| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: took her into the company as a "countess" -- the name they used
for the minor actresses who usually came on to the stage in
crowds or in dumb parts. To begin with Masha used to play
maid-servants and pages, but when Madame Beobahtov, the flower of
Limonadov's company, eloped, they made her _ingenue_. She acted
badly, lisped, and was nervous. She soon grew used to it,
however, and began to be liked by the audience. Fenogenov was
much displeased.
"To call her an actress!" he used to say. "She has no figure, no
deportment, nothing whatever but silliness."
In one provincial town the company acted Schiller's " Robbers."
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: "So for twenty years altogether--counting nine years in England--
I have been going on; and there is still something in everything I do
that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort.
Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always
I fall short of the things I dream. The human shape I can get now,
almost with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and strong;
but often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,--painful things,
that I dare not shape too freely. But it is in the subtle grafting
and reshaping one must needs do to the brain that my trouble lies.
The intelligence is often oddly low, with unaccountable blank ends,
unexpected gaps. And least satisfactory of all is something that I
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: souls. Whence they came we cannot tell, nor why; perhaps from
mere hunting after food, and love of wandering and being
independent and alone. Perhaps they came into that icy land for
fear of stronger and cleverer people than themselves; for we have
no proof, my child, none at all, that they were the first men that
trod this earth. But be that as it may, they came; and so cunning
were these savage men, and so brave likewise, though they had no
iron among them, only flint and sharpened bones, yet they
contrived to kill and eat the mammoths, and the giant oxen, and
the wild horses, and the reindeer, and to hold their own against
the hyaenas, and tigers, and bears, simply because they had wits,
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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 Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: to the sound of earth revolving on its axis. It is not sleep,
still less is it waking; it is a middle state where naught prevails
save a dreamy consciousness of well-being. We ourselves, when
comfortably in bed, enjoy, just before we fall asleep, a few
moments of bliss, the prelude to cessation of thought and its train
of worries; and those moments are among the sweetest in our lives.
The Clotho seems to know similar moments and to make the most of
them.
If I push open the door of the cabin, invariably I find the Spider
lying motionless, as though in endless meditation. It needs the
teasing of a straw to rouse her from her apathy. It needs the
The Life of the Spider |
