Today's Stichomancy for Igor Stravinsky
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Bot. I will discharge it, in either your straw-colour
beard, your orange tawnie beard, your purple in graine
beard, or your French-crowne colour'd beard, your perfect
yellow
Quin. Some of your French Crownes haue no haire
at all, and then you will play bare-fac'd. But masters here
are your parts, and I am to intreat you, request you, and
desire you, to con them by too morrow night: and meet
me in the palace wood, a mile without the Towne, by
Moone-light, there we will rehearse: for if we meete in
the Citie, we shalbe dog'd with company, and our deuises
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: Oh, the lovely Hyena.
THE BOURGEOIS ELEMENT AND BACKGROUND
ISN'T it simply wonderful about D'Annunzio
enlisting as a common soldier and digging
trenches along with the Due D'Abruzzi and
those other Italian poets? Or was it D'Abruzzi?
Anyhow, it was one of those poets that were al-
ways talking about the Superman.
Although, I must say, one doesn't hear so much
about the Superman these days, does one? The
Superman is going out, you know.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Fine as ice-ferns on January panes
Made by a breath. I know not whence at first,
Nor of what race, the work; but as he told
The story, storming a hill-fort of thieves
He got it; for their captain after fight,
His comrades having fought their last below,
Was climbing up the valley; at whom he shot:
Down from the beetling crag to which he clung
Tumbled the tawny rascal at his feet,
This dagger with him, which when now admired
By Edith whom his pleasure was to please,
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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 A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: your liberty for an occasion to the flesh." Such men must be
urged by laws and hemmed in by teaching and exhortation. The
third class are wicked men, always ready for sins; these must be
constrained by spiritual and temporal laws, like wild horses and
dogs, and where this does not help, they must be put to death by
the worldly sword, as St. Paul says, Romans xiii: "The worldly
ruler bears the sword, and serves God with it, not as a terror
to the good, but to the evil." The fourth class, who are still
lusty, and childish in their understanding of faith and of the
spiritual life, must be coaxed like young children and tempted
with external, definite and prescribed decorations, with reading,
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