De Nederlandse dichter Erik Menkveld werd geboren op 25 april 1959 in Eindhoven. Zie ook alle tags voor Erik Menkveld op dit blog.

Te Emmen

Evenzeer als wij het nauwgezette
zwemmen en metallic blauwe
van een kleine Afrikaanse vis
te Emmen vanmiddag, waterlelieblad
dat zich met rode kop optrekt
tot waterschildpadschild,
een dagpauwoog in de vlindertuin
die mijn hand voor wilde orchis
aanziet en heel Drenthe buiten
evenzeer.

Boerenbui

Hevige aandrang te eggen of te gieren?
Een tractor te kopen? Nuchtere
kalveren voor de mesterij?

Red één ongeschoren schaap
bij nacht en ontij uit de sloot, bekijk
het liefste varken op worstkwaliteit, eet

twaalf sneeën zelfverbouwd roggebrood.
En vergeet niet bij rooien of poten
op klompen te lopen en overal bij.

Meestal waait het dan wel over.
En anders ben je onherroepelijk
geboren voor de boerderij.

 
Erik Menkveld (25 april 1959 - 30 maart 2014)

De Amerikaanse dichter Ted Kooser werd geboren op 25 april 1939 in Ames, Iowa. Zie ook alle tags voor Ted Kooser op dit blog.

A Room in the Past

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright  
you can’t see beyond its windows  
into the afternoon. A kitchen  
falling through time with its things  
in their places, the dishes jingling  
up in the cupboard, the bucket  
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck  
was thirty years. No one’s at home  
in this room. Its counter is wiped,  
and the dishrag hangs from its nail,  
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,  
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother  
moved through this life like a ghost,  
and when she had finished her years,  
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back  
on the rest of us, forever.

Pocket Poem

If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I'd opened it a thousand times
to see if what I'd written here was right,
it's all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.

 
Ted Kooser (Ames, 25 april 1939)

De Engelse dichter, schrijver, criticus en letterkundige James Fenton werd geboren op 25 april 1949 in Lincoln. Zie ook alle tags voor James Fenton op dit blog.

At the Kerb

Grief to bestow, where once they bestowed their beauty,
Who are these mourners processing to the grave,
Each bearing a history like a precious ointment
And tender on their sleeves the wounds of love?

Brutal disease has numbered him a victim,
As if some unmarked car had appeared one day
And snatched him off to torture and confinement,
Then dumped him by the kerbside and sped away;

As if they stooped now at the kerb to lift the body,
As if they broke the jars and the unguent flowed,
Flowed down the sleeves and wounds, ran down the kerbstones,
Grief to bestow what beauty once bestowed.

Yellow Tulips

Looking into the vase, into the calyx, into the water drop,
Looking into the throat of the flower at the pollen stain,
I can see the ambush love sprung once in the summery wood,
I can see the casualties where they lay, till they set forth again.

I can see the lips, parted first in surprise, parted in desire,
Smile now as the silence falls on the yellow-dappled ride
For each thinks the other can hear each receding thought
On each receding tide.

They have come out of the wood now. They are skirting the fields
Between the tall wheat and the hedge, on the unploughed strips,
And they believe anyone who saw them would know
Every secret of their limbs and of their lips,

As if, like creatures of legend, they had come down out of the mist
Back to their native city and stood in the square,
And they were seen to be marked at the throat with a certain sign
Whose meaning all could share.

These flowers came from a shop. Really they looked nothing much
Till they opened as if in surprise at the heat of this hotel.
Then the surprise turned to a shout, and the girl said, ‘Shall I chuck them now
Or give them one more day? They’ve not lasted so well.’

‘Oh give them one more day. They’ve lasted well enough.
They’ve lasted as love lasts, which is longer than most maintain.
Look at the sign it has left here at the throat of the flower
And on your tablecloth - look at the pollen stain.’

 
James Fenton (Lincoln, 25 april 1949)

De Engelse dichter Walter John de la Mare werd geboren op 25 april 1873 in Charlton, Kent. Zie ook alle tags voor Walter John de la Mare op dit blog.

The Corner Stone

Sterile these stones
By time in ruin laid.
Yet many a creeping thing
Its haven has made
In these least crannies, where falls
Dark's dew, and noonday shade.

The claw of the tender bird
Finds lodgment here;
Dye-winged butterflies poise;
Emmet and beetle steer
Their busy course; the bee
Drones, laden, near.

