| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: sighs unheeded, devotions unrewarded,--on earth at least,--splendid
silences misconstrued; vengeances withheld, disdained; generosities
perpetually bestowed and wasted; pleasures longed for and denied;
angelic charities secretly accomplished,--in short, all the religions
of womanhood and its inextinguishable love.
Juana knew that life; fate spared her nought. She was wholly a wife,
but a sorrowful and suffering wife; a wife incessantly wounded, yet
forgiving always; a wife pure as a flawless diamond,--she who had the
beauty and the glow of the diamond, and in that beauty, that glow, a
vengeance in her hand; for she was certainly not a woman to fear the
dagger added to her "dot."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: My temperament was akin to joy. I filled my life to the very brim
with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine.
Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and
even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me. I
remember during my first term at Oxford reading in Pater's
RENAISSANCE - that book which has had such strange influence over
my life - how Dante places low in the Inferno those who wilfully
live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to
the passage in the DIVINE COMEDY where beneath the dreary marsh lie
those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever
through their sighs -
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: wait for the procession, which was headed by the priests playing
mournful, wailing music on large and small horns and drums. The
priests were followed by the mourners and their friends. When
they arrived at the place of the burning, the mourners prostrated
themselves upon white cushions before the paper furnishings amid
the shrieks of the instruments, the wailing of the hired
mourners, and the petitions of the priests for the spirits to
assist the departed on her way.
While this was going on, fire was applied to various parts of the
paper pile, and in a moment a great flame sprang up into the
air--a flame that could be seen from miles around, and in less
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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 The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: I abandon experiments in my study.
We must go direct to the spot and force the duel upon the
Tarantula, who is full of pluck in her own stronghold. Only,
instead of the Bumble-bee, who enters the burrow and conceals her
death from our eyes, it is necessary to substitute another
adversary, less inclined to penetrate underground. There abounds
in the garden, at this moment, on the flowers of the common clary,
one of the largest and most powerful Bees that haunt my district,
the Carpenter-bee (Xylocopa violacea), clad in black velvet, with
wings of purple gauze. Her size, which is nearly an inch, exceeds
that of the Bumble-bee. Her sting is excruciating and produces a
The Life of the Spider |
