| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you--
Without these friendships--life, what cauchemar!"
Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: Verden University to New Zealand to prepare a paper showing the
thing is a failure there. I'll have every town in the state
thoroughly canvassed by lecturers and speakers against the bill.
I'll bombard the farmers with literature."
"What about the newspapers?"
"We control most of them. At Verden only the _World_ is against
us."
"Buy it."
"Can't be bought. Its editorial columns are not for sale."
"Anything can be bought if you've got the price. Who owns it?"
"A Captain Chunn. He made his money in Alaska. My cousin is the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic and
knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many
rides were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings,
which had a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the
other bright-flaming coin.
For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely,
always fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most
distant visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint
joy when she had reached it. But when she came to the fourth
milestone, the first she had happened to notice among the long
grass by the roadside, and read that she was still only four miles
Adam Bede |
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 Chouans by Honore de Balzac: "What is all this about, gentlemen?" asked the marquis, examining the
faces round him.
"This, monsieur le marquis," said a famous smuggler, with the
awkwardness of a man of the people who long remains under the yoke of
respect to a great lord, though he admits no barriers after he has
once jumped them, and regards the aristocrat as an equal only,
"/this/," he said, "and you have come in the nick of time to hear it.
I am no speaker of gilded phrases, and I shall say things plainly. I
commanded five hundred men during the late war. Since we have taken up
arms again I have raised a thousand heads as hard as mine for the
service of the king. It is now seven years that I have risked my life
The Chouans |
