Word: mountain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...forget that day. He sat in the cabin of Air Force One, a scant few minutes after the assassination, solemn, grim, his face an unyielding mask. All around him everyone was in various states of shock, nearing collapse. But the new President sat there, like a large grey stone mountain, untouched by fear or frenzy, from whom everyone began to draw strength. And suddenly, as though the darkness of the cave confided its fears to the trail of light growing larger as it banished the night, the nation's breath, held tightly in its breast, began to ease...
Unlike the pianists who open doors with their elbows, Michelangeli is not one to pamper his "strangler's hands." He is an avid skier, mountain climber and high-speed sports-car enthusiast (as a prewar professional driver, he once won the Mille Miglia). As a result he cannot find an insurance company that will insure his hands. Or his future. Even his manager, marveling at Michelangeli's "sudden return to the world," openly wonders: "How long will it continue?" Hopefully until next January, when the reluctant master is scheduled to perform in the U.S. for the first time...
...Purgatorio, the most complex and psychological of the canticles, is an allegory of a process the church calls conversion and the psychoanalysts individuation. Purgatory, as Dante conceives it, is formed in the shape of a mountain. Around the mountain, like a mighty serpent, winds a path that spirals upward to the summit. At seven stages of the ascent are situated seven cornices, and on each of them penitents purge one of the seven deadly sins. The proud plod under heavy burdens; the envious wander with eyelids sewn shut; the gluttonous gaze at inaccessible fruit. As Dante and Virgil ascend, they...
...Nevertheless, since "thus the human mind must be addressed," Heaven arranges itself for his experience into a hierarchy of nine heavens ascending in series to the Heart of Light. Suddenly "transhumanized," the poet is swiftly borne upward through the heavens as "a falling rill that plunges from a mountain to the depths." Beatrice precedes him, and on the way they encounter the shining spirits of the saved-among them Justinian, Charles Martel, St. Thomas, Solomon, Charlemagne and St. Benedict. As Dante's spirit soars toward God, his lines soar into a region of mystical incandescence...
...this book sound hurried also give it the breathless, behind-the-scenes nature that make it so readable. There were people who felt that The Making of the President, 1960 was the best book ever written on American politics; I think it is still the best of all the mountain of writing that has been done on John Kennedy. If 1964 is not as brilliant a success, it is at least worthy to stand on the same shelf...