Word: absurdes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Westermann's images are radically different. They are both limpid and mysterious, and this is largely the result of Westermann's loving attention to craft. He manipulates his repertory of boxes, laminations, dovetails, locks, hinges and clamps with unerring finesse. The effect-as in the absurd log-cabin toy tower that rises, with a metal swan flapping from its crenelations, inside the box called Battle of Little Jack's Creek, 1970-is to convince you of the utter reality, the solid presence, of a completely surreal world, pinned and glued at all its joints and present...
...20th century is the age of death. But, Alvarez argues, because mankind is only numbly aware of this, the risky purpose of the creative writer must now be to force his audience "to recognize and accept imaginatively . . . not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified." This mission may be regarded as carrying coals to Newcastle. Alvarez, however, clearly feels quietly (and personally) Promethean about...
...activities of the Fine Arts Administration can stimulate some Italian critics to unusual fury. Journalist Lamberti Sorrentino calls it "the most anachronistic, insensate, absurd sector of the Italian state apparatus." But the real malaise lies deeper, and it is only visible to those who-following the lead of conservation groups like Italia Nostra and the recently formed Firenze Viva-are ready to see the problem holistically, as a menace to the balance of interlocked, mutually supporting cultural and natural systems. The fresco is to the wall as the wall is to the building, the building to the piazza, the piazza...
...deal with less mysterious, but still uncannily disturbing events. In The Intruders, two brothers embrace in remorse after the murder of a woman whom they both loved and sacrificed, because she was destroying their own fraternal love. The End of the Duel stands out as one of the most absurd and horrible tales, told with cool, impeccable gravity. Two soldiers, captured and condemned to death, play out a long-standing feud by running a race with their throats slit, while fellow prisoners, awaiting their own executions, place their bets...
...fantastic, those of Borges' latest "voice" do the opposite: bestowing a sense of the fantastic upon what might very well be real. The old Borgesian fragmentation and permutation of time and of "fact" turn up again. But this time the exotic context is traded for a violent and often absurd mundaneness that is dissettlingly close to home