OUTSIDE a scruffy Kabul high school this week, a solemn crowd formed two tidy queues to register for Afghanistan's first elections since a black cloud of war, civil war and famine descended on the country a quarter of a century ago.
A question worth at least asking is: Does the blithe shift from punditry to what really is a form of solemn witness require a more pointed demarcation?
Their solidarity is established in the opening scene, a choreographed march in which a corps of black-clad Christian and Muslim women form a solemn, swaying procession to the cemetery.
Both developed from relatively solemn cantillation to a variety of forms, both simple and highly florid.
It isn't a question of classical tastes against pop; it's a question of small forms heard in motion against large forms heard with solemn intent.
Nonetheless, these nestled forms assume a solemn monumentality, commanding their sill like immense, slightly anthropomorphic monoliths.
He stressed the quasi-religious dimension to his kingship, and solemn crown-wearings in Westminster Abbey formed an increasingly important part of his kingly ritual.
In the 1990s he embarked on a series of paintings, the "Stelae," whose vertical forms evoked the solemn majesty of Egyptian obelisks, Han dynasty tomb posts or the menhirs of Stonehenge.
He freely used alliteration and assonance, solemn and often metrically convenient archaic forms, and old constructions.
Alexis de Tocque ville, speaking about his "Democracy in America,"' in a pre face says: "There will be found on every page a solemn warning that society changes its forms, humanity its condition, & that new destinies are impending".
