| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: refers to those which give expression to the face, and remarks:[16]
"Le createur n'a donc pas eu a se preoccuper ici des besoins de
la mecanique; il a pu, selon sa sagesse, ou--que l'on me pardonne
cette maniere de parler--par une divine fantaisie, mettre en
action tel ou tel muscle, un seul ou plusieurs muscles a la fois,
lorsqu'il a voulu que les signes caracteristiques des passions,
meme les plus fugaces, lussent ecrits passagerement sur la
face de l'homme. Ce langage de la physionomie une fois cree,
il lui a suffi, pour le rendre universel et immuable, de donner
a tout etre humain la faculte instinctive d'exprimer toujours
ses sendments par la contraction des memes muscles."
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: 4
So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled
round, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in,
brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or
drawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped,
wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already
furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left--a pair of
shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those
alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they
were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and
buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: matter, a perennial theme of conversation among Frenchmen, he simply
remarked:
"Gowns cost too much."
He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and went on:
"Yes, far too much. The woman you buy--and she is the least expensive
--takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself takes all
your time! Woman extinguishes every energy, every ambition. Napoleon
reduced her to what she should be. From that point of view, he really
was great. He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and
Louis XV.; at the same time he could love in secret."
We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England is wife, Marcas bore
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: "Augustine," he went on, "artists are generally little better than
beggars. They are too extravagant not to be always a bad sort. I
served the late Monsieur Joseph Vernet, the late Monsieur Lekain, and
the late Monsieur Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks
played on poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the
Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur Philidor! They
are a set of rascals; I know them well! They all have a gab and nice
manners. Ah, your Monsieur Sumer--, Somm----"
"De Sommervieux, papa."
"Well, well, de Sommervieux, well and good. He can never have been
half so sweet to you as Monsieur le Chevalier de Saint-Georges was to
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