| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: of Birotteau, wrapped his filthy dressing-gown around him, laid down
his pipe, and drew together the curtains of the bed with a haste which
made even the innocent perfumer suspect his morals.
"Sit down, monsieur," said the make-believe banker.
Claparon, without his wig, his head wrapped up in a bandanna
handkerchief twisted awry, seemed all the more hideous to Birotteau
because, when the dressing-gown gaped open, he saw an undershirt of
knitted wool, once white, but now yellowed by wear indefinitely
prolonged.
"Will you breakfast with me?" said Claparon, recollecting the
perfumer's ball, and thinking to make him a return and also to put him
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: Lady Otway, who was Mr. Hilbery's sister, knew quite well that, in
private, the Hilberys called Sir Francis "that old Turk," and though
she did not follow the drift of Mrs. Hilbery's remarks, she knew what
prompted them.
"But if you can give way to your husband," she said, speaking to
Katharine, as if there were a separate understanding between them, "a
happy marriage is the happiest thing in the world."
"Yes," said Katharine, "but--" She did not mean to finish her
sentence, she merely wished to induce her mother and her aunt to go on
talking about marriage, for she was in the mood to feel that other
people could help her if they would. She went on knitting, but her
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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 Georgics by Virgil: And lupin sour, whose brittle stalks arise,
A hurtling forest. For the plain is parched
By flax-crop, parched by oats, by poppies parched
In Lethe-slumber drenched. Nathless by change
The travailing earth is lightened, but stint not
With refuse rich to soak the thirsty soil,
And shower foul ashes o'er the exhausted fields.
Thus by rotation like repose is gained,
Nor earth meanwhile uneared and thankless left.
Oft, too, 'twill boot to fire the naked fields,
And the light stubble burn with crackling flames;
Georgics |
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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: the case of others. So we begin gradually to see that things are
not black, but have their strange compensations; and when they draw
towards their worst, the idea of death is like a bed to lie on. I
should bear false witness if I did not declare life happy. And
your wonderful statement that happiness tends to die out and misery
to continue, which was what put me on the track of your frame of
mind, is diagnostic of the happy man raging over the misery of
others; it could never be written by the man who had tried what
unhappiness was like. And at any rate, it was a slip of the pen:
the ugliest word that science has to declare is a reserved
indifference to happiness and misery in the individual; it declares
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