| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose,
tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration. And somehow
the splendid common domicile, familiar, domestic, and resonant,
also resembles a theater, with actors clicking over bridges and,
in straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas. As
you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge
the canals assume to the eye the importance of a stage, meeting it
at the same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro
against the battered scenery of their little houses of comedy,
strike you as members of an endless dramatic troupe.
I went to bed that night very tired, without being able to compose
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: Farther out old Mahon's face was upturned to the sky,
with the long white beard spread out on his breast, as
though he had been shot where he sat at the tiller; and a
man, all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with both
arms embracing the stem-head and with his cheek laid on
the gunwale. The East looked at them without a sound.
"I have known its fascinations since: I have seen the
mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown na-
tions, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues,
overtakes so many of the conquering race, who are proud
of their wisdom, of their knowledge, of their strength.
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: antipathic animal; and I know one bred from his childhood to
zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and honest in
feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet cannot,
after handling and petting and admiring all day long every uncouth
and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the
common house-spider. At all events, whether we were intruding or
not, in turning this stone, we must pay a fine for having done so;
for there lies an animal as foul and monstrous to the eye as
"hydra, gorgon, or chimaera dire," and yet so wondrously fitted to
its work, that we must needs endure for our own instruction to
handle and to look at it. Its name, if you wish for it, is
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