| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: unnatural, not loving my own daughter, to love another person's
child. What does he know of love for children, of my love for
Seryozha, whom I've sacrificed for him? But that wish to wound
me! No, he loves another woman, it must be so."
And perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind,
she had
gone round the same circle that she had been round so often
before, and had come back to her former state of exasperation,
she was horrified at herself. "Can it be impossible? Can it be
beyond me to control myself?" she said to herself, and began
again from the beginning. "He's truthful, he's honest, he loves
Anna Karenina |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: and-white-and-red, a blazing beauty. Ellador was brown: hair
dark and soft, like a seal coat; clear brown skin with a healthy
red in it; brown eyes--all the way from topaz to black velvet they
seemed to range--splendid girls, all of them.
They had seen us first of all, far down in the lake below, and
flashed the tidings across the land even before our first exploring flight.
They had watched our landing, flitted through the forest with us,
hidden in that tree and--I shrewdly suspect--giggled on purpose.
They had kept watch over our hooded machine, taking turns
at it; and when our escape was announced, had followed along-
side for a day or two, and been there at the last, as described.
Herland |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: shadows of the eastern hedge-top struck the west hedge
midway, so that the heads of the groups were enjoying
sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn. They
disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts
which flanked the nearest field-gate.
Presently there arose from within a ticking like the
love-making of the grasshopper. The machine had begun,
and a moving concatenation of three horses and the
aforesaid long rickety machine was visible over the
gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses,
and an attendant on the seat of the implement. Along
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: He made no reply. At last I could see him, and it was one of those
spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing,
his elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw his
body forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his bent
head. His hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders
and hanging about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of
the great men of the time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly white.
He constantly rubbed one leg against the other, with a mechanical
action that nothing could have checked, and the incessant friction of
the bones made a doleful sound. Near him was a bed of moss on boards.
"He very rarely lies down," said Mademoiselle de Villenoix; "but
Louis Lambert |
