| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: only that he shouldn't, as an anticlimax, have been taken sleeping
so sound as not to be able to win back by an effort of thought the
lost stuff of consciousness. He declared to himself at moments
that he would either win it back or have done with consciousness
for ever; he made this idea his one motive in fine, made it so much
his passion that none other, to compare with it, seemed ever to
have touched him. The lost stuff of consciousness became thus for
him as a strayed or stolen child to an unappeasable father; he
hunted it up and down very much as if he were knocking at doors and
enquiring of the police. This was the spirit in which, inevitably,
he set himself to travel; he started on a journey that was to be as
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: did Tientietnikov take it into his head that, when conversing with his
superiors, Lienitsin became, of the moment, a stick of luscious
sweetmeat, but that, when conversing with his inferiors, he
approximated more to a vinegar cruet. Certain it is that, like all
petty-minded individuals, Lienitsin made a note of any one who failed
to offer him a greeting on festival days, and that he revenged himself
upon any one whose visiting-card had not been handed to his butler.
Eventually the youth's aversion almost attained the point of hysteria;
until he felt that, come what might, he MUST insult the fellow in
some fashion. To that task he applied himself con amore; and so
thoroughly that he met with complete success. That is to say, he
Dead Souls |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unskilful in the world's false forgeries,
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore, I'll lie with love, and love with me,
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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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
Prufrock/Other Observations |
