Word: empyrean
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fair, this spoof on late Victorian aestheticism and its pretentiously empyrean devotees is not sterling Gilbert & Sullivan. Patiencedoes have its share of Gilbertian humor, mostly deriving from the parody of aesthetic attitudinizing, and its plot is powered by the usual sort of Gilbertian paradox--in this case, an identification of love with duty which brands the love of anything worth loving as undutiful. But it lacks the consistently memorable score that distinguishes Pirates of Penzance, for example, or the brilliant comic sequences which make Iolanthea favorite...
...Empyrean Love. Oxford, says Jan, saved James from madness by instilling in him an attitude of tolerance and self-amusement. But in his 20s, James' secret sense of anguishing incompleteness seemed hopeless. The doctors whom he saw blithely suggested that he wear gayer clothes, or bluffly urged him to "soldier on for a lifetime" as a male. Then he met Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a Ceylon tea planter...
Except as "a total declaration of interdependence" or a means of having children, Morris has always regarded sex as the least part of love. The present interchangeability of the rude mechanical word "sex" with the empyrean word "love," seems to him grisly and baneful. In a very English romantic way, though, James had obviously been a great lover-of cities and landscapes, of music and pictures, of friends and children. The book eloquently makes clear that the one person in the world whom Morris has most loved, admired and respected is Elizabeth, and that what Morris is most proud...
...sights and inhabits the psyches of a dozen or so great players at key moments during the 1970 matches at Wimbledon. His triumph, though, is a portrait of Robert Twynam, senior groundsman, who for years has exhorted the Wimbledon grass to grow, almost blade by blade. For Twynam, the empyrean racket men of the age are mainly classified as "toe-draggers, sliders or choppers," in relation to how their profane tennis shoes carve up England's most pruned and perfect piece of greensward...
...recession in America has been hardest on those serious painters whose work has not yet entered the $20,000-minimum empyrean where the De Koonings, Motherwells and Stellas reside. In bad times, there is almost no free money to buy anything but sure bets. And, since the collecting of art has largely surrendered to the principles of investment and tax deduction, the question of what is or is not a sure bet has acquired a nervous obsessiveness...