| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: removed if you yourself take a little trouble to make them; you can
afterwards baptise them, and put any name you like to them,
fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of
Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to have been famous
poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or bachelors
should attack you and question the fact, never care two maravedis
for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot cut off
the hand you wrote it with.
"As to references in the margin to the books and authors from whom
you take the aphorisms and sayings you put into your story, it is only
contriving to fit in nicely any sentences or scraps of Latin you may
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: On the day when the trumpet shall be blown, and we will gather the
sinners in that day blue-eyed.
They shall whisper to each other, 'Ye have only tarried ten days.'
We know best what they say, when the most exemplary of them in his way
shall say, 'Ye have only tarried a day.'
They will ask thee about the mountains; say, 'My Lord will scatter
them in scattered pieces, and He will leave them a level plain, thou
wilt see therein no crookedness or inequality.'
On that day they shall follow the caller in whom is no
crookedness; and the voices shall be hushed before the Merciful, and
thou shalt hear naught but a shuffling.
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: fall of that ambitious house. As for the tall Cointet, he set up the
new machinery for making lengths of paper in a ribbon, and allowed
people to believe that he was buying plant for David's experiments.
Then the cunning Cointet used David's formula for pulp, while urging
his partner to give his whole attention to the sizing process; and
thousands of reams of the new paper were despatched to Metivier in
Paris.
When September arrived, the tall Cointet took David aside, and,
learning that the latter meditated a crowning experiment, dissuaded
him from further attempts.
"Go to Marsac, my dear David, see your wife, and take a rest after
|
