In making her bizarre revisionist claims about Poland being transformed after 1945 into the ideal location for all the Jewish citizens of Israel, Helen Thomas does not advance the Palestinian cause, but to the contrary marginalizes it through alignment with extremist views based on historical illusions and fantasies.
Ms. Isbin, instead, created the illusion of historical distance, as if the guitar line represented Sanz's voice, with the orchestra providing Rodrigo's commentary.
(The trouble they faced in the industry is pointedly dramatized in one of the films in the series, Dash's 1982 featurette "Illusions," a historical fantasy-drama about a black woman producer in Hollywood during the Second World War — and about sexual harassment).
The feared undermining of the principles of historical inquiry is therefore an illusion generated by exaggerating the scale on which the order of nature would be disrupted were a miracle actually to occur.
Somewhere between a historical site and an optical illusion, these Parisian theaters have our brains spinning.
There is simply no historical record to support these illusions.
The "catch" is, of course, an illusion – but with a historical body count of at least 12, even that illusion requires the most focused and disciplined performance skills.
Matthew Passion," redemption comes through the embrace of suffering -- a retrogressive illusion of a different historical moment, Adorno might say.
In an individual life, the time of happy illusion is childhood; in historical terms, the happiest people were Leopardi's beloved Greeks, who still believed in the gods and in eternal glory.
