| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: except temptation.
LADY WINDERMERE. You have the modern affectation of weakness.
LORD DARLINGTON. [Looking at her.] It's only an affectation, Lady
Windermere.
[Enter PARKER C.]
PARKER. The Duchess of Berwick and Lady Agatha Carlisle.
[Enter the DUCHESS OF BERWICK and LADY AGATHA CARLISLE C.]
[Exit PARKER C.]
DUCHESS OF BERWICK. [Coming down C., and shaking hands.] Dear
Margaret, I am so pleased to see you. You remember Agatha, don't
you? [Crossing L.C.] How do you do, Lord Darlington? I won't let
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: season continues to make its wonted revolutions.
"Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen, and what,
when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not
endeavour to modify the motions of the elements or to fix the
destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings
like us may perform, each labouring for his own happiness by
promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of
others.
"Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and women were
made to be the companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be
persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: human condition; we differ less from our past than we might like to
believe. T. S. Eliot understood this when he wrote "Dante and Shakespeare
divide the modern world between them, there is no third." So now Dante
joins Shakespeare (e-text #100) in the Project Gutenberg collection. Two
works that influenced Dante are also part of the collection: The Bible
(#10) and Virgil's Aeneid (#227). Other major influences--St. Thomas of
Aquinas' Summa Theologica, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, and Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics--are available in electronic form at other Internet
sites. If one searches enough he may even find a computer rendering of the
Danteum on the Internet. By presenting this electronic text to Project
Gutenberg it is my hope that in will not rest in a computer unknown and
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
