| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: person) is extreme. That is one reason out of half a dozen why I
so often prefer the first. It is much in my mind just now, because
of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago, THE EBB TIDE:
a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain
between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched
about (in phrase) 'four notes higher' than it should have been, has
sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so - if my head escaped,
my heart has them.
The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the
cross-roads. A subject? Ay, I have dozens; I have at least four
novels begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: know the meaning of those words 'duty,' 'virtue.' Jules, I love you
for yourself; I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more
to my dying day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to
have one sole emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is
dreadful, I know--but I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for
any. I feel I am more wife than mother. Well, then, can you fear?
Listen to me, my own beloved, promise to forget, not this hour of
mingled tenderness and doubt, but the words of that madman. Jules, you
/must/. Promise me not to see him, not to go to him. I have a deep
conviction that if you set one foot in that maze we shall both roll
down a precipice where I shall perish--but with your name upon my
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. She saw her
darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw THAT detail
perish utterly; all that was left was master--master, pure and simple,
and it was not a gentle mastership, either. She saw herself sink from the
sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery,
the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete.
She was merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing
and helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious
temper and vicious nature.
Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue,
because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy.
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