Their myriad-mirrored eyes
Great day reflect.
By their exquisite farings
Is this granite specked;
Is trodden to infinite dust;
By gnawing lichens decked.

Toward what eventual dream
Sleeps its cold on,
When into ultimate dark
These lives shall be gone,
And even of man not a shadow remain
Of all he has done?

 
Walter John de la Mare (25 april 1873 – 22 juni 1956)
In 1924

De Amerikaanse schrijver Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr. werd geboren op 25 april 1914 in Bloomington, Indiana. Zie ook alle tags voor Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr.op dit blog.

Uit: Raintree County

“Then there was the MGM movie that appeared in 1957 with the billing that here was an epic to out do Gone with the Wind. The novel had won an enormous prize given by Loew's Incorporated in 1947 but was shelved in 1949. With the advent of TV and other problems, the company went into a disastrous slump in 1947-48. They were also having trouble coming up with a script, and the young author's suicide may have been a damper of sorts. In 1954 it was dusted off and the task of writing the script was given to Millard Kaufman, creator of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo.
In late August of 1956 my mother invited herself and the kids down to Danville, Kentucky, where an army of movie staffers was encamped for a summer of shooting. Indiana no longer looked enough like itself and to its dismay had been passed over in the location search. Montgomery Clift was still recovering from an automobile accident in May that interrupted shooting for six weeks. Leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's home in the Benedict Canyon hills, he had driven into a telephone pole, losing two front teeth, cutting a hole through his upper lip, and breaking his nose and jaw. He refused to drop out of the film, and, in constant pain, kept a gray satchel full of pills by his side. He stumbled through the rest of the film mostly in right profile; the left was lumpy and inert. In his off-camera life in recent weeks he had faked his own bloody death, run naked into the streets of Danville after a nightmare, broken a toe, and badly burned two fingers with a cigarette while out cold from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.
Enter the Lockridge family hopeful of finding in Clift someone capable of playing John Shawnessy, who in many ways resembles his creator. I shook the hand of someone bent over, fidgety, gaunt, bloodshot, and much older than his thirty-five years. His efforts were heroic, but still the great actor mumbled, moved his wired jaw with difficulty, forgot his lines, and seemed by turns manic and drugged. The crew was shooting a scene that featured Shawnessy and Susanna Drake, the neurotic heroine played by Elizabeth Taylor. Both were lying drunk on the banks of the Shawmucky River following Shawnessy's great victory in the Raintree County footrace.”

 
Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr. (25 april 1914 – 6 maart 1948)
Hier met echtgenote Vernice en zoontje Larry in 1943

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 25e april mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

25-04-2015 om 14:36 geschreven door Romenu  

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Julius Waldemar Grosse werd geboren op 25 april 1828 in ErfurtZie ook alle tags voor Julius Grosse op dit blog.

Armut der Weisheit

Ihr alten Bücher, glänzend noch bei Nacht
In Gold und Leder und voll weiser Lehren –
Ihr redet mir von einst’ger Kaiserpracht,
Bringt Platon, Sirach, Epikur zu Ehren.
Ihr baut mir eine Welt aus euren Blättern,
Und Geister steigen auf aus euren Lettern.

Ach, ich ersehne nur im Mondenschein
Ein lebend Herz, und eure Geister machen
Mich bitter fühlen, daß ich bin allein,
Fern der Geliebten, fern dem holden Lachen
Des Mädchenmunds – o Plato, Epikur,
Dagegen seid ihr arme Schelme nur.

Ewige Jugend

Wohl alle Tage, wenn ich bei dir bin,
Umschleiert mich ein Frühling ew'gen Lebens
Und ewiger Jugend. Jahre fließen hin;
Dein Zaubertrank, ich trank ihn nicht vergebens.

Und wenn du morgen welktest bleich und krank,
Die schöne Stirn gefurcht von Gram und Sorgen,
Mein Auge ist gefeit von jenem Trank,
Das Leben mir ein ew'ger Hochzeitmorgen.

Und wandelst du dereinst mit greisen Frau'n,
Müd' und gebeugt in silberweißem Haare;
Ich bin geweiht, dich stets als Braut zu schau'n,
Ohnmächtig überfluten uns die Jahre. -

Ja, wie der Wein, der alt an Glut gewann,
So glüht der Zauber mächt'ger mit den Zeiten.
Du kannst nicht altern. Was ein Gott begann,
Wird göttlich dauern in die Ewigkeiten.

