| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could well afford to
overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortunately, the enigmatical
history of the Lanty family offered a perpetual subject of curiosity,
not unlike that aroused by the novels of Anne Radcliffe.
People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon finding out
where you buy your candelabra, or who ask you what rent you pay when
they are pleased with your apartments, had noticed, from time to time,
the appearance of an extraordinary personage at the fetes, concerts,
balls, and routs given by the countess. It was a man. The first time
that he was seen in the house was at a concert, when he seemed to have
been drawn to the salon by Marianina's enchanting voice.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: let them defy its influence as they would, was still the fount of
all theology, as well as of all civilisation. But I must believe
that much of it came from that mysterious ancient Western Church,
the Church of St. Patric, St. Bridget, St. Columba, which had
covered with rude cells and chapels the rocky islets of the North
Atlantic, even to Iceland itself. Even to Iceland; for when that
island was first discovered, about A.D. 840, the Norsemen found in
an isle, on the east and west and elsewhere, Irish books and bells
and wooden crosses, and named that island Papey, the isle of the
popes--some little colony of monks, who lived by fishing, and who
are said to have left the land when the Norsemen settled in it. Let
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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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: among themselves with cynical scepticism. No individual Siegfried
can rescue them from this bondage and hypocrisy; in fact, the
individual Siegfried has come often enough, only to find himself
confronted with the alternative of governing those who are not
Siegfrieds or risking destruction at their hands. And this
dilemma will persist until Wotan's inspiration comes to our
governors, and they see that their business is not the devising
of laws and institutions to prop up the weaknesses of mobs and
secure the survival of the unfittest, but the breeding of men
whose wills and intelligences may be depended on to produce
spontaneously the social wellbeing our clumsy laws now aim at and
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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 The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: Are come to play a pleasant comedy;
For so your doctors hold it very meet,
Seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy:
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play,
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
SLY.
Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a commonty a
Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?
PAGE.
The Taming of the Shrew |
