| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And in place of
the numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for
exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
The Communist Manifesto |
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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld
If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."
Aunt Helen
Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
