| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: it didn't occur to us; and I heard once a high, clear woman's voice
stigmatizing us for a "species of swelled heads" (espece d'enfles).
We proceeded sedately, my companion muttered with rage, and I was
able to resume my thinking. It was based on the deep persuasion
that the man at my side was insane with quite another than
Carnivalesque lunacy which comes on at one stated time of the year.
He was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps completely; which of
course made him all the greater, I won't say danger but, nuisance.
I remember once a young doctor expounding the theory that most
catastrophes in family circles, surprising episodes in public
affairs and disasters in private life, had their origin in the fact
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Now, John in France, & lately John of France,
Thy bloody Ensigns are my captive colours;
And you, high vaunting Charles of Normandy,
That once to day sent me a horse to fly,
Are now the subjects of my clemency.
Fie, Lords, is it not a shame that English boys,
Whose early days are yet not worth a beard,
Should in the bosom of your kingdom thus,
One against twenty, beat you up together?
KING JOHN.
Thy fortune, not thy force, hath conquered us.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to
her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which
produces an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the
most prudish will confess. When a woman is very much in love,
and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment
must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace
a world that stretches away forever. Only women or young men can
imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes. As for
older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they
had experience of such phenomena of nervous power; at a later day
it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence
|
