| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: facility she had thrown off her moral duties as a mother, I
concluded rightly, though unconsciously, that she would throw off
as easily her conjugal duties, feeling all the surer of this
because she was in perfect health, as was shown by the fact that,
in spite of the prohibition of the dear doctors, she nursed her
following children, and even very well."
"I see that you have no love for the doctors," said I, having
noticed Posdnicheff's extraordinarily spiteful expression of face
and tone of voice whenever he spoke of them.
"It is not a question of loving them or of not loving them. They
have ruined my life, as they have ruined the lives of thousands
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: flirtatous and as probably not hating it at all. But now I knew she
was right, for as I saw Tom coming toward me after laying fatther's
cigar on the piano, I felt that I COULD NOT BEAR IT.
And this I must say, here and now. I do not like kissing. Even
then, in that first embrase of to, I was worried because I could
smell the varnish burning on the Piano. I therfore permited but one
salute on the cheek and no more before removing the cigar, which
had burned a large spot.
"Look here," he said, in a stern manner, "are we engaged or aren't
we? Because I'd like to know."
"If you are to demonstrative, no!" I replied, firmly.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: apt to do: spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been
in hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid
that grown up people would grow tired of looking for them and give
up the search; and the life of a child being no more than an April
day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus.
It is the imaginative quality of Christ's own nature that makes him
this palpitating centre of romance. The strange figures of poetic
drama and ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of
his own imagination entirely did Jesus of Nazareth create himself.
The cry of Isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the
song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon - no
|
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: some of those Barnsley men proved but the other day they had become
already:
A very gentle perfect knight,
Very unfaithful was chivalry to its ideal--as all men are to all
ideals. But bear in mind, that if the horse was the symbol of the
ruling caste, it was not at first its only strength. Unless that
caste had had at first spiritual, as well as physical force on its
side, it would have been soon destroyed--nay, it would have
destroyed itself--by internecine civil war. And we must believe
that those Franks, Goths, Lombards, and Burgunds, who in the early
Middle Age leaped on the backs (to use Mr. Carlyle's expression) of
|
