| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: baleful gaze upon the altar. La staggered forward,
reeled, and fell across Werper in a swoon.
6
The Arab Raid
After their first terror had subsided subsequent to the
shock of the earthquake, Basuli and his warriors
hastened back into the passageway in search of Tarzan
and two of their own number who were also missing.
They found the way blocked by jammed and distorted
rock. For two days they labored to tear a way through
to their imprisoned friends; but when, after Herculean
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: the children, and the drawing-room went undusted. But the
housemaid, too, served her term as model when Edna perceived that the
young woman's back and shoulders were molded on classic lines, and
that her hair, loosened from its confining cap, became an
inspiration. While Edna worked she sometimes sang low the little
air, "Ah! si tu savais!"
It moved her with recollections. She could hear again the
ripple of the water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of
the moon upon the bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of
the hot south wind. A subtle current of desire passed through her
body, weakening her hold upon the brushes and making her eyes burn.
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: " 'If ever I longed to kill a man,' so the Count told me afterwards,
'it was at that moment; but what could one do? Hortense showed her
pretty face, one had to laugh. To keep my dignity, I flung her the six
hundred francs. "There's for the girl," said I.' "
"That is Maxime all over!" cried La Palferine.
"More especially as it was little Croizeau's money," added Cardot the
profound.
"Maxime scored a triumph," continued Desroches, "for Hortense
exclaimed, 'Oh, if I had only known that it was you!' "
"A pretty 'confusion' indeed!" put in Malaga. "You have lost, milord,"
she added turning to the notary.
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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 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: as a form of LUXURY, as an archaizing TASTE. Variations, whether
they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or
deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in
the greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be
individual and detach himself. At this turning-point of history
there manifest themselves, side by side, and often mixed and
entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like
up-growth and up-striving, a kind of TROPICAL TEMPO in the
rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay and self-
destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly
exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and
Beyond Good and Evil |
