| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the Rue de Richelieu, when in
the distance he descried a woman too elegantly dressed, covered, as he
phrased it, with a great deal of portable property, too expensive and
too carelessly worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the
court or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which. But
after July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the indications
--the princess can only be a princess of the stage.
"The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had given him an
assignation. He followed her with a courteous persistence, a
persistence in good taste, giving the lady from time to time, and
always at the right moment, an authoritative glance, which compelled
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: reciting from Homer, you or the charioteer?
ION: The charioteer.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, because you are a rhapsode and not a charioteer.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the art of the rhapsode is different from that of the
charioteer?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a different knowledge, then a knowledge of different
matters?
ION: True.
SOCRATES: You know the passage in which Hecamede, the concubine of Nestor,
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: mind under a very strong illumination of remembered
pleasure. But the effect of not one of them all will
compare with the discoverer's joy, and the sense of old
Time and his slow changes on the face of this earth, with
which I explored such corners as Cannonmills or Water
Lane, or the nugget of cottages at Broughton Market.
They were more rural than the open country, and gave a
greater impression of antiquity than the oldest LAND upon
the High Street. They too, like Fergusson's butterfly,
had a quaint air of having wandered far from their own
place; they looked abashed and homely, with their gables
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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 Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: "One can always send in a secret report, but how is one to make
it up? I should want to make all sorts of innuendoes and
insinuations, like Proshkin, and I can't do it. If I made up
anything I should be the first to get into trouble for it. I'm an
ass, damn my soul!"
And Nevyrazimov, racking his brain for a means of escape from his
hopeless position, stared at the rough copy he had written. The
letter was written to a man whom he feared and hated with his
whole soul, and from whom he had for the last ten years been
trying to wring a post worth eighteen roubles a month, instead of
the one he had at sixteen roubles.
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
