| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Shantih shantih shantih
Line 415 aetherial] aethereal
Line 428 ceu] uti -- Editor
NOTES
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the
incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested
by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend:
_From Ritual to Romance_ (Macmillan).<1> Indeed,
so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate
the diffi-culties of the poem much better than my notes can do;
and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself)
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: a philosophical symmetry in their narratives. In the great
majority of complex myths, no such symmetry is to be found. A
score of different mythical conceptions would get wrought into
the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and
construct a single harmonious system of conceptions out of the
pieces must often end in ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is
unquestionably the sun, so is the eye of Polyphemos, which
Odysseus puts out.[42] But the Greek poet knew nothing of the
incongruity, for he was thinking only of a superhuman hero
freeing himself from a giant cannibal; he knew nothing of
Sanskrit, or of comparative mythology, and the sources of his
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: she naturally fell into all her wonted ways of attention and assistance,
and on Charles's leaving them together, was listening to Mrs Musgrove's
history of Louisa, and to Henrietta's of herself, giving opinions
on business, and recommendations to shops; with intervals of every help
which Mary required, from altering her ribbon to settling her accounts;
from finding her keys, and assorting her trinkets, to trying
to convince her that she was not ill-used by anybody; which Mary,
well amused as she generally was, in her station at a window
overlooking the entrance to the Pump Room, could not but have
her moments of imagining.
A morning of thorough confusion was to be expected. A large party
Persuasion |
