| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: not, to a public servant who ruins his country, even though he is
buried at the public expense? Would you hesitate between a Richelieu,
a Mazarin, or a Potemkin, each with his hundreds of millions of
francs, and a conscientious Robert Lindet that could make nothing out
of assignats and national property, or one of the virtuous imbeciles
who ruined Louis XVI.? Go on, Bixiou."
"I will not go into the details of the speculation which we owe to
Nucingen's financial genius. It would be the more inexpedient because
the concern is still in existence and shares are quoted on the Bourse.
The scheme was so convincing, there was such life in an enterprise
sanctioned by royal letters patent, that though the shares issued at a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: rhapsodes and actors, who also hang from the Muses, but are let down at the
side; and the last ring of all is the spectator. The poet is the inspired
interpreter of the God, and this is the reason why some poets, like Homer,
are restricted to a single theme, or, like Tynnichus, are famous for a
single poem; and the rhapsode is the inspired interpreter of the poet, and
for a similar reason some rhapsodes, like Ion, are the interpreters of
single poets.
Ion is delighted at the notion of being inspired, and acknowledges that he
is beside himself when he is performing;--his eyes rain tears and his hair
stands on end. Socrates is of opinion that a man must be mad who behaves
in this way at a festival when he is surrounded by his friends and there is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: Adonis" in the space of ten years; and at the same time learn
great and fine and unsurpassable literary FORM.
However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this
and more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the
complex procedure of the law-courts; and all about soldiering,
and sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways of royal
courts and aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his
one head every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and
every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the
ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge
of the world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than was
What is Man? |
