| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: join my name--your Clemence--in these good works?
"After loving as we have loved, there is naught but God, Jules.
God does not lie; God never betrays. Adore him only, I charge you!
Lead those who suffer up to him; comfort the sorrowing members of
his Church. Farewell, dear soul that I have filled! I know you;
you will never love again. I may die happy in the thought that
makes all women happy. Yes, my grave will be your heart. After
this childhood I have just related, has not my life flowed on
within that heart? Dead, you will never drive me forth. I am proud
of that rare life! You will know me only in the flower of my
youth; I leave you regrets without disillusions. Jules, it is a
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: broader, and more gentle hill-tops. Thus, the quarter of
the Castle over-tops the whole city and keeps an open
view to sea and land. It dominates for miles on every
side; and people on the decks of ships, or ploughing in
quiet country places over in Fife, can see the banner on
the Castle battlements, and the smoke of the Old Town
blowing abroad over the subjacent country. A city that
is set upon a hill. It was, I suppose, from this distant
aspect that she got her nickname of AULD REEKIE. Perhaps
it was given her by people who had never crossed her
doors: day after day, from their various rustic Pisgahs,
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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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in
challenges sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or
even by threats of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas,
wrapped it in a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart
that he would still make himself a great painter. He placed his
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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 Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: its ordinary acceptation. A greedy ant, a sensual ant, an ant capable of
any one of the seven deadly sins, or even of a small venial sin, is
unimaginable. Equally unimaginable, of course, a romantic ant, an
ideological ant, a poetical ant, or an ant inclined to metaphysical
speculations. No human mind could attain to the absolute matter-of-fact
quality of the ant-mind;-- no human being, as now constituted, could
cultivate a mental habit so impeccably practical as that of the ant. But
this superlatively practical mind is incapable of moral error. It would be
difficult, perhaps, to prove that the ant has no religious ideas. But it is
certain that such ideas could not be of any use to it. The being incapable
of moral weakness is beyond the need of "spiritual guidance."
Kwaidan |
