| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: architecture now called Renaissance, and presents the most fantastic
features of that style. Therefore, at a period when a strict and
jealous architecture ruled construction, when the Middle Ages were not
even considered, at a time when literature was not as clearly welded
to art as it is now, La Fontaine said of the chateau de Blois, in his
hearty, good-humored way: "The part that Francois I. built, if looked
at from the outside, pleased me better than all the rest; there I saw
numbers of little galleries, little windows, little balconies, little
ornamentations without order or regularity, and they make up a grand
whole which I like."
The chateau of Blois had, therefore, the merit of representing three
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: Girardet, and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the
proceedings out till the elections are over. I will not undertake to
plead till the day after I am returned."
"Do this one thing," said the Abbe. "Come to the Hotel de Rupt: there
is a young person of nineteen there who, one of these days, will have
a hundred thousand francs a year, and you can seem to be paying your
court to her--"
"Ah! the young lady I sometimes see in the kiosk?"
"Yes, Mademoiselle Rosalie," replied the Abbe de Grancey. "You are
ambitious. If she takes a fancy to you, you may be everything an
ambitious man can wish--who knows? A Minister perhaps. A man can
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: sacrifice is going on, and the Hermaea are in course of celebration;
secondly, the 'accustomed irony' of Socrates, who declares, as in the
Symposium, that he is ignorant of all other things, but claims to have a
knowledge of the mysteries of love. There are likewise several contrasts
of character; first of the dry, caustic Ctesippus, of whom Socrates
professes a humorous sort of fear, and Hippothales the flighty lover, who
murders sleep by bawling out the name of his beloved; there is also a
contrast between the false, exaggerated, sentimental love of Hippothales
towards Lysis, and the childlike and innocent friendship of the boys with
one another. Some difference appears to be intended between the characters
of the more talkative Menexenus and the reserved and simple Lysis.
Lysis |
