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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: effect of animal instinct combining with the almost luminous flashes
of a soul crushed under the weight of thought? In short, was it not
the prick of the penknife so vividly imagined by the boy, felt by the
man as the thunderbolt of his most vital craving--for love?
And now, here is the letter that depicts the state of his mind as it
was struck by the spectacle of Parisian civilization. His feelings,
perpetually wounded no doubt in that whirlpool of self-interest, must
always have suffered there; he probably had no friend to comfort him,
no enemy to give tone to this life. Compelled to live in himself
alone, having no one to share his subtle raptures, he may have hoped
to solve the problem of his destiny by a life of ecstasy, adopting an
Louis Lambert |
