| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: from her grief, brings a feeling of earth-born passions into this hymn
of thanksgiving. This, again, is a touch of genius.
"Ay, sing!" exclaimed the Duchess, as she listened to the last stanza
with the same gloomy enthusiasm as the singers threw into it. "Sing!
You are free!"
The words were spoken in a voice that startled the physician. To
divert Massimilla from her bitter reflections, while the excitement of
recalling la Tinti was at its height, he engaged her in one of the
arguments in which the French excel.
"Madame," said he, "in explaining this grand work--which I shall come
to hear again to-morrow with a fuller comprehension, thanks to you, of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: is the mask that each one of them wears, not the reality that lies
behind the mask. It is a humiliating confession, but we are all of
us made out of the same stuff. In Falstaff there is something of
Hamlet, in Hamlet there is not a little of Falstaff. The fat
knight has his moods of melancholy, and the young prince his
moments of coarse humour. Where we differ from each other is
purely in accidentals: in dress, manner, tone of voice, religious
opinions, personal appearance, tricks of habit and the like. The
more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis
disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal
thing called human nature. Indeed, as any one who has ever worked
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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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: truth."
"Be it so then - you may come out. But remember, disobey me again,
and into a worse place still you go."
"I beg pardon ma'am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I
never had the honour of setting eyes upon you till I came to these
ugly quarters."
"Never saw me? Who said to you, Those that will be foul, foul they
will be?"
Grimes looked up; and Tom looked up too; for the voice was that of
the Irishwoman who met them the day that they went out together to
Harthover. "I gave you your warning then: but you gave it
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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 At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: of decadent workmanship carrying the story of the region much
beyond the period of the Pliocene map whence we derived our last
general glimpse of the prehuman world. This was the last place
we examined in detail, since what we found there gave us a fresh
immediate objective.
Certainly, we were in one of the strangest,
weirdest, and most terrible of all the corners of earth’s globe.
Of all existing lands, it was infinitely the most ancient. The
conviction grew upon us that this hideous upland must indeed be
the fabled nightmare plateau of Leng which even the mad author
of the Necronomicon was reluctant to discuss. The great mountain
At the Mountains of Madness |
