| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: I wish I hated the heath less--or loved you more."
"You can be painfully frank. You loved me a month ago
warmly enough to go anywhere with me."
"And you loved Thomasin."
"Yes, perhaps that was where the reason lay," he returned,
with almost a sneer. "I don't hate her now."
"Exactly. The only thing is that you can no longer get her."
"Come--no taunts, Eustacia, or we shall quarrel.
If you don't agree to go with me, and agree shortly,
I shall go by myself."
"Or try Thomasin again. Damon, how strange it seems
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: To body forth our own vacuity."
She then: "Does this refer to me?"
"Oh no, it is I who am inane."
"You, madam, are the eternal humorist
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--"
And--"Are we then so serious?"
La Figlia Che Piange
Prufrock/Other Observations |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: you are the uninvited ones--indeed you are--to thus come romping into
our fairy bower."
The children did not open their eyes any wider on hearing this speech,
for they could not; but their faces expressed their amazement fully,
while Helda gasped the words:
"A fairy bower! We are in a fairy bower!"
"Most certainly," was the reply. "And as for being odd in appearance,
let me ask how you could reasonably expect a fairy to appear as mortal
maidens do?"
"A fairy!" exclaimed Seseley. "Are you, then, a real fairy?"
"I regret to say I am," returned the other, more soberly, as she
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
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 Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.
A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and
was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.
This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own
heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed
is he who thus blesseth!
For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and
evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp
afflictions and passing clouds.
Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all
things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
