| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: like the apple of his eye. I have been half afraid the girl, who
is devilishly handsome, might run away, and then my uncle would
have followed her; but an illness which seized her suddenly has
kept her in bed. If God desired to protect me, he would call her
soul to himself, now, while she is repenting of her sins.
Meantime, on my side I have, thanks to that old trump, Hochon, the
doctor of Issoudun, one named Goddet, a worthy soul who conceives
that the property of uncles ought to go to nephews rather than to
sluts.
Monsieur Hochon has some influence on a certain papa Fichet, who
is rich, and whose daughter Goddet wants as a wife for his son: so
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: bystanders.
King Richard looked more than once at the Nubian and his dog; but
the former moved not, nor did the latter strain at the leash, so
that Richard said to the slave with some scorn, "Thy success in
this enterprise, my sable friend, even though thou hast brought
thy hound's sagacity to back thine own, will not, I fear, place
thee high in the rank of wizards, or much augment thy merits
towards our person."
The Nubian answered, as usual, only by a lowly obeisance.
Meantime the troops of the Marquis of Montserrat next passed in
order before the King of England. That powerful and wily baron,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: after all, the genius of America was there smiting the crown
prince to his ruin long before the first American doughboy could
set foot in France.
For years the names of oil king and iron master have been a
hissing and a byword among the hot-heads in America. Yet oil king
and iron master filled a world with motor lorries. The blessings
these have brought to every man are more than he can measure. We
mention this as one: They stopped the Germans at Verdun and saved
our civilization. It was an iron war and our iron won.
My days were spent at forge and puddling furnace. The iron that
I made is civilization's tools. I ride by night in metal
|
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 1984 by George Orwell: call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all
Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions
more and more in their everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and
embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was
a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic
formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final,
perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary,
that we are concerned here.
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression
for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc,
but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that
1984 |
