| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: as once more the water turned the wheel. Chichikov would also walk
afield to watch the early tillage operations of the season, and
observe how the blackness of a new furrow would make its way across
the expanse of green, and how the sower, rhythmically striking his
hand against the pannier slung across his breast, would scatter his
fistfuls of seed with equal distribution, apportioning not a grain too
much to one side or to the other.
In fact, Chichikov went everywhere. He chatted and talked, now with
the bailiff, now with a peasant, now with a miller, and inquired into
the manner and nature of everything, and sought information as to how
an estate was managed, and at what price corn was selling, and what
Dead Souls |
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: the mango-swamps, over the long low reaches of sand-grasses and
drowned weeds, for more than a hundred miles. From the
shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the shallows of Pelto Bay the
dead lie mingled with the high-heaped drift;--from their cypress
groves the vultures rise to dispute a share of the feast with the
shrieking frigate-birds and squeaking gulls. And as the
tremendous tide withdraws its plunging waters, all the pirates of
air follow the great white-gleaming retreat: a storm of
billowing wings and screaming throats.
And swift in the wake of gull and frigate-bird the Wreckers come,
the Spoilers of the dead,--savage skimmers of the
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