| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: by that of others. Twice this scene had taken place before the eyes of
the countess, who said nothing. When the various pieces of Bichette,
placed here and there upon the embers, were sufficiently broiled, each
man satisfied his hunger with the gluttony that disgusts us when we
see it in animals.
"This is the first time I ever saw thirty infantrymen on one horse,"
cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.
It was the only jest made that night which proved the national
character.
Soon the great number of these poor soldiers wrapped themselves in
what they could find and lay down on planks, or whatever would keep
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: not crossed and interchanged with others. - Knowledge in most of
its branches, and in most affairs, is like music in an Italian
street, whereof those may partake who pay nothing. - But there is
no nation under heaven - and God is my record (before whose
tribunal I must one day come and give an account of this work) -
that I do not speak it vauntingly, - but there is no nation under
heaven abounding with more variety of learning, - where the
sciences may be more fitly woo'd, or more surely won, than here, -
where art is encouraged, and will so soon rise high, - where Nature
(take her altogether) has so little to answer for, - and, to close
all, where there is more wit and variety of character to feed the
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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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: third rate literary hacks for "librettos" to set to music: he
produced his own dramatic poems, thus giving dramatic integrity
to opera, and making symphony articulate. A Beethoven symphony
(except the articulate part of the ninth) expresses noble
feeling, but not thought: it has moods, but no ideas. Wagner
added thought and produced the music drama. Mozart's loftiest
opera, his Ring, so to speak, The Magic Flute, has a libretto
which, though none the worse for seeming, like The Rhine Gold,
the merest Christmas tomfoolery to shallow spectators, is the
product of a talent immeasurably inferior to Mozart's own.
The libretto of Don Giovanni is coarse and trivial: its
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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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: substance, a being without life, or life without action. She was under
the spell of that timid curiosity which impels women to seek perilous
excitement, to gaze at chained tigers and boa-constrictors, shuddering
all the while because the barriers between them are so weak. Although
the little old man's back was bent like a day-laborer's, it was easy
to see that he must formerly have been of medium height. His excessive
thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved that he had always been
of slight build. He wore black silk breeches which hung about his
fleshless thighs in folds, like a lowered veil. An anatomist would
instinctively have recognized the symptoms of consumption in its
advanced stages, at sight of the tiny legs which served to support
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