| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: Molly Brandeis, sitting up in bed in the chilly room, with
her covers about her, was conscious of a little sick
feeling, not at what he had done, but that a son of hers
should ever wear the sullen, defiant, hang-dog look that
disfigured Theodore's face now.
"Bauer's?"
A pause. "Yes."
"Why?"
"I just stopped in there for a minute after the concert. I
didn't mean to stay. And then Bauer introduced me around to
everybody. And then they asked me to play, and--"
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Yankee batteries were silent; there was no news of the troops
except that they had been withdrawn in large numbers from the
breastworks about the town and had marched off toward the south to
defend the railroad. No one knew where the fighting was, if indeed
there was any fighting, or how the battle was going if there was a
battle.
Nowadays the only news was that which passed from mouth to mouth.
Short of paper, short of ink, short of men, the newspapers had
suspended publication after the siege began, and the wildest rumors
appeared from nowhere and swept through the town. Now, in the
anxious quiet, crowds stormed General Hood's headquarters demanding
Gone With the Wind |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: Are the technical schools vast manufactories of incapables? That
subject requires careful investigation. If I am right they need
reforming, at any rate in their method of proceeding,--for I am
not, of course, doubting the utility of such schools. Only, when
we look back into the past we see that France in former days never
wanted for the great talents necessary to the State; but now she
prefers to hatch out talent geometrically, after the theory of
Monge. Did Vauban ever go to any other Ecole than that great
school we call vocation? Who was Riquet's tutor? When great
geniuses arise above the social mass, impelled by vocation, they
are nearly always rounded into completeness; the man is then not
|
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: your name, "Melchior," chiming in the flower-bells; I saw it
written on the clouds. Yes, yes, I live, I am living, thanks to
thee,--my poet, more beautiful than that cold, conventional Lord
Byron, with a face as dull as the English climate. One glance of
thine, thine Orient glance, pierced through my double veil and
sent thy blood to my heart, and from thence to my head and feet.
Ah! that is not the life our mother gave us. A hurt to thee would
hurt me too at the very instant it was given,--my life exists by
thy thought only. I know now the purpose of the divine faculty of
music; the angels invented it to utter love. Ah, my Melchior, to
have genius and to have beauty is too much; a man should be made
Modeste Mignon |
