| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde: n'est-ce pas? Comment se fait-il que la vipere rouge ne remue plus?
. . . Tu n'as pas voulu de moi, Iokanaan. Tu m'as rejetee. Tu m'as
dit des choses infames. Tu m'as traitee comme une courtisane, comme
une prostituee, moi, Salome, fille d'Herodias, Princesse de Judee!
Eh bien, Iokanaan, moi je vis encore, mais toi tu es mort et ta tete
m'appartient. Je puis en faire ce que je veux. Je puis la jeter
aux chiens et aux oiseaux de l'air. Ce que laisseront les chiens,
les oiseaux de l'air le mangeront . . . Ah! Iokanaan, Iokanaan, tu
as ete le seul homme que j'ai aime. Tous les autres hommes
m'inspirent du degout. Mais, toi, tu etais beau. Ton corps etait
une colonne d'ivoire sur un socle d'argent. C'etait un jardin plein
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: he did a very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps he
wrote to Marian Fancourt. He was aware of the perversity of this
act, and it was only as a luxury, an amusement, the reward of a
strenuous autumn, that he justified it. She had asked of him no
such favour when, shortly before he left London, three days after
their dinner in Ennismore Gardens, he went to take leave of her.
It was true she had had no ground - he hadn't named his intention
of absence. He had kept his counsel for want of due assurance: it
was that particular visit that was, the next thing, to settle the
matter. He had paid the visit to see how much he really cared for
her, and quick departure, without so much as an explicit farewell,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: could I do? And even devious methods I employed only when I saw that
the straight road would not serve my purpose so well as a crooked.
Moreover, as I toiled, the appetite for those methods grew upon me.
Yet what I took I took only from the rich; whereas villains exist who,
while drawing thousands a year from the Treasury, despoil the poor,
and take from the man with nothing even that which he has. Is it not
the cruelty of fate, therefore, that, just when I was beginning to
reap the harvest of my toil--to touch it, so to speak, with the tip of
one finger--there should have arisen a sudden storm which has sent my
barque to pieces on a rock? My capital had nearly reached the sum of
three hundred thousand roubles, and a three-storied house was as good
Dead Souls |
