| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: I said to God, "How is it so quiet?"
He said, "They have gone away to drink it."
I said, "They drink it--their own!"
God said, "It comes from this side of the curtain, and they are very
thirsty."
Then the feast went on, and after a while I saw a small, white hand slipped
in below the curtain's edge along the floor; and it motioned towards the
wine jars.
And I said to God, "Why is that hand so bloodless?"
And God said, "It is a wine-pressed hand."
And men saw it and started to their feet; and women cried, and ran to the
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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: After remaining for about three years with his uncle, an old and not
uncultured Oratorian, Louis left him early in 1811 to enter the
college at Vendome, where he was maintained at the cost of Madame de
Stael.
Lambert owed the favor and patronage of this celebrated lady to
chance, or shall we not say to Providence, who can smooth the path of
forlorn genius? To us, indeed, who do not see below the surface of
human things, such vicissitudes, of which we find many examples in the
lives of great men, appear to be merely the result of physical
phenomena; to most biographers the head of a man of genius rises above
the herd as some noble plant in the fields attracts the eye of a
Louis Lambert |
