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De Spaanse dichter en schrijver Rafael Alberti werd geboren op 16 december 1902 in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz). Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Aufforderung
Im Erlenschatten, Liebste,
im Erlenschatten, nicht.
Unter der Pappel, ja,
dem Weiß und Grün der Pappel.
Weißes Blatt du,
grünes Blatt ich.
Die Quellen waren aus Wein
Die Quellen waren aus Wein.
Die Meere, aus lila Trauben.
Du wolltest Wasser.
Die Hitze stieg zum Bach
herab. Der Bach war aus Most.
Du wolltest Wasser.
Es fröstelte der Stier. Das Feuer
war aus schwarzem Muskateller.
Du wolltest Wasser.
(Zwei Strahlen von süßem Wein
sprangen aus deinen Brüsten.)
Vertaald door Erwin Walter Palm
Rafael Alberti (16 december 1902 27 oktober 1999)
De Franse fabeldichter Pierre Lachambeaudie werd geboren op 16 december 1807 bij Sarlat. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008.
La Goutte d'Eau
Un orage grondait à l'horizon lointain,
Lorsqu'une goutte d'eau, s'échappant de la nue,
Tombe au sein de la mer et pleure son destin.
« Me voilà dans les flots, inutile, inconnue,
Ainsi qu'un grain de sable au milieu des déserts.
Quand sur Faite du vent je roulais dans les airs.
Un plus bel avenir s'offrait à ma pensée :
J'espérais sur la terre avoir pour oreiller
L'aile du papillon ou la fleur nuancée,
Ou sur le gazon vert et m'asseoir et briller...
Elle pariait encore : une huître, à son passage.
S'entr'ouvre, la reçoit, se referme soudain.
Celle qui supportait la vie avec dédain
Durcit, se cristallise au fond du coquillage,
Devient perle bientôt, et la main du plongeur
La délivre de l'onde et de sa prison noire,
Et depuis, on l'a vue, éclatante de gloire,
Sur la couronne d'or d'un puissant empereur.
0 toi, vierge sans nom, fille du prolétaire,
Qui retrempes ton ûme au creuset du malheur,
Un travail incessant fut ton lot sur la terre;
Prends courage ! ici-bas chacun aura son tour :
Dans les flots de ce monde, où tu vis solitaire,
Comme la goutte d'eau tu seras perle un jour...
Pierre Lachambeaudie (16 december 1807 7 juli 1872)
Standbeeld op Père-Lachaise, Parijs
De Britse schrijver en criticus (Victor Sawdon) V. S. Pritchett werd geboren op 16 december 1900 in Ipswich, Suffolk. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008.
Uit: London
London is prolific in its casualties, its human waste and eccentrics. We see that blowsy red-haired woman with the gray beard who dances and skips about in the Haymarket. A well-known trial to bus conductors, the woman always carries a spare hat concealed in a brown-paper bag for traveling by bus. She changes her hat and then sings out:
He called me his Popsy Wopsy
But I don't care.
And drops into a few unprintable words. We are very fond of her. There is the pavement artist who conducts a war with other street entertainers, especially those who use an animal to beg from the thousands of dog lovers, cat strokers, pigeon and duck feeders, the chronic animal lovers who swarm in London. "Worship God not animals," he scrawls in angry chalk on the pavement. There is the Negro bird warbler, ecstatic in his compulsion, and the King of Poland in his long golden hair and his long crimson robe. There are those solitaires with imaginary military careers and the frightening dry monotonous gramophone record of their battles and wounds. They are compelled, they utter, they click their heels, salute and depart. A pretty addled neighbor of mine used to mix up the washing of the tenants in her house when it hung on the line in her garden. She was getting her own back on the Pope, who had broken up her marriage to the Duke of Windsor. One has to distinguish between the divine mad and the people pursuing a stern, individual course. The elderly lady who arrives in white shorts on a racing bicycle at the British Museum every morning, winter and summer, is simply a student whom we shall see working under the gilded dome of the Reading Room. The taxi driver who answers you in the Latin he has picked up from the bishops he has been taking to and fro from the Athenaeum Club all his life is not consciously doing a comic turn. He is simply living his private life in public. As Jung says, we are dreaming all the time; consciousness merely interrupts. It was what Dickens noticed in Londoners a hundred years before.
