The Old Man
LUN RICHARDS deserves praise on more than one score for his series, Talk of the Devil. For one thing, it takes an unusually agile mind to devise several talks on a Personage who, however seriously he may be taken by philosophers and theologians, is associated by most "men in the street" only with cartoons in "magazines for males." For another, the cunning with which Mr. Richards had planned his talks was admirable, In the first three, by tracing the ancestry of Satan to various ancient myths, and by showing how much the popular conception owed (to artists and poets, he seemed to be demolishing the very concept of the Devil with something of the iconoclastic delight of a 19th century Higher Critic. And yetand yet-there was that element of doubt suggested throughout which kept the listener in suspense from week to week almost as with a detective story. All doubts were dispelled when Mr. Richards in his final talk offered us the orthodox view, but given new freshness, point and vitality by his skilful clearing away of accretions. Why, indeed, should the devil have all the best tunes? It is warming to my old orthodox heart to hear the traditional defended with some of the wit and vivacity of ‘modern heterodoxy.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 20
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214The Old Man New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 20
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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