| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: while she knitted. I had resumed my seat and kept quiet, for I
mistrusted that old woman. What if she ordered me to depart? She
seemed capable of any outrage. She had snorted once or twice; she
was knitting violently. Suddenly she piped at the young girl in
French a question which I translate colloquially:
"What's your father up to, now?"
The young creature shrugged her shoulders so comprehensively that
her whole body swayed within the loose wrapper; and in that
unexpectedly harsh voice which yet had a seductive quality to the
senses, like certain kinds of natural rough wines one drinks with
pleasure:
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public
do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public
like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they
have insulted them, they leave them alone. In the case of the
novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest,
the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely
ridiculous. No country produces such badly-written fiction, such
tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as
England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of
such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too
easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: those of people in a humbler condition, and his pains not only far
more numerous, but more intense.
That sounds incredible (exclaimed Simonides); if it were really so,
how do you explain the passionate desire commonly displayed to wield
the tyrant's sceptre, and that too on the part of persons reputed to
be the ablest of men? Why should all men envy the despotic monarch?
For the all-sufficient reason (he replied) that they form conclusions
on the matter without experience of the two conditions. And I will try
to prove to you the truth of what I say, beginning with the faculty of
vision, which, unless my memory betrays me, was your starting-point.
Well then, when I come to reason[13] on the matter, first of all I
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