 
Julius Grosse (25 april 1828 – 9 mei 1902)
Portret op een medaillon door Ernst Julius Hähnel, 1879

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Richard Anders werd geboren op 25 april 1928 in Ortelsburg, tegenwoordig Szczytno, Polen. Zie ook alle tags voor Richard Anders op dit blog.

Verschwunden

Mal bist du dir voraus – mal rennst du hinter dir her und siehst deinen
mit jeder Sekunde kleiner werdenden Rücken. Die Straße führt zum
Horizont, wo die Häuser nur Punkte sind. Plötzlich bist du verschwunden,
bist unerreichbar geworden. Du drehst dich um. Jemand läuft auf dich zu.
Du! Du fliehst. Erst jetzt läufst du mit der Geschwindigkeit, mit der du dich,
als du hinter dir her warst, hättest erreichen können. Doch diesmal ist es
nicht Spiel oder Ernst. Den Augen deines Verfolgers entronnen, bist du
auch – bis auf diese lesbare heiße Spur – dir selbst abhanden gekommen.

Sturz

Du öffnest das Fenster. Obwohl es heller Tag ist, siehst du in tiefe
Schwärze. Dennoch springst du, wie du es dir vorgenommen hast.
Ein Blitz erschreckt dich: Hinter deinem Rücken zerflammt dein Haus.
Die Schwärze scheint sich im Sturz zu verdichten, bis sie dich schwerelos
wie eine Mauer umschließt. Stand dein Haus in den Sternen? Gäbe es noch
Dämmerung, dämmerte es dir, daß springend du deinen Kopf nicht verlassen hast.
Und du wirst ihn nie verlassen wegen deiner, im Vergleich zum Kopf
unendlichen Kleinheit, die dich zu Lebzeiten nicht den furchtbaren Aufschlag,
das Zersplittern aller Knochen erleben läßt.

 
Richard Anders (Ortelsburg, 25 april 1928)



 

De Spaanse schrijver Leopoldo Alas (wereldwijd bekend als ‘Clarín’) werd geboren op 25 april 1852 in Zamora. Zie ook alle tags voor Leopoldo Alas op dit blog.

Uit: La Regenta (Vertaald door Robert M. Fedorchek)

“This did not prevent him from sighing when he noticed that Diego [the son] had adopted ideas, habits, and tendencies that were a far cry from the Castilian simplicity that for Don Juan constituted good manners and character. Their son looked more like the duchess than the duke, and the education that he called rigid, proper, and cold accentuated the differences between them, differences that Don Juan sincerely regretted. But the duke did not complain. To each his own, he believed. Neither Diego nor anyone else would change his ways now, but his successor, well…let him become what God had ordained. Don Juan had demanded freedom for himself, and he allowed others to live as they wished. One thing, however, was clear: while the old duke was alive, his house, no matter how annoyed the young master appeared to be, would bend to his will.
Diego, as a matter of fact, felt an insuperable repugnance for his father’s ways. He, who had had student servants, who from his time at the boarding school had learned to measure the distances that reality out of necessity establishes between different classes, even saw a kind of hypocrisy, or at least a ridiculous illusion, in bad taste, in this apparent equality of treatment which did not go beyond the surface, which could only be skin-deep. All of this, he thought, is a grotesque comedy that annoys the rest of us and would humiliate the poor peasants themselves if they were more sensitive. »

 
Leopoldo Alas (25 april 1852 – 13 juni 1901)
Standbeeld van La Regenta in Oviedo

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Sigmund von Birken werd geboren op 25 april 1626 in Wildstein nabij Eger. Zie ook alle tags voor Sigmund von Birken op dit blog.

Sonntags-Abend-Lied
Nach der Singweise: Die helle Sonn ist nun dahin usw.

1.
Die liebe Sonne weicht von hier,
Der Tag verjagt die Nacht.
Hirt Israels! du bist bey mir,
Ich traue deiner Wacht.

2.
Gehst du mir auf, du ewigs Liecht,
So hab ich Sonnenschein.
Bist du bey mir, so werd ich nicht
Im Hertzen finster seyn.

3.
Fürcht, meine Seele! nur kein Leid:
Dein Liecht schon tritt herzu.
Bey dir die Sonn einkehret heut,
Ist deiner Ruhe Ruh.

