Word: idyll
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...purely formal duty." Her friend Carlo Sacchi the silk merchant was an amateur poet as well and only slightly less passionate. In Italy's caviar and champagne set during the early '40s, the two made a neatly rhymed couplet, and even Signora Sacchi nodded at their idyl on the theory that it was only a "passing passion...
...Pathetic Idyl. It took the crafty peasants to discover their little idyl, and soon the whole pathetic story was out. Sister Clothilde left her order, Denis was hustled off to school. Both knew that they had made a false start; both believed that they belonged together and would some day meet again. Shrewd young Author Rossi makes no promises...
...Midwest showed signs of vigor. Hamlin Garland had begun to portray farm life as something more, or less, than an idyl. In the Far West lived the gnarled misanthrope, Ambrose Bierce, writing creepy Gothic tales that pointed back to Poe and forward to Faulkner. But in general, Brooks acknowledges, it was a time of decidedly minor craftsmen, a dry season between fertile ones in American writing. The turn came as the old century flickered...
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...