
and that in the struggle the fittest survive, and the unfit perish.
In our economic struggle, I continued, there was always plenty
of opportunity for the fittest to reach the top, which they did,
in great numbers, particularly in our country; that where there was
severe economic pressure the lowest classes of course felt it the
Herland |
