| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: hadn't taken me up so short, I sometimes think I should do better
if I were joined to one that would always remind me when I was
wrong, and give me a motive for doing good and eschewing evil, by
decidedly showing her approval of the one and disapproval of the
other.'
'If you had no higher motive than the approval of your fellow-
mortal, it would do you little good.'
'Well, but if I had a mate that would not always be yielding, and
always equally kind, but that would have the spirit to stand at bay
now and then, and honestly tell me her mind at all times, such a
one as yourself for instance. Now, if I went on with you as I do
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: dupe. A mother is not so tender nor so solicitous for a beloved
daughter as the practitioner of tartuferie for his milch cow. What
brilliant success attends the performance of Tartufe behind the closed
doors of a home! It is worth more than friendship. Moliere died too
soon; he would otherwise have shown us the misery of Orgon, wearied by
his family, harassed by his children, regretting the blandishments of
Tartufe, and thinking to himself, "Ah, those were the good times!"
During the last eight years of her life the mistress of Les Aigues
received only thirty thousand francs of the fifty thousand really
yielded by the estate. Gaubertin had reached the same administrative
results as his predecessor, though farm rents and territorial products
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: And then--the madness seized me. When I look back over the
months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As
it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I
have turned very gray--Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday,
by saying that a little bluing in the rinse-water would make my
hair silvery, instead of a yellowish white. I hate to be
reminded of unpleasant things and I snapped her off.
"No," I said sharply, "I'm not going to use bluing at my time of
life, or starch, either."
Liddy's nerves are gone, she says, since that awful summer, but
she has enough left, goodness knows! And when she begins to go
The Circular Staircase |
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 Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Wo weilest du?_
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
-- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
_Od' und leer das Meer._
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
The Waste Land |
