| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: of a century until he finishes an orchestral score. When Wagner
first sketched Night Falls On The Gods he was 35. When he
finished the score for the first Bayreuth festival in 1876 he had
turned 60. No wonder he had lost his old grip of it and left it
behind him. He even tampered with The Rhine Gold for the sake of
theatrical effect when stage-managing it, making Wotan pick up
and brandish a sword to give visible point to his sudden
inspiration as to the raising up of a hero. The sword had first
to be discovered by Fafnir among the Niblung treasures and thrown
away by him as useless. There is no sense in this device; and its
adoption shows the same recklessness as to the original intention
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Yet habitable mill.
Still as the ringing saws advance
To slice the humming deal,
All day the pallid miller hears
The thunder of the wheel.
He hears the river plunge and roar
As roars the angry mob;
He feels the solid building quake,
The trusty timbers throb.
All night beside the fire he cowers:
He hears the rafters jar:
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: clear delight with which he was finally to sacrifice it. They
might come in now, the builders, the destroyers - they might come
as soon as they would. At the end of two flights he had dropped to
another zone, and from the middle of the third, with only one more
left, he recognised the influence of the lower windows, of half-
drawn blinds, of the occasional gleam of street-lamps, of the
glazed spaces of the vestibule. This was the bottom of the sea,
which showed an illumination of its own and which he even saw paved
- when at a given moment he drew up to sink a long look over the
banisters - with the marble squares of his childhood. By that time
indubitably he felt, as he might have said in a commoner cause,
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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 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: and when his turn came, she said warmly, "Now, Sir, you won't
forget to come and see us, if you ever travel our way, will you?
I'll never forgive you if you do, for I want them all to know my
friend."
"Do you? Shall I come?" he asked, looking down at her with
an eager expression which she did not see.
"Yes, come next month. Laurie graduates then, and you'd
enjoy commencement as something new."
"That is your best friend, of whom you speak?" he said in
an altered tone.
"Yes, my boy Teddy. I'm very proud of him and should like
Little Women |
