| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: words he had spoken by the mouth of Masilo to the Black One who was
dead, but also all the cattle of the Halakazi should be his, and he
would make him great in the land. I answered that all this was as the
king willed. I had but done my duty by the king and worked so that,
whatever befell, a proud chief should be weakened and a foe should be
attacked at no cost to the king, in such fashion also that perhaps it
might come about that the king would shortly have the Lily at his
side.
Then I sat down to wait what might befall.
Now it is, my father, that the white men come into my story, whom we
named the Amaboona, but you call the Boers. Ou! I think ill of those
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is
no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when
talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences
was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding
the locality. In our sensible age - since the Dunwich horror of
1928 was hushed up by those who had the town's and the world's
welfare at heart - people shun it without knowing exactly why.
Perhaps one reason - though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers
- is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone
far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England
backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with
The Dunwich Horror |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: household now, for the harness business shrank and shrank.
"I don't see how you can expect me to keep house decently on
this!" Babe would say contemptuously. Babe's nose, always a
little inclined to sharpness, had whittled down to a point of
late. "If you knew what Ben gives Eva."
"It's the best I can do, Sis. Business is something rotten."
"Ben says if you had the least bit of----" Ben was Eva's
husband, and quotable, as are all successful men.
"I don't care what Ben says," shouted Jo, goaded into rage.
"I'm sick of your everlasting Ben. Go and get a Ben of your
own, why don't you, if you're so stuck on the way he does
One Basket |
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 Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: woman and marriage!"
*The Domostroy is a matrimonial code of the days of Ivan the
Terrible.
"Yes, gentlemen," said the lawyer, "we are still a long way from
the European ideas upon marriage. First, the rights of woman,
then free marriage, then divorce, as a question not yet solved."
. . .
"The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not
understand," rejoined the lady, "is that only love consecrates
marriage, and that the real marriage is that which is consecrated
by love."
The Kreutzer Sonata |
