| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: year, and that is enough for them; they will not hear of any more just
now, and they are my masters. Nevertheless, that is not the question.
I admit that you may be a great poet, but will you be a prolific
writer? Will you hatch sonnets regularly? Will you run into ten
volumes? Is there business in it? Of course not. You will be a
delightful prose writer; you have too much sense to spoil your style
with tagging rhymes together. You have a chance to make thirty
thousand francs per annum by writing for the papers, and you will not
exchange that chance for three thousand francs made with difficulty by
your hemistiches and strophes and tomfoolery----"
"You know that he is on the paper, Dauriat?" put in Lousteau.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: Because in the afternoon the band played just the sort of music that
little girls liked to hear.
Every afternoon all the nurses came to the Mall and brought all the
babies, and the nurses rolled the babies up and down the sawdust
walks in the pretty baby-carriages, with nice white, and pink, and
blue parasols over the babies' heads.
That afternoon Sister Helen Vincula stayed a long time with Bessie
Bell, on the Mall, sitting by her on the stone bench and listening
to the gay music, and looking at the children in their prettiest
clothes, and at the nurses rolling the babies in the pretty
carriages with the beautiful pink, and white, and blue parasols over
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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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: exclaimed. "At your respected brother-in-law's I tasted the finest
syrup which has ever come my way, but here I have tasted the very
finest kvass."
"Yet the recipe for the syrup also came from here," said Vassili,
"seeing that my sister took it with her. By the way, to what part of
the country, and to what places, are you thinking of travelling?"
"To tell the truth," replied Chichikov, rocking himself to and fro on
the bench, and smoothing his knee with his hand, and gently inclining
his head, "I am travelling less on my own affairs than on the affairs
of others. That is to say, General Betristchev, an intimate friend,
and, I might add, a generous benefactor of mine, has charged me with
Dead Souls |
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 Anabasis by Xenophon: Xenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a
pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
Anabasis |
