| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: height, the ladder standing always in the inside. I kept the
trees, which at first were no more than stakes, but were now grown
very firm and tall, always cut, so that they might spread and grow
thick and wild, and make the more agreeable shade, which they did
effectually to my mind. In the middle of this I had my tent always
standing, being a piece of a sail spread over poles, set up for
that purpose, and which never wanted any repair or renewing; and
under this I had made me a squab or couch with the skins of the
creatures I had killed, and with other soft things, and a blanket
laid on them, such as belonged to our sea-bedding, which I had
saved; and a great watch-coat to cover me. And here, whenever I
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: followed her, rising like a silent flood, as though the great night of
the world had broken through the discreet reserve of walls, of closed
doors, of curtained windows. It rose over the steps, it leaped up the
walls like an angry wave, it flowed over the blue skies, over the
yellow sands, over the sunshine of landscapes, and over the pretty
pathos of ragged innocence and of meek starvation. It swallowed up
the delicious idyll in a boat and the mutilated immortality of famous
bas-reliefs. It flowed from outside--it rose higher, in a destructive
silence. And, above it, the woman of marble, composed and blind on
the high pedestal, seemed to ward off the devouring night with a
cluster of lights.
Tales of Unrest |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: atom of the faith I held. They were just as immediately intent upon
personal ends, just as limited by habits of thought, as the men in
any other group or party. Perhaps I had slipped unawares for a time
into the delusions of a party man--but I do not think so.
No, it was the mood of profound despondency that had followed upon
the abrupt cessation of my familiar intercourse with Isabel, that
gave this fact that had always been present in my mind its quality
of devastating revelation. It seemed as though I had never seen
before nor suspected the stupendous gap between the chaotic aims,
the routine, the conventional acquiescences, the vulgarisations of
the personal life, and that clearly conscious development and
|
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 Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: earlier he might have been a vastly different man. The cruelest
wound that in all his selfish life he had taken was when she
sent him word, quite definitely after the affair at the Feydau,
that she could not again in any circumstances receive him. At
one blow - through that disgraceful riot - he had been robbed of a
mistress he prized and of a wife who had become a necessity to the
very soul of him. The sordid love of La Binet might have consoled
him for the compulsory renunciation of his exalted love of Aline,
just as to his exalted love of Aline he had been ready to sacrifice
his attachment to La Binet. But that ill-timed riot had robbed
him at once of both. Faithful to his word to Sautron he had
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