| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: When Praskovya Mikhaylovna returned, Sergius was sitting in the
little room waiting for her. He did not come out for dinner, but
had some soup and gruel which Lukerya brought him.
'How is it that you have come back earlier than you said?' asked
Sergius. 'Can I speak to you now?'
'How is it that I have the happiness to receive such a guest? I
have missed one of my lessons. That can wait . . . I had always
been planning to go to see you. I wrote to you, and now this
good fortune has come.'
'Pashenka, please listen to what I am going to tell you as to a
confession made to God at my last hour. Pashenka, I am not a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: an old fellow, and now his family rather surprised him; he seemed
to think it a joke that all these children should belong to him.
As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept
taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown,
a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to
the little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented
him with a paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him.
Looking over the boy's head he said to me, `This one is bashful.
He gets left.'
Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated Bohemian papers.
He opened them and began to tell his wife the news, much of which seemed to
My Antonia |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: and began:--
"To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the
beginning. It must be told how and why I married, and what I was
before my marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The son of
a rich gentleman of the steppes, an old marshal of the nobility,
I was a University pupil, a graduate of the law school. I
married in my thirtieth year. But before talking to you of my
marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly, and what ideas I
had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other so-called
respectable people,--that is, in debauchery. And like the
majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced
The Kreutzer Sonata |
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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: house, and kiss them on their foreheads; his eyes, his lips, his whole
countenance expressing the deepest commiseration.
"You are not very happy, my dear little girls," he said one day; "but
I shall marry you early. It will comfort me to have you leave home."
"Papa," said Eugenie, "we have decided to take the first man who
offers."
"Ah!" he cried, "that is the bitter fruit of such a system. They want
to make saints, and they make--" he stopped without ending his
sentence.
Often the two girls felt an infinite tenderness in their father's
"Adieu," or in his eyes, when, by chance, he dined at home. They
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