| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can
no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital,
from that moment, you say individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no
other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of
property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and
made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the
products
of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to
subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: and consequently not too competent, if he is occasionally unjust or
out of temper. Perpetually watched by a hundred mocking eyes, and
surrounded with snares, he sometimes revenges himself for his own
blunders on the boys who are only too ready to detect them.
Unless for serious misdemeanors, for which there were other forms of
punishment, the strap was regarded at Vendome as the /ultima ratio
Patrum/. Exercises forgotten, lessons ill learned, common ill behavior
were sufficiently punished by an imposition, but offended dignity
spoke in the master through the strap. Of all the physical torments to
which we were exposed, certainly the most acute was that inflicted by
this leathern instrument, about two fingers wide, applied to our poor
Louis Lambert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: the society of comic operas. And you can imagine, if the
climate were but towardly, how all the world and his wife
would flock into these gardens in the cool of the
evening, to hear cheerful music, to sip pleasant drinks,
to see the moon rise from behind Arthur's Seat and shine
upon the spires and monuments and the green tree-tops in
the valley. Alas! and the next morning the rain is
splashing on the windows, and the passengers flee along
Princes Street before the galloping squalls.
It cannot be denied that the original design was
faulty and short-sighted, and did not fully profit by the
|
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 Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Twisted himself beneath the weight that cramps him,
And looked at me, and knew me, and called out,
Keeping his eyes laboriously fixed
On me, who all bowed down was going with them.
"O," asked I him, "art thou not Oderisi,
Agobbio's honour, and honour of that art
Which is in Paris called illuminating?"
"Brother," said he, "more laughing are the leaves
Touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese;
All his the honour now, and mine in part.
In sooth I had not been so courteous
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
