| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: that I all but broke out with the question, and what kept it back
was but a kind of instinctive recoil (lest it should be a mistake),
from the last violence of self-exposure. She was such a subtle
old witch that one could never tell where one stood with her.
You may imagine whether it cleared up the puzzle when,
just after she had said she would think of my proposal and without
any formal transition, she drew out of her pocket with an
embarrassed hand a small object wrapped in crumpled white paper.
She held it there a moment and then she asked, "Do you know
much about curiosities?"
"About curiosities?"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: Peter Gerasimovitch, approaching Nekhludoff, to whom the foreman
was relating something. "Why, we've got her to Siberia."
"What are you saying?" exclaimed Nekhludoff. This time he did not
notice the teacher's familiarity.
"Why, we did not put in our answer 'Guilty, but without intent of
causing death.' The secretary just told me the public prosecutor
is for condemning her to 15 years' penal servitude."
"Well, but it was decided so," said the foreman.
Peter Gerasimovitch began to dispute this, saying that since she
did not take the money it followed naturally that she could not
have had any intention of committing murder.
Resurrection |