4.
Nacht, gute Nacht, mach dich davon!
Mein Tag mich dannoch grüst.
Ja, meine Sonn ist Gottes Sohn,
Mein Liecht heist Jesus Christ.

5.
Ob Sünden-Nacht dazwischen steht,
Raubt mir den Sonnenschein:
Durch seines Blutes Morgenröth
Soll sie zertrieben seyn.

6.
Geh schlaffen, Leib, und ruhe wol,
Dich schutzt der Engel wacht.
Die Sonn gesund dich wecken soll,
Wol sag ich: gute Nacht!

 
Sigmund von Birken (25 april 1626 – 21 juni 1681)
Wildstein met burcht 

De Tsjechische dichter en vertaler Jindřich Hořejší werd geboren op 25 april 1886 in Praag. Zie ook alle tags voor Jindřich Hořejší op dit blog.

Uit:Jaroslav Hasek, le brave soldat Chvéïk (vertaling Jindřich Hořejší)

« — Mais, M’sieur le patron, c’est l’archiduc Ferdinand, celui de Konopiste, le gros calotin, vous savez bien ?
— Jésus-Marie, n’en v’là d’une nouvelle ! s’écria Chvéïk. Et où est-ce que ça lui est arrivé, à l’archiduc, voyons ?
— À Saraïévo. Des coups de revolver. Il y était allé avec son archiduchesse en auto.
— Ça, par exemple ! Ben oui, en auto… Vous voyez ce qu‘c’est, M’ame Muller, on s’achète une auto et on ne pense pas à la fin… Un déplacement, ça peut toujours mal finir, même pour un seigneur comme l’archiduc… Et surtout à Saraïévo ! C’est en Bosnie, vous savez, M’ame Muller, et il n’y a que les Turcs qui sont capables de faire un sale coup pareil. On n’aurait pas dû leur prendre la Bosnie et l’Herzégovine, voilà tout. Ils se vengent à présent. Alors, notre bon archiduc est monté au ciel, M’ame Muller ? Ça n’a pas traîné, vrai ! Et a-t-il rendu son âme en tout repos, ou bien a-t-il beaucoup souffert à sa dernière heure ?
— Il a été fait en cinq sec, M’sieur le patron. Pensez donc, un revolver, ce n’est pas un jouet d’enfant. Il y a pas longtemps, chez nous, à Nusle, un monsieur a joué avec un revolver et il a tué toute sa famille, y compris le concierge qui est monté au troisième pour voir ce qui se passait."

 
Jindřich Hořejší (25 april 1886 – 30 mei 1941)
Standbeeld van de brave soldaat Švejk in Przemyśl, Polen
 

De Engelse essayist en diplomaat Sir William Temple werd geboren in Londen op 25 april 1628. Zie ook alle tags voor Willam Temple op dit blog.

Uit: Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands

“Upon these Foundations was this State first establisht, and by these Orders maintained, till the death of the last Prince of Orange; When by the great influence of the Province of Holland amongst the rest, the Authority of the Princes came to be shared among the several Magistracies of the State; Those of the Cities assumed the last nomination of their several Magistrates;
The States-Provincial, the disposal of all Military Commands in those Troops which their share was to pay; And the StatesGeneral, the Command of the Armies, by Officers of their own appointment, substituted and changed at their will. No power remain'd to pardon what was once condemned by rigor of Law; Nor any person to represent the Port and Dignity of a Soveraign · State; Both which could not fail of being sensibly missed by the people, since no man in particular can be secure of offending, or would therefore absolutely despair of impunity himself, though he would have others do so; And men are generally pleased with the Pomp and Splendor of a Government, not only as it is an amusement for idle people, but as it is a mark of the Greatness, Honour and Riches of their Countrey.
However these Defects were for near Twenty years supplied in some measure, and this Frame supported by the great Authority and Riches of the Province of Holland, which drew a sort of dependance from the other Six; and by the great Sufficiency, Integrity and Constancy of their chief Minister, and by the effect of both in the prosperous Successes of their Affairs:
Yet having a Constitution strained against the current vein and humour of the people, It was always evident, that upon the growth of this young Prince, The great Virtues and Qualities he derived from the mixture of such Royal and such Princely Blood, could not fail in time of raising His Authority to equal at least, if not to surpass that of his glorious Ancestors.”

 
William Temple (25 april 1628 – 27 januari 1699)
Portret door Gaspar Netscher, 1675

25-04-2015 om 14:21 geschreven door Romenu