Word: solemn
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...something more nourishing than party propaganda. Although few dare openly challenge the mindless conformity imposed by the Communist regime, the spread of irreverent songs and jokes indicates that the Chinese sense of humor is irrepressible. One favorite device is to sing love lyrics, sotto voce, to the tune of solemn hymns to Mao Tse-tung...
...Durrell cheats a bit in Sicilian Carousel. He asks at one point: "What was Sicily? What was a Sicilian?" He never comes close to an answer, except for certain gestures, shades of light, knowledgeable asides. Never mind. The questions will keep, and they were probably too solemn anyway...
Another difficult visitor-though hardly in the same league-preceded Begin to Washington. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, notoriously solemn and often cranky, had been angered by Carter Administration pressure on West Germany to pump up its economy and to refrain from selling full-cycle nuclear plants abroad. Schmidt had also expressed fears that Carter's unsubtle, missionary foreign policy style and his human rights campaign were hurting detente and East-West relations. But Chancellor and President took pains to mute their differences, and both sides considered the meeting "an atmospheric success." Schmidt-whom Carter had called "Helmut...
...moment comes when the narrator sights an "endless" column of Russian soldiers marching under guard. These are the former German P.O.W.s who were dispatched to the Stalinist camps for the crime of having been captured by the enemy. Abruptly, the relentless drumbeat tempo of the meter shifts to a solemn pace...
Soweto (an acronym for southwest townships) remembered its grim anniversary last week in a solemn moratorium that its residents, with calculated irony, called "Black Christmas." There was a two-day general strike by African workers and packed church services fiercely punctuated with raised black-power salutes. Hymns of liberation like Senzenina (What Have We Done?) were sung about Azania-the name that black nationalists use for South Africa. Black sports and entertainment events were canceled. Even Soweto's 400 illegal drinking shebeens were closed. White and African police gathered in force outside the wire fences that border the township...