Today's Stichomancy for Leo Tolstoy
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris:
What with this trouble on his mind and the grim determination with
which he held to his work, Condy changed rapidly. Blix had
steadied him, and a certain earnestness and seriousness of
purpose, a certain STRENGTH he had not known before, came swiftly
into being.
Was Blix to go away, leave him, perhaps for all time, and not know
how much he cared? Would he speak before she went? Condy did not
know. It was a question that circumstances would help him to
decide. He would not speak, so he resolved, unless he was sure
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: provided. This circumstance hastened matters. Two or three months more
of hunger and Akakiy Akakievitch had accumulated about eighty rubles.
His heart, generally so quiet, began to throb. On the first possible
day, he went shopping in company with Petrovitch. They bought some
very good cloth, and at a reasonable rate too, for they had been
considering the matter for six months, and rarely let a month pass
without their visiting the shops to inquire prices. Petrovitch himself
said that no better cloth could be had. For lining, they selected a
cotton stuff, but so firm and thick that Petrovitch declared it to be
better than silk, and even prettier and more glossy. They did not buy
the marten fur, because it was, in fact, dear, but in its stead, they
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: gain my ends, and this was what I did. I sued the Comte de Restaud for
a sum of money, ostensibly due to Gobseck, and gained judgment. The
Countess, of course, did not allow him to know of this, but I had
gained on my point, I had a right to affix seals to everything on the
death of the Count. I bribed one of the servants in the house--the man
undertook to let me know at any hour of the day or night if his master
should be at the point of death, so that I could intervene at once,
scare the Countess with a threat of affixing seals, and so secure the
counter-deed.
"I learned later on that the woman was studying the Code, with her
husband's dying moans in her ears. If we could picture the thoughts of
Gobseck |
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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: is so sever offensive, and scandalous that no amount of revision
can help it. How much more might people learn from "that they
need not do any good works", when all they hear is about the
preaching about the works themselves, sated in such a clear
strong way: "No works", "without works", "not by works"! If it is
not offensive to preach "without works", "not by works"! If it is
not offensive to preach "without works", "not by works"!, "no
works", why is it offensive to preach "by faith alone"?
Still more offensive is that St. Paul does not reject just
ordinary works, but works of the law! It follows that one could
take offense at that all the more and say that the law is
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