| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: the admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is a festival of
ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the
vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we venture to lay
ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that
we swell in each other's eyes to such a vast proportion. For
talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits of their
ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their secret
pretensions, and give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious,
musical and wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to
be. So they weave for themselves with words and for a while
inhabit a palace of delights, temple at once and theatre, where
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: very probably be the best. But it is a strange experience, to a
man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are
within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand
him, and by whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he
would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who
has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the
bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to
be conscious that he is himself among its objects! There are few
uglier traits of human nature than this tendency -- which I now
witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours -- to grow cruel,
merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If
The Scarlet Letter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: a mysterious glimpse of her after five years--five years, in
which the pent-up passion, chafing in an empty life, had grown
the mightier for every fruitless effort to satisfy it!
Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose
some precious thing; and after hunting through his papers,
ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside down; after
one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, and despair;
after a prodigious expenditure of the liveliest irritation of
soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of finding that
all-important nothing which had come to be a king of monomania?
Very good. Now, spread that fury of search over five years; put
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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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: necessity, they never leave Clochegourde and see no company. Until now
their attachment to the Bourbons explained this retirement, but the
return of the king has not changed their way of living. When I came to
reside here last year I paid them a visit of courtesy; they returned
it and invited us to dinner; the winter separated us for some months,
and political events kept me away from Frapesle until recently. Madame
de Mortsauf is a woman who would hold the highest position wherever
she might be."
"Does she often come to Tours?"
"She never goes there. However," he added, correcting himself, "she
did go there lately to the ball given to the Duc d'Angouleme, who was
The Lily of the Valley |
