| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: --a world, above all others, of equality, where every one believed
that M. d'Espard was ruined, and where all, from the lowest to the
highest, refused the privileges of nobility to a nobleman without
money, because they were all ready to allow an enriched bourgeois to
usurp them. Thus the lack of communion between this family and other
persons was as much moral as it was physical.
In the father and the children alike, their personality harmonized
with the spirit within. M. d'Espard, at this time about fifty, might
have sat as a model to represent the aristocracy of birth in the
nineteenth century. He was slight and fair; there was in the outline
and general expression of his face a native distinction which spoke of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: being the weakest and most tender--and when they had satisfied
their appetite for human flesh, some of them devouring
two and three of the slaves, there were only a score
of full-grown men left, and I thought that for some reason
these were to be spared, but such was far from the case,
for as the last Mahar crawled to her rock the queen's thipdars
darted into the air, circled the temple once and then,
hissing like steam engines, swooped down upon the remaining slaves.
There was no hypnotism here--just the plain, brutal ferocity
of the beast of prey, tearing, rending, and gulping its meat,
but at that it was less horrible than the uncanny method of
At the Earth's Core |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: into yer heart:
The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the
little shoes they wore
Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumb-
marks on the door.
Ye've got t' weep t' make it home, ye've got t'
sit an' sigh
An' watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know
that Death is nigh;
An' in the stillness o' the night t' see Death's
angel come,
A Heap O' Livin' |
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 Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: otherwise than as he found them, and he writes with such skill and
insight that his work is of abiding value. But what invests "The
Prince" with more than a merely artistic or historical interest is the
incontrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which
still guide nations and rulers in their relationship with each other
and their neighbours.
In translating "The Prince" my aim has been to achieve at all costs an
exact literal rendering of the original, rather than a fluent
paraphrase adapted to the modern notions of style and expression.
Machiavelli was no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he
wrote obliged him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his
The Prince |
