| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: opportunity to escape to the Ancients, just when the spider and the
bee were entering into their contest; to which he gave his
attention with a world of pleasure, and, when it was ended, swore
in the loudest key that in all his life he had never known two
cases, so parallel and adapt to each other as that in the window
and this upon the shelves. "The disputants," said he, "have
admirably managed the dispute between them, have taken in the full
strength of all that is to be said on both sides, and exhausted the
substance of every argument PRO and CON. It is but to adjust the
reasonings of both to the present quarrel, then to compare and
apply the labours and fruits of each, as the bee has learnedly
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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: He found her beauty ever fresh and new--
He had not loved in vain!
"But he, pale and frozen by the cold of Russia, chilled to the very
marrow, met his yearning fair one with a melancholy smile."
The whole poem was written up to this situation, which was worked out
with such vigor and boldness as too entirely justified the Abbe Duret.
Paquita, on reaching the limits set to real love, did not, like Julie
and Heloise, throw herself into the ideal; no, she rushed into the
paths of vice, which is, no doubt, shockingly natural; but she did it
without any touch of magnificence, for lack of means, as it would be
difficult to find in Rouen men impassioned enough to place Paquita in
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: I was nervous; I could not go further; I could not leave the place.
I don't know exactly what I thought might happen, but it seemed
to me important to be there. I wandered about in the alleys--
the warm night had come on--smoking cigar after cigar and looking
at the light in Miss Bordereau's windows. They were open now,
I could see; the situation was different. Sometimes the light moved,
but not quickly; it did not suggest the hurry of a crisis.
Was the old woman dying, or was she already dead? Had the doctor
said that there was nothing to be done at her tremendous age but to
let her quietly pass away; or had he simply announced with a look
a little more conventional that the end of the end had come?
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