Word: idyl
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Book IV begins with a descriptive passage satirically called an "idyl." A young nurse flits between Dr. Paterson and an old dowager who appreciates her massages and hopes for lesbian intimacy. In this final glance at the wasteland of his time, Williams is at his best: he records the inflections of U.S. speech with accuracy and economy. But when he gets around to giving his own recipe for improving U.S. life, what seems to emerge is a shrill cry against "usury," oddly reminiscent of Ezra Pound...
Then, as it must in all sarong epics, catastrophe intrudes on the idyl. The island volcano (realistically played by Hawaii's erupting Mauna Loa) sends fiery lava streaming into the valley, and Jourdan's bride gets her orders from the kahuna to appease the gods by leaping into the angry crater...
...repairs, they miss its departure while sightseeing. The plane crashes. Listed as dead, they are free to make a new life far from Cotten's wife (Jessica Tandy) and son. For a while, until the past (and the Production Code) catches up with the lovers, life becomes an idyl in a palazzo. Renunciation finally comes not so much from themselves as from the prodding of other characters...
...Rumer Godden has cooked up a fresh batch of literature in it. As readers of her earlier novels (Black Narcissus, A Candle for St. Jude) may expect, the Godden brew is not much more than cambric tea, and though its prose has a refreshing bouquet and its flavor of idyl is cut by lemon slices of irony, the book is still a Tempest in a teapot. Author Godden gracefully recognizes the fact by calling her novel not a Tempest but A Breath...
Rudi Bing now thinks of his five years at Glyndebourne as the best of his life. The idyl was shattered by World War II. Glyndebourne shut up shop; Bing went to work in a London department store (Peter Jones in Sloane Square) as a coupon clerk, eventually worked his way up to manager. Technically, he was an enemy alien; he had applied for British citizenship in 1939, but the war had prevented his papers from going through. He was never interned. Moreover, he was able to bring his aging parents from Austria to England...