| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: "My next of kin are very uneasy about my conversion. They no doubt
attribute it to your influence over me; they fancy I deprive them of
their inheritance to enrich you."
"But you won't do that?" said Ursula naively, looking up at him.
"Oh, divine consolation of my old age!" said the doctor, taking his
godchild in his arms and kissing her on both cheeks. "It was for her
and not for myself, oh God! that I besought thee just now to let me
live until the day I give her to some good being who is worthy of her!
--You will see comedies, my little angel, comedies which the Minorets
and Cremieres and Massins will come and play here. You want to
brighten and prolong my life; they are longing for my death."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: But when her lips were ready for his pay,
He winks, and turns his lips another way.
Never did passenger in summer's heat
More thirst for drink than she for this good turn. 92
Her help she sees, but help she cannot get;
She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn:
'O! pity,' 'gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy:
'Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96
'I have been woo'd, as I entreat thee now,
Even by the stern and direful god of war,
Whose sinewy neck in battle ne'er did bow,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: society, nevertheless went off and privately burned herself to
death soon after her husband's decease.
[176] Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.
The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral
offerings of food, weapons, ornaments, or money, on the theory
of object-souls, will probably suggest that such offerings may
be mere memorials of affection or esteem for the dead man.
Such, indeed, they have come to be in many countries after
surviving the phase of culture in which they originated; but
there is ample evidence to show that at the outset they were
presented in the belief that their ghosts would be eaten or
Myths and Myth-Makers |
