| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil,
and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the
brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists
The Communist Manifesto |
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 Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: coop was split into firewood with a hatchet. It is
possible that a man (supposing he happened to be
on deck at the time of the accident) might have
floated ashore on that hencoop. He might. I ad-
mit it is improbable, but there was the man--and
for days, nay, for weeks--it didn't enter our heads
that we had amongst us the only living soul that
had escaped from that disaster. The man himself,
even when he learned to speak intelligibly, could
tell us very little. He remembered he had felt bet-
ter (after the ship had anchored, I suppose), and
Amy Foster |
