| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Stooping over the dead man with distaste, she unbuttoned the
remaining buttons of his jacket and systematically began rifling
his pockets.
"Dear God," she whispered, pulling out a bulging wallet, wrapped
about with a rag. "Melanie--Melly, I think it's full of money!"
Melanie said nothing but abruptly sat down on the floor and leaned
back against the wall.
"You look," she said shakily. "I'm feeling a little weak."
Scarlett tore off the rag and with trembling hands opened the
leather folds.
"Look, Melly--just look!"
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox
was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the
sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness,
or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure
where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little
action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that
therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day
to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I
was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I
allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.
There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.
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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 The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: So the question of the tonic was finally abandoned, and the
Coroner proceeded with his task. Having elicited from Dorcas how
she had been awakened by the violent ringing of her mistress's
bell, and had subsequently roused the household, he passed to the
subject of the quarrel on the preceding afternoon.
Dorcas's evidence on this point was substantially what Poirot and
I had already heard, so I will not repeat it here.
The next witness was Mary Cavendish. She stood very upright, and
spoke in a low, clear, and perfectly composed voice. In answer
to the Coroner's question, she told how, her alarm clock having
aroused her at 4.30 as usual, she was dressing, when she was
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
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 Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: that I was never one of those wonderful fellows that would go
afloat in a wash-tub for the sake of the fun, and if I may pride
myself upon my consistency, it was ever just the same with my
writing. Some men, I have heard, write in railway carriages, and
could do it, perhaps, sitting crossed-legged on a clothes-line;
but I must confess that my sybaritic disposition will not consent
to write without something at least resembling a chair. Line by
line, rather than page by page, was the growth of "Almayer's
Folly."
And so it happened that I very nearly lost the MS., advanced now
to the first words of the ninth chapter, in the Friedrichstrasse
A Personal Record |
