| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: cart down on him. 'Take out the sacks!' But the cart pressed
down colder and colder, and then he heard a strange knocking,
awoke completely, and remembered everything. The cold cart was
his dead and frozen master lying upon him. And the knock was
produced by Mukhorty, who had twice struck the sledge with his
hoof.
'Andreevich! Eh, Andreevich!' Nikita called cautiously,
beginning to realize the truth, and straightening his back.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and his stomach and legs
were stiff and cold and heavy like iron weights.
'He must have died! May the Kingdom of Heaven be his!' thought
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled hair, and half-naked, was
indeed an object of curiosity,--the curiosity of a daring Spanish
woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The
profile of that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing
which he, an Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming
of an impossible woman because he was tired of all women, had ever
seen. He could still quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a
thousand follies, the thousand passions of a young and blase man--the
most abominable monster that society generates. An idea came into his
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: The people were astonished and could not understand how Ivan had
produced the strangers.
The soldiers sang for some time, to the great delight of the
villagers; and when Ivan commanded them to stop they instantly
ceased.
Ivan then ordered them off to the barn, telling the astonished
and mystified moujiks that they must not follow him. Reaching
the barn, he turned the soldiers again into straw and went home
to sleep off the effects of his debauch.
CHAPTER VII.
The Kreutzer Sonata |
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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: an old-world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern shops,
where the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made them
work like Negroes. These three assistants were equal to a business
which would harry ten such clerks as those whose sybaritical tastes
now swell the columns of the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace
of this solemn house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where
the meanest article of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness
which reveals strict order and economy. The most waggish of the three
youths often amused himself by writing the date of its first
appearance on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their tender
mercies at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to leave
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