| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: love the old thing--something that appealed to my
youth!
"We left London in ballast--sand ballast--to load a
cargo of coal in a northern port for Bankok. Bankok!
I thrilled. I had been six years at sea, but had only seen
Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming
places in their way--but Bankok!
"We worked out of the Thames under canvas, with a
North Sea pilot on board. His name was Jermyn, and
he dodged all day long about the galley drying his hand-
kerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept.
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: grew intenser and intenser set itself with feeble pawings now to
clamber "Au-dessus de la Melee," and now to--in some
weak way--stop the conflict. ("Au-dessus de la
Melee"--as the man said when they asked him where he
was when the bull gored his sister.) The efforts to stop the
conflict at any price, even at the price of entire submission to
the German Will, grew more urgent as the necessity that everyone
should help against the German Thing grew more manifest.
Of all the strange freaks of distressed thinking that this war
has produced, the freaks of the Genteel Whig have been among the
most remarkable. With an air of profound wisdom he returns
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct
with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated
corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal
covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings
touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre,
whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind
legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way
clown toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was
bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the
backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated
knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally life-like, and the
Call of Cthulhu |
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 Professor by Charlotte Bronte: CHAPTER XXII
A WEEK is gone; LE JOUR DES NOCES arrived; the marriage was
solemnized at St. Jacques; Mdlle. Zoraide became Madame Pelet,
NEE Reuter; and, in about an hour after this transformation, "the
happy pair," as newspapers phrase it, were on their way to Paris;
where, according to previous arrangement, the honeymoon was to be
spent. The next day I quitted the pensionnat. Myself and my
chattels (some books and clothes) were soon transferred to a
modest lodging I had hired in a street not far off. In half an
hour my clothes were arranged in a commode, my books on a shelf,
and the "flitting" was effected. I should not have been unhappy
The Professor |
