Word: shimmering
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most important of the Soviet Union's three surviving Russian Orthodox seminaries. The 78 graduates, clad in black tunics and trousers, take their places in the cathedral before the ornate screen, hung with treasured icons, that separates the sanctuary from the congregation. Hundreds of candles shimmer against the gold and silver on the walls, and the smell of hot wax mingles with that of flowers...
When Vienna was good it glittered, and when it turned bad it phosphoresced. This shimmer of decay, 80 years later, still lights up the contemporary terrain so pervasively that the city seems less a historical place than a state of mind. Psychoanalysis was born there, as well as atonal music, several schools of urban planning and modern Zionism. Vienna also spawned the brand of hooligan anti-Semitism that was admired, studied and perfected by an Austrian named Adolf Hitler. The powerful impulses sent out from turn-of-the-century Vienna have made it difficult to imagine the place...