| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: her? Who could help her?
Against her will she had come to the surface, and found herself half
out of the picture, looking, little dazedly, as if at unreal things, at
Mr Carmichael. He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his
paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged
with existence. His book had fallen on to the grass.
She wanted to go straight up to him and say, "Mr Carmichael!" Then he
would look up benevolently as always, from his smoky vague green eyes.
But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them.
And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that
broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. "About life,
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: claim, and they were a law-abiding as well as a law-giving breed.
Leclere shrugged his shoulders. "Bot one t'ing," he said; "a
leetle, w'at you call, favour--a leetle favour, dat is eet. I gif
my feefty t'ousan' dollair to de church. I gif my husky dog,
Batard, to de devil. De leetle favour? Firs' you hang heem, an'
den you hang me. Eet is good, eh?"
Good it was, they agreed, that Hell's Spawn should break trail for
his master across the last divide, and the court was adjourned down
to the river bank, where a big spruce tree stood by itself.
Slackwater Charley put a hangman's knot in the end of a hauling-
line, and the noose was slipped over Leclere's head and pulled
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose
in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God
of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in
the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor
and the Merchant appear later; also the 'crowds of people', and
Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves
(an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily,
with the Fisher King himself.
60. Cf. Baudelaire:
Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,
Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.
The Waste Land |
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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: leaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of the
heart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten.
When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbed
in the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours between
the brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word which
could betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears.
Monsieur Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness of
the night, and the singular activity of the senses given by powerful
emotion, enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen and
the involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those who
are habitually up at night, and who observe the different acoustic
Ferragus |
