Word: tarnhelm
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...Offen and Besitz, and they tell her that she must procure the magic zither which confers upon its owner the power to go to sleep while apparently carrying on a conversation.... Immerglich calls to her side Dampfboot, the tinsmith of the gods, and bids him make for her a tarnhelm or invisible cap which will enable her to talk to people without their understanding a word she says. For a dollar and a half extra, Dampfboot throws in a magic ring which renders its wearer insensible...
...Orlando is not a work of Handel scholarship, any more than Benchley's synopsis is a work of Wagner scholarship. But Benchley's spirit is in many ways Sellars's as well: an abundant wit, a vaguely lunatic sense of the absurd--and just the slightest touch of the tarnhelm...
...England's No. 1 woman composer, bony, cigar-smoking, fedora-hatted Dame Ethel Smythe: "I can hardly believe that Julius Harrison can be banning Wagner because of the Nazis. If art is to be affected by anything but itself, good-by to culture." Soon the tempest in a Tarnhelm reached the august portals of British Broadcasting Corp., where wax-mustached Conductor Sir Adrian Boult solemnly clucked: "The BBC contemplates no ban on any musical work by reason of its composer's nationality. BBC's concern is to provide good musical programs...
Though it is miles this side of Ultima Thule, her newest book, The Young Cosima, will have allowances made for it. Reason: it concerns the most fantastic romance of the most fantastically romantic of composers, Richard Wagner. Wagnerian freshmen who think the Tarnhelm* was something to steer a boat with will take to the book no less than initiates, for the triangle has a dependable literary as well as musical tinkle. In this case: a great man wanting sympathy, a young man wanting love, an intensely ambitious young woman no more capable of love than a piano stool...
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