| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Archimedes could lift the world without a fulcrum for his lever.
You must also personify the established power against which the
new force is reacting; and in the conflict between them you get
your drama, conflict being the essential ingredient in all drama.
Siegfried, as the hero of Die Gotterdammerung, is only the primo
tenore robusto of an opera book, deferring his death, after he
has been stabbed in the last act, to sing rapturous love strains
to the heroine exactly like Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia. In
order to make him intelligible in the wider significance which
his joyous, fearless, conscienceless heroism soon assumed in
Wagner's imagination, it was necessary to provide him with a much
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: 'Many there were that did his picture get,
To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind;
Like fools that in the imagination set
The goodly objects which abroad they find
Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign'd;
And labouring in mo pleasures to bestow them,
Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them:
'So many have, that never touch'd his hand,
Sweetly suppos'd them mistress of his heart.
My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, (not in part,)
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and
whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this
kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of
too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt,
although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to
eat up our whole nation without it.
After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to
reject any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found
equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before
something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my
scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors
A Modest Proposal |
