| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: for the Highland character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty
of the task, led him to take up at forty-one the study of Gaelic;
in which he made some shadow of progress, but not much: the
fastnesses of that elusive speech retaining to the last their
independence. At the house of his friend Mrs. Blackburn, who plays
the part of a Highland lady as to the manner born, he learned the
delightful custom of kitchen dances, which became the rule at his
own house and brought him into yet nearer contact with his
neighbours. And thus at forty-two, he began to learn the reel; a
study, to which he brought his usual smiling earnestness; and the
steps, diagrammatically represented by his own hand, are before me
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: not often captured by the Epeirae. The net shakes violently, seems
bound to break its moorings.
The Spider rushes from her leafy villa, runs boldly up to the
giantess, flings a single bundle of ropes at her and, without
further precautions, grips her with her legs, tries to subdue her
and then digs her fangs into the Dragon-fly's back. The bite is
prolonged in such a way as to astonish me. This is not the
perfunctory kiss with which I am already familiar; it is a deep,
determined wound. After striking her blow, the Spider retires to a
certain distance and waits for her poison to take effect.
I at once remove the Dragon-fly. She is dead, really and truly
The Life of the Spider |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: 'Lo, what a fiend is here!' said he:
'One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.'
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,
And burned him in a holy place
Where many had been burned before;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion's shore?
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
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 The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: spirits.
As the parson has ever gone band in hand with the landlord,
so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist
tinge.
Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against
marriage,
against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these,
charity and
poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life
and
The Communist Manifesto |
