In melancholy, the puritan distrust of sensual pleasures meets the romantic value of extreme emotions.
Critic, novelist, poet, dramatist, artist, commentator – and, above all, storyteller – Berger was described by Susan Sontag as peerless in his ability to make "attentiveness to the sensual world" meet "imperatives of conscience".
THE doormen and bellhops in white gloves and dark brown suits at the soaring Mayflower Hotel have come to recognize the subtle signs: attractive women who carry no luggage, dressed tastefully but, in stilettos and lacy camisoles, seeming a touch too sensual to meet a chubby Commerce Committee lobbyist for cocktails.
"Sensual touch?" she shouts.
Ms. Liotard, a former fashion magazine editor, found the answer in smooth, sensual plaster forms in which art meets decoration.
Here Orpheus is a street musician saddled with a reprobate father who meets his Eurydice, a touring actress burdened with a similarly sensual mother, in a provincial station buffet.
Here, the severe met the sensual in a hedonist-ascetic fusion.
Descending to the floor they remain lip-locked for several seconds, but it is far from sensual; as their lips meet, Ms. Tong looks as if she were about to take a bite out of an apple.
But an encounter with a young woman he meets in a bar suddenly throws his life into a frenzy of sensual indulgence and inhibited recklessness that leads him down an even darker path.
To celebrate his birthday, Irina meets him alone at a sushi restaurant when Lawrence is out of town, and over the course of their languid, sensual meal two divergent scenarios emerge.
