| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: was under way. And farther away still, far off there beyond the
fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the globe, the
shoulder of the earth, he knew were other ranches, and beyond
these others, and beyond these still others, the immensities
multiplying to infinity.
Everywhere throughout the great San Joaquin, unseen and unheard,
a thousand ploughs up-stirred the land, tens of thousands of
shears clutched deep into the warm, moist soil.
It was the long stroking caress, vigorous, male, powerful, for
which the Earth seemed panting. The heroic embrace of a
multitude of iron hands, gripping deep into the brown, warm flesh
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: thoughts expressed in the statue; but the Initiates in the secrets of
art are of the same intellect as the sculptor; they see in his work
the whole universe of his thought. Such persons are in themselves the
principles of art; they bear within them a mirror which reflects
nature in her slightest manifestations. Well! so it is with me; I have
within me a mirror before which the moral nature, with its causes and
effects, appears and is reflected. Entering thus into the
consciousness of others I am able to divine both the future and the
past. How? do you still ask how? Imagine that the marble statue is the
body of a man, a piece of statuary in which we see the emotion,
sentiment, passion, vice or crime, virtue or repentance which the
Seraphita |
