| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: with one eye concealed by the brim of his wide hat. Mimmy, not by
nature hospitable, tries to drive him away; but the Wanderer
announces himself as a wise man, who can tell his host, in
emergency, what it most concerns him to know. Mimmy, taking this
offer in high dudgeon, because it implies that his visitor's wits
are better than his own, offers to tell the wise one something
that HE does not know: to wit, the way to the door. The
imperturbable Wanderer's reply is to sit down and challenge the
dwarf to a trial of wit. He wagers his head against Mimmy's that
he will answer any three questions the dwarf can put to him.
Now here were Mimmy's opportunity, had he only the wit to ask
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: 'It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud, 1141
Bud and be blastod in a breathing-while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: 1144
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.
'It shall be sparing and too full of riot,
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; 1148
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: for your young lady, she is all there; yes, sir, you can do low
life, I believe. The prison was excellent; it was of that nature
of touch that I sometimes achingly miss from your former work; with
some of the grime, that is, and some of the emphasis of skeleton
there is in nature. I pray you to take grime in a good sense; it
need not be ignoble: dirt may have dignity; in nature it usually
has; and your prison was imposing.
And now to the main point: why do we not see you? Do not fail us.
Make an alarming sacrifice, and let us see 'Henry James's chair'
properly occupied. I never sit in it myself (though it was my
grandfather's); it has been consecrated to guests by your approval,
|
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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging
within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks
out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the
bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have
already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed
classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions
must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its
slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised
himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty
bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to
The Communist Manifesto |
