| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: Her pulse was much stronger, and every symptom more favourable
than on the preceding visit. Elinor, confirmed in every
pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness; rejoicing that
in her letters to her mother, she had pursued her own
judgment rather than her friend's, in making very light
of the indisposition which delayed them at Cleveland;
and almost fixing on the time when Marianne would be
able to travel.
But the day did not close so auspiciously as it began.--
Towards the evening Marianne became ill again, growing
more heavy, restless, and uncomfortable than before.
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: divided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, and
these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of
happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction
which casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had
brought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I
could only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling with the
turmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced that
gnawing pang to which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and
betrayed affections have not inured me.
"Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should be
happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows into
Louis Lambert |
