| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: up like them. But it looks to me, from some of
the things you've said about 'em, they must have
a dern fool streak in 'em somewheres."
I was kind of jealous of them nights, I guess, or
I wouldn't of run 'em down that-a-way behind
their backs. But the way she was always taking
on over them was calkelated to make me see I
wasn't knee-high to a duck in Martha's mind
when one of them nights popped into her head.
When I run 'em down that-a-way, she says to the
blind all things is blind, and if I had any chivalry
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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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect
its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence--an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise
from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an
habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation. For
something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by
his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and
by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation
and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision
The Fall of the House of Usher |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he
involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly
distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His
long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of
Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy
brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which
I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not
why;--from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before
me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion
The Fall of the House of Usher |
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 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: No man--you apprehend me?--no man here bears a charmed life.'
He stood there for a moment in the moonlight with his delicate
hooked nose set a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering
without a wink, then, with a curt Good-night, he strode off.
I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled,
which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days.
It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential
friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat.
I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty
Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was
nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape,
Heart of Darkness |
