Word: dismalness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Aristotle's famous theory of dramatic katharsis, according to which men are supposed to purge themselves of dismal emotions by witnessing the enactment of tragedies still more dismal, seems to collapse before tragic authors in general, Theodore Dreiser in particular. An American Tragedy (1925) apparently did not dissipate, merely whetted his gloom. In Tragic America he looks for trouble wholesale, finds it just one more monopoly of the capitalistic system. "Actually an oligarchical group of lords in America is today seeking to enslave this great people. And, for that purpose, first seeking to debase it mentally." The implications...
...Swedes, disconsolate, nibbled brown beans, salt herring, oatmeal and knackebrod which they had carried all the way from Stockholm. An unprecedented thaw at Lake Placid, N. Y., had spoiled the ice, melted the snow, made practice for the Olympic Games, which begin Feb. 4, impossible. Undiscouraged by this dismal turn of events, the Olympic Committee announced the full schedule of events...
...Jess back to his dingy home again, while managing to make his crazy adventures of the troupe seem a dream, it never gives a final accounting for the members of the troupe that are left. To be sure, they have been laid low by tomatoes in a theatre too dismal to boast grapefruit; they have lost a hero and heroine to the London stage; and they have lost Jess, but somehow the corporate ghost of "The Good Companions" lives on and is not to be laid without special attention from the playwright. The audience never knows what happens...
...dismal drizzle last week 17,000 people entered Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, newest and largest auditorium in Canada. Outside and in nearby streets, traffic was tied up; anxious to get in, 20,000 to 25,000 more milled about for two hours. With streamer headlines the Toronto Daily Mail & Empire reported the exciting event as "the largest indoor gathering ever held in Canada." Editorially it asked, "Does This Mean Coming Religious Revival?" For in Maple Leaf Gardens was no hockey game, no prize fight or revival meeting but a Bible Class-one which had, six years ago, only...
Considerable doubt was expressed as to whether the Plan would be a success or a dismal failure when the gift was first made public. There is a limit, it was argued, beyond which segregation ceases to serve its purpose. The cultivation of the individual less not consist merely of instilling practical and intellectual knowledge into him it consists of much more than that. The counting out of his personality by contact with the wide variety of his contemporaries for example, is also an object of any really worthy secondary school. It has always been the boast of Exeter that...