| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: filled with womanly delicacy; for its dominant desire was to make some
Tasso, some Milton, a Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Murat, a Christopher
Columbus happy.
Commonplace miseries did not seriously touch this youthful soul, who
longed to extinguish the fires of the martyrs ignored and rejected in
their own day. Sometimes she imagined balms of Gilead, soothing
melodies which might have allayed the savage misanthropy of Rousseau.
Or she fancied herself the wife of Lord Byron; guessing intuitively
his contempt for the real, she made herself as fantastic as the poetry
of Manfred, and provided for his scepticism by making him a Catholic.
Modeste attributed Moliere's melancholy to the women of the
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: does this it stultifies itself. And yet Tartuffe's articles and
Chadband's notes do this good, at least. They serve to show how
extremely limited is the area over which ethics, and ethical
considerations, can claim to exercise influence. Science is out of
the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths.
Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon
things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. To morals belong
the lower and less intellectual spheres. However, let these
mouthing Puritans pass; they have their comic side. Who can help
laughing when an ordinary journalist seriously proposes to limit
the subject-matter at the disposal of the artist? Some limitation
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: Virginie.
"Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
"A great artist," answered Grassou.
There was silence for a moment.
"Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
portrait? He frightened me."
"He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
"Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you,"
said Madame Vervelle.
The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
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