| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds,
Threw out its voice, and spake: "When I escap'd
From Circe, who beyond a circling year
Had held me near Caieta, by her charms,
Ere thus Aeneas yet had nam'd the shore,
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
Of my old father, nor return of love,
That should have crown'd Penelope with joy,
Could overcome in me the zeal I had
T' explore the world, and search the ways of life,
Man's evil and his virtue. Forth I sail'd
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: detectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes and
then sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of my
collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.
The signs point that way."
Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand
still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've
heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and
nervous all day.
The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.
On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even
for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him
hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two
thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge).
What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the
ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.
His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two,
and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still.
(He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then
could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed
high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars,
To the Lighthouse |
