Elegance, as the Countess defines it, is "the art of being astonishing without creating astonishment".
In former times the idea of the actor as motivated by a desire to create astonishment and wonder was sometimes seen as the basis of all theatre.
Creating astonishment in onlookers is essential.
The size of the endowment losses in elite universities this year, both in percentage and dollar terms, has created some astonishment and shock that, in light of the gains these same endowments enjoyed over the past decade, is itself rather astonishing.
Then, filling the silence my astonishment created, he added with an eye to his friends, "Do an imitation of an Iraqi for me: put your arms up and say, 'Please don't kill me.' " Although I've thought of dozens of snappy comebacks since, my reaction then was not fight but flight -- at Concorde speed.
This fact creates a certain amount of astonishment in a society that never expected to witness this kind of emigration phenomenon among its young, educated citizens.
Words can do little to convey the visual astonishment this space opera creates.
For the naturalist, this generates wonder, astonishment at what different ways of life are possible, and creates an opening in one's experience for empathy with the suffering, pain, and loss of others.
(Brecht described this as "stripping an event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about [it]".) Wood laughs off the comparison but agrees their techniques aren't dissimilar.
Cubism was invented by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the same time modern physics was being created: its crystalline structures and opaque surfaces suggest the astonishment of a reality whose every microcosmic particle is sublimely complex.
Mr. Talbot first attended the festival in 1967, two years after creating New Yorker Films, which for the next four decades brought an astonishment of films to American screens, from Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Ousmane Sembène, among many others.
