| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: live. It was as if, being nothing anywhere else for any one,
nothing even for himself, he were just everything here, and if not
for a crowd of witnesses or indeed for any witness but John
Marcher, then by clear right of the register that he could scan
like an open page. The open page was the tomb of his friend, and
there were the facts of the past, there the truth of his life,
there the backward reaches in which he could lose himself. He did
this from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander
through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who
was, in the most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self;
and to wander, which was more extraordinary yet, round and round a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer
circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way,
and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When
the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one
instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when
unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal
profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms
of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the
Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion
as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it
The Dunwich Horror |
