| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: a cottage in the village," Aunt Masha sadly recalled.
"When he left me to go back to the hotel where he was staying,
it seemed to me that he was rather calmer.
"When he said good-by, he even made some joke about his having
come to the wrong door.
"I certainly would never have imagined that he would go away
again that same night."
It was a grievous trial for Aunt Masha when the old confessor
Iosif, who was her spiritual director, forbade her to pray for her
dead brother because he had been excommunicated. She was too
broad-minded to be able to reconcile herself to the harsh
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: marching soldiers, and the swinging of swords; and the tumult of
battle reached them dimly like the noise of the sea to shipwrecked men
dying on the masts of a ship. The Italiotes, who were sturdier than
the rest, were still shrieking. The Lacedaemonians were silent, with
eyelids closed; Zarxas, once so vigorous, was bending like a broken
reed; the Ethiopian beside him had his head thrown back over the arms
of the cross; Autaritus was motionless, rolling his eyes; his great
head of hair, caught in a cleft in the wood, fell straight upon his
forehead, and his death-rattle seemed rather to be a roar of anger. As
to Spendius, a strange courage had come to him; he despised life now
in the certainty which he possessed of an almost immediate and an
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: not enough ghosts about this place?"
A murmur of approval interrupted him here. Mahmat looked
reproachfully at Babalatchi.
"But the Tuan Babalatchi ordered me to drag the body ashore"--he
went on looking round at his audience, but addressing himself
only to Almayer--"and I dragged him by the feet; in through the
mud I have dragged him, although my heart longed to see him float
down the river to strand perchance on Bulangi's clearing--may his
father's grave be defiled!"
There was subdued laughter at this, for the enmity of Mahmat and
Bulangi was a matter of common notoriety and of undying interest
Almayer's Folly |
