| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: little difference between that country and Mogul Tartary. The
people are mostly pagans; their houses and towns full of idols; and
their way of living wholly barbarous, except in the cities and
villages near them, where they are Christians, as they call
themselves, of the Greek Church: but have their religion mingled
with so many relics of superstition, that it is scarce to be known
in some places from mere sorcery and witchcraft.
In passing this forest (after all our dangers were, to our
imagination, escaped), I thought, indeed, we must have been
plundered and robbed, and perhaps murdered, by a troop of thieves:
of what country they were I am yet at a loss to know; but they were
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses
personal desire. You are content to become a mere spectator. The
baker stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by
to the CAFE at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man the
ramparts, as bold as so many lions. It would task language to say
how placidly you behold all this. In a place where you have taken
some root, you are provoked out of your indifference; you have a
hand in the game; your friends are fighting with the army. But in
a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so
large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far
apart from the business, that you positively forget it would be
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: foreigners? As yet, the office of stadtholder has been held by
Netherlanders; but do not the Spaniards betray their great and irresistible
desire to possess themselves of these places? Will not people prefer being
governed by their own countrymen, and according to their ancient
customs, rather than by foreigners, who, from their first entrance into the
land, endeavour to enrich themselves at the general expense, who measure
everything by a foreign standard, and who exercise their authority without
cordiality or sympathy?
Regent. You take part with our opponents?
Machiavel. Assuredly not in my heart. Would that with my understanding
I could be wholly on our side!
Egmont |
