| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: I don't know where he can have gone; perhaps he has gone to the theatre.
I know it is n't proper to go to the theatre on Sunday evening;
but they say charity begins at home, and as Gordon's does n't
begin at home, perhaps it does n't begin anywhere. I told him
that if he would n't come with me I would come alone, and he said I
might do as I chose--that he was not in a humor for making visits.
I wanted to come to you very much; I had been thinking about it
all day; and I am so fond of a visit like this in the evening,
without being invited. Then I thought perhaps you had a salon--
does n't every one in Paris have a salon? I tried to have a salon
in New York, only Gordon said it would n't do. He said it was n't
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: SIMONE. A hundred thousand!
Said you a hundred thousand? Oh! be sure
That will for all time and in everything
Make me your debtor. Ay! from this time forth
My house, with everything my house contains
Is yours, and only yours.
A hundred thousand!
My brain is dazed. I shall be richer far
Than all the other merchants. I will buy
Vineyards and lands and gardens. Every loom
From Milan down to Sicily shall be mine,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: lectured about art, and wrote essays on art, and produced their
art-historians, and their archaeologists, and all the rest of it.
Why, even the theatrical managers of travelling companies brought
their dramatic critics with them when they went on tour, and paid
them very handsome salaries for writing laudatory notices.
Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks.
Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism. It is the
Greeks who have given us the whole system of art-criticism, and how
fine their critical instinct was, may be seen from the fact that
the material they criticised with most care was, as I have already
said, language. For the material that painter or sculptor uses is
|
