Word: existentialist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Theology: "Doctrine, truth is not a substantial deposit that one can lay hold of as an end in itself. One pursues truth, but truth is for the purpose of life. I guess there is enough of an existentialist in me to feel that theology and commitment belong together. To regard theology as a closed system you stand off from-well, that's what Kierkegaard was talking about when he said 'To be a theologian is to have crucified Christ...
...significant works, which he performed in defense of Christianity against ideological dangers. In a long career (one of his first assignments as a young diplomat was to help represent the Vatican at Queen Victoria's funeral) he saw these dangers of the soul veer from Edwardian complacency to existentialist despair. Perhaps his most important efforts were in these areas: ¶ COMMUNISM. When Pius XII was born, the Communists had nowhere won political power; at the time of his death, 52,552,000 Catholics were living in Communist-ruled countries. Again and again, he ringingly condemned Communism as an atheistic...
...Mahood's entire family was killed off by sausage poisoning. But it does not take much imagination to see in Mahood (Manhood?) Author Beckett's savage symbol for mankind. Beckett's great strength is to make his readers uneasy. Like all Beckettmen, Mahood echoes the old existentialist plaint that he did not ask to be born and that life's mess is not of his making. Despairingly he sums up his and Beckett's arid philosophy: "I'm mute, what do they want, what have I done to them, what have I done...
...Visit brings the Lunts back to Broadway in an existentialist fable of a woman's vengeful hate and a whole community's greed...
...European existentialism in Room F. Orthodox analysts down the hall in Emerson A will smirk smugly at 138a's talk of being and angst while they doodle rigorously with 140's metamathematical p's and q's. The literati, both serious and dilantante, will feel all the agonies of existentialist Choice themselves in deciding between Harbage's survey of Shakespeare in Room 18, 2 Divinity Avenue, and Brower's reading in Yeats, Eliot, Frost, and Stevens in the Longfellow Alumnae Room...