V.S. Pritchett ( 16 december 1900 20 maart 1997)
De Engelse schrijfster Mary Russell Mitford werd geboren op 16 december 1787 in Alresford, Hampshire. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008.
Uit: Our Village
Of all situations for a constant residence, that which appears to me most delightful is a little village far in the country; a small neighbourhood, not of fine mansions finely peopled, but of cottages and
cottage-like houses, 'messuages or tenements,' as a friend of mine calls such ignoble and nondescript dwellings, with inhabitants whose faces are as familiar to us as the flowers in our garden; a little world of our own, close-packed and insulated like ants in an ant-hill, or bees in a hive, or sheep in a fold, or nuns in a convent, or sailors in a ship; where we know every one, are known to every one, interested in every one, and authorised to hope that every one feels an interest in us. How pleasant it is to slide into these true-hearted feelings from the kindly and unconscious influence of habit, and to learn to know and to love the people about us, with all their peculiarities, just as we learn to know and to love the nooks and turns of the shady lanes and sunny commons that we pass every day. Even in books I like a confined locality, and so do the critics when they talk of the unities. Nothing is so tiresome as to be whirled half over Europe at the chariot-wheels of a hero, to go to sleep at Vienna, and awaken at Madrid; it produces a real fatigue, a weariness of spirit. On the other hand, nothing is so delightful as to sit down in a country village in one of Miss Austen's delicious novels, quite sure before we leave it to become intimate with every spot and every person it contains; or to ramble with Mr. White* over his own parish of Selborne, and form a friendship with the fields and coppices, as well as with the birds, mice, and squirrels, who inhabit them; or to sail with Robinson Crusoe to his island, and live there with him and his goats and his man Friday;--how much we dread any new comers, any fresh importation of savage or sailor! we never sympathise for a moment in our hero's want of company, and are quite grieved when he gets away;--or to be shipwrecked with Ferdinand on that other lovelier island--the island of Prospero, and Miranda, and Caliban, and Ariel, and nobody else, none of Dryden's exotic inventions:--that is best of all. And a small neighbourhood is as good in sober waking reality as in poetry or prose; a village neighbourhood, such as this Berkshire hamlet in which I write, a long, straggling, winding street at the bottom of a fine eminence, with a road through it, always abounding in carts, horsemen, and carriages, and lately enlivened by a stage-coach from B---- to S----, which passed through about ten days ago, and will I suppose return some time or other. There are coaches of all varieties nowadays; perhaps this may be intended for a monthly diligence, or a fortnight fly. Will you walk with me through our village, courteous reader? The journey is not long. We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill.
Mary Russell Mitford (16 dcember 1787 - 10 januari 1855)
Portret door Benjamin Robert Haydon
De Braziliaanse dichter Olavo Bilac werd geboren op 16 december 1865 in Rio de Janeiro. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008.
Brazilian Flag Anthem
Hail, precious banner of hope!
Hail, august symbol of peace!
Thy noble presence to our minds
The greatness of our motherland does bring.
Chorus
Take the affection enclosed
in our manly chest, (*)
Dear symbol of the land,
Of the beloved land of Brazil!
In thy beauteous bosom portraits
This sky of purest blue,
The impaired greenness of these forests,
And the splendor of the South Cross Constellation.
(Chorus)
Beholding thy sacred shadow,
We understand our duty,
And Brazil loved by its sons,
powerful and happy shall be!
(Chorus)
Over the great Brazilian Nation,
In times of happiness or grief,
Hover always sacred flag,
Pavilion of justice and love!
(Chorus)
Olavo Bilac (16 december 1865 28 december 1918)
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