| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life,
a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and
directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of
modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It
is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my
sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only
begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work,
of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more
curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic
quality at any rate.
When Marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs' - DELLA
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: a habit learned in their babyhood. For seven years the sincere
petition had been put up every morning on their mother's bed, and
begun and ended by a kiss. Then the two brothers went through their
morning toilet as scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless they had
been trained in habits of minute attention to the person, so necessary
to health of body and mind, habits in some sort conducive to a sense
of wellbeing. Conscientiously they went through their duties, so
afraid were they lest their mother should say when she kissed them at
breakfast-time, "My darling children, where can you have been to have
such black finger-nails already?" Then the two went out into the
garden and shook off the dreams of the night in the morning air and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith
he) take good at God's hands, and not be content to
take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion.
This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge,
keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise
would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for
the most part fortunate; as that for the death of
Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of
Henry the Third of France; and many more. But
in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindic-
tive persons live the life of witches; who, as they
Essays of Francis Bacon |
