| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: orchestra list.
Yesterday the opera was "Tristan and Isolde." I have seen
all sorts of audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures,
sermons, funerals--but none which was twin to the Wagner audience
of Bayreuth for fixed and reverential attention. Absolute
attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the
attitude assumed at the beginning of it. You detect no movement
in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. You seem to sit with
the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they are being
stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when
they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: luck awaits you. And here, take my veil and put it round your
chest; it is enchanted, and you can come to no harm so long as
you wear it. As soon as you touch land take it off, throw it
back as far as you can into the sea, and then go away again."
With these words she took off her veil and gave it him. Then she
dived down again like a sea-gull and vanished beneath the dark
blue waters.
But Ulysses did not know what to think. "Alas," he said to
himself in his dismay, "this is only some one or other of the
gods who is luring me to ruin by advising me to quit my raft. At
any rate I will not do so at present, for the land where she
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: predominant influence over the lives of men. And these two, though
opposed, are not absolutely separated the one from the other. Plato, with
his great knowledge of human nature, was well aware how easily one is
transformed into the other, or how soon the noble but fleeting aspiration
may return into the nature of the animal, while the lower instinct which is
latent always remains. The intermediate sentimentalism, which has
exercised so great an influence on the literature of modern Europe, had no
place in the classical times of Hellas; the higher love, of which Plato
speaks, is the subject, not of poetry or fiction, but of philosophy.
Secondly, there seems to be indicated a natural yearning of the human mind
that the great ideas of justice, temperance, wisdom, should be expressed in
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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 Ursula by Honore de Balzac: the brunt of it? No, my little gentleman! somebody's teeth will pin
your legs first! Come, Minoret, don't stand staring there like a big
canary; you are in your own house, and you allow a man to keep his hat
on before your wife! I say he shall go. Now, monsieur, be off! a man's
house is his castle. I don't know what you mean with your nonsense,
but show me your heels, and if you dare touch Desire you'll have to
answer to ME,--you and your minx Ursula."
She rang the bell violently and called to the servants.
"Remember what I have said to you," repeated Savinien to Minoret,
paying no attention to Zelie's tirade. Suspending the sword of
Damocles over their heads, he left the room.
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