| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: superintendent or the examining magistrate came," he said, "so I
suppose I must go now. . . . It's nearly three miles to the
_volost_, and the storm, the snowdrifts, are something terrible
-- maybe one won't get there before midnight. Ough! how the wind
roars!"
"I don't need the elder," said Lyzhin. "There is nothing for him
to do here."
He looked at the old man with curiosity, and asked:
"Tell me, grandfather, how many years have you been constable? "
"How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Freedom I
began going as constable, that's how I reckon it. And from that
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: expulsion of the Girondists who had provoked the measure. Upon
the Convention refusing the Commune besieged it on June 2, 1798,
by means of its revolutionary army, which was under the orders of
Hanriot. Terrified, the Assembly gave up twenty-seven of its
members. The Commune immediately sent a delegation ironically to
felicitate it upon its obedience.
After the fall of the Girondists the Convention submitted itself
completely to the injunctions of the omnipotent Commune. The
latter decreed the levy of a revolutionary army, to be
accompanied by a tribunal and a guillotine, which was to traverse
the whole of France in order to execute suspects.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind,
deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary
things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often
astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the
view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's beauty, or whether
there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table
with them like a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud, or
saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was afraid; for sometimes
it was awkward--
Best and brightest come away!
poor Miss Giddings, when he shouted that at her, almost jumped out of
To the Lighthouse |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: pure and sacred. The dreamy thoughts of Juana, but above all Juana
herself, had communicated to all things her own peculiar charm; her
soul appeared to shine there, like the pearl in its matrix. Juana,
dressed in white, beautiful with naught but her own beauty, laying
down her rosary to answer love, might have inspired respect, even in a
Montefiore, if the silence, if the night, if Juana herself had not
seemed so amorous. Montefiore stood still, intoxicated with an unknown
happiness, possibly that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of
the clouds which form its enclosure.
"As soon as I saw you," he said in pure Tuscan, and in the modest tone
of voice so peculiarly Italian, "I loved you. My soul and my life are
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