| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: be my fate, if such is your determination and that of monsieur le
comte, so be it; but if so, will you, who are the friend of Doctor
Bianchon, ask him for a permit to let me enter a hospital?
The person who carries this letter has been eleven consecutive
days to the hotel de Brambourg, rue de Clichy, without getting any
help from my husband. The poverty in which I now am prevents my
employing a lawyer to make a legal demand for what is due to me,
that I may die with decency. Nothing can save me, I know that. In
case you are unwilling to see your unhappy sister-in-law, send me,
at least, the money to end my days. Your brother desires my death;
he has always desired it. He warned me that he knew three ways of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: But at the time I did not know; I knew generally very little, and
least of all what I was doing in that GALERE.
I remember that, exactly as in the comedy of Moliere, my uncle
asked the precise question in the very words - not of my
confidential valet, however, but across great distances of land, in
a letter whose mocking but indulgent turn ill concealed his almost
paternal anxiety. I fancy I tried to convey to him my (utterly
unfounded) impression that the West Indies awaited my coming. I
had to go there. It was a sort of mystic conviction - something in
the nature of a call. But it was difficult to state intelligibly
the grounds of this belief to that man of rigorous logic, if of
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: contiguous rooms, extraordinarily, seemed lighter - so light,
almost, that at first he took the change for day. He stood firm,
however that might be, just where he had paused; his resistance had
helped him - it was as if there were something he had tided over.
He knew after a little what this was - it had been in the imminent
danger of flight. He had stiffened his will against going; without
this he would have made for the stairs, and it seemed to him that,
still with his eyes closed, he would have descended them, would
have known how, straight and swiftly, to the bottom.
Well, as he had held out, here he was - still at the top, among the
more intricate upper rooms and with the gauntlet of the others, of
|
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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This
may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul
of a young woman of twenty-eight--perhaps more wisdom than the Holy
Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is
necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.
How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls
perish in its tumult!
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering,
clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in
abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
