| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: then your Honestie?
Ham. I trulie: for the power of Beautie, will sooner
transforme Honestie from what is, to a Bawd, then the
force of Honestie can translate Beautie into his likenesse.
This was sometime a Paradox, but now the time giues it
proofe. I did loue you once
Ophe. Indeed my Lord, you made me beleeue so
Ham. You should not haue beleeued me. For vertue
cannot so innocculate our old stocke, but we shall rellish
of it. I loued you not
Ophe. I was the more deceiued
Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: came over her, she pressed her hands to her temples in an
ecstacy, and called softly, beseechingly:
"Mother!"
And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant
Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she
imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and
nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her
that her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the sky and on
all sides, in the windows and on the trees. Her father and mother
had never died, she had never been a schoolmistress, it was a
long, tedious, strange dream, and now she had awakened. . . .
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: And if, in any degree, it does so now, how much more might it
do so if the writers chose! There is not a life in all the
records of the past but, properly studied, might lend a hint
and a help to some contemporary. There is not a juncture in
to-day's affairs but some useful word may yet be said of it.
Even the reporter has an office, and, with clear eyes and
honest language, may unveil injustices and point the way to
progress. And for a last word: in all narration there is
only one way to be clever, and that is to be exact. To be
vivid is a secondary quality which must presuppose the first;
for vividly to convey a wrong impression is only to make
|
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 McTeague by Frank Norris: her dance yet. Wait only till he got his hands upon her.
She'd let him starve, would she? She'd turn him out of
doors while she hid her five thousand dollars in the bottom
of her trunk. Aha, he would see about that some day.
She couldn't make small of him. Ah, no. She'd dance all
right--all right. McTeague was not an imaginative man by
nature, but he would lie awake nights, his clumsy wits
galloping and frisking under the lash of the alcohol, and
fancy himself thrashing his wife, till a sudden frenzy of
rage would overcome him, and he would shake all over,
rolling upon the bed and biting the mattress.
McTeague |
