| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: blessing to get home, and this time it was a sort of wonder
to ourselves that we got back alive. Casualties: Fanny's
back jarred, horse incident; Belle, bad headache, tears and
champagne; self, idiocy, champagne, fatigue; Lloyd, ditto,
ditto. As for the adventurer, I believe he will have a
delightful voyage for his little start in life. But there is
always something touching in a mite's first launch.
DATE UNKNOWN.
I am now well on with the third part of the DEBACLE. The two
first I liked much; the second completely knocking me; so far
as it has gone, this third part appears the ramblings of a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--"
And--"Are we then so serious?"
La Figlia Che Piange
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair--
Lean on a garden urn--
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair--
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise--
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: from the god? The god, at any rate, has foreknowledge, and premonishes
those whom he will of what is about to be. That is a thing which all
the world believes and asserts even as I do. Only, when they describe
these premonitions under the name of birds and utterances, tokens[24]
and soothsayers, I speak of a divinity, and in using that designation
I claim to speak at once more exactly and more reverentially than they
do who ascribe the power of the gods to birds. And that I am not lying
against the Godhead I have this as a proof: although I have reported
to numbers of friends the counsels of heaven, I have never at any time
been shown to be a deceiver or deceived."
[20] Cf. "Mem." I. i. 2.
The Apology |
