| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in
material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property. National
one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,
there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.
The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: already knew, rose from his hide-strung chair. He was, as I think I
have said, not in the least like one of the phlegmatic Boers, either in
person or in temperament, but, rather, a typical Frenchman, although no
member of his race had set foot in France for a hundred and fifty years.
At least so I discovered afterwards, for, of course, in those days I
knew nothing of Frenchmen.
His companion was also French, Leblanc by name, but of a very different
stamp. In person he was short and stout. His large head was bald
except for a fringe of curling, iron-grey hair which grew round it just
above the ears and fell upon his shoulders, giving him the appearance of
a tonsured but dishevelled priest. His eyes were blue and watery, his
Marie |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn't a privilege he could
invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely
what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for
him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years,
like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether
the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The
definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the
definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn't cause
himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt. Such was the
image under which he had ended by figuring his life.
They had at first, none the less, in the scattered hours spent
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