| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: appalled by this sudden fury. "Did you two talk only with your eyes?"
he spluttered savagely. She rose.
"I can't bear this," she said, trembling from head to foot. "I am
going."
They stood facing one another for a moment.
"Not you," he said, with conscious roughness, and began to walk up and
down the room. She remained very still with an air of listening
anxiously to her own heart-beats, then sank down on the chair slowly,
and sighed, as if giving up a task beyond her strength.
"You misunderstand everything I say," he began quietly, "but I prefer
to think that--just now--you are not accountable for your actions." He
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: any way but has gone on intensifying his own personality, and
producing his own individual work. At first none came to him.
That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not
change him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He is
an incomparable novelist. With the decorative arts it is not
different. The public clung with really pathetic tenacity to what
I believe were the direct traditions of the Great Exhibition of
international vulgarity, traditions that were so appalling that the
houses in which people lived were only fit for blind people to live
in. Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours came from
the dyer's hand, beautiful patterns from the artist's brain, and
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: "Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord
Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood
in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"
"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied,
touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
"Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.
One's own life--that is the important thing. As for the lives
of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan,
one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not
one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher aim.
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
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 Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: fulfilment of their impotent wishes, while, indignant at our supineness, his
spirit abandons the world. He is no more! Deceive me not; deceive not
thyself!
Brackenburg. No,--he lives! and the Spaniards, alas, are preparing for the
people, on whom they are about to trample, a terrible spectacle, in order to
crush for ever, by a violent blow, each heart that yet pants for freedom.
Clara. Proceed! Calmly pronounce my death-warrant also! Near and more
near I approach that blessed land, and already from those realms of peace,
I feel the breath of consolation say on.
Brackenburg. From casual words, dropped here and there by the guards, I
learned that secretly in the market-place they were preparing some terrible
Egmont |
