| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: Who has not known what it is to sit lost in sad or delicious
meditation, listening to its voice within, while attending to a
conversation or to reading? An admirable duality which often
helps us to tolerate a bore! Hope, prolific and smiling, poured
out before him a thousand visions of happiness; and he refused to
consider what was going on around him. As confiding as a child,
it seemed to him base to analyze a pleasure.
After a short lapse of time he perceived that the old lady and
her daughter were playing cards with the old gentleman. As to the
satellite, faithful to his function as a shadow, he stood behind
his friend's chair watching his game, and answering the player's
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: each other's blood; they stole each other's lands, gold, and women. They
sinned.
"Many moons ago the Great Spirit sorrowed to see His chosen tribe, the
palefaces, living in ignorance and sin. He sent His only Son to redeem them,
and said if they would listen and believe, and teach the other tribes, He
would forgive their sin and welcome them to the beautiful forest.
"That was moons and moons ago, when the paleface killed his brother for gold
and lands, and beat his women slaves to make them plant his corn. The Son of
the Great Spirit lifted the cloud from the palefaces' eyes, and they saw and
learned. So pleased was the Great Spirit that He made the palefaces wiser and
wiser, and master of the world. He bid them go afar to teach the ignorant
The Spirit of the Border |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The less ae mair.
His hair a' lang about his bree,
His tap-lip lang by inches three -
A slockened sort 'mon,' to pree
A' sensuality -
A droutly glint was in his e'e
An' personality.
An' day an' nicht, frae daw to daw,
Dink an' perjink an' doucely braw,
Wi' a kind o' Gospel ower a',
May or October,
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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 The Odyssey by Homer: in front of a hot fire, doing it first on one side then on the other,
that he may get it cooked as soon as possible; even so did he turn
himself about from side to side, thinking all the time how, single-
handed as he was, he should contrive to kill so large a body of men
as the wicked suitors."
It looks as though in the interval between the publication of
"The Authoress" (1897) and of the Translation (1900) Butler had
changed his mind; for in the first case the comparison is between
Ulysses and a paunch full, etc., and in the second it is between
Ulysses and a man who turns a paunch full, etc. The second
comparison is perhaps one which a great poet might make.
The Odyssey |
