| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual
appeals. Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out
to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named
Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass,
and he told me. We walked up and down one of those long and
dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story. He said
he had married a beautiful girl, some years younger than
himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and
soul. He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that
what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and
when I looked in his face I knew he was speaking the truth.
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: reins. 'This part about here is West Endelstow; Lord Luxellian's
is East Endelstow, and has a church to itself. Pa'son Swancourt
is the pa'son of both, and bobs backward and forward. Ah, well!
'tis a funny world. 'A b'lieve there was once a quarry where this
house stands. The man who built it in past time scraped all the
glebe for earth to put round the vicarage, and laid out a little
paradise of flowers and trees in the soil he had got together in
this way, whilst the fields he scraped have been good for nothing
ever since.'
'How long has the present incumbent been here?'
'Maybe about a year, or a year and half: 'tisn't two years; for
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: lucid glances in which we men can never see anything because they
question us too much.
"Well, madame," returned the old man, "do you know what some one came
to tell me in the depths of my province? That my nephew had ruined
himself for you, and that the poor fellow was living in a garret while
you were in silk and gold. Forgive my rustic sincerity; it may be
useful for you to know of these calumnies."
"Stop, monsieur," said Madame Firmiani, with an imperative gesture; "I
know all that. You are too polite to continue this subject if I
request you to leave it, and too gallant--in the old-fashioned sense
of the word," she added with a slight tone of irony--"not to agree
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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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: vast multitude, the illusion of the stage, the glamour of a costume
which was most attractive for the time, all conspired in that woman's
favor. Sarrasine cried aloud with pleasure. He saw before him at that
moment the ideal beauty whose perfections he had hitherto sought here
and there in nature, taking from one model, often of humble rank, the
rounded outline of a shapely leg, from another the contour of the
breast; from another her white shoulders; stealing the neck of that
young girl, the hands of this woman, and the polished knees of yonder
child, but never able to find beneath the cold skies of Paris the rich
and satisfying creations of ancient Greece. La Zambinella displayed in
her single person, intensely alive and delicate beyond words, all
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