Today's Stichomancy for Stanley Kubrick
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: Many a sketch is dedicated to you. I do look forward to your criticisms,
which, to my shame and glory, are always grand appreciations.
It is a lovely joke, that. Au revoir."
This was the end of the first phase of Paul's love affair.
He was now about twenty-three years old, and, though still virgin,
the sex instinct that Miriam had over-refined for so long now
grew particularly strong. Often, as he talked to Clara Dawes,
came that thickening and quickening of his blood, that peculiar
concentration in the breast, as if something were alive there,
a new self or a new centre of consciousness, warning him that
sooner or later he would have to ask one woman or another. But he
 Sons and Lovers |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: few years longer in Mademoiselle Gamard's house he would learn to
understand her better and acknowledge the real value of her excellent
nature."
Birotteau left the room confounded. In the direful necessity of
consulting no one, he now judged Mademoiselle Gamard as he would
himself, and the poor man fancied that if he left her house for a few
days he might extinguish, for want of fuel, the dislike the old maid
felt for him. He accordingly resolved to spend, as he formerly did, a
week or so at a country-house where Madame de Listomere passed her
autumns, a season when the sky is usually pure and tender in Touraine.
Poor man! in so doing he did the thing that was most desired by his
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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 Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: fair complexions, mild, timid, and gentle; but it
had been tempered, and, as it were, hardened, by
the circumstances of her education. Accustomed
to see the will of all, even of Cedric himself, (sufficiently
arbitrary with others,) give way before her
wishes, she had acquired that sort of courage and
self-confidence which arises from the habitual and
constant deference of the circle in which we move.
She could scarce conceive the possibility of her
will being opposed, far less that of its being treated
with total disregard.
 Ivanhoe |
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 Octopus by Frank Norris: year. The farmer's profits were the object of attack from a
score of different quarters. It was a flock of vultures
descending upon a common prey--the commission merchant, the
elevator combine, the mixing-house ring, the banks, the warehouse
men, the labouring man, and, above all, the railroad. Steadily
the Liverpool buyers cut and cut and cut. Everything, every
element of the world's markets, tended to force down the price to
the lowest possible figure at which it could be profitably
farmed. Now it was down to eighty-seven. It was at that figure
the crop had sold that year; and to think that the Governor had
seen wheat at two dollars and five cents in the year of the
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