| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: ornaments to Eustacia Vye she laughed and went on.
Why did a woman of this sort live on Egdon Heath? Budmouth
was her native place, a fashionable seaside resort
at that date. She was the daughter of the bandmaster
of a regiment which had been quartered there--a Corfiote
by birth, and a fine musician--who met his future wife
during her trip thither with her father the captain,
a man of good family. The marriage was scarcely in accord
with the old man's wishes, for the bandmaster's pockets
were as light as his occupation. But the musician did
his best; adopted his wife's name, made England permanently
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: friends and name to me one whom you would like to have for a son. We
have known a good many who dishonor their names. Children, my dear
Paul, are the most difficult kind of merchandise to take care of.
Yours, you think, will be angels; well, so be it! Have you ever
sounded the gulf which lies between the lives of a bachelor and a
married man? Listen. As a bachelor you can say to yourself: 'I shall
never exhibit more than a certain amount of the ridiculous; the public
will think of me what I choose it to think.' Married, you'll drop into
the infinitude of the ridiculous! Bachelor, you can make your own
happiness; you enjoy some to-day, you do without it to-morrow;
married, you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you
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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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: which now fell upon her, just as the red spectrum of an object shines
in our eyes when we close them in full daylight. This terrible and
double misfortune made Dumay, not less devoted, but more anxious about
Modeste, now the only daughter of the father who was unaware of his
loss. Madame Dumay, idolizing Modeste, like other women deprived of
their children, cast her motherliness about the girl,--yet without
disregarding the commands of her husband, who distrusted female
intimacies. Those commands were brief. "If any man, of any age, or any
rank," Dumay said, "speaks to Modeste, ogles her, makes love to her,
he is a dead man. I'll blow his brains out and give myself to the
authorities; my death may save her. If you don't wish to see my head
Modeste Mignon |
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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: patience and justice are not qualities on which we can rely.
But the look or the gesture explains things in a breath; they
tell their message without ambiguity; unlike speech, they
cannot stumble, by the way, on a reproach or an allusion that
should steel your friend against the truth; and then they have
a higher authority, for they are the direct expression of the
heart, not yet transmitted through the unfaithful and
sophisticating brain. Not long ago I wrote a letter to a
friend which came near involving us in quarrel; but we met,
and in personal talk I repeated the worst of what I had
written, and added worse to that; and with the commentary of
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