| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: his prey. The ethics of all the others meted a quick and
merciful death to their victims.
Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments
of the ways of human beings.
When he had followed Kulonga through the forest he had
expected to come to a city of strange houses on wheels,
puffing clouds of black smoke from a huge tree stuck in the
roof of one of them--or to a sea covered with mighty floating
buildings which he had learned were called, variously, ships
and boats and steamers and craft.
He had been sorely disappointed with the poor little village
Tarzan of the Apes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: above, through thin slabs of transparent onyx, and the water in the
marble tank glimmered like a moonstone. He plunged hastily in,
till the cool ripples touched throat and hair, and then dipped his
head right under, as though he would have wiped away the stain of
some shameful memory. When he stepped out he felt almost at peace.
The exquisite physical conditions of the moment had dominated him,
as indeed often happens in the case of very finely-wrought natures,
for the senses, like fire, can purify as well as destroy.
After breakfast, he flung himself down on a divan, and lit a
cigarette. On the mantel-shelf, framed in dainty old brocade,
stood a large photograph of Sybil Merton, as he had seen her first
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: Written Summer
1928
Published April 1929 in Weird Tales, Vol. 13, No. 4, 481-508.
Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras - dire stories of Celaeno
and the Harpies - may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition
- but they were there before. They are transcripts, types - the
archtypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital
of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect
us all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects,
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us
bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing.
The Dunwich Horror |
