| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: countess had been seized with nausea, caused, she said, by the violent
excitements of that day. Thus I, who longed to give my life for hers,
I was killing her.
"Dear count," I said to Monsieur de Mortsauf, who obliged me to play
backgammon, "I think the countess very seriously ill. There is still
time to save her; pray send for Origet, and persuade her to follow his
advice."
"Origet, who half killed me?" cried the count. "No, no; I'll consult
Carbonneau."
During this week, especially the first days of it, everything was
anguish to me--the beginning of paralysis of the heart--my vanity was
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: Protagoras, I take to be the meaning of Simonides in this poem.
Hippias said: I think, Socrates, that you have given a very good
explanation of the poem; but I have also an excellent interpretation of my
own which I will propound to you, if you will allow me.
Nay, Hippias, said Alcibiades; not now, but at some other time. At present
we must abide by the compact which was made between Socrates and
Protagoras, to the effect that as long as Protagoras is willing to ask,
Socrates should answer; or that if he would rather answer, then that
Socrates should ask.
I said: I wish Protagoras either to ask or answer as he is inclined; but I
would rather have done with poems and odes, if he does not object, and come
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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 The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: of Minard began by sales of this kind. In the Rue Saint-Denis they
sell nothing but 'greased silk'; it is all that they can do. The most
honest merchants tell you in the most candid way that 'you must get
out of a bad bargain as best you can'--a motto for the most
unscrupulous rascality. Blondet has given you an account of the Lyons
affair, its causes and effects, and I proceed in my turn to illustrate
my theory with an anecdote:--There was once a woolen weaver, an
ambitious man, burdened with a large family of children by a wife too
much beloved. He put too much faith in the Republic, laid in a stock
of scarlet wool, and manufactured those red-knitted caps that you may
have noticed on the heads of all the street urchins in Paris. How this
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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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: that interior world where his thought and his emotions go seeking
for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no
policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of
opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay
to his temptations if not his conscience?
And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of
perfectly open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except
those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of
mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are
permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity.
They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so much the worse
A Personal Record |
