| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: Does any one suppose that fortunes alone are risked in the great game?
The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the
soldiers of the Empire. What works of art and genius are expended on a
gown or a garland in which to make a sensation! A fragile, delicate
creature will wear her stiff and brilliant harness of flowers and
diamonds, silk and steel, from nine at night till two and often three
o'clock in the morning. She eats little, to attract remark to her
slender waist; she satisfied her hunger with debilitating tea, sugared
cakes, ices which heat her, or slices of heavy pastry. The stomach is
made to yield to the orders of coquetry. The awakening comes too late.
A fashionable woman's whole life is in contradiction to the laws of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: apple-tree. Beside the apple-tree stood a sort of fruit-house,
which was not securely fastened, and where one might contrive to get
an apple. One apple is a supper; one apple is life. That which was
Adam's ruin might prove Gavroche's salvation. The garden abutted
on a solitary, unpaved lane, bordered with brushwood while awaiting
the arrival of houses; the garden was separated from it by a hedge.
Gavroche directed his steps towards this garden; he found the lane,
he recognized the apple-tree, he verified the fruit-house, he examined
the hedge; a hedge means merely one stride. The day was declining,
there was not even a cat in the lane, the hour was propitious.
Gavroche began the operation of scaling the hedge, then suddenly paused.
Les Miserables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: elicit as much individual discussion as possible and had been somewhat
disappointed in his hopes.
Yes, Bertie and Billy were astonished. But their astonishment did not
equal that of Oscar, who had answered many of the questions in the
Professor's own language. Oscar received seventy-five per cent for this
achievement--a good mark. But Billy's mark was eighty-six and Bertie's
ninety. "There is some mistake," said Oscar to them when they told him
; and he hastened to the Professor with his tale. "There is no
mistake," said the Professor. Oscar smiled with increased deference.
"But," he urged, "I assure you, sir, those young men knew absolutely
nothing. I was their tutor, and they knew nothing at all. I taught
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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 Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
The Waste Land |
