The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: at the opera in Vienna: Gluck, Mozart, everything of that sort.
But I'm a conservative in music--it's not like ideas, you know.
I stick to the good old tunes."
"Mr. Casaubon is not fond of the piano, and I am very glad he is not,"
said Dorothea, whose slight regard for domestic music and feminine
fine art must be forgiven her, considering the small tinkling
and smearing in which they chiefly consisted at that dark period.
She smiled and looked up at her betrothed with grateful eyes.
If he had always been asking her to play the "Last Rose of Summer,"
she would have required much resignation. "He says there is only an old
harpsichord at Lowick, and it is covered with books."
Middlemarch |
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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: Provence and chiding me boisterously for lying abed. How
pleasantly he startled me by his noisy objurgations to be up and
off instantly for a "three years' campaign in the South Seas." O
magic words! Une campagne de trois ans dans les mers du sud"--
that is the French for a three years' deep-water voyage.
He gave me a delightful waking, and his friendliness was
unwearied; but I fear he did not enter upon the quest for a ship
for me in a very solemn spirit. He had been at sea himself, but
had left off at the age of twenty-five, finding he could earn his
living on shore in a much more agreeable manner. He was related
to an incredible number of Marseilles well-to-do families of a
Some Reminiscences |