vignette, algedonic, Millet, incomprehensible, self-denial

Adventures of a Bystander is Drucker's rich collection of autobiographical stories and vignettes, in which this legendary figure paints a portrait of his ...

A first-year dance student was the victim of a “horrifying and incomprehensible” killing that was the first on school grounds since the bell tower mass shooting nearly 50 years ago.


Self-denial was incomprehensible to him, unless it formed part of some aesthetic regimen. I stood with him once and watched a line of peasants laboring a turnip field. A Millet brought to life. And his only remark was: It is beautiful that they are they and that we are we. For him even the most painful social confrontations and contrasts, which would have stabbed the conscience of even the vulgarest nouveau riche, were stingless. Without significance except as vignettes, as interesting discords, as pleasurable because vivid examples of the algedonic polarity of existence.



讓·弗朗索瓦·米勒（Jean-François Millet，1814年10月4日－1875年1月20日）法國巴比松派畫家Millet lived all year round at Barbizon。以鄉村風俗畫中感人的人性在法國畫壇聞名。習慣被稱作米勒，實際按照法語發音應翻作“米葉”。

vignette

(vĭn-yĕt') vignette
vignette [vin‐yet], any brief composition or self‐contained passage, usually a descriptive prose sketch, essay, or short story. The term also refers to a kind of decorative design sometimes found at the beginning or end of a chapter in a book; these were often based on vine‐leaves.

algedonical-j-dän-ik
characterized by or relating to pain especially as associated with pleasure