| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: are going to come in; then, when she sees that it is not you, her
face resumes its sorrowful expression, a cold sweat breaks out
over it, and her cheek-bones flush.
February 19, midnight.
What a sad day we have had to-day, poor M. Armand! This morning
Marguerite was stifling; the doctor bled her, and her voice has
returned to her a while. The doctor begged her to see a priest.
She said "Yes," and he went himself to fetch an abbe' from Saint
Roch.
Meanwhile Marguerite called me up to her bed, asked me to open a
cupboard, and pointed out a cap and a long chemise covered with
 Camille |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and
his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when
they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he
felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an
alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it--if not he, then
another. This man's strength and sanity, his feeling for straight
forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in
Mucklebackit's cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of
something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back
his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face, he let them
fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely
 To the Lighthouse |