EARTH, AIR, FIRE AND WATER

Alex Eliot, who picked himself up from influential position in the midst of the New York carousel and took himself to Greece, here shares A Personal Adventure into the Sources of our Life and Legend. Disturbed by the sense of substitution in our lives and in the American lack of joy despite generous and moral qualities, he finds that all human experience is encompassed by the four elements of his title. His essays from the side of Mount Pentelikon in a country where the word for hello and goodbye really means ""Rejoice!"" range the ancient and classic worlds in surprising, fresh glimpses of the past, as it melds into the present search. The propensity of the Delphic Oracle to be right, the secret of the Eleusynian mystery, the reason for the Egyptian pyramids are pursued with humor and intelligence. Mr. Eliot gives the sense of re-creating the creation of sculpture in the conditions of Classic Greece, reinterprets the legend of Heracles (which means ""service renown"") as a mortal who certainly earned his immortality, in the frame of elements. Imaginative, intelligent interpretation with glint enough to intrigue the serious reader.