| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: hair afresh--and the swains were preparing for a carousal--my mule made a
dead point--'Tis the fife and tabourin, said I--I'm frighten'd to death,
quoth he--They are running at the ring of pleasure, said I, giving him a
prick--By saint Boogar, and all the saints at the backside of the door of
purgatory, said he--(making the same resolution with the abbesse of
Andouillets) I'll not go a step further--'Tis very well, sir, said I--I
never will argue a point with one of your family, as long as I live; so
leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch, and t'other
into that--I'll take a dance, said I--so stay you here.
A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the groupe to meet me, as I
advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chesnut approaching
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: meaning of the past.
"If only this is her last piece of trickery!" thought the thunder-
struck lover to himself.
He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a whim, for he
had heard what a /capriccio/ might mean in an Italian. But what a
crime had he committed in the eyes of a woman--in accepting a born
princess as a citizen's wife! in believing that a daughter of one of
the most illustrious houses of the Middle Ages was the wife of a
bookseller! The consciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe's
desire to know whether he would be ignored and repelled. He asked for
Prince Gandolphini, sending in his card, and was immediately received
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Commanded straight to cut off all our heads:
And surely we had died, but that the Duke,
More full of honor than his angry sire,
Procured our quick deliverance from thence;
But, ere we went, 'Salute your king', quoth he,
'Bid him provide a funeral for his son:
To day our sword shall cut his thread of life;
And, sooner than he thinks, we'll be with him,
To quittance those displeasures he hath done.'
This said, we past, not daring to reply;
Our hearts were dead, our looks diffused and wan.
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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 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth
that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature.
I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my
confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous
ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course,
and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front,
only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than
just this attempt to supply, one's self, ALL the nature.
How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression
of reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I
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