Word: paradoxical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...result is a tension and a paradox. On the one hand, inefficiency, stagnation and alienation are the inevitable accompaniments of the centralization, elitism and repression that are necessary to carry out the first order of business: the preservation of power. On the other hand, the political system is well designed to be impervious to the consequences of the economic failure and social demoralization that are built into...
Actualy, most Italians do not seem concerned about whether the economy dips the government falls or the shootouts take place in the Prime Minister's Chigi Palace. Italy is a living paradox: the more its political and economic life deteriorates, the more its citizens seem to enjoy la dolce vita. As distress from terrorism or corruption grows, ordinary Italians are withdrawing into individualismo, which means ignoring the social structures and doing one's own thing, and familismo, or pulling back into family togetherness. Such universal disengagement does not shatter the nation. Instead, it keeps Italy functioning remarkably well...
...paradox of Hans Werner Henze extends from his life to his art. A member of the progressive Darmstadt circle of composers after World War II, Henze broke decisively with the avant-garde in the mid-'50s and today sneers at the "utter boredom" of doctrinaire serialism. For all his radical leftist politics, Henze's own music is on the musical right. In a way, he is the Brahms of his day, writing in forms such as symphony, concerto and oratorio, preserving the traditional structures in the ace of the avant-gardist onslaught. Henze has mixed idioms freely throughout...
...answer is probably yes on both counts. Giamatti has a highly refined passion for paradox, a humanist sensibility that is both invoked and evoked repeatedly in every essay, and on nearly every page of this elegantly written book. Winning and bit-time athletics have apparently gone hand-in-hand, but Giamatti is capable of drawing a sharp distinction between the two, and pointing out a hidden incompatibility. Yet perhaps the primary weakness--as well as the primary strength--of this collection is the difficulty the reader shares with Giamatti of reconciling the conflicting notions he posits...
Sadat bore with fortitude the loneliness that is inseparable from moving the world from familiar categories toward where it has never been. He raised our gaze toward heretofore unimaginable horizons. And when he had transformed the paradox and solved the riddle, he was killed by the apostles of the ordinary, the fearful, the merchants of the ritualistic whom he shamed by being at once out of scale and impervious to their meanness of spirit...