| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: No erasures; the universe was present. Blondeau was grieved.
I said to myself: `Blondeau, my love, you will not get the very
smallest sort of an execution to-day.' All at once Blondeau calls,
`Marius Pontmercy!' No one answers. Blondeau, filled with hope,
repeats more loudly: `Marius Pontmercy!' And he takes his pen.
Monsieur, I have bowels of compassion. I said to myself hastily:
`Here's a brave fellow who is going to get scratched out. Attention.
Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact. He's not a good student.
Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies,
a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience,
one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession.
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: troubled, and my reason fails. The society of the modern world
which I have sought to delineate, and which I seek to judge, has
but just come into existence. Time has not yet shaped it into
perfect form: the great revolution by which it has been created
is not yet over: and amidst the occurrences of our time, it is
almost impossible to discern what will pass away with the
revolution itself, and what will survive its close. The world
which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the
remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amidst the
vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of
ancient institutions and former manners will remain, or how much
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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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: My old master is a good old master,
O yea! O yea! O yea!_
This they would sing, with other words of their own improvising--
jargon to others, but full of meaning to themselves. I have
sometimes thought, that the mere hearing of those songs would do
more to impress truly spiritual-minded men and women with the
soul-crushing and death-dealing character of slavery, than the
reading of whole volumes of its mere physical cruelties. They
speak to the heart and to the soul of the thoughtful. I cannot
better express my sense of them now, than ten years ago, when, in
sketching my life, I thus spoke of this feature of my plantation
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified; no kind of
knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for
images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of
the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care
the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I
wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the
changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless.
Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to
his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully
vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of
the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must
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