| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: Then they made the discovery that they both lived in the
same flat, Marcus occupying a room on the floor above
McTeague. On different occasions McTeague had treated
Marcus for an ulcerated tooth and had refused to accept
payment. Soon it came to be an understood thing between
them. They were "pals."
McTeague, listening, heard Marcus go up-stairs to his room
above. In a few minutes his door opened again. McTeague
knew that he had come out into the hall and was leaning over
the banisters.
"Oh, Mac!" he called. McTeague came to his door.
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: Even during the marches over frozen swamps and
mountains, during the terrible winter in Sitka when
he had become familiar with illness and even with
hunger, his ardor had grown, as well as his deter-
mination to force Russia into the front rank of
Commercial Europe. The United States he barely
considered. He respected the new country for
the independent spirit and military genius that
had routed so powerful a nation as Great Britain,
but he thought of her only as a new and tentative
civilization on the far shores of the Atlantic. After
Rezanov |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre
which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride,
like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,--
due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her
hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black
reflections round the delicate transparent ears and defined the
outlines of a blue-veined throat. These luxuriant locks brought into
strong relief the dazzling eyes and the scarlet lips of a well-arched
mouth. The bodice of the country set off the lines of a figure that
swayed as easily as a branch of willow. She was not the Virgin of
Italy, but the Virgin of Spain, of Murillo, the only artist daring
|
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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: with what it really was if seen in Three, and could hardly refrain
from making my comparisons aloud. I neglected my clients
and my own business to give myself to the contemplation
of the mysteries which I had once beheld, yet which I could impart
to no one, and found daily more difficult to reproduce even before
my own mental vision.
One day, about eleven months after my return from Spaceland,
I tried to see a Cube with my eye closed, but failed;
and though I succeeded afterwards, I was not then quite certain
(nor have I been ever afterwards) that I had exactly realized
the original. This made me more melancholy than before,
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
