Word: decays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...convergence of hatreds. The anticlerical freethinkers of the Enlightenment detested the Jesuits. So did Jansenist Catholics, who adhered to a puritanical view of man's depravity. Their most articulate spokesman was Blaise Pascal, who, in his eloquently satirical Provincial Letters, accused the Jesuits of abetting the decay of Christianity by their lax moral and ascetic teachings. Their papal loyalty, furthermore, infuriated believers in the new nationalism. A magnanimous missionary project in New Spain?the "Paraguay Reductions"?grew into self-sufficient Indian strongholds under Jesuit protection, angering European colonists who spread calumnies against the order. Finally, the Pope bowed...
Still, as demonstrated by Visconti's previous excursions through the darker realms of the German soul (The Damned, Death in Venice), decay in some form or other is the only thing that really interests him. It is thus natural for him to see Ludwig's molars as the mirror of his soul, while ignoring the fact that quite another side of the royal character was expressed in such glorious excesses as the romantic Schloss Neuschwanstein, the rococo Linderhof, and the unfinished imitation of Versailles, Schloss Herrenchiemsee. Ludwig's edifice complex may nearly have bankrupted his kingdom...
...radio last week, President Nixon made the surprising declaration that in urban America "the hour of crisis has passed." With that assessment, he brushed aside a decade or more of contentions that the nation's great cities were besieged, impoverished and in danger of decay. To support his official optimism, Nixon cited some cheery generalizations: civil disorders have declined; crime rates have fallen in more than half the major cities; finances have improved; the air is getting cleaner. Every one of those assertions is either partially true or partially misleading...
...across the street. Why Wittgenstein devoted his life to pursuing the ineffable may not be explainable either, but at least it can be talked about. With caution and discrimination and color, Authors Janik and Toulmin attempt to show how Wittgenstein's theories grew out of the fertile decay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...
...novels of Thomas Pynchon seem to take place in a vast, unfathomable cyclotron. Characters, ideas, metaphors, styles, pains, ecstasies, assorted objects from the Pyramids to paper clips all whirl about at enormous velocity. They collide, split into new forms, or suddenly decay, leaving behind only enigmatic smiles...