| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: The success of Wagner has been so prodigious that to his dazzled
disciples it seems that the age of what he called "absolute music
must be at an end, and the musical future destined to be an
exclusively Wagnerian one inaugurated at Bayreuth. All great
geniuses produce this illusion. Wagner did not begin a movement:
he consummated it. He was the summit of the nineteenth century
school of dramatic music in the same sense as Mozart was the
summit (the word is Gounod's) of the eighteenth century school.
And those who attempt to carry on his Bayreuth tradition will
assuredly share the fate of the forgotten purveyors of
second-hand Mozart a hundred years ago. As to the expected
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire
purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence
our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is
of the sun and deals directly with things. I feel sure that in
elemental forces there is purification, and I want to go back to
them and live in their presence.
Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely
to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with
pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison
both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens,
and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying
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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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: and they fled and pursued, and splashed, and pelted, and rolled
each other in the sand, and kept up a continuous noise of cries and
laughter like holiday children. Indeed, and however strange their
own function in that austere establishment, were they not escaped
for the day from the largest and strictest Ladies' School in the
South Seas?
Our fifth attendant was no less a person than the royal cook. He
was strikingly handsome both in face and body, lazy as a slave, and
insolent as a butcher's boy. He slept and smoked on our premises
in various graceful attitudes; but so far from helping Ah Fu, he
was not at the pains to watch him. It may be said of him that he
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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 Silas Marner by George Eliot: haven't been used to. And it 'ud be poor work for me to put on
things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a place at church, as 'ud make
them as I'm fond of think me unfitting company for 'em. What could
_I_ care for then?"
Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained questioning glance. But his
eyes were fixed on the floor, where he was moving the end of his
stick, as if he were pondering on something absently. She thought
there was a word which might perhaps come better from her lips than
from his.
"What you say is natural, my dear child--it's natural you should
cling to those who've brought you up," she said, mildly; "but
Silas Marner |
