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Revolution in D Minor: How the Czech Philharmonic Toppled Communism
Revolution in D Minor: How the Czech Philharmonic Toppled Communism June 19, 1990 On December 14, 1989, the leading symphony orchestra of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Philharmonic, gave a concert at Smetana Hall in Prague. It was probably the most famous concert in the history of that country. The orchestra played Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Václav Neumann, […]
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Was Walt Whitman Christ?
Whitmaniacs at Large The big embarrassment of Walt Whitman’s later years was not his poverty (groups of writers in England and America had to take up a collection) but the cult that arose around him. Ardent followers celebrated him as Messiah, Christ, maybe a god. Some of these followers were individuals of genuine distinction, not […]
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John Reed and the Greenwich Village Revolutionaries
To Russia With Love February 1982 1. High spirits — that is what stands out from the Greenwich Village renaissance. Reds captures some of this by showing bohemian leftists yapping energetically at the lunch table and dancing to victrolas in dingy apartments. These scenes get the idea across, but I wish Warren Beatty had also […]