| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: This view of life he forcibly expressed in the
"Kreutzer Sonata," in which Woman and Music,
the two magnets of his youth, were impeached as
powers of evil. Already, in "War and Peace"
and in "Anna Karenina," his descriptions of fe-
male charms resembled catalogues of weapons
against which a man must arm himself or perish.
The beautiful Princess Helena, with her gleam-
ing shoulders, her faultless white bosom, and her
eternal smile is evidently an object of aversion to
her creator; even as the Countess Betsy, with her
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Clara. Beside myself! Horrible. You, Brackenburg, are beside yourself.
When you hailed the hero with loud acclaim, called him your friend, your
hope, your refuge, shouted vivats as he passed;--then I stood in my corner,
half opened the window, concealed myself while I listened, and my heart
beat higher than yours who greeted him so loudly. Now it again beats
higher! In the hour of peril you conceal yourselves, deny him, and feel not,
that if he perish, you are lost.
Brackenburg. Come home.
Clara. Home?
Brackenburg. Recollect thyself! Look around thee! These are the streets in
which thou weft wont to appear only on the Sabbath-day, when thou didst
Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: far as it is in itself it would be debarred from touching them, and would
touch itself only.
Clearly.
Then the inference is that it would touch both?
It would.
But what do you say to a new point of view? Must not that which is to
touch another be next to that which it is to touch, and occupy the place
nearest to that in which what it touches is situated?
True.
Then the one, if it is to touch itself, ought to be situated next to
itself, and occupy the place next to that in which itself is?
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