| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Quince. Robin Starueling, you must play Thisbies
mother?
Tom Snowt, the Tinker
Snowt. Heere Peter Quince
Quin. you, Pyramus father; my self, Thisbies father;
Snugge the Ioyner, you the Lyons part: and I hope there
is a play fitted
Snug. Haue you the Lions part written? pray you if
be, giue it me, for I am slow of studie
Quin. You may doe it extemporie, for it is nothing
but roaring
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: had struck fire in falling, but was, amid the cries of his dear
nephews and by the light of the torches they came to seek at her house
found standing up as straight as a skittle and as gay as a weaving
whirl, exclaiming that the good wine of the penitentiary had given him
the courage to sustain this shock and that his bones were exceedingly
hard and had sustained rude assaults. The good nephews believing him
dead, were much astonished, and perceived that the day that was to
dispatch their uncle was a long way off, seeing that at the business
stones were of no use. So that they did not falsely call him their
good uncle, seeing that he was of good quality. Certain scandalmongers
said that the canon found so many stones in his path that he stayed at
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: the treasures of the world at her feet! She studied all his caprices,
and was happy to gratify them. He made his only meal at her house--his
supper; for all his money was spent in clothes and his place in the
/Fenice/. He had also to pay a hundred francs a year as wages to his
father's old gondolier; and he, to serve him for that sum, had to live
exclusively on rice. Also he kept enough to take a cup of black coffee
every morning at Florian's to keep himself up till the evening in a
state of nervous excitement, and this habit, carried to excess, he
hoped would in due time kill him, as Vendramin relied on opium.
"And I am a prince!"
As he spoke the words, Emilio Memmi tossed Marco Vendramin's letter
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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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: apologizing to my father, and never sought to justify his own part
in it.
Why was it that, as Turgénieff himself put it, his
"constellation" and my father's "moved in the ether with
unquestioned enmity"?
This is what my sister Tatyána wrote on the subject in
her article "Turgénieff," published in the supplement to
the "Novoye Vrémya," February 2, 1908:
All question of literary rivalry, it seems to me, is utterly
beside the mark. Turgénieff, from the very outset of my
father's literary career, acknowledged his enormous talents, and
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