Word: elan
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Arthur Richman's comedy is ill-illumined insomuch as it fails to provide the electric brilliance of witty, speeches which must accompany such efforts. Its sophisticated persons light their cigarets with the elan that should precede an epigram; then they blow the smoke out as if they were at home. The company is distinguished: A. E. Matthews, the hero of a thousand stage affairs, is the detective who telephones to the cuckold, assuring him that in a week at latest he will have grounds for a New York State divorce. The cavorting adulteress is Mary Boland...
...desired in a jazz band, then at least two and perhaps four more are required to cultivate the delicate social graces which should accompany the deft xylophonist. No xylophonist can hope to get away merely on the strength of his ability at his instrument: he must possess savoir-faire elan and also some gift for intelligent repartee...
...whole rather delightful vacation, with so much enthusiasm for the Arts, Nature and other matters of great import to University Hall that he can hardly wait to attend his first class. There is a considerable degree of assurance that he will do so, but unfortunately not with quite the elan which might he desired All this because two occurrences, one quite delicious and the other unfortunate to an untold degree marred he bright days just gone...
...Etta Banana's tragedy and shuts her eyes. I remembered, as I saw her, that famous evening when the great and only Eddie Foy, his family and I filled the old Madison Square Garden watching Duse play little Eva in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Miss Frye has the same elan, the some esprit, the same biceps...
...highest form of consciousness, since it is but a nebula surrounded by dim intuitions, awareness. He predicted rare discoveries in the subconscious. He has substituted for Darwin's "natural" selection a "creative" selection by which, he thinks, man will ultimately surpass his own nature. The stream of life (elan vital), having entered blind alleys in the vegetable kingdom and insect world, has achieved man in the vertebrate phylum, and will not be stopped there. Benedetto Croce (1866-), idol of Italy-although, lately, victim...