| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: songs are like seeds that must break into blossom in other hearts
wherever they find the soil prepared by personal experience. How can
you express unless you first have felt? And is not passion suffering.
Poetry is only brought forth after painful wanderings in the vast
regions of thought and life. There are men and women in books, who
seem more really alive to us than men and women who have lived and
died--Richardson's Clarissa, Chenier's Camille, the Delia of Tibullus,
Ariosto's Angelica, Dante's Francesca, Moliere's Alceste,
Beaumarchais' Figaro, Scott's Rebecca the Jewess, the Don Quixote of
Cervantes,--do we not owe these deathless creations to immortal
throes?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: as blank of comment as her lips. As neither surprise, pleasure,
approbation, nor interest were evinced in her countenance, so no
more were disdain, envy, annoyance, weariness; if that
inscrutable mien said anything, it was simply this--
"The matter is too trite to excite an emotion, or call forth an
opinion."
As soon as I had done, a hum rose; several of the pupils,
pressing round Mdlle. Henri, began to beset her with compliments;
the composed voice of the directress was now heard:--
"Young ladies, such of you as have cloaks and umbrellas will
hasten to return home before the shower becomes heavier" (it was
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: breaking down another, but had gone round and got in from Holborn
with the rest, the narrow lane in the rear was quite free of
people. So, when they had crawled through the passage indicated by
the vintner (which was a mere shelving-trap for the admission of
casks), and had managed with some difficulty to unchain and raise
the door at the upper end, they emerged into the street without
being observed or interrupted. Joe still holding Mr Haredale
tight, and Edward taking the same care of the vintner, they hurried
through the streets at a rapid pace; occasionally standing aside to
let some fugitives go by, or to keep out of the way of the soldiers
who followed them, and whose questions, when they halted to put
Barnaby Rudge |
