| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: the Sonnets are mere satires on the work of Drayton and John Davies
of Hereford. To him, as indeed to me, they were poems of serious
and tragic import, wrung out of the bitterness of Shakespeare's
heart, and made sweet by the honey of his lips. Still less would
he admit that they were merely a philosophical allegory, and that
in them Shakespeare is addressing his Ideal Self, or Ideal Manhood,
or the Spirit of Beauty, or the Reason, or the Divine Logos, or the
Catholic Church. He felt, as indeed I think we all must feel, that
the Sonnets are addressed to an individual, - to a particular young
man whose personality for some reason seems to have filled the soul
of Shakespeare with terrible joy and no less terrible despair.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sank
to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as
I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.
To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love
something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I
contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven
image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to
remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy,
half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep
unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe
and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy
Jane Eyre |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: tight as a drum," he said to himself. "Not another titbit of veal
could now get into it." Also, circumstances had so brought it about
that next door to him there was situated his host's apartment; and
since the intervening wall was thin, Chichikov could hear every word
that was said there. At the present moment the master of the house was
engaged in giving the cook orders for what, under the guise of an
early breakfast, promised to constitute a veritable dinner. You should
have heard Pietukh's behests! They would have excited the appetite of
a corpse.
"Yes," he said, sucking his lips, and drawing a deep breath, "in the
first place, make a pasty in four divisions. Into one of the divisions
Dead Souls |
