| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: them, Madame Delestang, an imperious, handsome lady in a
statuesque style, would carry me off now and then on the front
seat of her carriage to the Prado, at the hour of fashionable
airing. She belonged to one of the old aristocratic families in
the south. In her haughty weariness she used to make me think of
Lady Dedlock in Dickens's "Bleak House," a work of the master for
which I have such an admiration, or rather such an intense and
unreasoning affection, dating from the days of my childhood, that
its very weaknesses are more precious to me than the strength of
other men's work. I have read it innumerable times, both in
Polish and in English; I have read it only the other day, and, by
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: darkness; and after it a moving and climbing of stars among the
blacknesses,--like searching lamps;--
Saw the deep kindle countless ghostly candles as for mysterious
night-festival,--and a luminous billowing under a black sky, and
effervescences of fire, and the twirling and crawling of
phosphoric foam;--
Saw the mesmerism of the Moon;--saw the enchanted tides
self-heaped in muttering obeisance before her.
Often she heard the Music of the Marsh through the night: an
infinity of flutings and tinklings made by tiny amphibia,--like
the low blowing of numberless little tin horns, the clanking of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: power that was unemployed. Her happiness gave her no suffering; it
rolled along without care or uneasiness; she was not afraid of losing
it; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the same
smile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled by
any breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on its
glassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that it
ought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God of
Genesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever,
was aware that such sentiments were not permissible, and she refrained
from confiding them to her "dear little husband." Her genuine
simplicity had not invented any other name for him; for one can't call
|
