Word: rying
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...favorite Delacroix to the wall so that others could not enjoy it. Invited out to dinner, he insisted that there be no dogs around, and no flowers on the table, lest other guests indulge in sentimentalities. This was the Degas whom the French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry came to know, an old man raging at his enemies and riding alone on the tops of buses...
Last week an English translation of Valéry's essay on Degas appeared in U.S. bookstores (Degas Dance Drawing; Lear, $5). It pictured the 19th Century master as coolly and deftly as Degas used to picture worn little ballet girls...
Yearning for Secrets. Degas, Valéry reported, did everything the hard way. He "concealed behind harsh and arbitrary opinions ... a despair of ever satisfying himself; his bitter and lofty views developed along with his penetrating knowledge of the masters; his yearning for the secrets he ascribed to them; his perpetual awareness of their baffling perfection...
Degas' strong point, Valéry thought, was his "taste, a quality rather uncommon among artists." His taste made him as critical of his own work as he was of his critics; when people praised him he laughed in their faces. "He could not conceive of an artist seeing one of his paintings after a lapse of time without wanting to work on it again. Occasionally he would even carry off paintings that had hung for a long time on the walls of friends' rooms, taking them back to his lair, from which they rarely reappeared...
...Mose was afraid that a sudden oversupply of consumer goods would produce serious economic dislocations. Typical was the plight of Softhearted John, the shark-mouthed grocer, whose goods no one would buy as long as they could have shmoos instead. "Ah'll be ruined ef ev'ry-body has everything they need!" he moaned. "Ah cain't make any money...