| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: the task before me is to communicate to fireside travellers some
sense of its seduction, and to describe the life, at sea and
ashore, of many hundred thousand persons, some of our own blood and
language, all our contemporaries, and yet as remote in thought and
habit as Rob Roy or Barbarossa, the Apostles or the Caesars.
The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the
first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart and
touched a virginity of sense. On the 28th of July 1888 the moon
was an hour down by four in the morning. In the east a radiating
centre of brightness told of the day; and beneath, on the skyline,
the morning bank was already building, black as ink. We have all
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: The tribe of lowly ones, that trac'd HIS steps,
Whose marvellous life deservedly were sung
In heights empyreal, through Honorius' hand
A second crown, to deck their Guardian's virtues,
Was by the eternal Spirit inwreath'd: and when
He had, through thirst of martyrdom, stood up
In the proud Soldan's presence, and there preach'd
Christ and his followers; but found the race
Unripen'd for conversion: back once more
He hasted (not to intermit his toil),
And reap'd Ausonian lands. On the hard rock,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: waiting their turn, pump them, study them, photograph them in your brain. Get
the atmosphere, the color, strong color, lots of it. Dig right in with both
hands, and get the essence of it, the spirit, the significance. What does it
mean? Find out what it means. That's what you're there for. That's what the
readers of the SUNDAY INTELLIGENCER want to know.
"Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in similitude.
Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize upon things
salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint those pictures in
words and the INTELLIGENCER will have you. Get hold of a few back numbers, and
study the SUNDAY INTELLIGENCER feature story. Tell it all in the opening
paragraph as advertisement of contents, and in the contents tell it all over
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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 Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Regent. In my service? Speak out, Machiavel.
Machiavel. I would not anticipate you.
Regent. And I would I could dissimulate. It wounds me --wounds me to
the quick. I had rather my brother would speak his mind than attach his
signature to formal epistles drawn up by a Secretary of state.
Machiavel. Can they not comprehend?--
Regent. I know them both within and without. They would fain make a
clean sweep; and since they cannot set about it themselves, they give their
confidence to any one who comes with a besom in his hand. Oh, it seems
to me as if I saw the king and his council worked upon this tapestry.
Machiavel. So distinctly!
Egmont |
