Word: monke
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Much ado about a sexy monk...
...Contemporary, the journal of the Russian Writers Union, is currently serializing At the Last Frontier by Valentin Pikul. The book is a canny mix of fact and rumor about the monk, whose skill in doctoring the Tsarina's sick son gained him inordinate influence over the royal family in the final decade of the Russian empire. By prudish Soviet standards, Pikul's empurpled prose is downright lurid. In one key scene, for example, Rasputin sneaks up to the Tsarina as she prays for her hemophiliac son. Out of the shadows steps the "bony peasant, his face framed...
Even more striking is the book's appeal to antiSemitism. According to Pikul, Rasputin was the tool of "Zionists," who exploited his political influence on the imperial family, paying the monk off with bonds, cash and cases of his favorite Madeira. With backing from Jewish bankers, Rasputin and his secretary, Aaron Simonovich, allegedly owned several night clubs "with card tables, and a buffet frequented by strange-looking, svelte women with eyes big from cocaine...
...Joseph more than anyone else has been responsible for the Tories' monetarist vision of an unfettered economy. Joseph has been accused of insensitivity toward the poor-he once claimed that what Britain needed was "more millionaires and more bankrupts"-and even some Tories characterize him as a "mad monk." Sir Keith readily admits the failings that have made him a bogeyman to the left. "I know I have a first-class mind," he once said, "but I have no political judgment whatsoever." Thus, despite his powerful influence on Thatcher, he was given the relatively minor Cabinet post of Minister...
Hemophilia, the bleeder's disease, evokes images of royal princes who suffered from this genetic malady, and of the Russian monk Rasputin, who gained influence over Nicholas and Alexandra by convincing them that he could control their son's bleeding. Such aristocratic associations have tended to obscure the grim fact that hemophilia strikes ordinary mortals as well. It imposes enormous physical, emotional and financial burdens on both sufferer and family...