United States or Honduras ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Kara is playing a wild Hungarian polonaise. Wonderful! Wonderful!" He might well say so, and he struggled to his feet, leaning against the pillar of stone to see the dancer better. From the wood came the fierce and stirring Slav music, and Chaldea's whole expressive body answered to every note as a needle does to a magnet.
It was a chivalrous but not an amorous dance, precedence being given to age and rank, before youth and beauty. And whereas, in other dances, the place of honor is always given to the fair sex, in the polonaise the men are in the foreground. In a word, the polonaise represents, both in its subject and the style of music, the masculine side of Chopin's genius.
"Well, Mother can rig you up a basque or a polonaise or something. Or put on a raincoat or an Indian blanket, but for goodness' sake get out and around. I'll stir you up " "Here, here, what's going on?" and Mrs. Rose came in just in time to hear Bob's last words. "You're not to stir Dotty up, Bob, we want to keep her quiet." "Quiet nothing! She'll dry up and blow away if she doesn't get a move on!
Why did she look at him like that? Ugly girl! How hateful ugly people were! When she was gone, he reopened the door of the waiting-room, and listened. Chopin! The polonaise in A flat. Good! Could that be Gyp? Very good! He moved out, down the passage, drawn on by her playing, and softly turned the handle. The music stopped. He went in.
It seemed to her, that Polonaise of Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing. Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play."
I am ashamed to think of it! One of the pleasantest moments of my life was at a grand gala at the Electoral Palace, where I had the honour of walking a polonaise with no other than the Margravine of Bayreuth, old Fritz's own sister: old Fritz's, whose hateful blue-baize livery I had worn, whose belts I had pipeclayed, and whose abominable rations of small beer and sauerkraut I had swallowed for five years.
But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise: Conquest's joyful thunder waken, Triumph, valiant Russians, now!... and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading his verses, bowed to Bagration.
Altogether, he was not greatly edified by this, the first funeral of its kind he had ever witnessed. A rowdy-dowdy business, he called it. Everyone was talking and laughing as they marched along. It was more like a polonaise than a funeral. In his African period the sight of such a burial would have affected him unpleasantly. But Mr. Heard was changing, widening out.
"What woman alta what?" "Your polonaise. The one whe'e we stopped yestaday." "Oh! Well, I've been thinkin' about that child, Albe't; I did before I went to sleep; and I don't believe I want to risk anything with her. It would be a ca'e," said Mrs. Lander with a sigh, "and I guess I don't want to take any moa ca'e than what I've got now. What makes you think she could alta my polonaise?"
She flung out her music through the windows into the night as a signal and an appeal. There was joy and triumph and splendor in the Grande Polonaise; she felt them in her heart and nerves as a delicate, dangerous tremor, the almost intolerable on coming of splendor, of triumph and of joy.
Word Of The Day