| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any
inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea. And
this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their
blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake. The
visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their
results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who
has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to
his epoch, is an egoist? Is a mother selfish when she immolates
all things to her child? Well, the detractors of genius do not
perceive its fecund maternity, that is all. The life of a poet is
so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: began to knit again.
The visible tribute of his careful housekeeping, and the clean
bright room which had once enshrined his wife, and now enshrined
her memory, was very moving to me; he had no thought for any one
else or for any other place. I began to see her myself in her
home,--a delicate-looking, faded little woman, who leaned upon his
rough strength and affectionate heart, who was always watching for
his boat out of this very window, and who always opened the door
and welcomed him when he came home.
"I used to laugh at her, poor dear," said Elijah, as if he
read my thought. "I used to make light of her timid notions. She
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: then, as Hutter says, I'll be "Jake."
My occupation during these leisure hours perhaps would strike my old
friends East as idle, silly, mawkish. But I believe you will understand me.
I have the pleasure of doing nothing, and of catching now and then a
glimpse of supreme joy in the strange state of thinking nothing. Tennyson
came close to this in his "Lotus Eaters." Only to see--only to feel is
enough!
Sprawled on the warm sweet pine needles, I breathe through them the breath
of the earth and am somehow no longer lonely. I cannot, of course, see the
sunset, but I watch for its coming on the eastern wall of the canyon. I see
the shadow slowly creep up, driving the gold before it, until at last the
The Call of the Canyon |
