| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: rubbed his eyes, and finally turned his stupid head in the
direction whither his little friends were eagerly pointing.
No sooner did he set eyes on the stranger, than, leaping on his
feet, and seizing his walking stick, he strode a mile or two to
meet him; all the while brandishing the sturdy pine tree, so
that it whistled through the air.
"Who are you?" thundered the Giant. "And what do you want in
my dominions?"
There was one strange thing about Antaeus, of which I have not
yet told you, lest, hearing of so many wonders all in a lump,
you might not believe much more than half of them. You are to
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh
the mightiest of all dragons: "All the values of things--glitter on me.
All values have already been created, and all created values--do I
represent. Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more. Thus speaketh the
dragon.
My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why
sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?
To create new values--that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to
create itself freedom for new creating--that can the might of the lion do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my
brethren, there is need of the lion.
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: stone, and interest from a gold-mine; and his office was besieged
in consequence by all that numerous class of persons who have
still some reputation to lose, and find themselves upon the point
of losing it; by those who have made undesirable acquaintances,
who have mislaid a compromising correspondence, or who are
blackmailed by their own butlers. In private life Michael was a
man of pleasure; but it was thought his dire experience at the
office had gone far to sober him, and it was known that (in the
matter of investments) he preferred the solid to the brilliant.
What was yet more to the purpose, he had been all his life a
consistent scoffer at the Finsbury tontine.
|
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 Odyssey by Homer: overthrow,' and when the winds toss Odysseus about, their
sport must be called 'the horrid tennis.'
In the age of Anne, 'dignity' and 'correctness' had to be
given to Homer, and Pope gave them by aid of his dazzling
rhetoric, his antitheses, his nettete, his command of every
conventional and favourite artifice. Without Chapman's
conceits, Homer's poems would hardly have been what the
Elizabethans took for poetry; without Pope's smoothness,
and Pope's points, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed
rude, and harsh in the age of Anne. These great
translations must always live as English poems. As
The Odyssey |
