| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: singer as her friend and companion.
Strange yet true! all these illusions became realities, and spread
even to the actual regions of the heart; Madame Soudry reigned
supreme, in a way, over her husband.
The gendarme, required to love a woman ten years older than himself
who kept the management of her fortune in her own hands, behaved to
her in the spirit of the ideas she had ended by adopting about her
beauty. But sometimes, when persons envied him or talked to him of his
happiness, he wished they were in his place, for, to hide his
peccadilloes, he was forced to take as many precautions as the husband
of a young and adoring wife; and it was not until very recently that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame. It is but a
maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength
of wine. I have tried to be a sober worker all my life--all my
two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive
horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, but also from
artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls on each side
of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling a little
battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from the mere
daily difficulties of the march, I ask myself whether I have kept
always, always faithful to that sobriety where in there is power
and truth and peace.
A Personal Record |
