But Mr. Kubelik avoided specialization, and near the end of his career, he devoted himself with increasing vigor to the Viennese classics.
He speaks openly of his artistic "homelessness" and of finding his place only in the scores to which he devotes himself with missionary fervor.
For the past year, Mr. Wilson has devoted himself with the single-mindedness of a college-age groupie to following Mr. Romney around the country in decidedly conspicuous style: driving a pickup truck festooned with 27 giant Romney for President posters.
From day one of his leadership he devoted himself, with ruthless determination, exhilarating panache and frenetic energy, to the creation of a new social coalition to replace the Thatcher coalition that had transformed British politics in the 80s.
Mr. Wilson, an anti-Obama Republican and former life insurance salesman, had devoted himself with the single-mindedness of a college-age groupie to following Mr. Romney around the country in a beat-up 1998 GMC, logging 40,000 miles, visiting 15 states and attending 150 campaign events.
From now on, he declares in two important letters (May 13 and 15, 1871), he has given up the idea of "work" (i.e., action) and, having acknowledged his true vocation, will devote himself with all his energy to his role as a poet.
In his later years he traveled in Europe more frequently than he had done before the war, became acquainted with virtually all the leaders of politics and public opinion, and devoted himself with all his private energies as well as those of his paper to the endeavor to smooth out misunderstandings and promote a better relation between Europe and the United States.
There's an unmistakable paradox surrounding the sudden death of Ron Mallett's father when Mallett was an impressionable kid growing up in the Bronx: Had Boyd Mallett survived, his son never would have devoted himself with such obsessive zeal to unraveling the mystery of time travel in hopes of saving his father's life.
After he was mugged at knifepoint in 1968, he left the city for the relative seclusion of Long Island, ultimately settling in Locust Valley, where he devoted himself with nearly obsessive fervor to mail art: sending, receiving and recycling usually small-scale works on paper via the United States Postal Service.
The story of the horndog scientist (Bill Murray) who, failing to seduce a young female subject during an experiment, devotes himself with particular zeal to the needs of a client (Sigourney Weaver) whom he wants to seduce isn't the expression of a director's point of view but, rather, the reflection of the unchallenged and unspoken assumptions of a place, a time, and, above all, a milieu.
