Word: mortality
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Four characters, bound for Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, constitute Mr. Cole's instruments in his tussle with the fates. The Bishop expresses a worldly skepticism; the Merchant an enthusiastic nihilism; the Baron is the only truly faithful mortal of the bunch; and the Angel, determined but confused, finally tumbles into the water instead of soaring into the Christian empyrean. Mr. Cole tries to make his characters palatable by casting a thin gauze of mockery over the entire apparatus. This technique, though well handled, fails to disguise the essential fatuity of his conception, for though the play is witty...
...Roman Catholic may not take Holy Communion unless he is free of mortal sin, which can only be obtained by confession and absolution from a priest, and no confession is valid unless the penitent sincerely intends never to repeat...
Continuing his description of this "new process of neo-colonialist methods," Kanza suggested that Moise Tshombe's soldiers had murdered Lumumba as soon as the arrested leader entered Katanga province. "It is impossible that Tshombe would allow his mortal enemy to escape," he said...
...Sojourner on Earth. The 2nd century father, Tatian, attacked the Greeks' cyclical conception of immortality, which assumed the pre-existence of the soul, with life extending into eternity, backward as well as forward. Tatian held that the soul is as mortal as the body, but that it can be saved by God. Immortality is not the Christian hope, said Tatian, but "life eternal"-which means living in God. And God grants this only to those who do not grasp for immortality, but submit to death. "Die to the world and repudiate its madness. Live to God, take hold...
...answers, 'Let all things pass away.' " The implicit proviso is "except this poem," and MacLeish goes on to say: "To face the truth of the passing away of the world and make song of it, make beauty of it, is not to solve the riddle of our mortal lives but perhaps to accomplish something more." What is that evasive "something more?" Poetry as religion, in the manner of Malraux's view of art? Poetry as an existential pacifier, good for stoics of all ages? Or has Playwright MacLeish now fastened on the poet that blasphemous tribulation...