| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: shimmering through faint drifts of silver mist. The hope of
finding that hue of distance and mystery embodied in a living
form, the old hope of discovering the Blue Flower rose again
in my heart. But it was only for a moment, for when I came
nearer I saw that the colour which had caught my eye came from
a multitude of closed gentians--the blossoms which never open
into perfection--growing so closely together that their
blended promise had seemed like a single flower.
So I harked back again, slanting across the meadow, to
find the road. But it had vanished. Wandering among the
alders and clumps of gray birches, here and there I found a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: that day comes, of great distinction. They are distinguished as it is
at carnival time, when their exuberant wit, repressed for the rest of
the year, finds a vent in more or less ingenious buffoonery.
"What times we live in! What an irrational central power which allows
such tremendous energies to run to waste! There are diplomatists in
Bohemia quite capable of overturning Russia's designs, if they but
felt the power of France at their backs. There are writers,
administrators, soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, every
kind of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the
Czar would buy Bohemia for a score of millions and set its population
down in Odessa--always supposing that they consented to leave the
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: himself to a handsome schoolmistress, it was his fancy, and he
could afford it. Moreover she was well connected, and had an
air. And what more natural than that he should stand at the
club-window and watch, when his young half-sister (that was to
be) drove by with John Lambert? So every afternoon he saw them
pass in a vehicle of lofty description, with two wretched
appendages in dark blue broadcloth, who sat with their backs
turned to their masters, kept their arms folded, and nearly
rolled off at every corner. Hope would have dreaded the close
neighborhood of those Irish ears; she would rather have ridden
even in an omnibus, could she and Philip have taken all the
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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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: doctor, even a distinguished one. I am certain that they shall
never take from me until the final day.
Yet I have not just gone ahead, ignoring the exact wording in the
original. Instead, with great care, I have, along with my
helpers, gone ahead and have kept literally to the original,
without the slightest deviation, wherever it appeared that a
passage was crucial. For instance, in John 6 Christ says: "Him
has God the Father set his seal upon (versiegelt)." It would be
more clear in German to say "Him has God the Father signified
(gezeiehent)" or even "God the Father means him." But rather than
doing violence to the original, I have done violence to the German
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