| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: and slowly, and yet dexterously, his blind assailant is feeling and
shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him; and then
the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger
begins packing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where he
sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is
lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated to a pulp long
before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom.
Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a
knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him,
motionless and blest. (19)
There; we must come away now, for the tide is over our ankles; but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: "Eighty-two."
"How long have you been blind?"
"For very nearly fifty years," he said, and there was that in his tone
which told me that his regret was for something more than his lost
sight, for great power of which he had been robbed.
"Then why do they call you 'the Doge'?" I asked.
"Oh, it is a joke. I am a Venetian noble, and I might have been a doge
like any one else."
"What is your name?"
"Here, in Paris, I am Pere Canet," he said. "It was the only way of
spelling my name on the register. But in Italy I am Marco Facino Cane,
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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: near them, like a light-house. They could see the steam of the
factory floating low, seeking some outlet between cloud and
water. As they drifted past a wharf, the great black piles of
coal hung high and gloomy; then a stray sunbeam brought out
their peacock colors; then came the fog again, driving
hurriedly by, as if impatient to go somewhere and enraged at
the obstacle. It seemed to have a vast inorganic life of its
own, a volition and a whim. It drew itself across the horizon
like a curtain; then advanced in trampling armies up the bay;
then marched in masses northward; then suddenly grew thin, and
showed great spaces of sunlight; then drifted across the low
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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 Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood
by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came
a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as
of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly
disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless
legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions
timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It
was uncanny and unnatural - too much, thought Dr Houghton, like
the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response
to the urgent call.
Towards one o'clock Old Whateley gained
The Dunwich Horror |
