Word: enigma
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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George Pierce Baker was a specimen of that great enigma, the Harvard giant. His English 47 play-writing class was nationally renowned for over thirty years; it attracted a classroom audience of some of the greatest names in American letters--Philip Barry, John Mason Brown, Thomas Wolfe, and Eugene O'Neill...
...Thousand Faces (Universal-International) is the glittering trademark that Hollywood gave Lon Chaney in his day. He was also ballyhooed as a "mystery man," and the ballyhoo for once told the truth; when Actor Chaney died in 1930. the film colony mourned an enigma. Reticent and secretive, Chaney, son of two deaf-mutes, shrouded his personality, veiled his past as adroitly as he camouflaged his own features under masterful disguises (he was the Encyclopaedia Britannica's expert on movie makeup). Chaney enjoyed the respect of his own associates in the film industry, but he avoided both publicity and public...
...there was another, less roast-beefy side to Elgar ("I must go out and buy some strychnine," he said in a moment of self-criticism), and from that side came his best music-The Dream of Gerontius, Enigma Variations, the Falstaff symphonic poem, his two symphonies. Such pieces have few of Elgar's faults and most of his virtues: the imaginative orchestration, the mystical harmonies, the broad, marching orchestral drive, and the peaceful lyrical passages, which rise and fall as gently as the rolling English countryside Elgar used to roam for inspiration...
...Marks the Spot. Part of the enigma of the Match King is that the man who commandeered millions spent comparatively little on himself. He maintained elegant apartments in Stockholm. London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and New York, but these were almost business necessities. He had little interest in women. His favorite possessions were two Rolls-Royces and three high-speed motorboats...
Personally, I feel the solution to the "enigma" of this play, or of modern music or painting, lies mainly in one thing: familiarity. No work that gives everything it has to offer on first acquaintance can be a candidate for immortality. People are still arguing about the meaning of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet--and these both can be legitimately regarded in all sorts of ways, from a first-rate detective story on up. The same is true of Godot; familiarity yields ever-increasing insights. One sees that the four main roles represent humanity ("All mankind is us"). Beckett presents them...