| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: able freely to express himself therewith when he moves in it without
recollections of the old, and has forgotten in its use his own
hereditary tongue.
When these historic configurations of the dead past are closely observed
a striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille Desmoulins,
Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the
parties and the masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman
costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their time: the emancipation
and the establishment of modern bourgeois society. One set knocked to
pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed down the feudal heads that
had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about, within France, the conditions
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: out into ashes, the lava had cooled; but the tracks of the flames, the
wreckage, and a little smoke remained to bear witness to the violence
of the eruption, the ravages of the fire. These images crowded up at
the sight of the clarionet player, till the thoughts now grown cold in
his face burned hot within my soul.
The fiddle and the flageolet took a deep interest in bottles and
glasses; at the end of a country-dance, they hung their instruments
from a button on their reddish-colored coats, and stretched out their
hands to a little table set in the window recess to hold their liquor
supply. Each time they did so they held out a full glass to the
Italian, who could not reach it for himself because he sat in front of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a
blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing
quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably
distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was
regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He
awaited each new stroke with impatience and -- he knew not
why -- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew
progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With
their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength
and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife;
he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
