| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: 210. 'Carriage and insurance free'] 'cost, insurance and freight'--Editor.
218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character',
is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest.
Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into
the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct
from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman,
and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact,
is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is
of great anthropological interest:
. . . Cum Iunone iocos et 'maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus', dixisse, 'voluptas.'
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: Mordaunt was concealed.
"Oho!" cried D'Artagnan, as he went down the steps of the
hatchway, preceded by the lantern, "what a number of
barrels! one would think one was in the cave of Ali Baba.
What is there in them?" he added, putting his lantern on one
of the casks.
The captain seemed inclined to go upon deck again, but
controlling himself he answered:
"Port wine."
"Ah! port wine! 'tis a comfort," said the Gascon, "since we
shall not die of thirst. Are they all full?"
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: hear?'
'But the Cardinal!' he cried in a quavering voice. 'The
Cardinal, M. de Berault! The last man you killed is not
forgotten yet. This time he will be sure to--'
'Leave me, do you hear?' I hissed. The fellow's impudence
passed all bounds. It was as bad as his croaking. 'Begone!' I
added. 'I suppose you are afraid that he will kill me, and you
will lose your money.'
Frison fell back at that almost as if I had struck him, and I
turned to my adversary, who had been awaiting my motions with
impatience. God knows he did look young as he stood with his
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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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: trunk without the payment of the forty francs, which of course I
could pay as soon as I should have sold the linen. My stupidity
proved to me that surgery was my only vocation. My good fellow,
refined souls, whose powers move in a lofty atmosphere, have none
of that spirit of intrigue that is fertile in resource and
device; their good genius is chance; they do not invent, things
come to them.
"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger
also came in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-
Flour. We knew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off
the same landing, and who hear each other sleeping, coughing,
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