| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: suffering, the very thought of which makes me shudder.
Farewell, favorite of fortune! Farewell, my friend, in whom I live
again, and through whom I am able to picture to myself this brave
love, this jealousy all on fire at a look, these whisperings in the
ear, these joys which create for women, as it were, a new atmosphere,
a new daylight, fresh life! Ah! pet, I too understand love. Don't
weary of telling me everything. Keep faithful to our bond. I promise,
in my turn, to spare you nothing.
Nay--to conclude in all seriousness--I will not conceal from you that,
on reading your letter a second time, I was seized with a dread which
I could not shake off. This superb love seems like a challenge to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: melody, exquisitely sweet, a perfect harmony, disturbed only by
revolutions independent of the divine will, as passions are
uncontrolled by the will of men.
"I, therefore, had to seek a vast framework in which effect and cause
might both be included; for the aim of my music is to give a picture
of the life of nations from the loftiest point of view. My opera, for
which I myself wrote the /libretto/, for a poet would never have fully
developed the subject, is the life of Mahomet,--a figure in whom the
magic of Sabaeanism combined with the Oriental poetry of the Hebrew
Scriptures to result in one of the greatest human epics, the Arab
dominion. Mahomet certainly derived from the Hebrews the idea of a
Gambara |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: the lockers.
"Tut," says Ballantrae, "you might fire a pistol at their ears.
You know what stuff they have been swallowing."
There was a hatch in the cabin floor, and under that the richest
part of the booty was stored against the day of division. It
fastened with a ring and three padlocks, the keys (for greater
security) being divided; one to Teach, one to Ballantrae, and one
to the mate, a man called Hammond. Yet I was amazed to see they
were now all in the one hand; and yet more amazed (still looking
through my fingers) to observe Ballantrae and Teach bring up
several packets, four of them in all, very carefully made up and
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