Word: uncouthness
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Crude but Sympathetic. Peter Grimes is no conventional operatic hero. Britten found him in a poem written by Parson Poet George Crabbe (1754-1832) and added a few hints of Freud. Crabbe's Grimes was an uncouth and unsympathetic ruffian; to Britten and Librettist Montagu Slater he is still crude but somehow sympathetic-a character who, by his uncontrollable rages, continually puts himself at swords'-points with society, which Britten represents with the massive chorus. Sings Peter Grimes: "They listen to money, these Borough gossips. I listen to courage and fiery visions...
...fellow whites didn't fare much better. He was charmed by the Lake George country of New York State, but found it "occupied by a race of boors about as uncouth, mean, and stupid as the hogs they seem chiefly to delight in." He reserved his greatest contempt for Englishmen. Looking down from the cupola of St. Paul's in London: " 'Now,' thought I, 'I have under my eye the greatest collection of blockheads and rascals, the greatest horde of pimps, prostitutes and bullies that the earth can show. . . . Was there ever such a cursed...
...Chang Tso-lin, who drank tiger blood and warlorded it over Manchuria until his assassination in 1928, the Young Marshal kidnaped Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the fantastic Sian incident of 1936. Eventually he freed the Gissimo and surrendered himself, crying: "I, Hsueh-liang, am by nature rude and uncouth. . . . Blushing with shame, I receive from you . . . the punishment I deserve...
Solace of History. During ten years of internment the once uncouth Young Marshal has read nearly 200 books. This led him to "dialectical thinking on the evolution of things" and search for a solution to the nation's problems in the study of the nation's history...
...They did not learn much . . . they did not feel there was much to be learned.... It never occurred to them that many Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans soon came to look upon them as uncouth barbarians...