| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: the realities of political power as distinguished from the
presences and idolatries behind which the real masters of modern
States pull their wires and train their guns. When he scored
Night Falls On The Gods, he had accepted the failure of Siegfried
and the triumph of the Wotan-Loki-Alberic-trinity as a fact. He
had given up dreaming of heroes, heroines, and final solutions,
and had conceived a new protagonist in Parsifal, whom he
announced, not as a hero, but as a fool; who was armed, not with
a sword which cut irresistibly, but with a spear which he held
only on condition that he did not use it; and who instead of
exulting in the slaughter of a dragon was frightfully ashamed of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: tower. In the evening the wind rose. At midnight
I could hear in my bed the terrific gusts and the
sounds of a driving deluge.
"About that time the Coastguardmen thought
they saw the lights of a steamer over the anchoring-
ground. In a moment they vanished; but it is clear
that another vessel of some sort had tried for shel-
ter in the bay on that awful, blind night, had
rammed the German ship amidships (a breach--
as one of the divers told me afterwards--'that you
could sail a Thames barge through'), and then
Amy Foster |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: The lust that famished my soul now eats and drinks its desire,
And they that encompassed my son shrivel alive in the fire.
Tenfold precious the vengeance that comes after lingering years!
Ye quenched the voice of my singer? - hark, in your dying ears,
The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone?
- Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and bone
And torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maid
Heaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade,
The smoke of your dissolution darkens the stars of night."
Thus she spoke, and her stature grew in the people's sight.
III. RAHERO
Ballads |
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 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope--fervently
do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by
the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The
Second Inaugural Address |
