| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his
deterioration (deteriorated into a "martyr," into a stage-and-
tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to
be clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any case--merely a
satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued
proof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN END, supposing that
every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin.
26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a
privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority-
-where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;-
-exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: However have you managed to get into such a state?"
"That I am nothing worse than muddy is indeed fortunate, since, but
for the Almighty, I should have had my ribs broken."
"Dear, dear! To think of all that you must have been through. Had I
not better wipe your back?"
"I thank you, I thank you, but you need not trouble. Merely be so good
as to tell your maid to dry my clothes."
"Do you hear that, Fetinia?" said the hostess, turning to a woman who
was engaged in dragging in a feather bed and deluging the room with
feathers. "Take this coat and this vest, and, after drying them before
the fire--just as we used to do for your late master--give them a good
Dead Souls |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat of their brow
and know the rough struggle, the strenuous excitement of effort. These
folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in the open air, had all seen
the warnings of danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. The
young mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn of the Church for a
lullaby.
"If we ever get there at all," the soldier remarked to the peasant,
"it will be because the Almighty is bent on keeping us alive."
"Ah! He is the Master," said the old woman, "but I think it will be
His good pleasure to take us to Himself. Just look at that light down
there . . ." and she nodded her head as she spoke towards the sunset.
|
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 Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: personalities are remotely derived.
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and
undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme
master of art as of life. An imaginative and exact rendering of
authentic memories may serve worthily that spirit of piety toward
all things human which sanctions the conceptions of a writer of
tales, and the emotions of the man reviewing his own experience.
II
As I have said, I was unpacking my luggage after a journey from
London into Ukraine. The MS. of "Almayer's Folly"--my companion
already for some three years or more, and then in the ninth
A Personal Record |
