| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."
The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
"I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.
You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.
But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: stood for an entire day and night absorbed in reflection amid the wonder of
the spectators; how on another occasion he had saved Alcibiades' life; how
at the battle of Delium, after the defeat, he might be seen stalking about
like a pelican, rolling his eyes as Aristophanes had described him in the
Clouds. He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike
anyone but a satyr. Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the
commonest words as the outward mask of the divinest truths.
When Alcibiades has done speaking, a dispute begins between him and Agathon
and Socrates. Socrates piques Alcibiades by a pretended affection for
Agathon. Presently a band of revellers appears, who introduce disorder
into the feast; the sober part of the company, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: hard word, and a grievous? Nay, it angers me to hear it,
and to think that a bow such as this shall rob our bravest
of spirit and of life, and all because thou canst not draw
it. For I tell thee that thy lady mother bare thee not of
such might as to draw a bow and shoot arrows: but there be
others of the proud wooers that shall draw it soon.'
So he spake, and commanded Melanthius, the goatherd,
saying: 'Up now, light a fire in the halls, Melanthius; and
place a great settle by the fire and a fleece thereon, and
bring forth a great ball of lard that is within, that we
young men may warm and anoint the bow therewith and prove
The Odyssey |
