| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over, but as wandering
wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to be
entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to
create. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he,
being an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a
monster, has none. One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down
to pick up a brush for a painter, but when the democracy stoops
down it is merely to throw mud. And yet the democracy have not so
far to stoop as the emperor. In fact, when they want to throw mud
they have not to stoop at all. But there is no necessity to
separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this public
building was built for us,--to compensate for the stupidities of the
Theatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stage
are much more expensive; and they don't give us every day the value of
our money."
"So this is the Chamber!" cried Gazonal, as he paced the great hall in
which there were then about a dozen persons, and looked around him
with an air which Bixiou noted down in his memory and reproduced in
one of the famous caricatures with which he rivalled Gavarni.
Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go and come continually
between this hall and the hall of sessions, with which it communicates
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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 The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: were reconducted to that city, and the greater part of them there
put to death.
v. 53. Malta's.] A tower, either in the citadel of Padua, which
under the tyranny of Ezzolino, had been "with many a foul and
midnight murder fed," or (as some say) near a river of the same
name, that falls into the lake of Bolsena, in which the Pope was
accustomed to imprison such as had been guilty of an irremissible
sin.
v. 56 This priest.] The bishop, who, to show himself a zealous
partisan of the Pope, had committed the above-mentioned act of
treachery.
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
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 Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: was our second marriage. Your mother was too honest. We
had thought each other dead--and--Newson became her
husband."
This was the nearest approach Henchard could make to the
full truth. As far as he personally was concerned he would
have screened nothing; but he showed a respect for the young
girl's sex and years worthy of a better man.
When he had gone on to give details which a whole series of
slight and unregarded incidents in her past life strangely
corroborated; when, in short, she believed his story to be
true, she became greatly agitated, and turning round to the
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
