| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: evidently crept behind a long line of people who were listening
attentively to Marianina's voice as she finished the cavatina from
/Tancred/. He seemed to have come up through the floor, impelled by
some stage mechanism. He stood for a moment motionless and sombre,
watching the festivities, a murmur of which had perhaps reached his
ears. His almost somnambulistic preoccupation was so concentrated upon
things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he saw
nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside one of the most
fascinating women in Paris, a young and graceful dancer, with slender
figure, a face as fresh as a child's, all pink and white, and so
fragile, so transparent, that it seemed that a man's glance must pass
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: of this repertoire through the whole opera of a passion. Lousteau,
regarding this adventure with Dinah as a mere temporary connection,
was eager to stamp himself on her memory in indelible lines; and
during that beautiful October he was prodigal of his most entrancing
melodies and most elaborate /barcarolles/. In fact, he exhausted every
resource of the stage management of love, to use an expression
borrowed from the theatrical dictionary, and admirably descriptive of
his manoeuvres.
"If that woman ever forgets me!" he would sometimes say to himself as
they returned together from a long walk in the woods, "I will owe her
no grudge--she will have found something better."
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: almost certain of ending there, where the rest of the day
was spent by himself at the side of Marianne, and by his
favourite pointer at her feet.
One evening in particular, about a week after
Colonel Brandon left the country, his heart seemed
more than usually open to every feeling of attachment
to the objects around him; and on Mrs. Dashwood's
happening to mention her design of improving the cottage
in the spring, he warmly opposed every alteration
of a place which affection had established as perfect with him.
"What!" he exclaimed--"Improve this dear cottage!
Sense and Sensibility |
