| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: understand that music----"
"It is because it expresses ideas," the Count put in.
"No; it is because it sets forth in a definite shape a picture of the
struggle in which so many perish, and because every individual life is
implicated in it through memory. Ah! I, hapless wretch, should have
been too happy to hear the sound of those heavenly voices I have so
often dreamed of."
Hereupon Gambara fell into a musical day-dream, improvising the most
lovely melodious and harmonious /cavatina/ that Andrea would ever hear
on earth; a divine strain divinely performed on a theme as exquisite
as that of /O filii et filioe/, but graced with additions such as none
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: him sketch her, and gazing up at intervals at the beautiful,
slim tower, as it played at contrasts with the large blue air.
After he had spent the greater part of a week in these
grave considerations, he made up his mind to leave Siena.
But he was not content with what he had done for his portfolio.
Siena was eminently sketchable, but he had not been industrious.
On the last morning of his visit, as he stood staring
about him in the crowded piazza, and feeling that,
in spite of its picturesqueness, this was an awkward place
for setting up an easel, he bethought himself, by contrast,
of a quiet corner in another part of the town, which he had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: Matifat in the background. He was not left alone for long, perhaps for
not more than five minutes, but those minutes seemed an eternity.
Thoughts rose within him that set his soul on fire, as the spectacle
on the stage had heated his senses. He looked at the women with their
wanton eyes, all the brighter for the red paint on their cheeks, at
the gleaming bare necks, the luxuriant forms outlined by the
lascivious folds of the basquina, the very short skirts, that
displayed as much as possible of limbs encased in scarlet stockings
with green clocks to them--a disquieting vision for the pit.
A double process of corruption was working within him in parallel
lines, like two channels that will spread sooner or later in flood
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