| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: do not return until I leave the room."
When the footsteps of the old servitor, who was the last to go,
echoed but faintly along the paved gallery, Don Juan hastily
locked the door, and sure that he was quite alone, "Let us try,"
he said to himself.
Bartolommeo's body was stretched on a long table. The embalmers
had laid a sheet over it, to hide from all eyes the dreadful
spectacle of a corpse so wasted and shrunken that it seemed like
a skeleton, and only the face was uncovered. This mummy-like
figure lay in the middle of the room. The limp clinging linen
lent itself to the outlines it shrouded--so sharp, bony, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: But he is not a rich man, either. And there are the
children to be educated, and besides, Max married Norah
O'Hara, not the whole O'Hara tribe. I want to go to
work. I am not a free woman, but when I am working, I
forget, and am almost, happy. I tell you I must be well
again! I will be well! I am well!"
At the end of which dramatic period I spoiled the
whole effect by bowing my head on the table and giving
way to a fit of weeping such as I had not had since the
days of my illness.
"Looks like it," said Max, at which I decided to
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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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: the sex. Clinging, caressing, creeping into you in every way: but if
you forced her to the sex itself, she just ground her teeth and sent
out hate. I forced her to it, and she could simply numb me with hate
because of it. So I was balked again. I loathed all that. I wanted a
woman who wanted me, and wanted IT.
'Then came Bertha Coutts. They'd lived next door to us when I was a
little lad, so I knew 'em all right. And they were common. Well, Bertha
went away to some place or other in Birmingham; she said, as a lady's
companion; everybody else said, as a waitress or something in a hotel.
Anyhow just when I was more than fed up with that other girl, when I
was twenty-one, back comes Bertha, with airs and graces and smart
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Euthydemus by Plato: severely this wisdom,--not sparing Socrates himself for countenancing such
an exhibition. Socrates asks what manner of man was this censorious
critic. 'Not an orator, but a great composer of speeches.' Socrates
understands that he is an amphibious animal, half philosopher, half
politician; one of a class who have the highest opinion of themselves and a
spite against philosophers, whom they imagine to be their rivals. They are
a class who are very likely to get mauled by Euthydemus and his friends,
and have a great notion of their own wisdom; for they imagine themselves to
have all the advantages and none of the drawbacks both of politics and of
philosophy. They do not understand the principles of combination, and
hence are ignorant that the union of two good things which have different
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