Proteus & Protean

 









protean



Yahoo!奇摩字典

/PRO/tean



a. (形容詞 adjective)



          1.    千變萬化的;變化不定的

          2.    一人演幾個角色的





Proteus



Wikipedia



He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar from several cultures, will change his shape to avoid having to; he will answer only to someone who is capable of capturing him. 



From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, with the general meaning of "versatile", "mutable", "capable of assuming many forms": "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.



From his transforming nature, and multifarious aspects comes our adjective "protean". A "protean career" would embrace many human concerns. For example, Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, scientist and designer of fortifications: his career was "protean".



Proteus syndrome is the name given to the deforming disease that afflicted Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man". Although difficult to differentiate from severe neurofibromatosis, there have been about 200 cases of Proteus syndrome over the last few decades.





see Juno & Junoesque









Cate Blanchett: Queen of the screen (1)



The irritability and defiance she sometimes shows in interviews were there V C right at the start of her career. It's telling that Blanchett originally thought the play that made her name when she was starting out in Sydney was "a misogynistic piece of crap". When she was cast as the student who accuses her professor of sexual harassment in David Mamet's Oleanna, her instinct was to turn the part down because of its dubious sexual politics. She ended up appearing with Geoffrey Rush (an actor almost as protean as she is) in a production she now acknowledges as a pivotal (p/I/votal) moment in her career. In hindsight (h/ai/nd, foresight), what she relished about Mamet's play was precisely what she disliked at first: the way it provoked such strong opinions, from loathing to wild enthusiasm. "It punches an audience senseless," she said admiringly.