Word: absurdity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tract intended to teach children "how blessed are the results of patient continuance in well-doing." What he actually wrote was a sort of sissified, Swissified Tarzan story, describing a number of innocently improbable adventures that took place on an amusingly improbable tropical island populated with an absolutely absurd fauna of Asiatic tigers, African lions, Australian kangaroos, Amazonian anacondas, North American grouse, Mongolian asses and Swiss prigs...
Gioconda's absurd libretto (by "Tobio Gorria," anagram for Arrigo Boito, Verdi's great librettist) revolves about a love plot of pentagonal complexity; Barnaba is in love with Gioconda, who is in love with Enzo, who is in love with Laura, who is married to Alvise. By the time Gorria-Boito sets things right, four acts and nearly that number of hours have elapsed. But La Gioconda is a singers' opera, and it gives the principals some rousing tunes, including Enzo's great second-act aria, Cielo e mar, superbly rendered last week by Tenor Tucker...
...which is not a spiritual doctrine, not a religion, not even a philosophy. One who understands Zen has no gods to fail him. For Zen is not a faith, but faith; not hopes, but hope; not beliefs, but belief. It has no rituals, no concepts, no symbolism. It is absurd to infer that the Eastern flavor of Zen is not worth tasting. Since Zen is simply a way of life, it knows no bounds or boundaries. The beauty of Zen is that it allows things to come of themselves, i.e., if there is enlightenment, the world will automatically become that...
Where is the act of purpose, the work of thought to come from? Even with the will to achieve it, deliberately acquiring a consensus may sound as absurd as deliberately deciding to fall in love. But for those about to embark regretfully on a dubious, consensusless future, Father Murray has a further word. "It just happens," he says in effect, "that I have here a device which any reasonably intelligent person may apply to lead him to the consensus, the public philosophy." And with an urbane, engaging smile, out of his long black clericals he pops it: natural...
...called all rumors of Cornell trying to go big-time in football "absurd." The Navy game was scheduled four years ago," he declared, pointing out that the Big Red had played Navy many times "off and on through the years...