| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: touch me again."
The strange man picked up his hat. "No thanks," he said grimly. "But I'll
not forget this--I'll go to your landlady."
"Pooh!" She shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "I'll tell her you forced
your way in here and tried to assault me. Who will she believe?--with your
bitten hand. You go and find your Schafers."
A sensation of glorious, intoxicating happiness flooded Viola. She rolled
her eyes at him. "If you don't go away this moment I'll bite you again,"
she said, and the absurd words started her laughing. Even when the door
was closed, hearing him descending the stairs, she laughed, and danced
about the room.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: from a high continental plateau, was some twelve thousand feet
in altitude; hence the actual height increase necessary was not
so vast as it might seem. Nevertheless we were acutely conscious
of the rarefied air and intense cold as we rose; for, on account
of visibility conditions, we had to leave the cabin windows open.
We were dressed, of course, in our heaviest furs.
As we drew
near the forbidding peaks, dark and sinister above the line of
crevasse-riven snow and interstitial glaciers, we noticed more
and more the curiously regular formations clinging to the slopes;
and thought again of the strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich.
At the Mountains of Madness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: could scarce help trembling when he saw splendor and mirth and
laughter and song and youth and beauty and power bowed in
reverence before Death. But in those times, in that adorable
Italy of the sixteenth century, religion and revelry went hand in
hand; and religious excess became a sort of debauch, and a
debauch a religious rite!
The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, then when all
faces had simultaneously put on the same grimace--half-gloomy,
half-indifferent--the whole masque disappeared, and left the
chamber of death empty. It was like an allegory of life.
As they went down the staircase, the Prince spoke to Rivabarella:
|
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 The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent
their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their
neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there
were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal,
keeping an exact account of each person's fortune, striving to control
or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and
blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These
persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant,
sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the
secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the
Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they
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