| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: himself as others see him. Well, here lies the hitch in many a work of
art: if its maker--poet, painter, or novelist--could but have become its
audience too, for a single day, before he launched it irrevocably upon
the uncertain ocean of publicity, how much better his boat would often
sail! How many little touches to the rigging he would give, how many
little drops of oil to the engines here and there, the need of which he
had never suspected, but for that trial trip! That's where the
ship-builders and dramatists have the advantage over us others: they can
dock their productions and tinker at them. Even to the musician comes
this useful chance, and Schumann can reform the proclamation which opens
his B-flat Symphony.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: GUIDO
You do well to talk:
Within your veins, old man, the pulse of youth
Throbs with no ardour. Your eyes full of rheum
Have against Beauty closed their filmy doors,
And your clogged ears, losing their natural sense,
Have shut you from the music of the world.
You talk of love! You know not what it is.
MORANZONE
Oh, in my time, boy, have I walked i' the moon,
Swore I would live on kisses and on blisses,
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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 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearances
indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his
unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration--
like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed.
He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe
in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move onwards
at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation.
If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure
had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth.
I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame.
It seemed to have consumed all thought of self so completely,
Heart of Darkness |
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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: susceptibilities of a man both poor and modest; the respect with which
he had surrounded him; the ingenious cleverness he had employed to
nobly compel him to share his opulence without permitting it to make
him blush, increased their friendship. Jacquet continued faithful to
Desmarets in spite of his wealth.
Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had
slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both
honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of
Foreign Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its
archives. Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his
light upon those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying
Ferragus |
