| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: one and the same. As soon as doubt was gone so was the lustful
desire. But thinking them to be two different fiends he fought
them separately.
'O my God, my God!' thought he. 'Why dost thou not grant me
faith? There is lust, of course: even the saints had to fight
that--Saint Anthony and others. But they had faith, while I have
moments, hours, and days, when it is absent. Why does the whole
world, with all its delights, exist if it is sinful and must be
renounced? Why hast Thou created this temptation? Temptation?
Is it not rather a temptation that I wish to abandon all the joys
of earth and prepare something for myself there where perhaps
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: [1] Reading {otan . . . paradexetai . . . os anabesomenos}. Or,
reading {otan paradexetai ton ippea (sc. o. ippos) ws
anabesomenon}, transl. "the horse has been brought round ready for
mounting."
[2] So Courier, "la muserolle." It might be merely a stitched leather
strap or made of a chain in part, which rattled; as
{khrusokhalinon patagon psalion} (Aristoph. "Peace," 155) implies.
"Curb" would be misleading.
[3] "Near the withers."
[4] Or, "as soon as he has got the springing poise preliminary to
mounting."
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: anything so ridiculous.
One evening about the middle of July I came in earlier than usual--
I forget what chance had led to this--and instead of going up to my
quarters made my way into the garden. The temperature was very high;
it was such a night as one would gladly have spent in the open air,
and I was in no hurry to go to bed. I had floated home in my gondola,
listening to the slow splash of the oar in the narrow dark canals,
and now the only thought that solicited me was the vague reflection
that it would be pleasant to recline at one's length in the fragrant
darkness on a garden bench. The odor of the canal was doubtless
at the bottom of that aspiration and the breath of the garden,
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