| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: bachelor breakfast-party given by one of our number who had lost a bet
to a young man greatly in vogue in the fashionable world. M. de
Trailles, the flower of the dandyism of that day, enjoyed a prodigious
reputation."
"But he is still enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears
his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace.
It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully
than any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and
pictures. All the women lose their heads over him. He always spends
something like a hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can
discover that he has an acre of land or a single dividend warrant. The
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: The world, like a child, has readily, and for the most part unhesitatingly,
accepted the tale of the Island of Atlantis. In modern times we hardly
seek for traces of the submerged continent; but even Mr. Grote is inclined
to believe in the Egyptian poem of Solon of which there is no evidence in
antiquity; while others, like Martin, discuss the Egyptian origin of the
legend, or like M. de Humboldt, whom he quotes, are disposed to find in it
a vestige of a widely-spread tradition. Others, adopting a different vein
of reflection, regard the Island of Atlantis as the anticipation of a still
greater island--the Continent of America. 'The tale,' says M. Martin,
'rests upon the authority of the Egyptian priests; and the Egyptian priests
took a pleasure in deceiving the Greeks.' He never appears to suspect that
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: such forests. So the sounds which in a symphony of Beethoven are
woven into a web of such amazing complexity may exist in
different combinations in nature; but when a musician steps out
of his way to imitate the crowing of cocks or the roar of the
tempest, we regard his achievement merely as a graceful conceit.
Art is, therefore, an imitation of nature; but it is an
intellectual and not a mechanical imitation; and the performances
of the camera and the music-box are not to be classed with those
of the violinist's bow or the sculptor's chisel.
And lastly, in distinguishing art from science, Taine remarks,
that in disengaging from their complexity the, causes which are
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
