|
De Zweedse dichter en vertaler Göran Sonnevi werd geboren in Lund op 2 oktober 1939. Zie ook mijn blog van 2 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 2 oktober 2008.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: Mozart's Third Brain (Vertaald door Rika Lesser)
CV
Not-Orpheus is singing He sings his nothing He sings his night
He sings all the names The name of nothing The only name Since
long ago He didnt know it And knew it in his night
All things sing All names sing Every tonal difference, every
sound All music in its destruction In its sublation Toward which point?
The mountain of nothing hovers Before it crushes us With its night With its
song
In the evening I walked through town with you, Dearest, along the river
A clear cold spring evening, the half-moon shone As if walking in a foreign city
Though I recognized parts of it You said it was almost like
walking in Prague, where we would have been if my mother hadnt fallen ill
When we stood by one corner of the Hotel Svea, where I played in a dance band in
1957,
the huge flock of jackdaws, in the trees by the bastion near the castle, flew
out over the river, in micropolyphonic conversation As in a piece by Ligeti
That night I dreamed I crossed a bridge spanning the river, now very broad
The long bridge was swaying, huge ocean swells entering the river from the sea
I walked with a girl, kissed her on the mouth, on the opposite bank
In the morning you came into my bed, Dear, we slinked like teenagers, so my
mother wouldnt hear us,
where she slept, in the room outside ours Shes already much better
I look at my face in the bathroom mirror Will I manage to go out into the Brain
Trucks pass Traffic goes on, in the great exchange of goods
Gulls, trees, people The degree of virtuality in different goods, the phantasms
also in what we eat, conceptions of origin, contents, effects
Fear Cultivated tastes We are in the immediacy of memory Only in a flash of
astonishment can memory be broken But even lightning is informed I look at
the
magical
diagrams of Giordano Bruno, read his texts See that all this is exactly as in
Jung, fundamental magical forms, for guiding the divine,
the unknown within the soul Also the similarity with tantric forms
Yes, thats
how it is,
I think, both Freud and Jung are magicians, the difference in rationality is
only marginal, Jungs a little older, Freuds more modern, a continuation of
Descartes, developed later in Spinozas pneumatic model for the passions,
and yet both are found, subsumed in Brunos love-flow, the lineage backward,
the tantric flow, also Platos Diotima, her flow . . .
Hölderlin saw the stream of people in dark water, streaming over
the ledges in the human-geological world, the levels of the abyss, Para-
dises various degrees of stasis
What use can I make of these magical forms? Im no magician And yet
I acknowledge their power, also within my self If they prevail, sovereignty
is crushed Libero arbitrio There the forms also break down
The stream of love breaks down Fluid lightning The flash of vibrating being
But also the flash of darkness The light of Beatrices eyes, their lightning
flash How
am I to understand this? How to understand unknowing That I do not!
Göran Sonnevi (Lund, 2 oktober 1939)
De Oostenrijkse schrijfster en literatuurwetenschapster Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch werd geboren in Linz op 2 oktober 1948. Zie ook mijn blog van 2 oktober 2008.
Uit: Familienfest
In den Schlafzimmern waren schon die Kisten für die Übersiedlung gepackt, und dazwischen türmten sich Kartons voller Dinge, die sich trotz Ednas Freude am Wegwerfen angesammelt hatten und die ihr nun am Ende auch überflüssig erschienen: Hadassa hatte sie mit ihren flüchtigen, schrägen Schriftzügen daraufgeschrieben, Heilsarmee, Caritas. Sie umstanden die Betten wie ungeduldige Gerichtsvollzieher, die zum Aufbruch drängten und die Zimmer noch vor dem Auszug unbewohnbar machten. Der Mangel an Licht hatte Edna schon immer gegen diese Räume aufgebracht. Vor allem das große Schlafzimmer mit dem begehbaren Kleiderschrank, in dem Morris' Anzüge seit fünf Jahren ungelüftet hingen, deprimierte sie. Die Glastüren mit den halbkreisförmigen Balkonen aus schwarzem Schmiedeeisen schienen der gegenüberliegenden Hausmauer so nah - kaum zu glauben, daß eine Straße dazwischen lag.
