| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: kingdom which some modern Mercier might build up of cryptograms that
push up upon, and flower, and die in or under the plastered walls of
the strange unhealthy houses where they prefer to cluster. The first
aspect of this human plant--umbelliferous, judging by the fluted blue
cap which crowned it, with a stalk encased in greenish trousers, and
bulbous roots swathed in list shoes--offered to the eye a flat and
faded countenance, which certainly betrayed nothing poisonous. In this
queer product might be recognized the typical stockholder, who
believes every report which the daily press baptizes with ink, and is
content, for all response, to say, "Read what the papers say,"--the
bourgeois, essentially the friend of order, always revolting in his
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: been dreaming of this sort of thing."
Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement
had play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We
behaved like men inspired. We were men inspired.
"We'll settle all that!" he said in answer to some incidental difficulty
that had pulled me up. "We'll soon settle that! We'll start the drawings
for mouldings this very night."
"We'll start them now," I responded, and we hurried off to the laboratory
to begin upon this work forthwith.
I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both
still at work - we kept our electric light going heedless of the day. I
The First Men In The Moon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: more, because their work was attended with more hazards, and lay
more among the poor, who were more subject to be infected, and in
the most pitiful plight when they were taken with the infection. But
then it must be added, too, that a great number of them died; indeed it
was scarce possible it should be otherwise.
I have not said one word here about the physic or preparations that
we ordinarily made use of on this terrible occasion - I mean we that
went frequently abroad and up down street, as I did; much of this was
talked of in the books and bills of our quack doctors, of whom I have
said enough already. It may, however, be added, that the College of
Physicians were daily publishing several preparations, which they had
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: windows of the wrong size, and where, even when wearied of the
houses you turn to contemplate the street itself, you have nothing
to look at but chimney-pot hats, men with sandwich boards,
vermilion letter-boxes, and do that even at the risk of being run
over by an emerald-green omnibus.
Is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such surroundings as
these? Of course it is difficult, but then art was never easy; you
yourselves would not wish it to be easy; and, besides, nothing is
worth doing except what the world says is impossible.
Still, you do not care to be answered merely by a paradox. What
are the relations of the artist to the external world, and what is
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