| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: If I left him behind in this deadly place he would
die. He felt it, he was certain of it. But I
wouldn't have the heart to leave him ashore. He
had a wife and child in Sydney.
He produced his wasted forearms from under the
sheet which covered him and clasped his fleshless
claws. He would die! He would die here. . . .
He absolutely managed to sit up, but only for a
moment, and when he fell back I really thought
that he would die there and then. I called to the
Bengali dispenser, and hastened away from the
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most
perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy.
The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I
must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things
I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must
accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been
punished, one might just as well never have been punished at all.
Of course there are many things of which I was convicted that I had
not done, but then there are many things of which I was convicted
that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life
for which I was never indicted at all. And as the gods are
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