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De Britse schrijfster Enid Algerine Bagnold werd geboren op 27 oktober 1889 in Rochester, Kent. Zij baarde in 1923 opzien met haar roman The Difficulty of Getting Married. Internationaal het bekendste en succesvolste werk van haar is National Velvet uit 1935. Het kinderboek werd in 1944 verfilmd door Clarance Brown met o.a. Elizabeth Taylor. Bagnold schreef ook vanaf het begin gedichten die in verschillende bloemlezingen werden gepubliceerd.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: THE HAPPY FOREIGNER
"COME in," she said in English, lifting her head and all her mind and spirit out of the pit of the pillow.
Feet came further into the room and a shivering child held a candle in her face. "Halb sechs, Fräulein," it said. But the Fräulein continued to stare at him. He thought she was not yet awakehe could not tell that she was counting countries in her head to find which one she was inor that she was inclining towards the theory that she was at school in Germany. He was very cold in his shirt and little trousers, and he pulled at her sheets. "Fräulein !" he said again with chattering teeth, and when she nodded more collectedly the little ghost slipped out relieved by the door. "Russian colonel . . . I must get up. Fancy making that boy call me! Why couldn't someone older . . . I must get up."
He had left the electric light burning in her room, but out in the corridor all was black and hushed as she had left it the night before when she had gone to bed. Behind the kitchen door there was a noise of water running in the sink. She opened the door, and there was the wretched child again, still in his shirt, rinsing out her coffee-pot by the light of one candle. Well, since he was doing it . . . Poor child! But she must have her coffee. By the time she was dressed he tapped again and brought in the tray with coffee, bread and jam on it. Setting it down, he looked it over with an anxious face. "Zucker," he said, and disappeared to fetch it. She filled her thermos bottle with the rest of the coffee which she could not finish, and put two of the slices of grey bread into the haversack, then crept downstairs and out into the black street where the gas lamps still burnt and the night sentry still paced up and down in the spectral gloom. Over the river hung a woolly fog, imprisoning the water; but as she crossd the bridge she noticed where its solidity was incomplete and torn, and into the dark water which lay at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters and between the cobble stones defied her, and her hands ached with cold though she put them in turn right through her blouse against her heart to warm them as she ran. Fetching her car she drove to the Hôtel Royal, and settled down to wait.
Enid Bagnold ( 27 oktober 1889 3 maart 1981)
De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 en woonde in de Londense gemeente Brent bij haar Engelse vader Harvey Smith en zijn tweede vrouw Yvonne McLean, van Jamaicaanse afkomst. Op 14-jarige leeftijd veranderde Sadie haar naam in Zadie.Tijdens haar universitaire opleiding in Engelstalige literatuur aan de universiteit van Cambridge, publiceerde Zadie Smith een aantal korte verhalen in de May Anthologies. Op basis hiervan boden diverse geïnteresseerde uitgevers haar een contract aan. Haar eerste roman, White Teeth, werkte ze af tijdens haar laatste jaar aan de universiteit. Eenmaal gepubliceerd, werd het onmiddellijk een bestseller. Het werd internationaal erkend als een schitterend debuut en viel meer dan eens in de prijzen Haar derde roman, On Beauty, werd gepubliceerd in september 2005 en werd voorgedragen voor de Man Booker Prize. In 2006 won On Beauty de Orange Prize for Fiction.
Uit: White Teeth
Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage license (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him. A little green light flashed in his eye, signaling a right turn he had resolved never to make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact it was a New Year's resolution.
But even as his breathing became spasmodic and his lights dimmed, Archie was aware that Cricklewood Broadway would seem a strange choice. Strange to the first person to notice his slumped figure through the windscreen, strange to the policemen who would file the report, to the local journalist called upon to write fifty words, to the next of kin who would read them. Squeezed between an almighty concrete cinema complex at one end and a giant intersection at the other, Cricklewood was no kind of place. It was not a place a man came to die. It was a place a man came in order to go other places via the A41. But Archie Jones didn't want to die in some pleasant, distant woodland, or on a cliff edge fringed with delicate heather. The way Archie saw it, country people should die in the country and city people should die in the city. Only proper. In death as he was in life and all that. It made sense that Archibald should die on this nasty urban street where he had ended up, living alone at the age of forty-seven, in a one-bedroom flat above a deserted chip shop. He wasn't the type to make elaborate plans -- suicide notes and funeral instructions -- he wasn't the type for anything fancy. All he asked for was a bit of silence, a bit of shush so he could concentrate. He wanted it to be perfectly quiet and still, like the inside of an empty confessional box or the moment in the brain between thought and speech. He wanted to do it before the shops opened.
