Word: darkeness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...illustrations for E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker (Crown; $19.95). This is not the customary sugarplum rendition. As the artist points out in his introduction, the Christmastime ballet was based on a version of the tale by Alexandre Dumas, "smoothed out, bland and utterly devoid of the weird, dark qualities that make it something of a masterpiece." With characteristic wit and technical wizardry, Sendak has restored those qualities. Marie, journeying from childhood to the altar, old Drosselmeier the taleteller and Nutcracker himself are no longer marzipan creations. In Ralph Manheim's vigorous new translation, mice and soldiers, clowns and children...
...same song ("We walk in easy snakes/ through the roulette rattling of the ethyl"). In songs like Juke Box Fury, the music, jazz inflected and flirtatiously arrhythmic, keeps the language lofted nicely in the thin air as Jones' husky voice snakes around the lyrics. But the record turns dark in mood, and heavy. This is not to say that it takes on real weight, however, only that it seems to be buckling under the pull of some nonspecific gravity. A woman who can work up a fail-safe two-line recipe for romantic bliss ("Make him some catfish...
...setting was historically apt. Until the Civil War, the ornate and intimate Old Senate Chamber, its dark wooden desks arranged in semicircles, rang with the spirited oratory of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. Last week, when the Senate's 53 Republicans gathered in the museum-like room to elect their leader for the next two years, the forensics were apparently no less rousing. Kansan Robert Dole claimed to be thoroughly persuaded by the speech his nominator, John Danforth of Missouri, made on his behalf. "It was so impressive," Dole quipped, "that I ended up voting...
Dressed in a dark tan uniform, Jaruzelski remained cool and confident throughout the nearly three-hour encounter with the press. At times he even displayed a wry sense of humor. President Reagan, the Polish leader said, deserved "a medal of achievement" from COMECON, the Soviet-led trading community, because Reagan's policy of sanctions against Poland had resulted in greater economic cooperation among Moscow's allies. Jaruzelski made it clear that he was not about to bend to pressure from Washington. Said he: "Reckoning that we will pay with concessions for favors is not realistic...
...shore in the foreground. Throughout, Ruetz exploits the interplay of light and landscape at dawn and sunset: in a pair of striking pictures of Monument Valley, for example, and in a dramatic gatefold of Bryce Canyon, where the sunrise just burnishes the tops of the canyon's pinnacles. Dark skies and heavy clouds brood over the land in many of his photos; one, looking across California's fog-shrouded Central Valley from a mountainside above it, is a play of brightness and shadow that seems more a Japanese silk-screen print than a photograph...