| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: less his philosophic consciousness, at a standstill for quarter
of a century until he finishes an orchestral score. When Wagner
first sketched Night Falls On The Gods he was 35. When he
finished the score for the first Bayreuth festival in 1876 he had
turned 60. No wonder he had lost his old grip of it and left it
behind him. He even tampered with The Rhine Gold for the sake of
theatrical effect when stage-managing it, making Wotan pick up
and brandish a sword to give visible point to his sudden
inspiration as to the raising up of a hero. The sword had first
to be discovered by Fafnir among the Niblung treasures and thrown
away by him as useless. There is no sense in this device; and its
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity
was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.
Such a rapture--for by what other name could one call it?--made Lily
Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was nothing of
importance; something about Mrs Ramsay. It paled beside this "rapture,"
this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for nothing so
solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and miraculously raised
its burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly gift, and one would no
more disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the shaft of sunlight,
lying level across the floor.
That people should love like this, that Mr Bankes should feel this for
To the Lighthouse |
