| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: The tears rolled down her furrowed face. Her hands trembled.
"An' den when dat Sadie MacMallister next door to us was sent
teh deh devil by dat feller what worked in deh soap-factory,
didn't I tell our Mag dat if she--"
"Ah, dat's annuder story," interrupted the brother. "Of
course, dat Sadie was nice an' all dat--but--see--it ain't dessame
as if--well, Maggie was diff'ent--see--she was diff'ent."
He was trying to formulate a theory that he had always
unconsciously held, that all sisters, excepting his own, could
advisedly be ruined.
He suddenly broke out again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time
to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is
the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial
injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the
moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This
sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not
pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and
equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.
Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will
now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: finished by the /allegro vivace/ of the bacchanalian chorus in D
minor. This, indeed, is the triumph of hell! Roll on, harmony, and
wrap us in a thousand folds! Roll on, bewitch us! The powers of
darkness have clutched their prey; they hold him while they dance. The
great genius, born to conquer and to reign, is lost! The devils
rejoice, misery stifles genius, passion will wreck the knight!"
And here Gambara improvised a /fantasia/ of his own on the
bacchanalian chorus, with ingenious variations, and humming the air in
a melancholy drone as if to express the secret sufferings he had
known.
"Do you hear the heavenly lamentations of neglected love?" he said.
Gambara |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: shaded spot, under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean,
firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of
clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it,
and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer,
when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her
brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down
the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me,
she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and
nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and
legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would
already have taken up their march, with faint, wiry peep, single
Walden |