Am Ende ihres Lebens waren sie und Morris in diesem exklusiven Bezirk Bostons angekommen, hatten die Enklave alter protestantischer Mayflower-Familien infiltriert - in zwei Generationen von Ellis Island nach Beacon Hill, die Erfüllung kühnster Einwandererträume. Aber es hatte ihnen nicht den Triumph gebracht, den sie erwartet hatten. Edna war nie heimisch geworden in den Räumen des zweistöckigen viktorianischen Backsteinhauses in der abschüssigen Pinckney Street, das sich wie ein nicht ganz legitimer Eindringling mit zwei seiner drei Fenster auf die Schmalseite des Louisburg Square drängte. Zwanzig Jahre früher hätte es ihr Genugtuung verschafft, in der vornehmen Stille der Mount Vernon Street ihre Schritte auf dem Kopfsteinpflaster zu hören, als ginge sie durch die hallenden Flure eines alten Hauses. Jetzt im Alter sehnte sie sich nach freien Ausblicken und nach Menschen, die mit ihrem Alltag beschäftigt waren, wenn sie auf die Straße ging; die Stille unter den Ahornbäumen, selbst die Schönheit der in der Dämmerung leuchtenden Schlehdornbüsche, die dunkle Feuchtigkeit all der an den Hauswänden wuchernden Ranken, die im Sommer die Räume vollends verdunkelten, bedrückten sie.
Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch (Linz, 2 oktober 1948)
De Britse (reis)schrijfster en historica Jan Morris werd als James Humphrey Morris geboren op 2 oktober 1926 in Clevedon, Somerset. Zie ook mijn blog van 2 oktober 2008.
Uit: Lincoln, a Foreigner's Quest
Hingham in Norfolk, England, is where Abraham Lincoln's paternal forebears came to America from, his father's great-great-grandfather having emigrated to the colonies in the late seventeenth century. It is a trim country village with a fine fourteenth-century church, some handsome eighteenth-century houses, a couple of inns, a Methodist chapel and a main road running through it. Unlike most English villages nowadays, it supports a thriving community of craftsmen and shopkeepers, and it used to bask in the local nickname "Little London."
Generations of Lincolns, we are told, lived in the ancillary hamlet of Swanton Morley, first in a cottage, then in a grander house which is now absorbed into the Angel Inn; a grassy plot of land behind the pub is preserved by the National Trust in not very evocative remembrance it looks like a small bowling green. In Hingham church, amidst sundry Lincoln references and suitably embroidered hassocks, there is a bust of Abraham on a wall, presented by the citizens of Hingham, Massachusetts, and excellent cream teas are served at Lincoln's Tea and Coffee Shoppe along the road. All in all Hingham is a tasteful, steady, very Saxon sort of place, and the best-known British writer about Abraham Lincoln, Lord Charnwood, liked to think he could trace his hero's character to his Norfolk origins. He was of sound English rural stock, Charnwood thought, and it is true that to this day Lincoln's gaunt and lanky frame, his pinched face and his Anglo-Saxon attitudes sometimes do show among country people of East Anglia.
On the other hand, away to the west in the wild moorlands of north Wales stands a derelict farmhouse called Bryn Gwyn, near the hill-hamlet of Ysbyty Ifan, which is a place of quite another kind. It is a magical place. Fairies and magicians abounded there long ago, and princes, and elegiac bards! Melancholy songs were sung to the harp! Slippery tricks were played, ambiguous tales were told at firesides! A terrific prospect extends to the west from Bryn Gwyn, away to the clumped mountains of Eryri, white with snow in winter, blue-gray on a summer day. Not another house is to be seen from the old building, and nobody has lived here since the 1940s, but fine big ash trees stand guard behind it, and nearby are the barn and sheep pen where today's farmer shears his sheep and piles his black plastic packages of silage.
Jan Morris (Clevedon, 2 oktober 1926)
|
