| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament. He is not the
arbiter of the work of art. He is one who is admitted to
contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in
its contemplation and the egotism that mars him - the egotism of
his ignorance, or the egotism of his information. This point about
the drama is hardly, I think, sufficiently recognised. I can quite
understand that were 'Macbeth' produced for the first time before a
modern London audience, many of the people present would strongly
and vigorously object to the introduction of the witches in the
first act, with their grotesque phrases and their ridiculous words.
But when the play is over one realises that the laughter of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way
based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or
discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They
merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from
an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on
under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property
relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject
to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical
conditions.
The Communist Manifesto |
