| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Christian in faith!---Nay, by Heaven! when I
gaze on thee, and think when and how we are next
to meet, I could even wish myself one of thine own
degraded nation; my hand conversant with ingots
and shekels, instead of spear and shield; my head
bent down before each petty noble, and my look
only terrible to the shivering and bankrupt debtor
---this could I wish, Rebecca, to be near to thee in
life, and to escape the fearful share I must have in
thy death.''
``Thou hast spoken the Jew,'' said Rebecca, ``as
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: again, and their very existence utterly forgotten, I believe,
before a French river pilot came on board to take our ship down,
empty as she came, into the Havre roads. You may think that this
state of forced idleness favoured some advance in the fortunes of
Almayer and his daughter. Yet it was not so. As if it were some
sort of evil spell, my banjoist cabin-mate's interruption, as
related above, had arrested them short at the point of that
fateful sunset for many weeks together. It was always thus with
this book, begun in '89 and finished in '94--with that shortest
of all the novels which it was to be my lot to write. Between
its opening exclamation calling Almayer to his dinner in his
Some Reminiscences |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: I HAD no knowledge - nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I
could bear it - they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored
me, and I accounted for my confusion - perversely, I allow - by the
idea that Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a
bad joke, the general intention a monstrous pose.
The great point of it all is, however, that I told George Corvick
what had befallen me and that my information had an immense effect
upon him. He had at last come back, but so, unfortunately, had
Mrs. Erme, and there was as yet, I could see, no question of his
nuptials. He was immensely stirred up by the anecdote I had
brought from Bridges; it fell in so completely with the sense he
|
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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: a dark church at night and discern a feeble light glimmering under a
lofty vault--a dim figure glides across--the sweep of a gown or of a
priest's cassock is audible--and we shiver! La Grande Breteche, with
its rank grasses, its shuttered windows, its rusty iron-work, its
locked doors, its deserted rooms, suddenly rose before me in fantastic
vividness. I tried to get into the mysterious dwelling to search out
the heart of this solemn story, this drama which had killed three
persons.
"Rosalie became in my eyes the most interesting being in Vendome. As I
studied her, I detected signs of an inmost thought, in spite of the
blooming health that glowed in her dimpled face. There was in her soul
La Grande Breteche |
