Word: hypochondriacal
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Laymen for whom Stravinsky's music holds an almost pagan quality are surprised to hear that he is ardently religious, says his prayers and goes regularly to the Russian Orthodox Church. But even with his faith and fervor Stravinsky has remained a rabid hypochondriac, always worrying over his own and everyone else's health. His nervous hope last week was that U. S. audiences would be more understanding than the customs officer who picked a package of wordless scores from his luggage and asked him in what language he had written them...
...though not quite gloomy, here chronicles with particularizing finger the ill fortunes of love in a French family of the Gironde (southwestern department of France). The book is really two novels whose characters are related. First part: Jean Pelouéyre, repulsive but sensitive only son of a rich hypochondriac, has a marriage arranged for him by his father and the priest. The bride is a lovely, sturdy peasant who does not dream of disobeying the priest's order but who shrinks physically from her physically horrible husband. When Jean has given up hope of getting her love...
Zeno Cosini, only child of a rich Trieste merchant, very early in his boyhood be came so preoccupied with introspection that he was soon a hypochondriac. A cigaret-smoker almost from infancy, he was constantly vowing to stop smoking. He wrote in his diary, on the walls of his room, the date on which he would smoke his last cigaret. The dates were soon in numerable. When his parents died. Zeno came into a fortune. He played with busi ness, gambled on the stock exchange. There he met shrewd, blunt Malfenti, who took a fancy to him, took him home...
...Publisher Byoir has a hobby it is his bothersome sinus, which has undergone 14 operations, must undergo no more. No hypochondriac, he takes a lively interest in his sinus, priding himself as an authority. He has even been known to drain his own sphenoid cavity, an intricate and highly painful process. Among his prized possessions is a photograph made of him by his friend Robert Hobart ("Bob") Davis, onetime associate editor of Munscy's, editorial writer on the New York Sun. Inscribed Photog- rapher Davis: "It isn't a masterpiece, but then neither is Byoir...
...Hypochondriac Proust used to wear a long nightgown, sweaters, mufflers, stockings, gloves, a nightcap. He lived on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, in a cork-lined attic room. His curtains were drawn against the tree-dust he found obnoxious. The smell of perfumes, flowers, steam heat, oppressed him unbearably. Only at 3 a.m., when breathing was easiest for his asthma, would he venture into the street. In a drawing-room he would not doff his fur-lined coat. Once someone entered his house from several flights below, leaving the street-door ajar. Quavered Proust: "Shut that door!"-and died. Author...