| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--
some small matter which, when the pressing need arose,
could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.
Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say.
I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last.
But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him
a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it
had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know,
things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this
great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.
It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: bourgeois, a sort of condottiere of the order of those whom we have
just characterized, a fanatical and intractable governmentalist,
could not resist the temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition
of capturing the barricade alone and unaided, that is to say,
with his company. Exasperated by the successive apparition of
the red flag and the old coat which he took for the black flag,
he loudly blamed the generals and chiefs of the corps, who were
holding council and did not think that the moment for the decisive
assault had arrived, and who were allowing "the insurrection to fry
in its own fat," to use the celebrated expression of one of them.
For his part, he thought the barricade ripe, and as that which is
Les Miserables |
