| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: my dearest girl, being ever present to me while I write, I note
these feelings, because women, more accustomed to observe manners
than actions, are too much alive to ridicule. So much so, that
their boasted sensibility is often stifled by false delicacy. True
sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and
the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of
others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations. With what reverence
have I looked up at my uncle, the dear parent of my mind! when I
have seen the sense of his own sufferings, of mind and body, absorbed
in a desire to comfort those, whose misfortunes were comparatively
trivial. He would have been ashamed of being as indulgent to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: and stood before me personified, living; it had come forth like
Minerva from Jupiter's brain, tall and strong; it was at once a
hundred years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead. Escaped from
his chamber, like a madman from his cell, the little old man had
evidently crept behind a long line of people who were listening
attentively to Marianina's voice as she finished the cavatina from
/Tancred/. He seemed to have come up through the floor, impelled by
some stage mechanism. He stood for a moment motionless and sombre,
watching the festivities, a murmur of which had perhaps reached his
ears. His almost somnambulistic preoccupation was so concentrated upon
things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he saw
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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 Chance by Joseph Conrad: The captain had never done so before. Always had a nod and a
pleasant word for a man. From this slight the ship-keeper drew a
conclusion unfavourable to the strange girl. He gave them time to
get down on the wharf before crossing the deck to steal one more
look at the pair over the rail. The captain took hold of the girl's
arm just before a couple of railway trucks drawn by a horse came
rolling along and hid them from the ship-keeper's sight for good.
Next day, when the chief mate joined the ship, he told him the tale
of the visit, and expressed himself about the girl "who had got hold
of the captain" disparagingly. She didn't look healthy, he
explained. "Shabby clothes, too," he added spitefully.
Chance |
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 McTeague by Frank Norris: regard the affair as the end and object of all their labors.
For a long time they had had their eyes upon one house in
particular. It was situated on a cross street close by,
between Polk Street and the great avenue one block above,
and hardly a Sunday afternoon passed that Trina and McTeague
did not go and look at it. They stood for fully half an
hour upon the other side of the street, examining every
detail of its exterior, hazarding guesses as to the
arrangement of the rooms, commenting upon its immediate
neighborhood--which was rather sordid. The house was a
wooden two-story arrangement, built by a misguided
McTeague |
