Word: mocker
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...earth, Goethe's, loving wisdom, seeks omniscience. Power inspires sharper drama than knowledge, particularly for those without the German to follow Faust's speculations and soliloquizings. Goethe's Mephistopheles, on the other hand, boasts some of the internationalism of Hell. Less fiend than cold-blooded mocker and cynic, he is full of wit and mischief, and Gustaf Gründgens, who plays him nimbly enough, has the one role that can often make action as expressive as words...
This is more than melodrama, Translator Graves easily persuades the reader. Alarcon, the firebrand grown conservative, still is a mocker. His gentle irony is aimed partly at the lofty aspirations of youth, and also, less obviously, at the easy com promises of age. The author's characters, particularly those that are, in part, self-caricatures, are drawn with accuracy and wit. Alarcón's description of a selfconscious, self-elected young genius shows why his book is worth Graves's trouble and the reader's time: "A young man, pale and gloomy, who avoids mankind...