| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: wife sailed into the room.
"Is Paul Ivanovitch leaving us so soon, dearest Lizanka?" she said
with an air of regret.
"Yes. Surely it must be that we have wearied him?" her spouse replied.
"By no means," asserted Chichikov, pressing his hand to his heart. "In
this breast, madam, will abide for ever the pleasant memory of the
time which I have spent with you. Believe me, I could conceive of no
greater blessing than to reside, if not under the same roof as
yourselves, at all events in your immediate neighbourhood."
"Indeed?" exclaimed Manilov, greatly pleased with the idea. "How
splendid it would be if you DID come to reside under our roof, so
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: quite well again, and her boy no longer required the assiduous care
which debars a mother from social pleasures, Theodore had come to the
stage of wishing to know the joys of satisfied vanity to be found in
society by a man who shows himself with a handsome woman, the object
of envy and admiration.
To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of her husband's
fame, and to find other women envious of her, was to Augustine a new
harvest of pleasures; but it was the last gleam of conjugal happiness.
She first wounded her husband's vanity when, in spite of vain efforts,
she betrayed her ignorance, the inelegance of her language, and the
narrowness of her ideas. Sommervieux's nature, subjugated for nearly
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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 Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: That it cried how true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.
THRENOS.
Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Grace in all simplicity,
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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 Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: upon some Orangemen, who, like him, were sorely vexed at the
turn which affairs had taken. They, mistaking the frantic
cries of Mynheer Isaac for demonstrations of joy, began to
belabour him with kicks and cuffs, such as could not have
been administered in better style by any prize-fighter on
the other side of the Channel.
Blows were, however, nothing to him. He wanted to run after
the coach which was carrying away Cornelius with his bulbs.
But in his hurry he overlooked a paving-stone in his way,
stumbled, lost his centre of gravity, rolled over to a
distance of some yards, and only rose again, bruised and
The Black Tulip |
