Word: apologists
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QUEEN MARGUERITE is the most complex character in Exit the King. As the play proceeds she must change from death's morbid apologist to a magnanimous prophet. But Marlene Nelson as Marguerite maintains a uniformly dour and malignant tenor, never clearly establishing what she feels or wants. Ionesco is vague on these points, but she should clarify the uncertainty. Her work in the final scene in the play, when she tells the king and the audience what it is to die, is the biggest let-down of the evening...
HENRI MATISSE by Louis Aragon. 2 vols., 721 pages. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $75. The publication of this eccentric, often brilliant, book was one of the major events in the French art world. Aragon, whose talent as a poet-novelist has long been buried under his notoriety as a Marxian apologist, met Matisse in 1941, and until the painter died in 1954 spent hours in his studio at Cimiez talking about the creative process. It took Aragon 27 years to put together his notes on those conversations and Matisse's comments. Aragon can be the most digressive of writers. Luckily...
Pines' version simply describes Jesus as "a wise man" whose "conduct was good" and who "was known to be virtuous." Moreover, it does not mention any involvement of the Jewish leaders in Jesus' trial, a good test of authenticity; any Christian apologist tempted to tamper with the text would almost surely have mentioned the Jews' role. As far as the resurrection is concerned, the 10th century manuscript recounts it only as a claim: "His disciples ... reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps...
...irony is that whoever tinkered with the original Josephus passage -whether it was Eusebius or some other eager apologist-ended up making Josephus' testimony suspect to later generations. In his zeal to refashion Josephus' Jesus in the Christian mold, the tamperer succeeded only in weakening the credibility of the text-even as proof of Jesus' existence...
...keeps both the conversation and the guests circulating affably is the club's founder, a witty, white-haired retired lawyer named Percy Chen, 70. Born in Trinidad into a wealthy, land-owning Chinese family, Chen is an atypical apologist for the People's Republic. He studied at University College in London and did his legal apprenticeship at the Middle Temple, one of London's prestigious Inns of Court. Even today, his accent is impeccably British, and he speaks very little Chinese...