| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: where paper was made of cotton reduced to pulp and boiled. Parchment
had become so extremely dear that a cheap substitute was discovered in
an imitation of the cotton paper known in the East as Charta
bombycina. The imitation, made from rags, was first made at Basel, in
1170, by a colony of Greek refugees, according to some authorities; or
at Padua, in 1301, by an Italian named Pax, according to others. In
these ways the manufacture of paper was perfected slowly and in
obscurity; but this much is certain, that so early as the reign of
Charles VI., paper pulp for playing-cards was made in Paris.
When those immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book,
craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: go--as also, to their undoing, did their wives. The reading of books
of the type diffused, in these modern days, for the inoculation of
humanity with a craving for new and superior amenities of life had
caused every one to conceive a passion for experimenting with the
latest luxury; and to meet this want the French wine merchant opened a
new establishment in the shape of a restaurant as had never before
been heard of in the province--a restaurant where supper could be
procured on credit as regarded one-half, and for an unprecedentedly
low sum as regarded the other. This exactly suited both heads of
boards and clerks who were living in hope of being able some day to
resume their bribes-taking from suitors. There also developed a
Dead Souls |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: occupation which makes existence like a bit of English machinery,
working with the regularity of clockwork. A higher happiness than
either consists in a curiosity, styled noble, a wish to learn Nature's
secrets, or to attempt by artificial means to imitate Nature to some
extent. What is this in two words but Science and Art, or passion or
calm?--Ah! well, every human passion wrought up to its highest pitch
in the struggle for existence comes to parade itself before me--as I
live in calm. As for your scientific curiosity, a kind of wrestling
bout in which man is never uppermost, I replace it by an insight into
all the springs of action in man and woman. To sum up, the world is
mine without effort of mine, and the world has not the slightest hold
Gobseck |
