De Britse schrijfster Enid Algerine Bagnold werd geboren op 27 oktober 1889 in Rochester, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: National Velvet
Unearthly humps of land curved into the darkening sky like the backs of browsing pigs, like the rumps of elephants. At night when the stars rose over them they looked like a starlit herd of divine pigs. The villagers called them Hullocks.
The valleys were full of soft and windblown vegetation. The sea rolled at the foot of all as though God had brought his herd down to water.
The Hullocks were blackening as Velvet cantered down the chalk road to the village. She ran on her own slender legs, making horse-noises and chirrups and occasionally striking her thigh with a switch, holding at the same time something very small before her as she ran. The light on the chalk road was the last thing to gleam and die. The flints slipped and flashed under her feet. Her cotton dress and her cottony hair blew out, and her lips were parted for breath in a sweet metallic smile. She had the look of a sapling-Dante as she ran through the darkness downhill.
At the entrance to the village the sea was pounding up the sewer with a spring gale behind it. She passed to the third cottage, stopped at the door, opened it, let a gush of light onto the pavement, closed it and carried her tender object inside.
Edwina, Malvolia and Meredith sat in their father's, Mr. Brown's, sitting room just before suppertime. It was dark outside and hot inside, and outside in the darkness the Hullocks went up in great hoops above the village. There was an oil stove in the comer of the sitting room and lesson books on the table. The ceiling was low, and sagged. A lamp with a green glass shade lit the table. There was no electric light. Donald, the boy of four, was asleep upstairs.
Edwina, Malvolia andMeredith were all exactly alike, like golden greyhounds. Their golden hair was sleek, their fine faces like antelopes, their shoulders still and steady like Zulu women carrying water, and their bodies beneath the shoulders rippled when they moved. They were seventeen, sixteen, and fifteen. Velvet was fourteen. Velvet had short pale hair, large, protruding teeth, a sweet smile and a mouthful of metal.
Mr. Brown was swilling down the slaughterhouse, as Mi Taylor was away for the day. The sound of the hose swished at the wooden partition which separated the slaughterhouse from the sitting room.
"He went beautifully!" said Velvet, and laying down a tiny paper horse on the table she wrenched at the gold band that bound her teeth back and laid it beside the horse.
"Father'll be in in a minute," said Edwina warningly.
"It's going in again directly I hear a sound," said Velvet and sitting down she swept the band into her lap.
"Look at him," she said lovingly, taking up the paper horse. "I must unsaddle him and rub him down." The heads were bent on the lesson books again and Velvettook a tiny bridle of cotton thre ' ads from the horse. Thengoing to a shell-box on the sideboard she brought it tothe table.
Enid Bagnold ( 27 oktober 1889 3 maart 1981)
De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.
Uit: On Beauty
One may as well begin with Jeromes e-mails to his father:
To: HowardBelsey@fas.Wellington.edu From: Jeromeabroad@easymail.com Date: 5 November Subject:
Hey, Dad basically Im just going to keep on keeping on with these mails Im no longer expecting you to reply, but Im still hoping you will, if that makes sense.
Well, Im really enjoying everything. I work in Monty Kippss own office (did you know that hes actually Sir Monty??), which is in the Green Park area. Its me and a Cornish girl called Emily. Shes cool. Therere also three more yank interns downstairs (one from Boston!), so I feel pretty much at home. Im a kind of an intern with the duties of a PA organizing lunches, filing, talking to people on the phone, that sort of thing. Montys work is much more than just the academic stuff: hes involved with the Race Commission, and he has Church charities in Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, etc. he keeps me really busy. Because its such a small set-up, I get to work closely with him and of course Im living with the family now, which is like being completely integrated into something new. Ah, the family. You didnt respond, so Im imagining your reaction (not too hard to imagine . . .). The truth is, it was really just the most convenient option at the time. And they were totally kind to offer I was being evicted from the bedsit place in Marylebone. The Kippses arent under any obligation to me, but they asked and I accepted gratefully. Ive been in their place a week now, and still no mention of any rent, which should tell you something. I know you want me to tell you its a nightmare, but I cant I love living here. Its a different universe. The house is just wow early Victorian, a terrace unassuming-looking outside but massive inside but theres still a kind of humility that really appeals to me almost everything white, and a lot of handmade things, and quilts and dark wood shelves and cornices and this four-storey staircase and in the whole place theres only one television, which is in the basement anyway, just so Monty can keep abreast of news stuff, and some of the things he does on the television but thats it. I think of it as the negativized image of our house sometimes . . . Its in this bit of North London called Kilburn, which sounds bucolic, but boy oh boy is not bucolic in the least, except for this street we live on off the high road, and its suddenly like you cant hear a thing and you can just sit in the yard in the shadow of this huge tree eighty feet tall and ivy-ed all up the trunk . . . reading and feeling like youre in a novel . . . Falls different here much less intense and trees balder earlier everything more melancholy somehow.
Zadie Smith (Londen, 27 oktober 1975)
De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.
Stoet
Langzaam trekt een blanke stoet door d'heemlen. Jesus eerst, der maagden koning, 't aanzicht lijk de zonne glanzend en de kleedren lijk de sneeuw, en hunne koninginne, de Onbevlekte met haar sterrenkrone. Zeven englen volgen, blank in 't slepend koorkleed, houdend hare wijd ontvouwde hemelsblauwe goudgesternde mantel, dragend hare blauwe lelievane. Duizend, duizend, duizend maagden volgen, sneeuwblank door de nevelige sluiers, dragend in de hand de blanke lelie, zingend zoete koren door de heemlen, volgend waar hij gaat der maagden koning en hunne onbevlekte koninginne.
Dichterliefde
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)
Standbeeld in Roeselaere
Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.
De Amerikaanse schrijfster Frances Ann "Fran" Lebowitz werd geboren op 27 oktober 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey.
De Iraanse schrijver en filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh werd geboren op 27 oktober 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran.
De Poolse schrijver Kazimierz Brandys werd geboren op 27 oktober 1916 in Lodz.
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