| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of
class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have
abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.
III SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE
1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM
A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: "Who is it?" boomed a voice from within. "Who're you
turning away, Casey?"
"A woman, not a parishioner." The door was almost shut now.
Footsteps down the hall. "Good! Let her in." The door
opened ever so reluctantly. Father Fitzpatrick loomed up
beside his puny assistant, dwarfing him. He looked sharply
at the figure on the porch. "For the love of--! Casey,
you're a fool! How you ever got beyond being an altar-boy
is more than I can see. Come in, child. Come in! The
man's cut out for a jailor, not a priest."
Fanny's two hands were caught in one of his big ones, and
Fanny Herself |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: When I first entered I was greeted very cordially by a personage in
a black gown and wig, whom I did not know. He laughed and said: "I
am Mr. Senior, whom you saw only Saturday evening, but you do not
know me in my wig." It is, indeed, an entire transformation, for it
reaches down on the shoulders. He is a master in chancery. He
stood by me nearly all the time and pointed out many of the judges,
and some persons not in Miss Murray's line.
But the trumpets sound! the Queen approaches! The trumpet
continues, and first enter at a side door close at my elbow the
college of heralds richly dressed, slowly, two and two; then the
great officers of the household, then the Lord Chancellor bearing
|
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 Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: into a sort of craze. He wanted to be alone in the house, and had
taken the rooms one by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had
changed nothing; the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago
looked the same as ever; it might have been kept under a glass case.
Gobseck's faithful old portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who
sat in the entry while she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and
charwoman, and now in addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his
feebleness, Gobseck saw his clients himself as heretofore, and
received sums of money; his affairs had been so simplified, that he
only needed to send his pensioner out now and again on an errand, and
could carry on business in his bed.
Gobseck |
