| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: heart.
This wretched convict, embodying the poem that has smiled on many a
poet's fancy--on Moore, on Lord Byron, on Mathurin, on Canalis--the
demon who has drawn an angel down to hell to refresh him with dews
stolen from heaven,--this Jacques Collin will be seen, by the reader
who has understood that iron soul, to have sacrificed his own life for
seven years past. His vast powers, absorbed in Lucien, acted solely
for Lucien; he lived for his progress, his loves, his ambitions. To
him, Lucien was his own soul made visible.
It was Trompe-la-Mort who dined with the Grandlieus, stole into
ladies' boudoirs, and loved Esther by proxy. In fact, in Lucien he saw
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: be kept busy. I could do all which they delighted in doing by
powers merely sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were flown
to Cairo. They ran from room to room, as a bird hops from wire to
wire in his cage. They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs
frisk in a meadow. One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the
rest might be alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek her.
Part of their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies
that floated on the river, and part in marking the various forms
into which clouds broke in the sky.
"Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids
sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily
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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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: in the position of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the
sixth century B. C., so authoritative as to compel all Greeks
to recognize the recension then and there made of their
revered poet? Besides which the celebrated ordinance of Solon
respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obliges us to
infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer previous
to 550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the interference of
Peisistratos "presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient
aggregate, the main lineaments of which were familiar to the
Grecian public, although many of the rhapsodes in their
practice may have deviated from it both by omission and
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: suddenly from the wood came 'bang!' and another time 'bang!' 'Oh,
damn it all!' . . . I jumped out of the sledge, and I saw in the
darkness a man running up to me, knee-deep in the snow. I put my
arm round his shoulder, like this, and knocked the gun out of his
hand. Then another one turned up; I fetched him a knock on the
back of his head so that he grunted and flopped with his nose in
the snow. I was a sturdy chap then, my fist was heavy; I disposed
of two of them, and when I turned round Fyodor was sitting
astride of a third. We did not let our three fine fellows go; we
tied their hands behind their backs so that they might not do us
or themselves any harm, and took the fools into the kitchen. We
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