Word: finly
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Schoenberg began composing in an atmosphere of fin-de-siecle decadence with the ponderously rich chromatic harmonies of the post-Wagnerian idiom. He matured as a composer at a time when tonality, the structure which had supported music for over 300 years, was finally sinking under the bloated burden of its own chromaticism into an anarchic morass. The ferment which resulted from the destruction of the old order gave rise to Schoenberg's great expressionist compositions like the sextet Verklarte Nacht, which seems to breathe in that decaying, sickeningly rich atmosphere, and Pierrot Lunaire, which for many is the ultimate...
...first month, Jaws has grossed an unprecedented $53 million and sent a delicious shiver along the nation's beaches. Formerly bold swimmers now huddle in groups a few yards offshore, bathers stunned with sun hover nervously at water's edge and at the hint of a dorsal fin retreat to the beach. "D'ya want to get jawed?" shouted one kid to another in the Santa Monica, Calif., surf. Even the lowly dogfish, the spaniel of the seas but a shark just the same, is suspected of homicidal intentions. "Kill it, kill it," urged a Long Island...
...their homeland. Yet the comparison with Verne was more than superficial. Both men began as romantic visionaries who sought careers in law, then in the theater, then in literature. Verne went on to science fiction; Herzl went on to Palestine. That bizarre journey has all the qualities of fin-de-siècle romance. It might have been told as a novel, a pageant-even as psychohistory. Instead, Israeli Journalist Amos Elon has chosen a method of slow accretion, scrupulously piling up dates and incidents, scarcely daring to speculate or interpret. The style is out of keeping with its subject...
Harpooned Brother. Careful observations of cetaceans show that they teach and discipline their young, sleep, hunt and even make love in ways that indicate a high order of social organization. In the seas, they often aid their wounded fellows; two fin whales spotted off Canada, for example, supported a harpooned brother on their flukes for five days. In aquariums, they cooperate with-and sometimes outthink-their captors. One group of dolphins being rewarded with fish ate until sated, then continued to perform while piling the excess fish on the pool bottom. When they got bored, they simply gave the fish...
...Gladstonian vocabulary, reserving for his strongest expletives such terms as "Oh perdition!" and "Balderdash!" He spurns television, the telephone, central heating, refrigeration, indoor plumbing and all literature published hi the past 60 years. Thoroughly true to his lifestyle, he supports himself by repairing player pianos, Victrolas, nickelodeons, and other fin de siecle artifacts, drawing customers from all over the state...