| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens
or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it
because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the
conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the
same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with
a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy
Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the
plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by
the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk;
therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout
with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: tarnished gleams of gold, I felt myself borne onward along a
mighty current, whose source seemed to be in the very beginning
of things, and whose tremendous waters gathered as they went all
the mingled streams of human passion and endeavor. Life in all
its varied manifestations of beauty and strangeness seemed
weaving a rhythmical dance around me as I moved, and wherever the
spirit of man had passed I knew that my foot had once been
familiar.
"As I gazed the mediaeval bosses of the tabernacle of Orcagna
seemed to melt and flow into their primal forms so that the
folded lotus of the Nile and the Greek acanthus were braided with
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: as he arrived he laid her down carefully by the entrance,
and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an armful of the
dryest fern. Spreading this within the shed, which was
entirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon;
then he ran with all his might towards the dwelling
of Fairway.
Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the
broken breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began
to animate the line between heath and sky. In a few moments
Clym arrived with Fairway, Humphrey, and Susan Nunsuch;
Olly Dowden, who had chanced to be at Fairway's, Christian
Return of the Native |
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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: for the interview to end. She thought she knew what Dick would ask,
and what David would answer. And, in a way, David would be right.
Dick, fine, lovable, upstanding Dick, had a right to the things other
men had, to love and a home of his own, to children, to his own full
life.
But suppose Dick insisted on clearing everything up before he
married? For to Lucy it was unthinkable that any girl in her senses
would refuse him. Suppose he went back to Norada? He had not
changed greatly in ten years. He had been well known there, a
conspicuous figure.
Her mind began to turn on the possibility of keeping him away from
The Breaking Point |
