| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: here? Is it curiosity? In that case I am paying dearly for a little
fleeting pleasure. Have you fallen /passionately/ in love already with
a woman whom you have never seen, a woman with whose name slander has,
of course, been busy? If so, your motive in making this visit is based
on disrespect, on an error which accident brought into notoriety."
She flung her book down scornfully upon the table, then, with a
terrible look at Gaston, she went on: "Because I once was weak, must
it be supposed that I am always weak? This is horrible, degrading. Or
have you come here to pity me? You are very young to offer sympathy
with heart troubles. Understand this clearly, sir, that I would rather
have scorn than pity. I will not endure compassion from any one."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: Mr. William Brewster Gilbert Winslow
Isaac Allerton Edmund Margesson
Miles Standish Peter Brown
John Alden Richard Bitteridge
John Turner George Soule
Francis Eaton Edward Tilly
James Chilton John Tilly
John Craxton Francis Cooke
John Billington Thomas Rogers
Joses Fletcher Thomas Tinker
John Goodman John Ridgate
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up
that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision.
I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket,
snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots. No hat.
Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held
in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder
behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's
chief accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this station.
He had come out for a moment, he said, `to get a breath of fresh air.
The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary
Heart of Darkness |
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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to
allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection. To have
made such an appeal would have been from the individualist point of
view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for
having made it? Of course once I had put into motion the forces of
society, society turned on me and said, 'Have you been living all
this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those
laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the
full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result
is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by
such ignoble instruments, as I did.
|
