Today's Stichomancy for Pablo Picasso

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac:

away on the stage. That part alone would suffice to make the fortune of the opera. Every woman felt herself engaged in a struggle with some violent lover. Never was music so passionate and so dramatic.

"The whole world now rises in arms against the reprobate. This /finale/ may be criticised for its resemblance to that of /Don Giovanni/; but there is this immense difference: in Isabella we have the expression of the noblest faith, a true love that will save Robert, for he scornfully rejects the infernal powers bestowed on him, while Don Giovanni persists in his unbelief. Moreover, that particular fault is common to every composer who has written a /finale/ since Mozart. The /finale/ to /Don Giovanni/ is one of those classic forms

Gambara

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

company."

"That is true," acknowledged the Pumpkinhead. "We are quite as congenial as flies and honey."

"But -- pardon me if I seem inquisitive -- are you not all rather -- ahem! rather unusual?" asked the Woggle-Bug, looking from one to another with unconcealed interest.

"Not more so than yourself," answered the Scarecrow. "Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it."

"What rare philosophy!" exclaimed the Woggle-Bug, admiringly.

"Yes; my brains are working well today," admitted the Scarecrow, an accent of pride in his voice.

The Marvelous Land of Oz

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner:

or physically, that by inheritance and education the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men of thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual man is from the mother who bore and reared him, is at variance with every law of human inheritance.

If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition,

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 Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale:

I come and they come with me Finding words with my breath; From the wisdom of many life-times I hear them cry: "Forever Seek for Beauty, she only Fights with man against Death!"

III

Day and Night

In Warsaw in Poland Half the world away, The one I love best of all