| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: to the very point on the opposite shore he wished to reach. A
great log had stranded there, at right angles to the bank,
forming a kind of jetty against which the swiftly flowing stream
broke with a loud ripple. He stepped on it with a quick but
steady motion, and in two strides found himself at the outer end,
with the rush and swirl of the foaming water at his feet.
Standing there alone, as if separated from the world; the
heavens, earth; the very water roaring under him swallowed up in
the thick veil of the morning fog, he breathed out the name of
Nina before him into the apparently limitless space, sure of
being heard, instinctively sure of the nearness of the delightful
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: involuntarily. Some diabolical influence had drawn him to his
father, and again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid
closed and opened again abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of
assent. It was an intelligent movement. If a voice had cried
"Yes!" Don Juan could not have been more startled.
"What is to be done?" he thought.
He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.
"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with
himself.
"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.
"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!"
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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 Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: make a noise. This is my sister, Mrs. Pleydell."
"How d'you do?" said Daphne. "My brother seems- "
"I'm all right," I said suddenly. "I'd lost my way, see? And
one of the tires went, just as I was passing a big white house on
the left. I stopped under a balcony, I think."
"That's right," said Bill Bairling. "Balcony of Silvia's room."
"I never knew it was St. Martin, though. I must have cut across
country somehow. Still. Well, there was no jack on the car so I
couldn't do anything. Just as I was getting in again, I heard a
noise above me and turned. My foot slipped on the step, and I
fell on my side. Couple of ribs gone, I think. I tried to get
The Brother of Daphne |
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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I forget
how much a day. The way that he set about cutting wood was
characteristic. We were at that moment patching up and
unpacking in the kitchen. Down he sat on one side, and down
sat his sister on the other. Both were chewing pine-tree
gum, and he, to my annoyance, accompanied that simple
pleasure with profuse expectoration. She rattled away,
talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing her head,
showing her brilliant teeth. He looked on in silence, now
spitting heavily on the floor, now putting his head back and
uttering a loud, discordant, joyless laugh. He had a tangle
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