| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: which it was stuffed.
A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure
discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your arts!
Serpents' filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that a
lizard's craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.
But I came NIGH unto you: then came to me the day,--and now cometh it to
you,--at an end is the moon's love affair!
See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand--before the rosy dawn!
For already she cometh, the glowing one,--HER love to the earth cometh!
Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love!
See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye not feel the
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: bay, and has sunk the main part of its capital in the island of
Upolu. When its founder, John Caesar Godeffroy, went bankrupt over
Russian paper and Westphalian iron, his most considerable asset was
found to be the South Sea business. This passed (I understand)
through the hands of Baring Brothers in London, and is now run by a
company rejoicing in the Gargantuan name of the DEUTSCHE HANDELS
UND PLANTAGEN GESELLSCHAFT FUR SUD-SEE INSELN ZU HAMBURG. This
piece of literature is (in practice) shortened to the D. H. and P.
G., the Old Firm, the German Firm, the Firm, and (among humorists)
the Long Handle Firm. Even from the deck of an approaching ship,
the island is seen to bear its signature - zones of cultivation
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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 Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: He started and, looking round, scowled. Beside him, as though she
had sprung out of the earth, stood a pale-faced woman of thirty
with a sickle in her hand. She was trying to look into his face,
and was smiling diffidently.
"Oh, it is you, Pelagea!" said the huntsman, stopping and
deliberately uncocking the gun. "H'm! . . . How have you come
here?"
"The women from our village are working here, so I have come with
them. . . . As a labourer, Yegor Vlassitch."
"Oh . . ." growled Yegor Vlassitch, and slowly walked on.
Pelagea followed him. They walked in silence for twenty paces.
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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 Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: I bent down to his face, put my hand through the rent in his blouse.
He was dead; and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb
of the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay,
splashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into
a weltering tumult of dazzling light. It fell like a glory upon his
death-shrunken face.
I let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I had made for him,
and stood up. Before me was the glittering desolation of the sea,
the awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me
the island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen.
The enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily,
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
