| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: about the street, sometimes in a company and with several
instruments and voice together, sometimes severally, each guitar
before a different window. It was a strange thing to lie awake in
nineteenth-century America, and hear the guitar accompany, and one
of these old, heart-breaking Spanish love-songs mount into the
night air, perhaps in a deep baritone, perhaps in that high-
pitched, pathetic, womanish alto which is so common among Mexican
men, and which strikes on the unaccustomed ear as something not
entirely human but altogether sad.
The town, then, was essentially and wholly Mexican; and yet almost
all the land in the neighbourhood was held by Americans, and it was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art
either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates
into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique
result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact
that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact
that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an
artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply
the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an
amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no
further claim to be considered as an artist. Art is the most
intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: interpret my amiability of temper his own way, and at length
presumed upon my indulgence so far - what do you think? - he
actually made me an offer!'
'And you - '
'I proudly drew myself up, and with the greatest coolness expressed
my astonishment at such an occurrence, and hoped he had seen
nothing in my conduct to justify his expectations. You should have
SEEN how his countenance fell! He went perfectly white in the
face. I assured him that I esteemed him and all that, but could
not possibly accede to his proposals; and if I did, papa and mamma
could never be brought to give their consent.'
Agnes Grey |
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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: tried pantomime without success. Her whole art consisted in the trick
of raising her skirts, after Noblet's manner, in a pirouette which
inflated them balloon-fashion and exhibited the smallest possible
quantity of clothing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the
very beginning that this /temps/, well executed by a fine woman, is
worth all the art imaginable. It is the chest-note C of dancing. For
which reason, he said, the very greatest dancers--Camargo, Guimard,
and Taglioni, all of them thin, brown, and plain--could only redeem
their physical defects by their genius. Tullia, still in the height of
her glory, retired before younger and cleverer dancers; she did
wisely. She was an aristocrat; she had scarcely stooped below the
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