Word: virgil
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Warmed-Over Virgil. Actually, The Trojans is really two operas in one. The first part tells the story of the fall of Troy, while the second describes the tattered survivors at Carthage and the love story of Dido and Aeneas. The Berlioz libretto is warmed-over Virgal shot through with a Shakespearean flavor (Berlioz described parts of it as "stolen from Shakespeare and Virgilianized"). To give the sprawling work a proper production and still hold it to a manageable 4½ hours (with only minor cuts), Covent Garden prepared lavish sets and drew on all its artistic and mechanical resources...
...must be time for reflection or the familiarity will remain too verbal ... Probably,... a course which chose eight great books would be trying to do too much. A list from which a selection would be made might include Homer, one or two of the Greek tragedies, Plato, the Bible, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy...
...third canto of the Inferno, Dante, with Virgil as his guide, enters the outer confines of Hell and there sees a vast throng of confused spirits set upon by wasps and hornets. He asks...
...Virgil: "Who are these that seem so overcome with pain?" And Virgil answers: "This miserable mode the dreary souls of those sustain, who lived without blame, and without praise. They are mixed with that caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God; but were for themselves...
Originally, the county was inhabited by Sartorises, Varners and Comptons. Now it is just about all Snopeses-the twins, Bilbo and Vardaman Snopes, Wallstreet Panic Snopes, Admiral Dewey Snopes, Byron and Virgil Snopes and Montgomery Ward Snopes. (The reader is grateful for an occasional mnemonic rhyme, e.g., one Snopes is called Eck, "the one with the broken neck.") Malignant, hated, despised, physically maladroit, the Snopeses prevail over better men by their rapacity and lack of pride or shame. They are like monkeys on the backs of men, and they move to "the blind glare of the blind money...