| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: larger heap, and said, 'All this must be spun tonight; and if it is,
you shall be my queen.' As soon as she was alone that dwarf came in,
and said, 'What will you give me to spin gold for you this third
time?' 'I have nothing left,' said she. 'Then say you will give me,'
said the little man, 'the first little child that you may have when
you are queen.' 'That may never be,' thought the miller's daughter:
and as she knew no other way to get her task done, she said she would
do what he asked. Round went the wheel again to the old song, and the
manikin once more spun the heap into gold. The king came in the
morning, and, finding all he wanted, was forced to keep his word; so
he married the miller's daughter, and she really became queen.
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: any hope that he would ever rise from his bed again. Despite the
fact that his temperature went up very high, he was conscious all
the time; he dictated some reflections every day, and deliberately
prepared for death.
The whole family was with him, and we all took turns in
helping to nurse him. I look back with pleasure on the nights when
it fell to me to be on duty by him, and I sat in the balcony by
the open window, listening to his breathing and every sound in his
room. My chief duty, as the strongest of the family, was to lift
him up while the sheets were being changed. When they were making
the bed, I had to hold him in my arms like a child.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: poet. 'And yet, surely, he who knows the superior ought to know the
inferior also;--he who can judge of the good speaker is able to judge of
the bad. And poetry is a whole; and he who judges of poetry by rules of
art ought to be able to judge of all poetry.' This is confirmed by the
analogy of sculpture, painting, flute-playing, and the other arts. The
argument is at last brought home to the mind of Ion, who asks how this
contradiction is to be solved. The solution given by Socrates is as
follows:--
The rhapsode is not guided by rules of art, but is an inspired person who
derives a mysterious power from the poet; and the poet, in like manner, is
inspired by the God. The poets and their interpreters may be compared to a
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