| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: disorder, beauty and incongruity, I saw Misery crouching in wait for
her or for her adorer, Misery rearing its head, for the Countess had
begun to feel the edge of those fangs. Her tired face was an epitome
of the room strewn with relics of past festival. The scattered
gewgaws, pitiable this morning, when gathered together and coherent,
had turned heads the night before.
" 'What efforts to drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read in
these traces of love stricken by the thunderbolt remorse--in this
visible presentment of a life of luxury, extravagance, and riot. There
were faint red marks on her young face, signs of the fineness of the
skin; but her features were coarsened, as it were, and the circles
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
Prufrock/Other Observations |
