| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: only begin; wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter
upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred."
My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words;
I resolved not to fail in my purpose, and calling on heaven to support me,
I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts, until the ocean
appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary of the horizon.
Oh! How unlike it was to the blue seasons of the south! Covered with ice,
it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior wildness
and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when they beheld the
Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture
the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: not the courage to stir a limb. He had lost faith in himself,
and there was nothing else in him of what makes a man. The
suffering remained, for it is ordered that it should abide in the
human body even to the last breath, and fear remained. Dimly he
could look into the depths of his passionate love, see its
strength and its weakness, and felt afraid.
The sun went down slowly. The shadow of the western forest
marched over the clearing, covered the man's scorched shoulders
with its cool mantle, and went on hurriedly to mingle with the
shadows of other forests on the eastern side. The sun lingered
for a while amongst the light tracery of the higher branches, as
Almayer's Folly |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: irony, his superiority, his audacity, 'regarding not the person of man,'
necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation. He is not acting a
part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has been all his life long,
'a king of men.' He would rather not appear insolent, if he could avoid it
(ouch os authadizomenos touto lego). Neither is he desirous of hastening
his own end, for life and death are simply indifferent to him. But such a
defence as would be acceptable to his judges and might procure an
acquittal, it is not in his nature to make. He will not say or do anything
that might pervert the course of justice; he cannot have his tongue bound
even 'in the throat of death.' With his accusers he will only fence and
play, as he had fenced with other 'improvers of youth,' answering the
|
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Butscha lived, provided their natural forces so magnificently
concentrated have not been spent in the struggle they have been forced
to maintain, against tremendous odds, to keep alive. This explains
many superstitions, the popular legends of gnomes, frightful dwarfs,
deformed fairies,--all that race of bottles, as Rabelais called them,
containing elixirs and precious balms.
Butscha, therefore, had very nearly found the key to the puzzle. With
all the anxious solicitude of a hopeless lover, a vassal ever ready to
die,--like the soldiers alone and abandoned in the snows of Russia,
who still cried out, "Long live the Emperor,"--he meditated how to
capture Modeste's secret for his own private knowledge. So thinking,
Modeste Mignon |
