| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: sustain you, triumph might have seemed easier; you would only have had
to crush your heart, and transfer your life into the world of
abstractions; religion would have absorbed all else, and you would
have lived for an idea, like those saintly women who kill all the
instincts of nature at the foot of the altar. But the all-pervading
charm of Paolo, the loftiness of his mind, his rare and touching
proofs of tenderness, constantly drag you down from that ideal realm
where virtue would fain maintain you; they perennially revive in you
the energies you have exhausted in contending with the phantom of
love. You never suspected this! The faintest glimmer of hope led you
on in pursuit of the sweet vision.
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: But there went a report through all the land of the beautiful sleeping
Briar Rose (for so the king's daughter was called): so that, from time
to time, several kings' sons came, and tried to break through the
thicket into the palace. This, however, none of them could ever do;
for the thorns and bushes laid hold of them, as it were with hands;
and there they stuck fast, and died wretchedly.
After many, many years there came a king's son into that land: and an
old man told him the story of the thicket of thorns; and how a
beautiful palace stood behind it, and how a wonderful princess, called
Briar Rose, lay in it asleep, with all her court. He told, too, how he
had heard from his grandfather that many, many princes had come, and
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: the prime wit of Little Britain, is bully Wagstaff himself. His
ancestors were all wags before him, and he has inherited with
the inn a large stock of songs and jokes, which go with it from
generation to generation as heirlooms. He is a dapper little
fellow, with bandy legs and pot belly, a red face, with a moist,
merry eye, and a little shock of gray hair behind. At the
opening of every club night he is called in to sing his
"Confession of Faith," which is the famous old drinking trowl
from "Gammer Gurton's Needle." He sings it, to be sure, with
many variations, as he received it from his father's lips; for it
has been a standing favorite at the Half-Moon and Bunch of
|
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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: significance.
Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do
not use the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence
while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or three
generations. The Plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and
if he wrote them it seems a pity the world did not find it out.
He ought to have explained that he was the author, and not merely
a NOM DE PLUME for another man to hide behind. If he had been
less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more
solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his
good name, and a kindness to us. The bones were not important.
What is Man? |
