| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: It was a part of my idea that the young lady had had
a foreign lover (and an unedifying tragical rupture)
before her meeting with Jeffrey Aspern. She had lived with
her father and sister in a queer old-fashioned, expatriated,
artistic Bohemia, in the days when the aesthetic was only
the academic and the painters who knew the best models for a
contadina and pifferaro wore peaked hats and long hair.
It was a society less furnished than the coteries of today
(in its ignorance of the wonderful chances, the opportunities
of the early bird, with which its path was strewn),
with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: Could I stay there, holding your head, and suspecting thoughts within
it to me unknown? Oh! I believe in you, I believe in you!" he cried,
seeing her smile sadly and open her mouth as if to speak. "Say
nothing; do not reproach me. Besides, could you say anything I have
not said myself for the last three hours? Yes, for three hours, I have
been here, watching you as you slept, so beautiful! admiring that
pure, peaceful brow. Yes, yes! you have always told me your thoughts,
have you not? I alone am in that soul. While I look at you, while my
eyes can plunge into yours I see all plainly. Your life is as pure as
your glance is clear. No, there is no secret behind those transparent
eyes." He rose and kissed their lids. "Let me avow to you, dearest
Ferragus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: observe this, to be confounded with civil liberty) is the France of
to-day. What is the France of 1840? A country occupied exclusively
with material interests,--without patriotism, without conscience;
where power has no vigor; where election, the fruit of liberty of will
and political liberty, lifts to the surface none but commonplace men;
where brute force has now become a necessity against popular violence;
where discussion, spreading into everything, stifles the action of
legislative bodies; where money rules all questions; where
individualism--the dreadful product of the division of property /ad
infinitum/--will suppress the family and devour all, even the nation,
which egoism will some day deliver over to invasion. Men will say,
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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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: A dear profaner of great mysteries,
An ardent amorous idolater,
When he beheld those grand relentless eyes
Laughed loud for joy, and crying out 'I come'
Leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam.
Then fell from the high heaven one bright star,
One dancer left the circling galaxy,
And back to Athens on her clattering car
In all the pride of venged divinity
Pale Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank,
And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy lover sank.
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