| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 150
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: themselves. The order of the proofs by which
they demolish their prejudices is most original;
to learn their dialectic it is necessary to over-
throw in your own mind every scholastic rule of
logic. For example, the usual way:
"This man loves me; but I am married:
therefore I must not love him."
The woman's way:
"I must not love him, because I am married;
but he loves me -- therefore" . . .
A few dots here, because reason has no more
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: the exceeding richness and the amazing number of the silk cloths and
lacquered boxes in which they are so religiously kept. As you gaze
thus, amid the soul-satisfying repose of the spot, at some
masterpiece from the brush of Motonobu, you find yourself wondering,
in a fanciful sort of way, whether Buddhist contemplation is not
after all only another name for the contemplation of the beautiful,
since devotees to the one are ex officio such votaries of the other.
Dissimilar as are these two glimpses of Japanese existence, in one
point the bustling street and the hushed temple are alike,--in the
nameless grace that beautifies both.
This spirit is even more remarkable for its all-pervasiveness than
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