Word: apollos
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...miles west of Athens, where once stood a temple to laurel-crowned Apollo, is the domed Monastery of Daphni, whose fine mosaics were neglected for 700 years and are now recognized as a peak of 12th century Byzantine art. The church, named for the Virgin of the Laurels (in Greek, Daphni), stands behind a screen of cypresses, and its walls conceal a violent history. Seized and partially rebuilt in 1204 by Prankish barons, it was in turn captured and burned by Moslem Turks in 1460. The building was used in the 19th century as a powder magazine, fort, police station...
...produced volumes of scholarly works was a sensitive mind, philosophically aware of man's comparative insignificance in a huge universe: "Sometimes I fear that we are all donkeys together--we foolish mortals--braying dissonantly at each other and taking our hee-haws for the oracles of Apollo--shaking our ears in the moonlight, and interpreting their shifting shadows as glimpses of the infinite...
...Egyptians danced for their sacred bull, and the Babylonians danced in their temples and processions. King David "danced before the Lord with all his might" (11 Samuel 6:14), and the Old Testament Hebrews danced in their vineyards on the Day of Atonement. The Greeks danced in honor of Apollo, of Pan, of Artemis, and in the ecstatic mysteries of Dionysus. In Islam, the Mevlevi dervishes still dance in patterns designed to expound cosmic laws as well as to achieve a state of inner peace...
...young Greek spiv of the postwar dead-beat generation. The book's larger theme is the old motif of American innocence v. European corruption. Reflected in the golden eye of a Mediterranean setting, what is sordid and depraved becomes corrosively hilarious. Spiro Polymerides is a sun-baked peasant Apollo. He is taken up by an arty, effeminate, high-minded official of a U.S. relief mission in Athens. To fiftyish Irvine Stroh, Spiro is a kind of male Liza Doolittle, whom he goes about refashioning in his own cultural image. Actually, Irvine is an emotional neuter except for the heartsickness...
...mind wanders, but a foot begins to tap, a hand to twitch in time to the music. Rhythm alone, motion for its own sake, take over. And that is the clue to what George Balanchine has done by way of choreography. Unlike his previous "neoclassic" collaborations with Stravinsky (Apollo, Orpheus), this work is abstract dance: there are no costumes or scenery and the Greek title, Agon (contest), does not denote a conflict of plot but simply a sort of dancers' free...