| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: alike. This is obvious; or else, why do states and nations, one and
all, inquire of the gods by divination what they ought to do and what
they ought not? This also is apparent, that we believe them able to do
us good and to do us harm; or why do all men pray to Heaven to avert
the evil and bestow the good? Well then, my boast is that these gods,
who know and can do all things,[72] deign to be my friends; so that,
by reason of their care for me, I can never escape from their
sight,[73] neither by night nor by day, whithersoever I essay to go,
whatsoever I take in hand to do.[74] But because they know beforehand
the end and issue of each event, they give me signals, sending
messengers, be it some voice,[75] or vision of the night, with omens
The Symposium |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Isolde, wholly devoted to it, is a poem of destruction and death.
The Mastersingers, a work full of health, fun and happiness,
contains not a single bar of love music that can be described as
passionate: the hero of it is a widower who cobbles shoes, writes
verses, and contents himself with looking on at the
sweetheartings of his customers. Parsifal makes an end of it
altogether. The truth is that the love panacea in Night Falls On
The Gods and in the last act of Siegfried is a survival of the
first crude operatic conception of the story, modified by an
anticipation of Wagner's later, though not latest, conception of
love as the fulfiller of our Will to Live and consequently our
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: dashed into the barn, knocking down the hurdle-stake in
passing; the heavy door slammed behind him; and all three
were imprisoned in the barn together. The mistaken creature
saw them, and stalked towards the end of the barn into which
they had fled. The girls doubled so adroitly that their
pursuer was against the wall when the fugitives were already
half way to the other end. By the time that his length
would allow him to turn and follow them thither they had
crossed over; thus the pursuit went on, the hot air from his
nostrils blowing over them like a sirocco, and not a moment
being attainable by Elizabeth or Lucetta in which to open
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
