| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: was going mad! After a while he collected his senses. What did they
quarrel about? That sugar! How absurd! He would give it to him--didn't
want it himself. And he began scrambling to his feet with a sudden
feeling of security. But before he had fairly stood upright, a
commonsense reflection occurred to him and drove him back into
despair. He thought: "If I give way now to that brute of a soldier, he
will begin this horror again to-morrow--and the day after--every
day--raise other pretensions, trample on me, torture me, make me his
slave--and I will be lost! Lost! The steamer may not come for
days--may never come." He shook so that he had to sit down on the
floor again. He shivered forlornly. He felt he could not, would not
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: Of this tissue were our days made. At noon our boys plucked us
each two or three banana leaves which they spread down for us to
lie on. Then we dozed through the hot hours in great comfort,
occasionally waking to blue sky through green trees, or to peer
idly into the tangled jungle. At two o'clock or a little later we
would arouse ourselves reluctantly and move on. The safari we had
dimly heard passing us an hour before. In this country of the
direct track we did not attempt to accompany our men.
The end of the day's march found us in a little clearing where we
could pitch camp. Generally this was atop a ridge, so that the
boys had some distance to carry water; but that disadvantage was
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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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: nothing now to blush for; she need not slander or whisper, hide her
face or reveal it. A fan is of no use now but for fanning herself.
When once a thing is no more than what it is, it is too useful to be a
form of luxury."
"Everything in France has aided and abetted the 'perfect lady,' " said
Daniel d'Arthez. "The aristocracy has acknowledged her by retreating
to the recesses of its landed estates, where it has hidden itself to
die--emigrating inland before the march of ideas, as of old to foreign
lands before that of the masses. The women who could have founded
European /salons/, could have guided opinion and turned it inside out
like a glove, could have ruled the world by ruling the men of art or
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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 The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: _Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?_
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
-- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
The Waste Land |
