| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: the tone of conversation, the pungent material detail of the day's
manners, the reproduction of the atmosphere and the environment.
These elements are not essential: a novel may be excellent, and yet
have none of them; a passion or a character is so much the better
depicted as it rises clearer from material circumstance. In this
age of the particular, let him remember the ages of the abstract,
the great books of the past, the brave men that lived before
Shakespeare and before Balzac. And as the root of the whole
matter, let him bear in mind that his novel is not a transcript of
life, to be judged by its exactitude; but a simplification of some
side or point of life, to stand or fall by its significant
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: which prompts the pallid spindling sprout of the potato
in the cellar to strive feebly toward the light.
From where he stood in the darkness he stretched
out his hands in the direction of that open window.
The gesture was his confession to the overhanging boughs,
to the soft night-breeze, to the stars above--and it
bore back to him something of the confessional's vague
and wistful solace. He seemed already to have drawn
down into his soul a taste of the refreshment it craved.
He sighed deeply, and the hot moisture smarted again upon
his eyelids, but this time not all in grief. With his
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: of habit forged through two-and-twenty years, could you not let me
know your wish, and beg me to come to you?'
'There was not time, sir,' she rejoined. 'I took my resolution
but last night, and taking it, felt that I must not lose a day--a
day! an hour--in having speech with you.'
They had by this time reached the house. Mr Haredale paused for a
moment, and looked at her as if surprised by the energy of her
manner. Observing, however, that she took no heed of him, but
glanced up, shuddering, at the old walls with which such horrors
were connected in her mind, he led her by a private stair into his
library, where Emma was seated in a window, reading.
Barnaby Rudge |
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 When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: our island and all of us who dwell thereon are drowned beneath
the ocean. Leave us before we kill you, if indeed you be men, or
die at your hands if, as we think, you be evil spirits who can
throw up mountains and drag them down, and create gods that slay,
and move about in the bowels of the world."
"That is our intention, for our business here is done," I
answered calmly. "Come now and help us to depart. But first bring
us food. Bring it in plenty, for we must victual our boat."
Marama bowed and issued the necessary orders. Indeed food
sufficient for our immediate needs was already there as an
offering, and of it we ate with thankfulness.
When the World Shook |
