| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: it is never more than that. Our experience never gets into our
blood and bones. It always remains outside of us. That's why we
look with wonder at the past. And this persists even when from
practice and through growing callousness of fibre we come to the
point when nothing that we meet in that rapid blinking stumble
across a flick of sunshine--which our life is--nothing, I say, which
we run against surprises us any more. Not at the time, I mean. If,
later on, we recover the faculty with some such exclamation: 'Well!
Well! I'll be hanged if I ever, . . . ' it is probably because this
very thing that there should be a past to look back upon, other
people's, is very astounding in itself when one has the time, a
Chance |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: xiii., from whence it continues to the end of Book xxiv.
In "The Authoress of the Odyssey", I wrote:
the introduction of lines xi., 115-137 and of line ix.,
535, with the writing a new council of the gods at the
beginning of Book v., to take the place of the one that was
removed to Book i., 1-79, were the only things that were
done to give even a semblance of unity to the old scheme
and the new, and to conceal the fact that the Muse, after
being asked to sing of one subject, spend two-thirds of her
time in singing a very different one, with a climax for
which no-one has asked her. For roughly the Return occupies
The Odyssey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: [17] Omitting {einai}, or if with Breit. {dokei einai . . .
sunageiresthai}, transl. "in which it is recognised that sights
are to be seen best fitted to enchain the eyes and congregate vast
masses." For other emendations see Holden, crit. app.; Hartm. op.
cit. p. 258.
[18] "Religious embassies"; it. "Theories." See Thuc. vi. 16; "Mem."
IV. viii. 2.
[19] Lit. "not stronger than those present."
[20] Or, "The dread oppresses him, he may be deprived of his empire
and yet be powerless."
[21] Cf. Plat. "Rep." ix. 579 B: "His soul is dainty and greedy; and
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