| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep
ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so
largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously
augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is
prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose,
just as an honest man in politics shines more than he
would elsewhere.
I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans
like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild
and moderate way, but with their whole hearts.
This is a legitimate result of habit and education.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: Eva was not satisfied, but found it in vain to try to make
her handsome cousin understand her feelings.
Dodo soon appeared, with the horses.
"Well, Dodo, you've done pretty well, this time," said his
young master, with a more gracious air. "Come, now, and hold Miss
Eva's horse while I put her on to the saddle."
Dodo came and stood by Eva's pony. His face was troubled;
his eyes looked as if he had been crying.
Henrique, who valued himself on his gentlemanly adroitness in
all matters of gallantry, soon had his fair cousin in the saddle,
and, gathering the reins, placed them in her hands.
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: riveted upon the intervening door.
He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to
him. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin
started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the
door-way of the other room. She crept to him across the floor.
The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like
sleep. The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as
if she were in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window a
florid moon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the
waters of a river glimmered pallidly.
The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Her
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
