| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: it discomposed, contorted, despairing. It was
nothing of the kind; it was just as I had seen it
twenty times, steady and glaring from the bridge
of the tug. It was immovably set and hungry,
dominated like the whole man by the singleness of
one instinct.
He wanted to live. He had always wanted to
live. So we all do--but in us the instinct serves a
complex conception, and in him this instinct existed
alone. There is in such simple development a gi-
gantic force, and like the pathos of a child's naive
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: couple of miles off, looks like a cheap and bizarre little toy. I
remember how, on coming up the river for the first time, I was
surprised at the smallness of that vivid object - a tiny warm speck
of crimson lost in an immensity of gray tones. I was startled, as
if of necessity the principal beacon in the water-way of the
greatest town on earth should have presented imposing proportions.
And, behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it entirely from
my view.
Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship
marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral
(the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: their senses, some out of their memory, and some out of their
understanding. But I return to the shutting up of houses.
As several people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem after
they were shut UP, so others got out by bribing the watchmen, and
giving them money to let them go privately out in the night. I must
confess I thought it at that time the most innocent corruption or
bribery that any man could be guilty of, and therefore could not but
pity the poor men, and think it was hard when three of those
watchmen were publicly whipped through the streets for suffering
people to go out of houses shut up.
But notwithstanding that severity, money prevailed with the poor
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "I'll sing a song of Ozland, where wondrous creatures dwell
And fruits and flowers and shady bowers abound in every dell,
Where magic is a science and where no one shows surprise
If some amazing thing takes place before his very eyes.
Our Ruler's a bewitching girl whom fairies love to please;
She's always kept her magic sceptre to enforce decrees
To make her people happy, for her heart is kind and true
And to aid the needy and distressed is what she longs to do.
And then there's Princess Dorothy, as sweet as any rose,
A lass from Kansas, where they don't grow fairies, I Suppose;
And there's the brainy Scarecrow, with a body stuffed with straw,
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
