| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: warm and cold and sticky all at the same time and the feel of the
night air on her limbs was refreshing. She thought dully what Aunt
Pitty would say, if she could see her sprawled here on the front
porch with her skirts up and her drawers showing, but she did not
care. She did not care about anything. Time had stood still. It
might be just after twilight and it might be midnight. She didn't
know or care.
She heard sounds of moving feet upstairs and thought "May the Lord
damn Prissy," before her eyes closed and something like sleep
descended upon her. Then after an indeterminate dark interval,
Prissy was beside her, chattering on in a pleased way.
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and taken in the situation, for by the time I had reached
Thuvia's side he was there also, and, springing from his
mount, he threw her upon its back and, turning the animal's
head toward the hills, gave the beast a sharp crack across
the rump with the flat of his sword. Then he attempted to
do the same with mine.
The brave boy's act of chivalrous self-sacrifice filled me
with pride, nor did I care that it had wrested from us our
last frail chance for escape. The Warhoons were now close
upon us. Tars Tarkas and Xodar had discovered our absence
and were charging rapidly to our support. Everything pointed
The Gods of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: new eyes on modern life, because they have listened to one of
Chopin's nocturnes, or handled Greek things, or read the story of
the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was
like threads of fine gold, and whose mouth was as a pomegranate.
But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with
what has found expression. In words or in colours, in music or in
marble, behind the painted masks of an AEschylean play, or through
some Sicilian shepherds' pierced and jointed reeds, the man and his
message must have been revealed.
To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can
conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. But to Christ
|
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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: century artisan. Such curiosities did more to enrich their fortunate
owners than the signs of "Providence," "Good-faith," Grace of God,"
and "Decapitation of John the Baptist," which may still be seen in the
Rue Saint-Denis.
However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to admire the
cat, which a minute's attention sufficed to stamp on his memory. The
young man himself had his peculiarities. His cloak, folded after the
manner of an antique drapery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the
more remarkable in the midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white
silk stockings, on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had
just come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for at this early hour
|
