| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: His wife Stepanida, his children and grandchildren came out into
the street to look at them. By degrees a crowd collected. The
Lytchkovs, father and son, both men with swollen faces and
entirely beardless, came up bareheaded. Kozov, a tall, thin old
man with a long, narrow beard, came up leaning on a stick with a
crook handle: he kept winking with his crafty eyes and smiling
ironically as though he knew something.
"It's only that they are white; what is there in them?" he said.
"Put mine on oats, and they will be just as sleek. They ought to
be in a plough and with a whip, too. . . ."
The coachman simply looked at him with disdain, but did not utter
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: gold pieces in a Jew's pocket. But that was not the worst of it. Korzh
had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have chanced
to see. My grandfather's aunt used to say--and you know that it is
easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call any one else a
beauty--that this Cossack maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as
the pinkest poppy when, bathed in God's dew, it unfolds its petals,
and coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were evenly arched
over her bright eyes like black cords, such as our maidens buy
nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, off the Moscow pedlars who
visit the villages with their baskets; that her little mouth, at sight
of which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to warble the
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
