The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: principal charm had lain.
" 'It is essential, madame, that I should speak to M. le Comte----"
" 'If so, you would be more favored than I am,' she said, interrupting
me. 'M. de Restaud will see no one. He will hardly allow his doctor to
come, and will not be nursed even by me. When people are ill, they
have such strange fancies! They are like children, they do not know
what they want.'
" 'Perhaps, like children, they know very well what they want.'
"The Countess reddened. I almost repented a thrust worthy of Gobseck.
So, by way of changing the conversation, I added, 'But M. de Restaud
cannot possibly lie there alone all day, madame.'
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: stranger's favour. The vanquished party, this time a sister, is
eaten without the slightest scruple. Her web becomes the property
of the victor.
There it is, in all its horror, the right of might: to eat one's
like and take away their goods. Man did the same in days of old:
he stripped and ate his fellows. We continue to rob one another,
both as nations and as individuals; but we no longer eat one
another: the custom has grown obsolete since we discovered an
acceptable substitute in the mutton-chop.
Let us not, however, blacken the Spider beyond her deserts. She
does not live by warring on her kith and kin; she does not of her
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: every tearing off of a leaf would be a wound in my heart. We have
only to throw our robes over our heads."
"No doubt that will answer the same purpose, but tell me - weren't
these very robes once part of a living creature?"
"Oh, no - no, they are the webs of a certain animal, but they have
never been in themselves alive."
"You reduce life to extreme simplicity," remarked Maskull
meditatively, "but it is very beautiful."
Climbing back over the hills, they now without further ceremony began
their march across the desert.
They walked side by side. Joiwind directed their course straight
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