| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: they speak of the 'color' in a writer's language? Do you not
acknowledge that there is a nervous style, a pallid style, a lively,
and a highly-colored style? Art can paint with words, sounds, colors,
lines, form; the means are many; the result is one.
"An Italian architect might give us the same sensation that is
produced in us by the introduction to /Mose/, by constructing a walk
through dark, damp avenues of tall, thick trees, and bringing us out
suddenly in a valley full of streams, flowers, and mills, and basking
in the sunshine. In their greatest moments the arts are but the
expression of the grand scenes of nature.
"I am not learned enough to enlarge on the philosophy of music; go and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: brief scene of last night?--Cover your face and be ashamed! He said
something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their
bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does
good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot
possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let
a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown,
must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded
to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no
extrication.
"Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: tomorrow, place the
glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully,
Jane Eyre |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: To sow a jangling noise of words unknown:
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud,
Among the builders; each to other calls
Not understood; till hoarse, and all in rage,
As mocked they storm: great laughter was in Heaven,
And looking down, to see the hubbub strange,
And hear the din: Thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named.
Whereto thus Adam, fatherly displeased.
O execrable son! so to aspire
Above his brethren; to himself assuming
Paradise Lost |
