| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: lost the unwritten poetry which intoxicated me. To me this refuge
represented the most various phases of human life, shadowed by
misfortune; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the dead, who
speak in the language of epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of
lepers; another, the house of the Atridae; but, above all, I found
there provincial life, with its contemplative ideas, its hour-glass
existence. I often wept there, I never laughed.
"More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the
dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank;
you must be on the watch for lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering
about with the wild freedom of nature; above all, you must have no
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: others. There was a mighty song of clashes and
crashes that went sweeping through the woods.
The guns in the rear, aroused and enraged by
shells that had been thrown burlike at them,
suddenly involved themselves in a hideous alter-
cation with another band of guns. The battle
roar settled to a rolling thunder, which was a
single, long explosion.
In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of
hesitation denoted in the attitudes of the men.
They were worn, exhausted, having slept but lit-
The Red Badge of Courage |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: All this, and more than I dare to tell you
To-night, -- yes, more than I dare to remember;
And then -- well, the music stopped. There are moments
In all men's lives when it stops, I fancy, --
Or seems to stop, -- till it comes to cheer them
Again with a larger sound. The curtain
Of life just then is lifted a little
To give to their sight new joys -- new sorrows --
Or nothing at all, sometimes. I was watching
The slow, sweet scenes of a golden picture,
Flushed and alive with a long delusion
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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 Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: of a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La
Force to believe that the doctor must be called in. These flaming
eyes, free to rove at this moment, for neither the officer nor the
gendarme looked round at their "customer," spoke so plain a language
that a clever examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance, would have
identified the man convicted for sacrilege.
In fact, ever since the "salad-basket" had turned out of the gate of
La Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way.
Notwithstanding the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an
eager and comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics. He
saw and noted every passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as
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