| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: own sorrow; but I never heard him utter a murmur of a complaint,
only words of tender emotion. When the coffin was carried to the
church he changed his clothes and went with the cortège.
When he reached the stone pillars he stopped us, said farewell to
the departed, and walked home along the avenue. I looked after him
and watched him walk away across the wet, thawing snow with his
short, quick old man's steps, turning his toes out at a sharp
angle, as he always did, and never once looking round.
My sister Masha had held a position of great importance in my
father's life and in the life of the whole family. Many a time in
the last few years have we had occasion to think of her and to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: of surviving elder horrors in what I disclose be not enough to
keep others from meddling with the inner antarctic - or at least
from prying too deeply beneath the surface of that ultimate waste
of forbidden secrets and inhuman, aeon-cursed desolation - the
responsibility for unnamable and perhaps immeasurable evils will
not be mine.
Danforth and I, studying the notes made by Pabodie
in his afternoon flight and checking up with a sextant, had calculated
that the lowest available pass in the range lay somewhat to the
right of us, within sight of camp, and about twenty-three thousand
or twenty-four thousand feet above sea level. For this point,
At the Mountains of Madness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: that her situation and her character ought to have been
respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at
the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing
to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable,
and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint.
If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her
understanding--I do not mean, however, to defend myself.
Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often,
with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which,
for a very short time, had the power of creating any return.
I wish--I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured
Sense and Sensibility |
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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: in these art-matters came to entire grief.
It is evident, then, that all authority in such things is bad.
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable
for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one
answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist
is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is
ridiculous. It has been stated that under despotisms artists have
produced lovely work. This is not quite so. Artists have visited
despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over, but as wandering
wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to be
entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to
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