Word: symbolist
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Through half a century Paul Gauguin has become increasingly famous as a painter of genius who invented a unique style. In that same period Emile Bernard has languished in the shadow as a second-rate symbolist. But back in the 1880s it was Bernard, at 20, just half Gauguin's age, who led the older man beyond impressionism and guided him toward the style that now defines him. Bernard was painting like Gauguin before Gauguin himself...
...Fileuse" and the tinges of modal harmony in "Mort de Melisande." Everything here is achieved through understatement, through minute shadings within a restrained gamut. The resulting "parfum imperissable," to borrow the title of one of Faure's songs, is perfectly suited to the evocative gentleness of Maeterlinck's great Symbolist play; it is, if I may indulge in oxymoron, music of cool warmth. Such music as this demands an extraordinarily nuanced performance from every player; yet all came through with the requisite sensitivity, and the music really breathed...
...sexless ... It is only in his writing that the aunt in him rises up, full of warnings, wagged fingers and brandished umbrellas . . . Shaw was unique. An Irish aunt so gorgeously drunk with wit is something English literature will never see again. But there is fruit for the symbolist in the fact that, prolific as he was, he left no children...
Pantaloon, by Manhattan's Robert Ward, 39, assistant to the president of Juilliard School of Music. The plot adapted from He Who Gets Slapped by Russian Symbolist Leonid Andreyev, concerns a disturbed fellow who joins a circus as a clown for deep-seated reasons of his own. Composer Ward's music resembles Mascagni's, with thick textures sweeping strings and sweet harmonies and thus Pantaloon has the makings of a successful theater piece. Unfortunately, the drama does not need, or benefit from, the addition of music...
Poggioli has written quite a few books himself, ranging from a study of Wallace Stevens (in Italian' to a collection of critical essays covering vast tracts of French and Italian literature. His courses here cover an equally broad mas of material: "Ideas of Tragedy," "The Symbolist Movement," 'European Classicism," "Dostoevsky and Tolstoy," and a few others. Many of Poggioli's colleagues consider him one of the two or three top scholars in comparative literature in the world. Concerning his plans for the future, he is working on a book which will analyze the whole field of avant-grade...