| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: 'Mystery.'
"If, prompted by curiosity, you go to look at this house from the
street, you will see a large gate, with a round-arched top; the
children have made many holes in it. I learned later that this door
had been blocked for ten years. Through these irregular breaches you
will see that the side towards the courtyard is in perfect harmony
with the side towards the garden. The same ruin prevails. Tufts of
weeds outline the paving-stones; the walls are scored by enormous
cracks, and the blackened coping is laced with a thousand festoons of
pellitory. The stone steps are disjointed; the bell-cord is rotten;
the gutter-spouts broken. What fire from heaven could have fallen
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: whether he can speak well about everything in Homer. 'Yes, indeed he can.'
'What about things of which he has no knowledge?' Ion answers that he can
interpret anything in Homer. But, rejoins Socrates, when Homer speaks of
the arts, as for example, of chariot-driving, or of medicine, or of
prophecy, or of navigation--will he, or will the charioteer or physician or
prophet or pilot be the better judge? Ion is compelled to admit that every
man will judge of his own particular art better than the rhapsode. He
still maintains, however, that he understands the art of the general as
well as any one. 'Then why in this city of Athens, in which men of merit
are always being sought after, is he not at once appointed a general?' Ion
replies that he is a foreigner, and the Athenians and Spartans will not
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: her mother's arm and treading the dead vine leaves. Sometimes the sun,
shining through the clouds, made her blink her lids, when she gazed at
the sails in the distance, and let her eyes roam over the horizon from
the chateau of Tancarville to the lighthouses of Havre. Then they
rested on the arbour. Her mother had bought a little cask of fine
Malaga wine, and Virginia, laughing at the idea of becoming
intoxicated, would drink a few drops of it, but never more.
Her strength returned. Autumn passed. Felicite began to reassure
Madame Aubain. But, one evening, when she returned home after an
errand, she met M. Boupart's coach in front of the door; M. Boupart
himself was standing in the vestibule and Madame Aubain was tying the
A Simple Soul |
