| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: cotton curtains, a few chairs of stained wood covered with
Utrecht velvet, several wretched colored prints in frames, and
wall papers that a little suburban tavern would have disdained.
Possibly it was the careless generosity with which Father Goriot
allowed himself to be overreached at this period of his life
(they called him Monsieur Goriot very respectfully then) that
gave Mme. Vauquer the meanest opinion of his business abilities;
she looked on him as an imbecile where money was concerned.
Goriot had brought with him a considerable wardrobe, the gorgeous
outfit of a retired tradesman who denies himself nothing. Mme.
Vauquer's astonished eyes beheld no less than eighteen cambric-
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: should have to die before knowing, before seeing--?" It would have
been brutal, in the early stages of her trouble, to put that
question to her; but it had immediately sounded for him to his own
concern, and the possibility was what most made him sorry for her.
If she did "know," moreover, in the sense of her having had some--
what should he think?--mystical irresistible light, this would make
the matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original adoption
of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life. She
had been living to see what would BE to be seen, and it would quite
lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the
vision. These reflexions, as I say, quickened his generosity; yet,
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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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly
Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North
Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars
making a diadem for his brow. Then the seamen, attentive courtiers
of the weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by
the mood of the master. The West Wind is too great a king to be a
dissembler: he is no calculator plotting deep schemes in a sombre
heart; he is too strong for small artifices; there is passion in
all his moods, even in the soft mood of his serene days, in the
grace of his blue sky whose immense and unfathomable tenderness
reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces, possesses, lulls to
The Mirror of the Sea |
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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: his body remaining rigid as though he were petrified. Then, having
cast upon us that look which struck us like a blow, he turned his eyes
once more to the limitless ocean, and gazed upon it, in spite of its
dazzling light, as eagles gaze at the sun, without lowering his
eyelids. Try to remember, dear uncle, one of those old oaks, whose
knotty trunks, from which the branches have been lopped, rise with
weird power in some lonely place, and you will have an image of this
man. Here was a ruined Herculean frame, the face of an Olympian Jove,
destroyed by age, by hard sea toil, by grief, by common food, and
blackened as it were by lightning. Looking at his hard and hairy
hands, I saw that the sinews stood out like cords of iron. Everything
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