Word: musee
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...must ask you, Madam," said the Muse of History, "to stop dancing up & down on this roof. These old palaces are scarcely more substantial than you ghosts. I am glad to see that Marxism has had the same psychotherapeutic effect on you as on so many neurotics who join the Communist Party. But your notions about Russia and Stalin are highly abnormal. All right-thinking people now agree that Russia is a mighty friend of democracy. Stalin has become a conservative. In a few hours the whole civilized world will hail the historic decisions just reached beneath your feet...
...Muse cannot help being an intellectual," said the Tsar generously, "but I do not think that we should charge her with Trotskyism. I must say, though, that for a Muse of History, you seem to have a very slight grasp of the historical dialectic. It is difficult for me to understand how a contemporary of the dialectician, Heraclitus of Ephesus, can still think in the static concepts of 19th-Century liberalism. History, Madam, is not a suburban trolley line which stops to accommodate every housewife with bundles in her arms...
...think I liked you better, Nicholas," said the Muse of History, "when you were only a weakling Tsar. You are becoming a realist...
...Muse of History drew the Tsarevich to her, for he had become restless. "Poor little bleeder," she said, stroking his hair, "different only in the organic nature of your disease from so many others who have bled and died. In answer to your question, Madam," she said, glancing at the Tsarina, "I never permit my foreknowledge to interfere with human folly, if only be cause I never expect human folly to learn much from history...
...Meaning: Hard Labor-An expletive used by Old Bolsheviks instead of Oh, Hell! *In the Greek Pantheon, Melpomene was the Muse of Tragedy...