| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: left, listened to the howling and the banging, and thought
gloomily:
"Well, what moral can be drawn from it? It's a blizzard and that
is all about it. . . ."
At midday they had lunch, then wandered aimlessly about the
house; they went to the windows.
"And Lesnitsky is lying there," thought Lyzhin, watching the
whirling snow, which raced furiously round and round upon the
drifts. "Lesnitsky is lying there, the witnesses are waiting. . .
."
They talked of the weather, saying that the snowstorm usually
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: several themes of this kind, and weave them together into a rich
musical fabric passing panoramically before the ear with a
continually varying flow of sentiment, is the highest feat of the
musician: it is in this way that we get the fugue of Bach and the
symphony of Beethoven. The admittedly inferior musician is the
one who, like Auber and Offenbach, not to mention our purveyors
of drawing-room ballads, can produce an unlimited quantity of
symmetrical tunes, but cannot weave themes symphonically.
When this is taken into account, it will be seen that the fact
that there is a great deal of repetition in The Ring does not
distinguish it from the old-fashioned operas. The real difference
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: some of the Continental guests, in the presence of the court
ladies, to make uncomplimentary remarks about the food, which was
Chinese, and often not very palatable to the foreigner. These
remarks, of course, were not supposed to be understood, though
the Empress Dowager always had her own interpreter at table. One
often felt that some of these ladies, in their efforts to see all
and get all, forgot what was due their own country as well as
their imperial hostess.
"One can understand the enormity of such an offense in a court
the etiquette of which is so exacting that none of her own
subjects ever dared appear in her presence until they had been
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