Word: shapely
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...shape of Calvino's parables is a constant. Each embodies some philosophical conceit, some paradox of perception or memory, and each finds form in a peculiar kind of physical description. The invisible cities bulge with imaginative and very specific detail: Chloe is peopled by "a girl twirling a parasol on her shoulder," "a woman in black, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling," "a young man with white hair," and "two girls, twins, dressed in coral." In Eusapia, a city of the dead...
...catalogue of forms is endless until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins...
...again when he describes Eudoxia, a city that could be a parable for Calvino's novel of parables. Eudoxia is a city seemingly without form, but whose true shape is preserved in a certain intricately woven carpet, just as Calvino's empire preserves some semblance of our own. According to an oracle, "questioned about the mysterious bond between two objects so dissimilar as the carpet and the city," one has a god-given form, and the other is "an approximate reflection, like every human creation...
...seemed to be heading toward a leftist dictatorship. Argentina, where the chances of democracy admittedly had never been strong, seemed on the edge of bankruptcy and chaos. Though Britain appeared to be making some moderate progress in fighting its way back from the economic precipice, it remained in desperate shape...
...child. Smith reports that the amniotic fluid that had surrounded one of the babies he examined had a definite odor of ethanol. A second baby born to an alcoholic mother emerged from the womb with the smell of ethanol on his breath. A third was in even worse shape. At birth, his blood contained an ethanol level of 150 milligrams per 100 milliliters. An adult with the same alcohol level in his blood would be considered grossly intoxicated...