| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best
answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled
among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot;
then, effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and
papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered
to a set of artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious
meanings of words, syllables, and letters: for instance, they
can discover a close stool, to signify a privy council; a flock
of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a
standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high
priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: to collate the two texts with the aim of discovering a certain
passage which would have come on the 751st page of his own defective
volume. This much he could not civilly refrain from telling the
librarian - the same erudite Henry Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic,
Ph.D. Princeton, Litt.D. Johns Hopkins) who had once called at
the farm, and who now politely plied him with questions. He was
looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation
containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him
to find discrepancies, duplications, and ambiguities which made
the matter of determination far from easy. As he copied the formula
he finally chose, Dr Armitage looked involuntarily over his shoulder
The Dunwich Horror |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: The rest he left to the miller who, at the smiling foreman's
recommendation, had bought the house and all it contained, to be
taken down and carried away, at one-tenth of the real value.
Recalling the feeling of regret at the loss of his property which
he had felt in Kousminski, Nekhludoff was surprised how he could
have felt this regret. Now he felt nothing but unceasing joy at
the deliverance, and a sensation of newness something like that
which a traveller must experience when discovering new countries.
CHAPTER X.
NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN.
The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his
Resurrection |
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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: You know that I am here, and that our friends
Are coming if I call."
Martha at last
Arose, and went with Mary to the door,
Where they stood looking off at the same place,
And at the same shape that was always there
As if it would not ever move or speak,
And always would be there. "Mary, go now,
Before the dark that will be coming hides him.
I am afraid of him out there alone,
Unless I see him; and I have forgotten
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