| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: this worry! The unfortunate position of an exile has its
advantages. At a certain height of social position (wealth has got
nothing to do with it, we have been ruined in a most righteous
cause), at a certain established height one can disregard narrow
prejudices. You see examples in the aristocracies of all the
countries. A chivalrous young American may offer his life for a
remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. We,
in our great country, have every sort of tradition. But a young
man of good connections and distinguished relations must settle
down some day, dispose of his life."
"No doubt, Madame," I said, raising my eyes to the figure outside -
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: yellow oil, the reek of which instantly recalled to Wilbur's mind
the rancid smell of the schooner on the day when he had first come
aboard of her. The deck-tubs were emptied into the hogsheads and
vats that stood in the waist of the "Bertha," the tubs scoured,
and the lines and bent shark-hooks overhauled. Charlie
disappeared in the galley, supper was cooked, and eaten upon deck
under the conflagration of the sunset; the lights were set, the
Chinamen foregathered in the fo'c'stle head, smoking opium, and by
eight o'clock the routine of the day was at an end.
So the time passed. In a short time Wilbur could not have said
whether the day was Wednesday or Sunday. He soon tired of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: unlawful, gives him his attitude before the world. Indeed, every
one who puts pen to paper for the reading of strangers (unless a
moralist, who, generally speaking, has no conscience except the
one he is at pains to produce for the use of others) can speak of
nothing else. It is M. Anatole France, the most eloquent and
just of French prose writers, who says that we must recognise at
last that, "failing the resolution to hold our peace, we can only
talk of ourselves."
This remark, if I remember rightly, was made in the course of a
sparring match with the late Ferdinand Brunetiere over the
principles and rules of literary criticism. As was fitting for a
Some Reminiscences |
