| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: "natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning
flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in
egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness, the
incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her desires and
virtues. That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for
the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is that she seems more
afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love, and more
condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and
sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in
the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy,
which rends while it delights--What? And all that is now to be at
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: "To say truth," said I, "I have only seen some dim reference to the
things in memoirs; and heard some traditions dimmer still, through
my uncle (whom I think you knew). My uncle lived when he was a boy
in the neighbourhood of St. Bride's; he has often told me of the
avenue closed up and grown over with grass, the great gates never
opened, the last lord and his old maid sister who lived in the back
parts of the house, a quiet, plain, poor, hum-drum couple it would
seem - but pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave
house - and, to the country folk, faintly terrible from some
deformed traditions."
"Yes," said Mr. Thomson. "Henry Graeme Durie, the last lord, died
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: who was to have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace.
She had died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been
fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that
promised to fill his life to the brim.
Of that benediction, however, it would have been false to say this
life could really be emptied: it was still ruled by a pale ghost,
still ordered by a sovereign presence. He had not been a man of
numerous passions, and even in all these years no sense had grown
stronger with him than the sense of being bereft. He had needed no
priest and no altar to make him for ever widowed. He had done many
things in the world - he had done almost all but one: he had
|
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 Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves withal.
Such are the actual facts; and not all novels have for a base so
telling a situation.
Chapter 50
The 'Original Jacobs'
WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead.
He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and on
the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his old age--
as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and his eye
and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as firm
and clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of pilots.
|
