| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: group have entered into a solemn agreement not
to take even so much as a cocktail or a glass of
wine if any of the working classes happen to be
about where they can see us and become corrupted
by our example.
The Best People owe those sacrifices to the
Masses, don't you think?
Of course, the waiters, and people like that,
really belong to the working classes too, I suppose.
But, as Fothergil Finch says, very often one
wouldn't know it. And who could expect a waiter
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno viva alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: figure, whose shadow, projected half across the street (there were
no flagged ways then, chains and posts were the only defense of the
foot passenger), appeared to him of gigantic magnitude. He had
been so long accustomed to contend with these phantoms of the
imagination, that he took a kind of stubborn delight in subduing
them. He walked up to the object, and observing the shadow only
was magnified, and the figure was the ordinary height of man, he
approached it, and discovered the very object of his search,--the
man whom he had seen for a moment in Valencia, and, after a search
of four years, recognized at the theater.
. . . . .
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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 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am
so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue,
or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself!
Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are
your sonnets."
Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair.
"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going
to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these
extravagant things to me. You don't know everything about me.
I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You laugh.
Don't laugh."
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
