Word: violiniste
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Joseph Wechsberg is a bland, dark, persistent man of 38 who started out in life to be a concert violinist. In pursuit of the bluebird of happiness, he has wandered far afield. In addition to fiddling on transatlantic ships and in European cabarets, he has been a professional claqueur in Vienna, a croupier in Nice, a politician's secretary in Prague, a war reporter-photographer in Persia, Ethiopia, China and the South Seas, a malt salesman in Venezuela, a soldier in his native Czechoslovakia, a lecturer on democracy in the U.S. He is currently with the U.S. Army...
...anecdotes show that he most often found the bluebird in his own musical backyard. The characters he portrays most fondly and skilfully are such acquaintances of his musical wanderings as Maurice, an orchestra leader "who was brought up on Pernod instead of mother's milk"; Boris, a violinist who "occasionally [ate] caviar with his right hand, playing a stunning pizzicato sequence with his left" Monsieur Arnould, a music director who had something "of the jovial, placid, dignity of the bull fiddle" he once played; Franzl, an amateur pianist whose reason for living was the hope that some...
Overtime. In St. Louis, Louis Druzinsky, St. Louis Symphony violinist, donned old clothes and dark glasses, fiddled Paganini and Tchaikovsky at a street corner, collected $5.98 in his tin cup in 25 minutes, philosophized: "I ought to quit the Symphony. I can make more money this...
...Violinist-Executioner. Karski went out in the rainy, cheerless afternoon to the apartment, six blocks away, of an old friend from his days at Lwow University. There Karski had belonged to an association that lectured to the peasants on literature, history, hygiene. The peasants were mildly interested in Karski's lectures. But they loved the intense, gifted, frail young high-school student who went with him and played the violin after his talk. This was Dziepatowski. He was now an executioner for the underground...
...misery and heroism of the people they served. When Story of a Secret State is not an adventure story, it is often hackneyed. When it tells of flight, pursuit, escape, triumph, it carries conviction in every incident. Its killings are coldblooded, its sorrows without tears. Dziepatowski, Karski's violinist friend, was caught and executed after he had killed a German agent in a Warsaw washroom. Borecki was caught, could not get the poison from his signet ring in time. He too was killed...