| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Where everything of weight unites together,
And I was shivering in the eternal shade,
Whether 'twere will, or destiny, or chance,
I know not; but in walking 'mong the heads
I struck my foot hard in the face of one.
Weeping he growled: "Why dost thou trample me?
Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance
of Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?"
And I: "My Master, now wait here for me,
That I through him may issue from a doubt;
Then thou mayst hurry me, as thou shalt wish."
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: streets. On another occasion she went to walk on the jetty to see the
English travellers land; but each Englishman had an Englishwoman,
nearly as handsome as Modeste herself, who saw no one at all
resembling a wandering Childe Harold. Tears overcame her, as she sat
down like Marius on the ruins of her imagination. But on the day when
she subpoenaed God for the third time she firmly believed that the
Elect of her dreams was within the church, hiding, perhaps out of
delicacy, behind one of the pillars, round all of which she dragged
Madame Latournelle on a tour of inspection. After this failure, she
deposed the Deity from omnipotence. Many were her conversations with
the imaginary lover, for whom she invented questions and answers,
Modeste Mignon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: and then put them to death in various ways, that he might
witness their agonies and bathe in their blood; experiencing
after each occasion the most dreadful remorse, but led on by
an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When this
unparalleled iniquity was finally brought to light, the castle
was found to contain bins full of children's bones. The
horrible details of the trial are to be found in the histories
of France by Michelet and Martin.
Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to
murder has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor
of Chalons was sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be
Myths and Myth-Makers |
