Word: frenchman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first sight of the Sphinx and its "terrifying stare," but as for the temples, they "bore me profoundly." The living panorama of the voyage, however, made all his senses tingle with excitement. He responded to everything strange and savage and grotesque. Naked Coptic monks swam out to the young Frenchman's boat to beg for baksheesh and swam back with coins between their teeth. Stray cows poked their noses into ruins that Du Camp was conscientiously measuring. It was fun to discuss theology with prelates of obscure religions, or the technique of the bastinado with corrupt judges (it takes...
...anything, this new relationship is likely to intensify Europe's perennial if ambiguous fascination with the mystery that is America. In 1830 that observant Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville saw in America "the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its prejudices and its passions." A century and a half later, another astute French observer, Jean-François Revel (Without Marx or Jesus) described America as "an example for all democracies and all technological societies today." Other observers argue that America is an example of precisely what other modern nations should...
Almost universally, people who see Sorrow and Pity come out with admiration and respect for Christian de la Masiere, a French aristocrat who fought in the Waffen SS for the Nazis on the Eastern front against Russia--in retrospect hardly the most justifiable position for a Frenchman during World War II. Ophuls himself said "I feel I have the right to judge Fascists" like la Masiere, and judge them severely. Yet we are unable to judge this man harshly--his principles, yes; his person, no. And this fact has confused many people who have tried hard to tease...
...fainthearted French employ the services of airborne passeurs (roughly, smugglers), who take 1% of the money transmitted as a fee. Several times a week, for example, a single-engine Cessna from a field in Switzerland lands on a French meadow where cows are peaceably grazing. Awaiting it is a Frenchman, who gives the pilot a suitcase loaded with gold or cash. The plane returns to Switzerland; at the same time, the Frenchman proceeds to Switzerland with a few hundred francs in his pocket for the satisfaction of customs inspectors. Once across the border, he recovers his money from the pilot...
Like other modern poets (the Frenchman St.-John Perse, the Greek George Seferis), he has made a career as a professional diplomat. He was Mexico's Ambassador to India when he resigned from the diplomatic service for, in fact, the most political of reasons-to protest the killing of Mexican university students by soldiers and police in October...