| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she finished.
"Well?" she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she murmured, putting the book on the table.
What had happened, she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she
had seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon;
Andrew holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by
something William had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the
landing; the children being awake; Charles Tansley waking them with his
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: Brydon; "and I make answer as I can - begging or dodging the
question, putting them off with any nonsense. It wouldn't matter
to any of them really," he went on, "for, even were it possible to
meet in that stand-and-deliver way so silly a demand on so big a
subject, my 'thoughts' would still be almost altogether about
something that concerns only myself." He was talking to Miss
Staverton, with whom for a couple of months now he had availed
himself of every possible occasion to talk; this disposition and
this resource, this comfort and support, as the situation in fact
presented itself, having promptly enough taken the first place in
the considerable array of rather unattenuated surprises attending
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