| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: who are young, do not know what it is to part with something that
is a piece of your past! But what would we not sacrifice for your
sakes? Your aunt says that I am to send you a kiss on the
forehead from her, and that kiss is to bring you luck again and
again, she says. She would have written you herself, the dear
kind-hearted woman, but she is troubled with the gout in her
fingers just now. Your father is very well. The vintage of 1819
has turned out better than we expected. Good-bye, dear boy; I
will say nothing about your sisters, because Laure is writing to
you, and I must let her have the pleasure of giving you all the
home news. Heaven send that you may succeed! Oh! yes, dear
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: almost invisible. All at once he pinned my elbows
to my sides. I felt utterly powerless in his grip,
and his voice, whispering in my ear, vibrated.
"It's worse than hunger. Captain, do you know
what that means? And I could kill then--or be
killed. I wish the crowbar had smashed my skull
ten years ago. And I've got to live now. Without
her. Do you understand? Perhaps many years.
But how? What can be done? If I had allowed
myself to look at her once I would have carried her
off before that man in my hands--like this."
Falk |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: Gusev, a discharged soldier, sat up in his hammock and said in an
undertone:
"I say, Pavel Ivanitch. A soldier at Sutchan told me: while they
were sailing a big fish came into collision with their ship and
stove a hole in it."
The nondescript individual whom he was addressing, and whom
everyone in the ship's hospital called Pavel Ivanitch, was
silent, as though he had not heard.
And again a stillness followed. . . The wind frolicked with the
rigging, the screw throbbed, the waves lashed, the hammocks
creaked, but the ear had long ago become accustomed to these
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