Word: sidelong
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Toman and die Waldfec, by Vitĕzslav Novak, embodies the old German folk story of Toman who, betrayed by his beloved, cannot resist the decoy of the sidelong smiling fairy whose kiss is death. He rides to his bride in a ballad for strings with a background of contra bass. Learning of her treachery, his laughter whirls in the brasses; exhaustion succeeds; the love cry faints into the sliding enchantments of Venus Yertocordia, to culminate at length in a triumphant orgy of brutal discords. "The finale," said one critic, "is like awakening from a nightmare...
...delight of the older generation, Michael and Fleur finally permitted an eleventh baronet to come into the world, and the final happiness of all concerned was only qualified by the symbolic significance of a picture bequeathed by a dying Forsyte. It was a Chinese work, depicting a "large whitish sidelong monkey, holding the rind of a squeezed fruit in its outstretched paw." The picture is commented on as a perfect allegory. "Eat the fruits of life, scatter the rinds, and get copped doing it," says one of its observers; ... a monkey's eyes are the human tragedy incarnate...
...Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli and all manner of other notables of renaissance Florence. It is all very ingenious and very amusing. But the joke is run into the ground. All these grotesque masqueraders begin to take themselves seriously. You think you were wrong about the fancy dress. Casting sidelong glances about the garden of Lorenzo, you nervously seek the uniformed attendant. At any moment, you feel, some ardent damsel may rush on shouting: "I'm an egg! Watch me scramble...