| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm
of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths
to chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves
the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp,
and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain,
undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is "deep". The German
himself does not EXIST, he is BECOMING, he is "developing
himself". "Development" is therefore the essentially German
discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas,-
-a ruling idea, which, together with German beer and German
music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners are
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: contains a notice of the performance of my play? It is edited by
a gentleman who, having devoted his life to work of the
Shaftesbury type, exposes social evils and clamors for their
reform in every column except one; and that one is occupied by
the declaration of the paper's kindly theatre critic, that the
performance left him "wondering what useful purpose the play was
intended to serve." The balance has to be redressed by the more
fashionable papers, which usually combine capable art criticism
with West-End solecism on politics and sociology. It is very
noteworthy, however, on comparing the press explosion produced by
Mrs Warren's Profession in 1902 with that produced by Widowers'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: I did not see him do it, but this I know: after all his furniture and
his cookstove and pots and pans had been hauled off by the purchasers,
when his house was stripped and bare, he sat down on the floor with his
clasp-knife and ate all the melons that he had put away for winter.
When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in their wagon to take Peter
to the train, they found him with a dripping beard, surrounded by heaps
of melon rinds.
The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old
Mr. Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into
the empty log house and sit there, brooding. This cabin was
his hermitage until the winter snows penned him in his cave.
My Antonia |
