| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: him to the Black Band.[*] The chateau de Villaines would have been
pulled down were it not for the remonstrances which the old uncle made
to the representatives of the "Pickaxe company." To increase the old
man's wrath, a distant relative (one of those cousins of small means
and much astuteness about whom shrewd provincials are wont to remark,
"No lawsuits for me with him!") had, as it were by accident, come to
visit Monsieur de Bourbonne, and INCIDENTALLY informed him of his
nephew's ruin. Monsieur Octave de Camps, he said, having wasted his
means on a certain Madame Firmiani, was now reduced to teaching
mathematics for a living, while awaiting his uncle's death, not daring
to let him know of his dissipations. This distant cousin, a sort of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of
the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.
Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more
plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are
told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish
being a prolifick dyet, there are more children born in Roman
Catholick countries about nine months after Lent, the markets
will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish
infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore
it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the
number of Papists among us.
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: there, the only reality in an invented world, among imaginary
things, happenings, and people. Writing about them, he is only
writing about himself. But the disclosure is not complete. He
remains, to a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a
suspected rather than a seen presence--a movement and a voice
behind the draperies of fiction. In these personal notes there is
no such veil. And I cannot help thinking of a passage in the
"Imitation of Christ" where the ascetic author, who knew life so
profoundly, says that "there are persons esteemed on their
reputation who by showing themselves destroy the opinion one had
of them." This is the danger incurred by an author of fiction
A Personal Record |
