Word: hutzpa
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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...brash and often tactless. He suffers from what was once described as a pre-Copernican ego, i.e., seeing the whole world revolve around him. The condition was described by his onetime mentor, Conductor Artur Rodzinski, with an expressive Jewish word that means cheek, nerve, monumental gall. "He has hutzpa," says Rodzinski, and illustrates what he means with the story of how Bernstein, a mere 35, dared to conduct Beethoven's sacrosanct Ninth Symphony with the great Santa Cecilia chorus in Rome. "And he had the nerve to move his hips in time to the music. Hutzpa...
...Millay. He has hutzpa all right, but always with more than a grain of justification. "Nobody," he once announced, "can handle the sonnet form like me and Millay"?but he could point to some entirely respectable poetry he had written in spare moments. He pronounces foreign words with elaborate accuracy?but it is not just an affectation, for he speaks five foreign languages (German, French, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew). He loves to give advice to experts on their own specialty? theater technicians on lighting, or classicists on Latin?but he has an impressive body of general information and education...