| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: use it, that is all. But this it behooves you to know, that in those
days I began to resolve the heterogeneous mass known as the People
into its elements, and to evaluate its good and bad qualities. Even
then I realized the possibilities of my suburb, that hotbed of
revolution in which heroes, inventors, and practical men of science,
rogues and scoundrels, virtues and vices, were all packed together by
poverty, stifled by necessity, drowned in drink, and consumed by
ardent spirits.
You would not imagine how many adventures, how many tragedies, lie
buried away out of sight in that Dolorous City; how much horror and
beauty lurks there. No imagination can reach the Truth, no one can go
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: with such singular results. It was better than human material
for maintaining life in organless fragments, and that was now
my friend’s chief activity. In a dark corner of the laboratory,
over a queer incubating burner, he kept a large covered vat full
of this reptilian cell-matter; which multiplied and grew puffily
and hideously.
On the night of which I speak we had a splendid
new specimen -- a man at once physically powerful and of such
high mentality that a sensitive nervous system was assured. It
was rather ironic, for he was the officer who had helped West
to his commission, and who was now to have been our associate.
Herbert West: Reanimator |
