| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Pasiphae with the love of her white bull-
Happy if cattle-kind had never been!-
O ill-starred maid, what frenzy caught thy soul
The daughters too of Proetus filled the fields
With their feigned lowings, yet no one of them
Of such unhallowed union e'er was fain
As with a beast to mate, though many a time
On her smooth forehead she had sought for horns,
And for her neck had feared the galling plough.
O ill-starred maid! thou roamest now the hills,
While on soft hyacinths he, his snowy side
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: the officers who looked down upon them sternly and calmly from
their gold frames.
"There are two of us brothers," he began --"I, Ivan Ivanovitch,
and my brother, Nikolay Ivanovitch, two years younger. I went in
for a learned profession and became a veterinary surgeon, while
Nikolay sat in a government office from the time he was nineteen.
Our father, Tchimsha-Himalaisky, was a kantonist, but he rose to
be an officer and left us a little estate and the rank of
nobility. After his death the little estate went in debts and
legal expenses; but, anyway, we had spent our childhood running
wild in the country. Like peasant children, we passed our days
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: for himself and his wife with three hundred thousand francs, which
gave him an income of thirty thousand francs a year. He then divided
his capital into three shares of four hundred thousand francs each,
which he gave to three of his children,--the Cocon d'Or, given to his
eldest daughter on her marriage, being the equivalent of a fourth
share. Thus the worthy man, who was now nearly seventy years old,
could spend his thirty thousand a year as he pleased, without feeling
that he injured the prospects of his children, all finely provided
for, whose attentions and proofs of affection were, moreover, not
prompted by self-interest.
Uncle Cardot lived at Belleville, in one of the first houses above the
|
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 Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: before,--men who rush into some business where they are certain to
lose their all. I am tempted, like Leonardo in the brigand's cave, to
cry out, 'Beware!' But if I did, what would become of me? So I keep
silence. This splendid house is a cut-throat's den! But Ferdinand and
Nucingen will lavish millions for their own caprices. Ferdinand is now
buying from the other du Tillet family the site of their old castle;
he intends to rebuild it and add a forest with large domains to the
estate, and make his son a count; he declares that by the third
generation the family will be noble. Nucingen, who is tired of his
house in the rue Saint-Lazare, is building a palace. His wife is a
friend of mine--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself, "she might help
|
