| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: do not know the type it cost Pygmalion to make the only statue that
ever walked--"
He fell into a reverie and remained, with fixed eyes, oblivious of all
about him, playing mechanically with his knife.
"See, he is talking to his own soul," said Porbus in a low voice.
The words acted like a spell on Nicolas Poussin, filling him with the
inexplicable curiosity of a true artist. The strange old man, with his
white eyes fixed in stupor, became to the wondering youth something
more than a man; he seemed a fantastic spirit inhabiting an unknown
sphere, and waking by its touch confused ideas within the soul. We can
no more define the moral phenomena of this species of fascination than
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: any guide on earth could be. It appeared that
even at sea a man could become the victim of evil
spirits. I felt on my face the breath of unknown
powers that shape our destinies.
Not to let the silence last too long I asked Mr.
Burns if he had written to his captain's wife. He
shook his head. He had written to nobody.
In a moment he became sombre. He never
thought of writing. It took him all his time to
watch incessantly the loading of the ship by a
rascally Chinese stevedore. In this Mr. Burns
The Shadow Line |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: smoke. At Cleveland, Emma, looking out of the car window, saw a
familiar figure pacing up and down the station platform. It was
that dapper and important little Irishman, O'Malley, buyer for
Gage & Fosdick, the greatest mail-order house in the
world--O'Malley, whose letter T. A. Buck had answered; O'Malley,
whose order meant thousands. He was on his way to New York, of
course.
In that moment Mrs. T. A. Buck faded into the background and Emma
McChesney rose up in her place. She snatched hat and coat and
furs, put them on as she went down the long aisle, swung down the
car steps, and flew down the platform to the unconscious
Emma McChesney & Co. |
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 Kenilworth by Walter Scott: worthy visitant was of greater extent than that in which they had
at first conversed, and had yet more the appearance of
dilapidation. Large oaken presses, filled with shelves of the
same wood, surrounded the room, and had, at one time, served for
the arrangement of a numerous collection of books, many of which
yet remained, but torn and defaced, covered with dust, deprived
of their costly clasps and bindings, and tossed together in heaps
upon the shelves, as things altogether disregarded, and abandoned
to the pleasure of every spoiler. The very presses themselves
seemed to have incurred the hostility of those enemies of
learning who had destroyed the volumes with which they had been
Kenilworth |
