| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: thought it was finished. Her eyes were liquid, her flesh trembled, her
tresses waved--she breathed! And yet, though I have grasped the secret
of rendering on a flat canvas the relief and roundness of nature, this
morning at dawn I saw many errors. Ah! to attain that glorious result,
I have studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed
and lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like
him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear
tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,--
remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by
means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept
diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: took me by the throat; only death and love know or have ever seen
it. And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk.
He held out his arms as if to embrace me. I drew near with
incredible shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with
overwhelming disgust. But he only drew my ear down to his lips.
'Trust me,' he whispered. 'JE SUIS BON BOUGRE, MOI. I'll take it
to hell with me, and tell the devil.'
Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities?
All that he thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could
not clothe it otherwise than in the language of a brutal farce.
Presently he bade me call the doctor; and when that officer had
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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 The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: sacks.
But Nutkin gathered oak-apples--
yellow and scarlet--and sat upon a
beech-stump playing marbles, and
watching the door of old Mr. Brown.
On the third day the squirrels got
up very early and went fishing; they
caught seven fat minnows as a
present for Old Brown.
They paddled over the lake and
landed under a crooked chestnut tree
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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 Intentions by Oscar Wilde: omission, is really the critical faculty in one of its most
characteristic moods, and no one who does not possess this critical
faculty can create anything at all in art. Arnold's definition of
literature as a criticism of life was not very felicitous in form,
but it showed how keenly he recognised the importance of the
critical element in all creative work.
ERNEST. I should have said that great artists work unconsciously,
that they were 'wiser than they knew,' as, I think, Emerson remarks
somewhere.
GILBERT. It is really not so, Ernest. All fine imaginative work
is self-conscious and deliberate. No poet sings because he must
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