Word: imp
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LOOKING BACK, my fondest memories are for the times when I tweaked Harvard authorities, out of self-interest, stupidity, or at the behest of the "imp of the perverse" that whispers in all our ears from time to time...
...bouffant day costume featured layers of huge polka dots overlapping like the tiles on a roof. And the hats! Florid Creole cones, luscious layers of peonies topped by an upended straw boater. Befruited skimmers and lacy lampshades. Carmen Miranda would have loved it. So would Elsa Schiaparelli, the imp of '30s couture...
...factual truth of this can be assessed by anyone who visits the Reynolds retrospective now running at London's Royal Academy. Reynolds' paintings have long since faded, mimicking his reputation. "Sir Sploshua," as others called him for his generous and Rubenesque handling of wet paint surfaces, had an imp of fakery lodged in his breast. He was determined to produce, for his clientele of the great, the tone and mellowed appearance of European seicento art. To this end he would whip up weird mayonnaises of wax, turps, asphaltum, eggs, resin and oil. "Varnished three times with different varnishes, and egged...
...lasts a little longer, and that is his undoing. His infatuation with the unstable "Bosie," son of the Marquess of Queensberry, lands him in court and then in jail, his marriage broken, his reputation ruined. This is the stuff of tragedy, but Wilde will not have it so; the imp of the perverse follows him to the grave. Exiled to Paris, the extravagant drunk regrets that he is dying "the way I lived: beyond my means...
Malik has a few problems of his own: he is a chronic sleepwalker and an irrepressible imp. When Mama (Mirjana Karanovic) snags a few intimate moments alone with Father, Malik feigns a fit of sleepwalking; Mama resignedly gets out of bed and lullabies the boy to sleep. When she returns to make love to her husband, she finds him asleep. When Malik crawls into bed between his parents, Father embraces him, and Mama is left awake and alone. In the film's loveliest scene, Malik sleepwalks out of his bed, down the stairs, out of the house, down the street...