| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: Not even Tolstoy, in The Kreutzer Sonata, has said all that we suspect
about it. When it persists beyond the period at which it ceases to be
necessary to the child's welfare, it is apt to be morbid; and we are
probably wrong to inculcate its deliberate cultivation. The natural
course is for the parents and children to cast off the specific
parental and filial relation when they are no longer necessary to one
another. The child does this readily enough to form fresh ties,
closer and more fascinating. Parents are not always excluded from
such compensations: it happens sometimes that when the children go
out at the door the lover comes in at the window. Indeed it happens
now oftener than it used to, because people remain much longer in the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: according to the etiquette of courts:--
"It is now our honorable duty to inform you... as to the reason of your
having been summoned hither... Our master, the King, augustly desires that
you become his son-in-law;... and it is his wish and command that you shall
wed this very day... the August Princess, his maiden-daughter... We shall
soon conduct you to the presence-chamber... where His Augustness even now
is waiting to receive you... But it will be necessary that we first invest
you... with the appropriate garments of ceremony." [2]
Having thus spoken, the attendants rose together, and proceeded to an
alcove containing a great chest of gold lacquer. They opened the chest, and
took from it various roes and girdles of rich material, and a kamuri, or
Kwaidan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: Harford. It may be that I am too bound to him already, who,
robbing me, yet left me richer, so that in the mire of my life I
found the pearl of price, or what I thought would be so.
GERALD. I don't understand you now.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Men don't understand what mothers are. I am no
different from other women except in the wrong done me and the
wrong I did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace. And
yet, to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture you I had to
wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to
fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless,
wants our children from us. Gerald, when you were naked I clothed
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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 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: Commissioner withdrew quietly, unnoticed, as if already forgotten.
He had his own crusading instincts. This affair, which, in one way
or another, disgusted Chief Inspector Heat, seemed to him a
providentially given starting-point for a crusade. He had it much
at heart to begin. He walked slowly home, meditating that
enterprise on the way, and thinking over Mr Verloc's psychology in
a composite mood of repugnance and satisfaction. He walked all the
way home. Finding the drawing-room dark, he went upstairs, and
spent some time between the bedroom and the dressing-room, changing
his clothes, going to and fro with the air of a thoughtful
somnambulist. But he shook it off before going out again to join
The Secret Agent |
