| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: deny a word of it.
But before I come to the particulars of this part, I must supply a
defect in my former relation; and this was, I forgot to set down
among the rest, that just as we were weighing the anchor to set
sail, there happened a little quarrel on board of our ship, which I
was once afraid would have turned to a second mutiny; nor was it
appeased till the captain, rousing up his courage, and taking us
all to his assistance, parted them by force, and making two of the
most refractory fellows prisoners, he laid them in irons: and as
they had been active in the former disorders, and let fall some
ugly, dangerous words the second time, he threatened to carry them
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: Englishman at home in France. Never more shall the sheep, who were
not more innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his
industrious pencil. He died too early, at the very moment when he
was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts, and blossom into
something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will think
he lived in vain. I never knew a man so little, for whom yet I had
so much affection; and I find it a good test of others, how much
they had learned to understand and value him. His was indeed a
good influence in life while he was still among us; he had a fresh
laugh, it did you good to see him; and however sad he may have been
at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: of perfect cubes, which Lake had mentioned in his messages, and
which indeed justified his comparison with the dreamlike suggestions
of primordial temple ruins, on cloudy Asian mountaintops so subtly
and strangely painted by Roerich. There was indeed something hauntingly
Roerich-like about this whole unearthly continent of mountainous
mystery. I had felt it in October when we first caught sight of
Victoria Land, and I felt it afresh now. I felt, too, another
wave of uneasy consciousness of Archaean mythical resemblances;
of how disturbingly this lethal realm corresponded to the evilly
famed plateau of Leng in the primal writings. Mythologists have
placed Leng in Central Asia; but the racial memory of man - or
At the Mountains of Madness |
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 End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: mind: the word pilot awakened the idea of trust, of
dependence, the idea of welcome, clear-eyed help brought
to the seaman groping for the land in the dark: groping
blindly in fogs: feeling their way in the thick weather
of the gales that, filling the air with a salt mist blown
up from the sea, contract the range of sight on all
sides to a shrunken horizon that seems within reach of
the hand.
A pilot sees better than a stranger, because his local
knowledge, like a sharper vision, completes the shapes
of things hurriedly glimpsed; penetrates the veils of
End of the Tether |
