Every feeble nod or hoarse croak from the subject is received like a pontifical blessing by a tired-looking staff of aging parishioners who, except for la Falaise — a woman who flaunts her well-worn beauty with mermaid nonchalance and whose expression of ironical detachment belies her vigilant subservience — are touchingly unglamorous.
29 The expression "imperial comitia" is ironical, in imitation of "consular comitia," etc., which described the ordinary elections.
Renan's ironical yet imaginative vision of the "festival of the universe" found expression in L'Antéchrist (1873; The Antichrist, 1896; vol. 4 of the Histoire des origines), with its satirical portrait of Nero and its apocalyptic atmosphere replete with expectations of a cataclysmic consummation of history assuredly the most impressive of his historical narratives.
Gaudí, when receiving his degree, reportedly told his friend, the sculptor Llorenç Matamala, with his ironical sense of humour, "Llorenç, they're saying I'm an architect now".
(You cannot understand an ironical remark without recognizing the irony, but this is not required for understanding the expression uttered).
"He possessed a singular combination of fiery imagination, capacity for meticulous observation, moral passion and intellectual gaiety," wrote Isaiah Berlin, "with a talent for writing in a manner at once pungent and distinguished, ironical and incandescent, brilliantly entertaining and at times rising to great nobility of feeling and expression".
"Russian art is ironical.
Hilliard's are keen, questioning, ironical.
This was not intentionally funny or ironical.
