Word: abstractions
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Pointedly, she queried the professor about how to appeal to the undecided voters. "Do the people understand abstract things like truth, justice and freedom that I always talk about or do they only understand material things?" The professor was evasive, so Cory described a trip she had made as chairman of a drive to aid the economically depressed island of Negros. "The people welcomed me, but it was because I was bringing them a check, which meant rice for them," she said frankly. "I have the impression that if elections are held, we are lost, because only Marcos can give...
Meanwhile, as static conquest of the air, the skyscraper multiplied the site, extruding a patch of earth into a stack of pure property: the abstract, universal sign of capitalism. The standardization of its floors invoked the image of the machine, like the use of bodies as mechanical parts in Busby Berkeley's choreography or the precisely drilled production-line kicks of the Rockettes. Its soaring shafts, tapering setbacks and elaborate stacking (for this was the age of Rockefeller Center, not of the banal glass box) hinted at vastly oversized Mayan temples; the contrast between glittering surface and deep wells...
Motivation and psychological depth, emotion and dramatic intensity--these were qualities Balanchine attempted to repress in his dancers and in his ballets. He sought to replace personality with his abstract ideal of physical movement...
Pasternak declined to join the chorus. "What I saw could not be expressed in words," Russia's greatest modern poet recalled in an unpublished memoir. "There was such inhuman, unimaginable misery, such a terrible disaster, that it began to seem almost abstract, it would not fit within the bounds of consciousness. I fell ill. For an entire year I could not write." What he had glimpsed was the consequences of Stalin's war against his country's peasantry, otherwise known as the collectivization of agriculture. Between 1929 and 1934, 20 million family farms had disappeared. So had the kulaks...
...plaza's most striking feature is a large abstract sculpture that sits atop a raised brick platform as though it were on a stage. The piece bears the title of one of Houdini's most famous tricks: Metamorphosis. Re-enacted time after time, the routine by now is familiar. The magician's assistant is handcuffed and placed in a sack, which is tied and put into a trunk. The trunk is in turn secured with locks and chains. The magician, standing atop the trunk, briefly raises a curtain. Abracadabra. Suddenly, the magician's assistant stands in the place...