Word: poincare
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...torus or ring sliced in half and then set up with one half balanced on the other. It is a geometrical form, like the three-dimensional mathematical models that made an indelible impression on Bill when he saw them at the Musée Poincaré in Paris in the '30s. But then the bronze surface is polished and gilded to the point where the solid sculpture almost disappears in an ecstatic dazzle of light and twisting reflections; the mathematical form condenses ambiguities...
...book is fascinating because of the astonishing variety of Armstrong's encounters: Serbian patriots, Yugoslavian royalty, Poincaré, Clemenceau, Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt. He savors characters like Rumania's giddy and theatrical Queen Marie, who once told him, "Like clowns [royal families], amuse people, even with their funerals." One night in Madrid, Ernest Hemingway, otherwise charming, kept threatening to seek out Novelist Louis Bromfield and beat him up for some obscure slight...