| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: unexpected decision.
"How do you do?" he said, with the air of a very busy man,
receiving Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the
business. "I know this case. As soon as I saw the names I
recollected this unfortunate business," he said, taking up the
petition and showing it to Nekhludoff. "And I am much indebted to
you for reminding me of it. It is the over-zealousness of the
provincial authorities."
Nekhludoff stood silent, looking with no kindly feelings at the
immovable, pale mask of a face before him.
"And I shall give orders that these measures should he revoked
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: For his approach, that often there had been.
Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by,
And stood stark naked on the brook's green brim:
The sun look'd on the world with glorious eye,
Yet not so wistly as this queen on him.
He, spying her, bounced in, whereas he stood:
'O Jove,' quoth she, 'why was not I a flood!'
VII.
Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle;
Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty;
Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is brittle;
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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 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: stories" of Bert Tybee, the bartender of the Minniemashie
House. She heard them smacking moist lips over every love-
scene at the Rosebud Movie Palace. At the counter of the
Greek Confectionery Parlor, while they ate dreadful messes
of decayed bananas, acid cherries, whipped cream, and gelatinous
ice-cream, they screamed to one another, "Hey, lemme
'lone," "Quit dog-gone you, looka what you went and done,
you almost spilled my glass swater," "Like hell I did," "Hey,
gol darn your hide, don't you go sticking your coffin nail in
my i-scream," "Oh you Batty, how juh like dancing with Tillie
McGuire, last night? Some squeezing, heh, kid?"
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: the Will/; his subsequent reflections led to many changes in its plan
and method; but the incident of that day was certainly the germ of the
work, just as the electric shock always felt by Mesmer at the approach
of a particular manservant was the starting-point of his discoveries
in magnetism, a science till then interred under the mysteries of
Isis, of Delphi, of the cave of Trophonius, and rediscovered by that
prodigious genius, close on Lavater, and the precursor of Gall.
Lambert's ideas, suddenly illuminated by this flash of light, assumed
vaster proportions; he disentangled certain truths from his many
acquisitions and brought them into order; then, like a founder, he
cast the model of his work. At the end of six months' indefatigable
Louis Lambert |
