| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: its rank grasses, its shuttered windows, its rusty iron-work, its
locked doors, its deserted rooms, suddenly rose before me in fantastic
vividness. I tried to get into the mysterious dwelling to search out
the heart of this solemn story, this drama which had killed three
persons.
"Rosalie became in my eyes the most interesting being in Vendome. As I
studied her, I detected signs of an inmost thought, in spite of the
blooming health that glowed in her dimpled face. There was in her soul
some element of ruth or of hope; her manner suggested a secret, like
the expression of devout souls who pray in excess, or of a girl who
has killed her child and for ever hears its last cry. Nevertheless,
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: were still the admiration of all who saw her. On the present
occasion, abandoned entirely to a remembrance which evoked
all the past in her heart, she looked almost as beautiful as
in the days of her youth, when her palace was open to the
visits of the Duke of Buckingham's father, then a young and
impassioned man, as well as an unfortunate prince, who lived
for her alone, and died with her name upon his lips. Anne of
Austria fixed upon Buckingham a look so tender in its
expression, that it denoted, not alone the indulgence of
maternal affection, but a gentleness of expression like the
coquetry of a woman who loves.
Ten Years Later |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: verses of which Cumnor and I had after infinite conjecture
established solidly enough the date--that she was even then,
as a girl of twenty, on the foreign side of the sea.
There was an implication in the poem (I hope not just for the phrase)
that he had come back for her sake. We had no real light upon her
circumstances at that moment, any more than we had upon her origin,
which we believed to be of the sort usually spoken of as modest.
Cumnor had a theory that she had been a governess in some family
in which the poet visited and that, in consequence of her position,
there was from the first something unavowed, or rather something
positively clandestine, in their relations. I on the other hand
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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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Here is the sluice with the race running under--
Marvellous places, though handy to home!
Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.
Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.
Home for the Indies and home from the ocean,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
