The Four Correlations: An Experiment with Literary Symbolism

Time for an aesthetic experiment with common literary symbols. You've prob'ly heard of several famous sets of four that often appear in literature: The Four Elements, The Four Seasons, The Four Humors (or Temperaments), The Four Times of Day, and The Four Stages of Life. (I know what you're thinking: Where are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Sadly, I'm leaving them out of this particular reckoning. They'll get their time. 😉)

It turns out that these aren't random groupings. In fact, they correlate to one another. Here are the four sets of symbols, correlated:

Air, Spring, Sanguine (Blood), Morning, Birth

Fire, Summer, Choleric (Yellow Bile), Noon, Youth

Earth, Autumn, Melancholy (Black Bile), Afternoon, Adulthood

Water, Winter, Phlegmatic (Phlegm), Night, Death

Upon first view, you might see some similarities: Of course, night correlates to death, and fire to summer, and so on. The connections to the four humors are less obvious, but they actually have a lot in common with the four elements*. But the real question is, why do these correlations exist? Because these sets or four tend to symbolize (or be symbolized by) the same concepts in literature.

All this to say, over the course of the next few months, I'll put up a series of posts that briefly discusses each subset in The Four Correlations (as I'll call them for now) and gives a list of elements, symbols, and ideas associated with each Correlation, for writing reference. This is your introductory post.

*The four elements and four humors are both associated with certain pairs of qualities: Air and Blood map to "hot, wet," Fire and Yellow Bile to "hot, dry," Earth and Black Bile to "cold, dry," and Water and Phlegm to "cold, wet." What are the four humors, you ask? They are part of an ancient medical theory about four substances within the body that must be kept in balance to maintain good health. The theory has long since been disproven, but the association of certain humors with certain temperaments remains. (That's why when someone has an easy-going temperament, we say he's "in good humor," or when someone is sad, we call him "melancholy.")