| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: reflected that He was there, in that kiln, dead.
Dead? Perhaps? His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?
If He were not dead? Perhaps time alone has power over that
Invisible and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent,
unrecognizable body, this body belonging to a spirit, if it also
had to fear ills, infirmities, and premature destruction?
Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After
man the Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at
any moment, by any accident, He came, He who was only to die at
his own proper hour and minute, because He had touched the limits
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection
and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns,
and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries
to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas
to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of
United States Declaration of Independence |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a swan's death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.
The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb, -
Were not these better far than to return
To my old fitful restless malady,
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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 Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be
his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there
was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A
vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before
Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there
was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. How could he
tell what an incomprehensible creature of that sort would or
would not do? She knew so much that she made the killing of Dain
an impossibility. That much was certain. And yet the sharp,
rough-edged kriss is a good and discreet friend, thought
Babalatchi, as he examined his own lovingly, and put it back in
Almayer's Folly |
