| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: the presence of the old hag. Love takes pleasure or fright at all, all
has meaning for it, everything is an omen of happiness or sorrow for
it.
This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe, and
represented the horrid fish's tail with which the allegorical geniuses
of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures,
like all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive.
Although Henri was not a free-thinker--the phrase is always a mockery
--but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can be
without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest men
are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: their track. We hear them before they are seen, and it is always
the same dreadful song:
"Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
A-pirating we go,
And if we're parted by a shot
We're sure to meet below!"
A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution
dock. Here, a little in advance, ever and again with his head to
the ground listening, his great arms bare, pieces of eight in his
ears as ornaments, is the handsome Italian Cecco, who cut his
name in letters of blood on the back of the governor of the
Peter Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: And now no soyle nor cautell doth besmerch
The vertue of his feare: but you must feare
His greatnesse weigh'd, his will is not his owne;
For hee himselfe is subiect to his Birth:
Hee may not, as vnuallued persons doe,
Carue for himselfe; for, on his choyce depends
The sanctity and health of the whole State.
And therefore must his choyce be circumscrib'd
Vnto the voyce and yeelding of that Body,
Whereof he is the Head. Then if he sayes he loues you,
It fits your wisedome so farre to beleeue it;
Hamlet |
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 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: solitude. He bolted out of the chartroom, and talked of
indifferent things somewhat wildly with the officer of the watch on
the bridge, to the mocking accompaniment of a ghostly piano.
The last thing to be recorded is that Lieutenant Heemskirk instead
of pursuing his course towards Ternate, where he was expected, went
out of his way to call at Makassar, where no one was looking for
his arrival. Once there, he gave certain explanations and laid a
certain proposal before the governor, or some other authority, and
obtained permission to do what he thought fit in these matters.
Thereupon the Neptun, giving up Ternate altogether, steamed north
in view of the mountainous coast of Celebes, and then crossing the
'Twixt Land & Sea |
