| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: always have been a desolate region, but now it is an
indescribable wilderness of shell craters, smashed-up Austrian
trenches, splintered timber, old iron, rags, and that rusty
thorny vileness of man's invention, worse than all the thorns and
thickets of nature, barbed wire. There are no dead visible; the
wounded have been cleared away; but about the trenches and
particularly near some of the dug-outs there was a faint
repulsive smell....
Yet into this wilderness the Italians are now thrusting a sort of
order. The German is a wonderful worker, they say on the Anglo-
French front that he makes his trenches by way of resting, but I
|
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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: that's very certain."
Baudoyer [to Chazelle]. "You found that appointment in your second
hat, I presume" [points to the hat on the chair]. "This is the third
time within a month that you have come after nine o'clock. If you
continue the practice you will get on--elsewhere." [To Bixiou, who is
reading the newspaper.] "My dear Monsieur Bixiou, do pray leave the
newspapers to these gentlemen who are going to breakfast, and come
into my office for your orders for the day. I don't know what Monsieur
Rabourdin wants with Gabriel; he keeps him to do his private errands,
I believe. I've rung three times and can't get him." [Baudoyer and
Bixiou retire into the private office.]
|
