| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Now that I have laid bare my heart and allowed you to read it, you
will believe in the sincerity of what I am about to add. Though
the glimpse I had of you was all too rapid, it has sufficed to
modify my opinion of your conduct. You are a poet and a poem, even
more than you are a woman. Yes, there is in you something more
precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of
fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in an ordinary
young girl, allotted to an every-day destiny, has another aspect
if endowed with the nature which I now attribute to you. Among the
crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet
to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: many as we please. And why? There is heresy in them, they say, and
heaven knows what. I have sung some of them, however; they are new, to
be sure, but I see no harm in them.
Buyck. Ask their leave, forsooth! In our province, we sing just what we
please. That's because Count Egmont is our stadtholder, who does not
trouble himself about such matters. In Ghent, Ypres, and throughout the
whole of Flanders, anybody sings them that chooses. (Aloud to Ruysum.)
There is nothing more harmless than a spiritual song--Is there, father?
Ruysum. What, indeed! It is a godly work, and truly edifying.
Jetter. They say, however, that they are not of the right sort, not of their
sort, and, since it is dangerous, we had better leave them alone. The
Egmont |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: god through the inky blackness of the night as easily and safely
as Clayton would have strolled a London street at high noon.
Occasionally they would enter a spot where the foliage
above was less dense, and the bright rays of the moon lit up
before Clayton's wondering eyes the strange path they were
traversing.
At such times the man fairly caught his breath at sight of
the horrid depths below them, for Tarzan took the easiest
way, which often led over a hundred feet above the earth.
And yet with all his seeming speed, Tarzan was in reality
feeling his way with comparative slowness, searching
Tarzan of the Apes |
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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: (like Mars) in the article of being armed; two men and a stalwart
woman were scarce strong enough to boot him; and after a single
appearance on parade the army is crippled for a week.
At last, the gates under the king's house opened; the army issued,
one behind another, with guns and epaulettes; the colours stooped
under the gateway; majesty followed in his uniform bedizened with
gold lace; majesty's wife came next in a hat and feathers, and an
ample trained silk gown; the royal imps succeeded; there stood the
pageantry of Makin marshalled on its chosen theatre. Dickens might
have told how serious they were; how tipsy; how the king melted and
streamed under his cocked hat; how he took station by the larger of
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