| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost
fantastic impressions of the young man. That which persons in the
social position of De Marsay, living as he lived, are best able to
recognize is a girl's innocence. But, strange phenomenon! The girl of
the golden eyes might be virgin, but innocent she was certainly not.
The fantastic union of the mysterious and the real, of darkness and
light, horror and beauty, pleasure and danger, paradise and hell,
which had already been met with in this adventure, was resumed in the
capricious and sublime being with which De Marsay dallied. All the
utmost science or the most refined pleasure, all that Henri could know
of that poetry of the senses which is called love, was excelled by the
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: this very calm, this intimacy, this sharing alike of good and evil,
which the vulgar ridicule. How noble was the reply of the Duchesse de
Sully, the wife of the great Sully, to some one who remarked that her
husband, for all his grave exterior, did not scruple to keep a
mistress. "What of that?" she said. "I represent the honor of the
house, and should decline to play the part of a courtesan there."
But you, Louise, who are naturally more passionate than tender, would
be at once the wife and the mistress. With the soul of a Heloise and
the passions of a Saint Theresa, you slip the leash on all your
impulses, so long as they are sanctioned by law; in a word, you
degrade the marriage rite. Surely the tables are turned. The
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: out--I just stood staring at him like a fool, until I thought he must
think me mad. Oh, Anna Grigorievna, if you but knew how upset I am!"
"What a strange affair!" commented the hostess. "What on earth can the
man have meant by 'dead souls'? I confess that the words pass my
understanding. Curiously enough, this is the second time I have heard
speak of those souls. True, my husband avers that Nozdrev was lying;
yet in his lies there seems to have been a grain of truth."
"Well, just think of my state when I heard all this! 'And now,'
apparently said Korobotchka to the Archpriest's wife, 'I am altogether
at a loss what to do, for, throwing me fifteen roubles, the man forced
me to sign a worthless paper--yes, me, an inexperienced, defenceless
Dead Souls |
