| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: closely as possible the spirit and feeling of the original. I
have tried, as it were, to take the play to pieces, and build a
novel out of the same material. I have not felt at liberty to
embellish M. Brieux's ideas, and I have used his dialogue word
for word wherever possible. Unless I have mis-read the author,
his sole purpose in writing LES AVARIES was to place a number of
most important facts before the minds of the public, and to drive
them home by means of intense emotion. If I have been able to
assist him, this bit of literary carpentering will be worth
while. I have to thank M. Brieux for his kind permission to make
the attempt, and for the cordial spirit which he has manifested.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: talk."
Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly,
as he had stopped before. Alexandra felt that
there was something strange in the way he
chilled off, as if something came up in him that
extinguished his power of feeling or thinking.
"Yes, Frank," she said kindly. "I know you
never meant to hurt Marie."
O Pioneers! |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: as commonly used, are comparative; I have always applied
them to the plains of Patagonia, which can boast of spiny
bushes and some tufts of grass; and this is absolute fertility,
as compared with northern Chile. Here again, there are not
many spaces of two hundred yards square, where some little
bush, cactus or lichen, may not be discovered by careful
examination; and in the soil seeds lie dormant ready to
spring up during the first rainy winter. In Peru real deserts
occur over wide tracts of country. In the evening we
arrived at a valley, in which the bed of the streamlet was
damp: following it up, we came to tolerably good water.
The Voyage of the Beagle |
