| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: cheers and laughter.
Sir WALTER SCOTT.--Wherever the new Theatre is built, I hope it
will not be large. There are two errors which we commonly
commit--the one arising from our pride, the other from our
poverty. If there are twelve plans, it is odds but the largest,
without any regard to comfort, or an eye to the probable expense,
is adopted. There was the College projected on this scale, and
undertaken in the same manner, and who shall see the end of it?
It has been building all my life, and may probably last during
the lives of my children, and my children's children. Let not
the same prophetic hymn be sung when we commence a new Theatre,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: who was opening and shutting it so often, moving so restlessly about,
and muttering like the soliloquy of a tragedy-queen!
No, it was a female voice. Also the figure half-hidden by the
cupboard-door--was a female figure, massive, and in flowing robes,
Could it be the landlady? The door opened, and a strange man entered
the room.
"What is that donkey doing?" he said to himself, pausing, aghast,
on the threshold.
The lady, thus rudely referred to, was his wife. She had got one of
the cupboards open, and stood with her back to him, smoothing down a
sheet of brown paper on one of the shelves, and whispering to herself
Sylvie and Bruno |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: But he who would become light, and be a bird, must love himself:--thus do
_I_ teach.
Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them
stinketh even self-love!
One must learn to love oneself--thus do I teach--with a wholesome and
healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving
about.
Such roving about christeneth itself "brotherly love"; with these words
hath there hitherto been the best lying and dissembling, and especially by
those who have been burdensome to every one.
And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to love
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my
acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for
neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my
house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers
than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of
loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th
of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were
carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly
impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of a
chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill
Walden |
