| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: matter, which is life, the method by which it works, which is
action, the conditions under which it reveals itself, which are
those of theatric presentation, its logical structure, which is
plot, and its final aesthetic appeal, which is to the sense of
beauty realised through the passions of pity and awe. That
purification and spiritualising of the nature which he calls [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced] is, as Goethe saw, essentially
aesthetic, and is not moral, as Lessing fancied. Concerning
himself primarily with the impression that the work of art
produces, Aristotle sets himself to analyse that impression, to
investigate its source, to see how it is engendered. As a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: times this evening,--as a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by
which she will earn about two hundred francs a month."
"She is better dressed than my prefect's wife."
"If you should go to her house," said Bixiou, "you would find there a
chamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. She occupies a fine apartment
in the rue Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in proportion to French
fortunes of the present day compared with those of former times, a
relic of the eighteenth century 'opera-girl.' Carabine is a power; at
this moment she governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential in
the Chamber of Deputies."
"And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder what comes next?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Within itself one kind of blow, when said
To feel a white hue, then another kind,
When feeling a black or any other hue,
And since it matters nothing with what hue
The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,
But rather with what sort of shape equipped,
'Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,
But render forth sensations, as of touch,
That vary with their varied forms.
Besides,
Since special shapes have not a special colour,
Of The Nature of Things |
