| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: heaven? or come safely to land somewhere in that blue uneven
distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes?
Probably the aeronauts were already warming themselves at a farm
chimney, for they say it is cold in these unhomely regions of the
air. The night fell swiftly. Roadside trees and disappointed
sightseers, returning through the meadows, stood out in black
against a margin of low red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the
other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the
colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the
white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk
kilns.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: children coarsened; their voices grew harsh; they mortified their
mother's vanity, and that made her strive to correct their bad habits
by a sternness which the severity of their father converted through
comparison to kindness. As a general thing, they were left to run
loose about the stables and courtyards of the inn, or the streets of
the town; sometimes they were whipped; sometimes they were sent, to
get rid of them, to their grandfather Auffray, who did not like them.
The injustice the Rogrons declared the old man did to their children,
justified them to their own minds in taking the greater part of "the
old scoundrel's" property. However, Rogron did send his son to school,
and did buy him a man, one of his own cartmen, to save him from the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: for joy is to be hers, and rushes by anticipation into the tide of
happiness, its dashing waves breaking against her burning bosom. Music
alone has this power of throwing us back on ourselves; the other arts
give us infinite pleasure. But I am digressing.
"These were my first ideas, vague indeed; for an inventor at the
beginning only catches glimpses of the dawn, as it were. So I kept
these glorious ideas at the bottom of my knapsack, and they gave me
spirit to eat the dry crust I often dipped in the water of a spring. I
worked, I composed airs, and, after playing them on any instrument
that came to hand, I went off again on foot across Italy. Finally, at
the age of two-and-twenty, I settled in Venice, where for the first
Gambara |
