| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: the daisies of a French light opera, if I could not hear the gentle
wit of a woman able to love and to charm, I could not endure the
terrible deep note on which Bertram comes in, saying to his son: '/Si
je la permets/!' when Robert had promised the princess he adores that
he will conquer with the arms she has bestowed on him.
"The hopes of the gambler cured by love, the love of a most beautiful
woman,--did you observe that magnificent Sicilian, with her hawk's eye
secure of her prey? (What interpreters that composer has found!) the
hopes of the man are mocked at by the hopes of hell in the tremendous
cry: '/A toi, Robert de Normandie/!'
"And are not you struck by the gloom and horror of those long-held
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
HESTER AND PEARL 217
into a tomb? -- and to help her to overcome the passion, once so
wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned
within the same tomb-like heart?
The Scarlet Letter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tanach: 1_Samuel 14: 26 And when the people were come unto the forest, behold a flow of honey; but no man put his hand to his mouth; for the people feared the oath.
1_Samuel 14: 27 But Jonathan heard not when his father charged the people with the oath; and he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand, and dipped it in the honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth; and his eyes brightened.
1_Samuel 14: 28 Then answered one of the people, and said: 'Thy father straitly charged the people with an oath, saying: Cursed be the man that eateth food this day; and the people are faint.'
1_Samuel 14: 29 Then said Jonathan: 'My father hath troubled the land; see, I pray you, how mine eyes are brightened, because I tasted a little of this honey.
1_Samuel 14: 30 How much more, if haply the people had eaten freely to-day of the spoil of their enemies which they found? had there not been then a much greater slaughter among the Philistines?'
1_Samuel 14: 31 And they smote of the Philistines that day from Michmas to Aijalon; and the people were very faint.
1_Samuel 14: 32 And the people flew upon the spoil, and took sheep, and oxen, and calves, and slew them on the ground; and the people did eat them with the blood.
1_Samuel 14: 33 Then they told Saul, saying: 'Behold, the people sin against the LORD, in that they eat with the blood.' And he said: 'Ye have dealt treacherously; roll a great stone unto me this day.'
1_Samuel 14: 34 And Saul said: 'Disperse yourselves among the people, and say unto them: Bring me hither every man his ox, and every man his sheep, and slay them here, and eat; and sin not against t 
The Tanach |
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 Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had,
in a sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he
should possess a faithful portrait of his idol. He went many times
past the house of the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or
twice, under a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching
creature that Madame Guillaume covered with her wing. For eight whole
months, devoted to his love and to his brush, he was lost to the sight
of his most intimate friends forgetting the world, the theatre,
poetry, music, and all his dearest habits. One morning Girodet broke
through all the barriers with which artists are familiar, and which
they know how to evade, went into his room, and woke him by asking,
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