| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: learned, and we seemed to veer about, nearly sinking in the
process, and to run before the hurricane at terrific speed.
"I wonder where we are going to?" I said to Bickley. "To the
land of sleep, Humphrey, I imagine," he replied in a more gentle
voice than I had often heard him use, adding: "Good-bye, old boy,
we have been real friends, haven't we, notwithstanding my
peculiarities? I only wish that I could think that there was
anything in Bastin's views. But I can't, I can't. It's good night
for us poor creatures!"
Chapter VI
Land
When the World Shook |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: in the arbitrary will of a filibuster. If ever a slice from history is
drawn black upon black, it is this. Men and events appear as reversed
"Schlemihls," [#1 The hero In Chamisso's "Peter Schiemihi," who loses
his own shadow.] as shadows, the bodies of which have been lost. The
revolution itself paralyzes its own apostles, and equips only its
adversaries with passionate violence. When the "Red Spectre,"
constantly conjured up and exorcised by the counter-revolutionists
finally does appear, it does not appear with the Anarchist Phrygian cap
on its head, but in the uniform of Order, in the Red Breeches of the
French Soldier.
We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20,
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: and talked among themselves as though there were no one else in the
boat; yet close beside them sat a man of great importance in the
district, a stout burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast cloak.
His servant, armed to the teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled
with gold at his side. Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a
doctor of the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk.
This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each other,
was separated from the passengers in the forward part of the boat by
the bench of rowers.
The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw
that there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in
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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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: and his three friends by this strange scene! Their eyes
were confused. They could no longer grasp the respective
distances of the different plains. A lunar landscape without
the softening of the phenomena of _chiaro-oscuro_ could not be
rendered by an earthly landscape painter; it would be spots of
ink on a white page-- nothing more.
This aspect was not altered even when the projectile, at the
height of 80@, was only separated from the moon by a distance
of fifty miles; nor even when, at five in the morning, it
passed at less than twenty-five miles from the mountain of
Gioja, a distance reduced by the glasses to a quarter of a mile.
From the Earth to the Moon |
