| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: "What a night!" she said. "Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands
in the stars...I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable--not only
am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers,
especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself--some
resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own
hands in a dark mirror."
"But what a bother," said I.
"I do not know what you mean by 'bother'; is it rather the curse of my
genius..." She paused suddenly, staring at me. "Do you know my tragedy?"
she asked.
I shook my head.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: rear--
"'You are walking on to the wounded cub; turn to the right.'
"I had the sense, dazed as I was, to take the hint, and slewing round at
right-angles, but still keeping my eyes on the lioness, I continued my
backward walk.
"To my intense relief, with a low growl she straightened herself,
turned, and bounded further up the kloof.
"'Come on, Macumazahn,' said Tom, 'let's get back to the waggon.'
"'All right, Tom,' I answered. 'I will when I have killed those three
other lions,' for by this time I was bent on shooting them as I never
remember being bent on anything before or since. 'You can go if you
Long Odds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: To free the city from mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish the
ancient graveyards;-- and that would signify the ruin of the Buddhist
temples attached to them;-- and that would mean the disparition of so many
charming gardens, with their lotus-ponds and Sanscrit-lettered monuments
and humpy bridges and holy groves and weirdly-smiling Buddhas! So the
extermination of the Culex fasciatus would involve the destruction of the
poetry of the ancestral cult,-- surely too great a price to pay!...
Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some
Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind,-- so that my ghostly company should
be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and the
disintegrations of Meiji (1). That old cemetery behind my garden would be a
Kwaidan |
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 Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: the door. He put up an internal prayer. Then whipping forth his
arm, he made but one snatch of the ring, and at the same instant,
levering up the table, he sent it bodily over upon the seaman Tom.
He, poor soul, went down bawling under the ruins; and before
Arblaster understood that anything was wrong, or Pirret could
collect his dazzled wits, Dick had run to the door and escaped into
the moonlit night.
The moon, which now rode in the mid-heavens, and the extreme
whiteness of the snow, made the open ground about the harbour
bright as day; and young Shelton leaping, with kilted robe, among
the lumber, was a conspicuous figure from afar.
|
