| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: didn't withhold his ministrations from elderly plebeians either. He
was a true democrat; he would have done business (a sharp kind of
business) with the devil himself. Everything was fly that came into
his web. He received the applicants in an alert, jovial fashion
which was quite surprising. It gave relief without giving too much
confidence, which was just as well perhaps. His business was
transacted in an apartment furnished like a drawing-room, the walls
hung with several brown, heavily-framed, oil paintings. I don't
know if they were good, but they were big, and with their elaborate,
tarnished gilt-frames had a melancholy dignity. The man himself sat
at a shining, inlaid writing table which looked like a rare piece
Chance |
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: purpose, and the women to be assigned their tasks, and the totals of
everything to be calculated, so that one may see the value of what has
been done. And lastly will come winter, when in every threshing-floor
the flail will be working, and the grain, when threshed, will need to
be carried from barn to binn, and the mills require to be seen to, and
the estate factories to be inspected, and the workmen's huts to be
visited for the purpose of ascertaining how the muzhik is faring (for,
given a carpenter who is clever with his tools, I, for one, am only
too glad to spend an hour or two in his company, so cheering to me is
labour). And if, in addition, one discerns the end to which everything
is moving, and the manner in which the things of earth are everywhere
Dead Souls |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the scent spoor of the woman within, and each reacted
according to his temperament and his habits of thought.
It left Chulk indifferent. The she was for Tarzan--all
that he desired was to bury his snout in the foodstuffs
of the Tarmangani. He had come to eat his fill without
labor--Tarzan had told him that that should be his
reward, and he was satisfied.
But Taglat's wicked, bloodshot eyes, narrowed to the
realization of the nearing fulfillment of his carefully
nursed plan. It is true that sometimes during the
several days that had elapsed since they had set out
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: heart, to which letters may suffice; and there is a life material,
to which more importance is, alas, attached than you are aware of
at your age. These two existences must, however, be made to
harmonize in the ideal which you cherish; and this, I may remark
in passing, is very rare.
The pure, spontaneous, disinterested homage of a solitary soul
which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial
flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for
every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a
literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own.
But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of
Modeste Mignon |
