| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: its being Edward's face. She returned it almost instantly,
acknowledging the likeness.
"I have never been able," continued Lucy, "to give
him my picture in return, which I am very much vexed at,
for he has been always so anxious to get it! But I am
determined to set for it the very first opportunity."
"You are quite in the right," replied Elinor calmly.
They then proceeded a few paces in silence. Lucy spoke first.
"I am sure," said she, "I have no doubt in the world
of your faithfully keeping this secret, because you must
know of what importance it is to us, not to have it reach
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: everything. When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to
us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our
desires towards pleasures, and seek not merely for a 'month or
twain to feed on honeycomb,' but for all our years to taste no
other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be starving
the soul.
I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most
beautiful personalities I have ever known: a woman, whose sympathy
and noble kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my
imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has
really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden
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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 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: the face of the hidden doll. Annie rushed up, uttered a loud wail,
and sat down to weep a dirge. Paul remained quite still.
"You couldn't tell it was there, mother; you couldn't tell it
was there," he repeated over and over. So long as Annie wept for
the doll he sat helpless with misery. Her grief wore itself out.
She forgave her brother--he was so much upset. But a day or two
afterwards she was shocked.
"Let's make a sacrifice of Arabella," he said. "Let's burn her."
She was horrified, yet rather fascinated. She wanted to see
what the boy would do. He made an altar of bricks, pulled some of
the shavings out of Arabella's body, put the waxen fragments into
Sons and Lovers |
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: varnish of French outside civilisation, which the years 1807-13
rubbed off them again with a brush of iron--they were yet Germans at
heart; and that German instinct for the unseen--call it enthusiasm,
mysticism, what you will, you cannot make it anything but a human
fact, and a most powerful, and (as I hold) most blessed fact--that
instinct for the unseen, I say, which gives peculiar value to German
philosophy, poetry, art, religion, and above all to German family
life, and which is just the complement needed to prevent our English
common-sense, matter-of-fact Lockism from degenerating into
materialism--that was only lying hidden, but not dead, in the German
spirit.
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