| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: had broken into a sweat that he would as little have consented to
attribute to fear as he would have dared immediately to act upon it
for enterprise. It marked none the less a prodigious thrill, a
thrill that represented sudden dismay, no doubt, but also
represented, and with the selfsame throb, the strangest, the most
joyous, possibly the next minute almost the proudest, duplication
of consciousness.
"He has been dodging, retreating, hiding, but now, worked up to
anger, he'll fight!" - this intense impression made a single
mouthful, as it were, of terror and applause. But what was
wondrous was that the applause, for the felt fact, was so eager,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: heroic look and air of kingly greatness. Nor did his character
belie his looks, as no one was better able to render himself
both loved and feared. For as he was the most easy and
agreeable of companions, and the most luxurious and delicate of
princes in his drinking and banqueting and daily pleasures, so
in action there was never anyone that showed a more vehement
persistence, or a more passionate energy. Bacchus, skilled in
the conduct of war, and after war in giving peace its pleasures
and joys, seems to have been his pattern among the gods.
He was wonderfully fond of his father Antigonus; and the
tenderness he had for his mother led him, for her sake, to
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might
guard a weak flame with a news-paper. And so then, she concluded,
addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to William
Bankes--poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in
lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong
enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor
not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants
to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have
whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.
"Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for
you," she said to William Bankes.
To the Lighthouse |
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 Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: a din fitted to the universe. It was the whirring
and thumping of gigantic machinery, complica-
tions among the smaller stars. The youth's ears
were filled up. They were incapable of hearing
more.
On an incline over which a road wound he
saw wild and desperate rushes of men perpet-
ually backward and forward in riotous surges.
These parts of the opposing armies were two
long waves that pitched upon each other madly
at dictated points. To and fro they swelled.
The Red Badge of Courage |
