| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: in the name of the revolution, solemn sermonizings on peace; passions
without truth; truths without passion; heroes without heroism; history
without events; development, whose only moving force seems to be the
calendar, and tiresome by the constant reiteration of the same tensions
and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify themselves periodically,
only in order to wear themselves off and collapse without a solution;
pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger
of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of
the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
world's saviours, who, in their "laisser aller," recall the Day of
Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: what work they were taken, he would question the woman dressed like a
Greek priestess, who held out a bottle-stand of stamped metal in which
she collected charity.
"I say, my dear, what is that music out of?"
"The opera of /Mahomet/," Marianna would reply.
As Rossini composed an opera called /Mahomet II./, the amateur would
say to his wife, sitting at his side:
"What a pity it is that they will never give us at the Italiens any
operas by Rossini but those we know. That is really fine music!"
And Gambara would smile.
Only a few days since, this unhappy couple had to pay the trifling sum
Gambara |
