Today's Stichomancy for Franz Kafka

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes:

my heart in his keeping. He who robs me and takes what is mine cannot love me, of that I am sure. But am I sure? Why then did he weep? Why? It was not in vain, for there was cause enough. I must not assume that I was the cause of it, for one is always loath to leave people whom one loves and knows. So it is not strange if he was sorry and grieved and if he wept when he left some one whom he knew. But he who gave him this advice to go and dwell in Britain could not have smitten me more effectively. He is cut to the quick who loses his heart. He who deserves it, should be treated ill; but I have never deserved such treatment. Alas, unhappy one, why has Cliges killed me when I am innocent?

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon:

diestrammenous}, "broad and not turned outwards."

[29] Or, "he will be sure to spread well behind," etc.

[30] {ton upobasin}, tech. of the crouching posture assumed by the horse for mounting or "in doing the demi-passade" (so Morgan, op. cit. p. 126).

The human subject would seem to point to this conclusion. When a man wants to lift anything from off the ground he essays to do so by bringing the legs apart and not by bringing them together.

A horse ought not to have large testicles, though that is not a point to be determined in the colt.

And now, as regards the lower parts, the hocks,[31] or shanks and

On Horsemanship

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Beat on window ledges.

These shall wake the yawning maid; She the door shall open-- Finding dew on garden glade And the morning broken.

There my garden grows again Green and rosy painted, As at eve behind the pane From my eyes it fainted.

Just as it was shut away, Toy-like, in the even,

A Child's Garden of Verses

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 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane:

trouble,' I says like dat! See? 'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble'; like dat. 'Git deh hell outa here,' I says. See?"

Jimmie nodded understandingly. Over his features played an eager desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the narrator proceeded.

"Well, deh blokie he says: 'T'hell wid it! I ain' lookin' for no scrap,' he says (See?), 'but' he says, 'I'm 'spectable cit'zen an' I wanna drink an' purtydamnsoon, too.' See? 'Deh hell,' I says. Like dat! 'Deh hell,' I says. See? 'Don' make no trouble,' I says. Like dat. 'Don' make no trouble.' See? Den deh mug he squared off an' said he was fine as silk wid his dukes

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets