Today's Stichomancy for Umberto Eco

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling:

swords!" as though she saw an enemy. Witta vowed he would wring her neck.'

'Poor Polly! Did he?' said Una.

'Nay. She was the ship's bird. She could call all the rowers by name ... Those were good days - for a wifeless man - with Witta and his heathen - beyond the world's end ... After many weeks we came on the great Shoal which stretched, as Witta's father had said, far out to sea. We skirted it till we were giddy with the sight and dizzy with the sound of bars and breakers, and when we reached land again we found a naked black people dwelling

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale:

Could you bear her burning eyes?

Are the songs that soothed your fears Vanished like a vanished flame, Save the line where shines your name Starlike down the graying years?

Cleis speaks no word to me, For the land where she has gone Lieth mute at dusk and dawn Like a windless tideless sea.

Paris in Spring

The city's all a-shining

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare:

I take it kindly, yet be well-assur'd You put sharp weapons in a madman's hands. Whiles I in Ireland nourish a mighty band, I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell; And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head, Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams, Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw. And for a minister of my intent, I have seduc'd a headstrong Kentishman,

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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

on learning of their merits, would raise the pair to the grade of General or God knows what--that is to say, to heights whereof even Manilov himself could form no idea. Then suddenly Chichikov's extraordinary request interrupted the dreamer's reflections, and he found his brain powerless to digest it, seeing that, turn and turn the matter about as he might, he could not properly explain its bearing. Smoking his pipe, he sat where he was until supper time.

CHAPTER III

Meanwhile, Chichikov, seated in his britchka and bowling along the turnpike, was feeling greatly pleased with himself. From the preceding chapter the reader will have gathered the principal subject of his

Dead Souls