| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or
of no artistic value whatsoever.
Perhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to
such words as 'immoral,' 'unintelligible,' 'exotic,' and
'unhealthy.' There is one other word that they use. That word is
'morbid.' They do not use it often. The meaning of the word is so
simple that they are afraid of using it. Still, they use it
sometimes, and, now and then, one comes across it in popular
newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to apply to a work
of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of
thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid,
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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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: that in disappearing completely it would not be merely my own hopes that I
should condemn to extinction. It would perhaps be sufficient if I stayed
away long enough to give the elder lady time to think she was rid of me.
That she would wish to be rid of me after this (if I was not rid of her)
was now not to be doubted: that nocturnal scene would have cured her
of the disposition to put up with my company for the sake of my dollars.
I said to myself that after all I could not abandon Miss Tita, and I continued
to say this even while I observed that she quite failed to comply with my
earnest request (I had given her two or three addresses, at little towns,
post restante) that she would let me know how she was getting on.
I would have made my servant write to me but that he was unable to manage
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