Zadie Smith (Londen, 27 oktober 1975)
De Amerikaanse schrijfster Frances Ann "Fran" Lebowitz werd geboren op 27 oktober 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey. Na van school te zijn gestuurd had zij verschillende baantjes totdat Andy Warhol haar vroeg voor een column in Interview. Haar eerste boek was een verzameling essays onder de titel Metropolitan Life en verscheen in 1978. In 1981 volgde Social Studies. Lebowitz staat bekend om haar sardonische commentaar op de Amerikaanse way of life.
Uit: Progress
So then, let us consider the likelihood that the empty pews were less the result of a lesser fear of God than they were an indication of a greater fear of the godless. In other words, let us suppose that the Red Scare was enough scare and that the whole thing was, as might well have been suspected, a Communist plot.
And let us assume that a citizenry fully occupied with the questions of the day, a citizenry busy leading and misleading the waymarching on Washington, appearing before Senate subcommittees, putting fluoride in the drinking water, and barring children from the schoolhouse doorwas a citizenry too engaged by the demands of democracy to be lured by the commands of religion.
And let us lament that there is no longer a need to imagine the consequences of the failure of imagination that is the consequence of a religiosity so pervasive that it has replaced that which is possible with that which is impossible.
And let us admit that where there is less religion there is more progress. And that this has been true not only throughout the entire history of the whole world but even in the United States of America. And let us understand that if you do not have a greater belief in democracy than you do in your religion you will eventually have less democracy. And that you may even lose your religion, because, as it turns out, the only people who are really tolerant of other people's religions are people who are really not that religious.
Fran Lebowitz (Morristown, 27 oktober 1950)
De Poolse schrijver Kazimierz Brandys werd geboren op 27 oktober 1916 in Lodz. Hij studeerde rechten in Warschau en debuteerde in 1935 als theatercriticus. Van 1945 tot 1950 was hij verbonden aan het tijdschrift "Kuźnica"en van 1956 tot 1969 aan "Nowa Kultura". Hij doceerde ook slavische literatuur aan de Sorbonne in Parijs. Vanaf 1978 woonde hij buiten Polen.
Uit: Warschauer Tagebuch
In Polen äußert sich die Genugtuung zumeist in einem Scherz. Als Wałęsa den Streik in Danzig für beendet erklärte, sagte er zu den Werftarbeitern: "Und jetzt geht jeder nach Hause und guckt nach, ob nicht etwas weg- oder dazugekommen ist, und dann ab in die Heia."
Diese Worte werden sicherlich nicht in die Geschichte eingehen. Sie sollten es aber. In ihnen äußert sich ein freundlicher, unprätentiöser Charakterzug der Polen, der die Ergriffenheit lieber hinter einem Witz versteckt. Ich kenne kein zweites Land, in dem Führer der Arbeiterklasse nach einem großen, siegreichen Streik Tausenden seiner Mitkämpfer die Worte hinwirft: "Ab in die Heia."
Kazimierz Brandys (27 oktober 1916 11 maart 2000)
De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006.
REGENDAG
Och hoe droevig sleept de dag. Betrokken
ligt de lucht met wolken grijs en grauw,
't stuifreînt, en die hooge boomen schokken
hunne kruinen, en vol vreemde rouw
ruischen zij, ontblaadrend, droeve zangen.
Lijk des avonds in het woud een dolend kind,
daar beneden door de donkre gangen
aaklig schreeuwt en huilt de wilde wind.
Sombre wolken door mijn ziel ook zweven,
nevelig betrekt mijn zonneglans.
Houd u sterk, o jongling, dat is 't leven.
Weze uw droefheid lijk uw vreugd -- eens mans.
DICHTERLIEFDE
naar Heyne op musiik van Schumann
Mijne tranen baren bloemen
lijk lentelach over de wei,
en mijne zuchten worden
een nachtegalenrei.
En wils du mi wederlieven,
voor di bloem op bloemken ontschiet,
en voor dijne venster zal klingen
der nachtegalen lied.
Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 23 juni 1880)
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