| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: "You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money,"
said old Vervelle.
At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of
pictures which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens,
Gerard Douw, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
pictures."
"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was
nearly finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff, London, A.
R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.
LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.),
Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol,
1914.
TARAS BULBA
CHAPTER I
"Turn round, my boy! How ridiculous you look! What sort of a priest's
cassock have you got on? Does everybody at the academy dress like
that?"
With such words did old Bulba greet his two sons, who had been absent
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And sand-grass of his own monotony
That makes earth less than earth. He could see that,
And he could see no more. The captured light
That may have been or not, for all he cared,
The song that is in sculpture was not his,
But only, to his God-forgotten eyes,
One more immortal nonsense in a world
Where all was mortal, or had best be so,
And so be done with. `Art,' he would have said,
`Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;'
And with a few profundities like that
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: gained by the victory, not only safety, but a crown. And,
therefore, Clearchus, by his caution, must be considered more
to blame for the result in the destruction of the life and
fortune of Cyrus, than he by his heat and rashness. For had the
king made it his business to discover a place, where having
posted the Grecians, he might encounter them with the least
hazard, he would never have found out any other but that which
was most remote from himself and those near him; of his defeat
in which he was insensible, and, though Clearchus had the
victory, yet Cyrus could not know of it, and could take no
advantage of it before his fall. Cyrus knew well enough what
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