| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: it in that way--when that's been the worst of my
punishment. My God! what could I do--wasn't I powerless? You were
singled out as a sacrifice: any word I might have said would have
been turned against you---"
"I have told you I don't blame you; all I ask you to understand
is that, after the use Bertha chose to make of me--after all that
her behaviour has since implied--it's impossible that you and I
should meet."
He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. "Is
it--need it be? Mightn't there be circumstances---?" he checked
himself, slashing at the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: slightly in his clumsy hand as Polly leapt straight up from
Bingo's back, trusting to her first calculation. Her forehead
struck the edge of the hoop. She clutched wildly at the air.
Bingo galloped on, and she fell to the ground, striking her head
against the iron-bound stake at the edge of the ring.
Everything stopped. There was a gasp of horror; the musicians
dropped their instruments; Bingo halted and looked back uneasily;
she lay unconscious and seemingly lifeless.
A great cry went up in the tent. Panic- stricken, men, women and
children began to clamber down from their seats, while others
nearest the ground attempted to jump into the ring. Barker,
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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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: (but you remember her face,) and so affectedly sentimental, that I,
sentimental as I was then, was sick of hearing her talk. Her
hallucination was so monstrous, and gave me such a shock of
desperate alarm, that I spoke, on the impulse of the moment, with
great energy, without regarding how her feelings might be wounded.
"`You mistake!' I exclaimed. `I didn't mean that,--I didn't
understand you. Don't talk to me that way,--don't look at me in
that way, Miss Ringtop! We were never meant for each other--I
wasn't----You're so much older--I mean different. It can't be--no,
it can never be! Let us go back to the house: the night is cold.'
"I rose hastily to my feet. She murmured something,--what, I did
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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 The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest.
Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into
the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct
from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman,
and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact,
is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is
of great anthropological interest:
. . . Cum Iunone iocos et 'maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus', dixisse, 'voluptas.'
Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
The Waste Land |
