Word: phenomenon
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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There she became the Great Jeritza to a gay, music-loving Vienna. Her fame grew with her repertoire. A beautiful prima donna has always seemed a phenomenon. Here was one magnificently built, with sea-blue eyes and golden hair. The public raved. Composers made their music for her. She created Strauss' Ariadne, later the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten. She was his Salome, his Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier). He saw her in Max Reinhardt's revival of Offenbach's Belle Hélène and an idea was born. It simmered and swelled until last winter...
After all, there aren't as many riots as there used to be, and the police record is slimmer than it was. Probably Dogberry would be the first to bless that occasional political phenomenon that lifts so many to their hind legs for one good howl...
...doubt meteorologists and physicists would deny such a phenomenon, but to the Vagabond the day or two leading up to a "big game" week-end seems to be lived in an atmosphere of steadily growing pressure. Tension gradually develops with the first appearance of curb-side speculators and new faces in the streets. On Saturday morning, with phonographs blaring forth the Harvard songs and marches from every dormitory; students rushing their girls up and down the streets in a seemingly aimless fashion, and dozens of hawkers with feathers and souvenirs nobody ever seems to buy, it reaches its high point...
...living richly century after century is a feat of imaginative intelligence. In unskilled hands the bold conception might well fall short of artistic execution, but Mrs. Woolf is a craftsman of great skill. The mechanics of sex-transformation and passage of time are deftly, almost blandly, subordinated to the phenomenon of one and the same temperament reacting to the characteristics of disparate ages. Orlando is influenced by each new mode, but vivid memories give him (her) a dispassionate perspective. The sweep of generations offers every opportunity for satiric commentary; the experience of both sexes an admirable occasion for comparison...
...tomorrow (I believe nobody who cannot see at least fifty years ahead has a right to govern a nation) are worried. . . . The whole of urban Italy shows a birth deficit. Not only is there not equilibrium, but deaths exceed the births. We have reached a tragic phase of the phenomenon. The cradles of our cities are empty and the cemeteries growing...