| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: for him - he had always lived on such safe lines. Later it assumed
a more interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a moral,
and Pemberton could enjoy a moral. The Moreens were adventurers
not merely because they didn't pay their debts, because they lived
on society, but because their whole view of life, dim and confused
and instinctive, like that of clever colour-blind animals, was
speculative and rapacious and mean. Oh they were "respectable,"
and that only made them more immondes. The young man's analysis,
while he brooded, put it at last very simply - they were
adventurers because they were toadies and snobs. That was the
completest account of them - it was the law of their being. Even
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: cross, but that would not have done, you know --
after all, she was not a Christian."
"And what of Pechorin?" I asked.
"Pechorin was ill for a long time, and grew
thin, poor fellow; but we never spoke of Bela
from that time forth. I saw that it would be dis-
agreeable to him, so what would have been the
use? About three months later he was appointed
to the E---- Regiment, and departed for
Georgia. We have never met since. Yet, when
I come to think of it, somebody told me not long
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: themselves over the ashes of the burned cities. At night men will
creep from their hiding-places to seek a bit of food among the ruins,
even at the risk of being cut down with the sword. Jackals shall pick
thy bones in the public places, where at eventide the fathers were
wont to gather. At the bidding of Gentiles, thy maidens shall be
forced to cease their lamentations and to make music upon the zither,
and the bravest of thy sons shall learn to bend their backs, chafed
with heavy burdens."
The listeners remembered the days of exile, and all the misfortunes
and catastrophes of the past. These words were like the anathemas of
the ancient prophets. The captive thundered them forth like bolts from
Herodias |
