| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: seem to speak and walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day;
the flesh lives, eyes move, blood flows in their veins, and
stuffs have a changing sheen. Imagination helps the realism of
every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work. At that
hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps it wakes at nightfall!
Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we people with
dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears the soul aloft
to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous imaginings,
where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday and the
morrow, the future--everything down to its miseries, the good and
the evil alike.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: The privetes of mannes herte
Thei speke and sounen in his Ere
As thogh thei lowde wyndes were,-
He tok vengance upon this pride.
Bot for he wolde awhile abide 2810
To loke if he him wolde amende,
To him a foretokne he sende,
And that was in his slep be nyhte.
This proude kyng a wonder syhte
Hadde in his swevene, ther he lay:
Him thoghte, upon a merie day
Confessio Amantis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: amongst the masters of the fine art I have known. Some were great
impressionists. They impressed upon you the fear of God and
Immensity - or, in other words, the fear of being drowned with
every circumstance of terrific grandeur. One may think that the
locality of your passing away by means of suffocation in water does
not really matter very much. I am not so sure of that. I am,
perhaps, unduly sensitive, but I confess that the idea of being
suddenly spilt into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness
and uproar affected me always with a sensation of shrinking
distaste. To be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an
ignominious fate by the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful
The Mirror of the Sea |
