| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: West confided to me his resolution to get fresh human bodies in
some manner, and continue in secret the experiments he could no
longer perform openly. To hear him discussing ways and means was
rather ghastly, for at the college we had never procured anatomical
specimens ourselves. Whenever the morgue proved inadequate, two
local negroes attended to this matter, and they were seldom questioned.
West was then a small, slender, spectacled youth with delicate
features, yellow hair, pale blue eyes, and a soft voice, and it
was uncanny to hear him dwelling on the relative merits of Christchurch
Cemetery and the potter’s field. We finally decided on the potter’s
field, because practically every body in Christchurch was embalmed;
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris
points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul
Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the
sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the
language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by
Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always
seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still
unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship
delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be
outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the
language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence
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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 Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: lights of cities; and the innumerable army of tramps and travellers
moved upon it in all lands as by a common impulse, and were now in
all places drawing near to the inn door and the night's rest. The
pictures swarmed and vanished in his brain; a surge of temptation, a
beat of all his blood, went over him, to set spur to the mare and to
go on into the unknown for ever. And then it passed away; hunger
and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions which we call common
sense, resumed their empire; and in that changed mood his eye
lighted upon two bright windows on his left hand, between the road
and river.
He turned off by a by-road, and in a few minutes he was knocking
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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 Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to
his accounting:
Of such tenacity his grip
That nothing from his hand can slip.
Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
In vain -- from his detaining pinch
They cannot struggle half an inch!
'Tis lucky that he so is planned
That breath he draws not with his hand,
For if he did, so great his greed
The Devil's Dictionary |
