| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: sometimes I was on the boards in the chorus, sometimes under them with
the carpenters. Thus I learned every kind of musical effect, studying
the tones of instruments and of the human voice, wherein they differed
and how they harmonized, listening to the score and applying the rules
taught me by my father.
"It was hungry work, in a land where the sun always shines, where art
is all pervading, but where there is no pay for the artist, since Rome
is but nominally the Sovereign of the Christian world. Sometimes made
welcome, sometimes scouted for my poverty, I never lost courage. I
heard a voice within me promising me fame.
"Music seemed to me in its infancy, and I think so still. All that is
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: ill they become so high a rank. In their habits they well
supply the place of our carrion-crows, magpies, and ravens;
a tribe of birds widely distributed over the rest of the world,
but entirely absent in South America. To begin with the
Polyborus Brasiliensis: this is a common bird, and has a wide
geographical range; it is most numerous on the grassy savannahs
of La Plata (where it goes by the name of Carrancha),
and is far from unfrequent throughout the sterile plains of
Patagonia. In the desert between the rivers Negro and Colorado,
numbers constantly attend the line of road to devour
the carcasses of the exhausted animals which chance to
The Voyage of the Beagle |
