Word: greek
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Orders for the new series, through a record-of-the-month sort of operation known as Shakespeare Recording Society Inc. (4,000 members so far), are "twelve times what we expected," notes Partner Mantell. She once said: "After studying Greek, Gothic and Sanskrit, we were obviously unfitted for anything." Now she admits: "We apparently had a streak of business sense...
Never on Sunday. A rambunctious little politico-philosophical fable about the Virtuous Whore and the Quiet American, who meet and educate each other in an earthy Greek setting. Directed by Jules (He Who Must Die) Dassin and starring Melina Mercouri, Hellenism's latest, triumphant incarnation...
Elsewhere, Durrell notes that the "Greeks adore partings." So does Durrell. He writes in what might be called the present past tense. He seems to be savoring his island idyl as if the relativities of war, chance and change had already foreclosed it, as indeed they subsequently did. In Durrell's case, the nostalgic mood is an authentic foretaste of his fictional calling, that subtle parting, or detachment, of a novelist from his experience, without which life would never become literature. But while he is still the close observer, Durrell sets down much of the immemorial daily life...
Feathers or Lead? Himself steeped in Greek myth and history, Durrell is quick to relish the durable, often superstitious, links with the pagan past. In Rhodes, the peasants believe that a child conceived on March 25 must be born on Christmas Eve and will inevitably turn out to be a Kaous. A Kaous is an impish little devil, complete with horns, hoofs and pointed ears, descended from Pan. He circulates after dark, croaking, "Feathers or lead?" Either answer may be wrong, after which the Kaous mounts his victim like a horse for a breakneck ride across country, lashing...
...Greek temper is erratic, the Greek tempo seduces Durrell with its essential timelessness. Sky, sea and air are the only absolutes, and full absolution; Durrell is convinced that the Greeks live "beyond good and evil." The only space that matters to them is the spot they occupy. Asked the distance to a neighboring town, a Corfiote villager would reply with the number of cigarettes smoked in transit. With the reminder that "Poverty is the Tenth Muse" of Greece, Durrell makes the inevitable attempt to define the national character: It "is based on the idea of the impoverished and downtrodden little...