Word: modern
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Maritain has written more than two dozen books, hardly any of them light reading. Together they form almost an encyclopedia of Roman Catholic thought. Nothing irritates Maritain more than to be accused of reaction or medievalism; he insists that his "antimodern" position is actually "ultra-modern...
...Centered. A social critic as well as a philosopher, Maritain applies Thomist principles to such contemporary phenomena as industrialism, modern art, anti-Semitism and communism. Aiming his attacks at both man-centered Marxism and capitalism, Maritain proposes a God-centered "Christian humanism." Says he: "God trains us through our disillusionments and mistakes to understand at last that we must believe only in Him and not in men, which places us in the proper position to marvel at ... all the good which [men] do in spite of themselves...
...more militant admirers of modern art, there is something baffling in John's brilliance: his painting is a whole lifetime behind the times. For half a century now, he has been working right across the Channel from Picasso and Matisse, and yet he has never been swayed an inch by the powerful influence of those moderns' magnetic brushes...
...lasted. Vain and touchy, a brilliant, malicious destroyer of reputations, he was a critical menace to the dull and mediocre in life and literature. Also one of the ablest craftsmen of verse who ever lived, he packed more in a couplet than others could in a stanza. Unlike many modern poets, he wrote both lucidly and sharply; he intended to be understood by every intelligent reader. He died of dropsy at 56. These characteristic lines (reprinted from the Selected Works of Alexander Pope, a new volume edited by Louis Kronenberger: Modern Library; $1.25) are one of the neatest jobs...
...when Franz Kafka was 26, he began keeping a diary. His personality was already obsessed by anxieties that he never shook off, and his writing was a presentiment of his later books. These diaries are more than a personal record; they seem to illuminate large areas of modern life and literature. Nothing quite like them has appeared in this century...