| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily.--
[SERVANT lets the ewer fall. PETRUCHIO strikes him.]
You whoreson villain! will you let it fall?
KATHERINA.
Patience, I pray you; 'twas a fault unwilling.
PETRUCHIO.
A whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-ear'd knave!
Come, Kate, sit down; I know you have a stomach.
Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I?--
What's this? Mutton?
FIRST SERVANT.
The Taming of the Shrew |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking
grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular
rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play
with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and
graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple
and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the under side of
its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the
pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and
what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The
Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its
name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept
diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows
deepening almost to blackness. The shadows of ordinary painters are
not of the same texture as their tones of light. They are wood, brass,
iron, anything you please except flesh in shadow. We feel that if the
figures changed position the shady places would not be wiped off, and
would remain dark spots which never could be made luminous. I have
avoided that blunder, though many of our most illustrious painters
have fallen into it. In my work you will see whiteness beneath the
opacity of the broadest shadow. Unlike the crowd of ignoramuses, who
fancy they draw correctly because they can paint one good vanishing
|
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 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: with himself. They were well matched, being equally
mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time during
a space of more than seven years, made to feel the
painful gnawings of hunger--a something which I
had not experienced before since I left Colonel
Lloyd's plantation. It went hard enough with me
then, when I could look back to no period at which
I had enjoyed a sufficiency. It was tenfold harder
after living in Master Hugh's family, where I had
always had enough to eat, and of that which was
good. I have said Master Thomas was a mean man.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
