De Duitse dichter en schrijver Dieter Noll werd geboren op 31 december 1927 in Riesa. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 31 december 2009.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Traum und Leben

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Träume sind Schreckenskammern der Angst,
leuchtende Räume der Wunscherfüllung.
Träume sind immer brutale Enthüllung
dessen, wonach du verlangst.

Träume bei Tage und Träume bei Nacht
sind nur im Ausmaß der Freiheit verschieden:
Diese sind, was du zu denken vermieden,
jene, was du gedacht.

Träumst du am Tag immer kühner und freier,
was du dir wünschst, was dir nie widerfuhr,
hebt sich vom Nacht-Traum allmählich der Schleier.

Wirkliche Freiheit hast du erreicht,
wenn der Nacht-Traum, frei von Zensur,
dem Tagtraum gleicht.

Dieter Noll (31 december 1927 – 6 februari 2008)

De Uruguayaanse schrijver Horacio Quiroga werd geboren op 31 december 1878 in Salto. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 december 2009.

The Son (Vertaald door F. Wufferz)

It is a powerful summer day in Misiones, with all the sun, heat, and calm the season can  provide. Nature, completely unbounded, feels satisfied with herself.
Like the sun, the heat, and the atmospheric lull, the father also opens his heart to Nature.
“Be careful, kid,” he says to his son, with that sentence cutting short any discussion of the matter.

His son understands perfectly.

“Yes, Dad,” the child replies, as he grabs his rifle and loads shells into his shirt pockets, which he closes carefully.
“Come back at lunch time,” the father says.
“Yes, Dad,” the boy repeats.
He balances the rifle in his hand, smiles at his fother, kisses him on the head, and leaves. For a moment, his father follows him with his eyes and then returns to his day's work, happy at his son's joy.

He knows that his son, taught from his earliest infancy to be wary of danger, can handle a rifle and hunt anything. The boy is only thirteen years old, but quite tall for his age. Yet he seems younger, judging by the purity of his blue eyes, still fresh with childlike surprise.

The father does not need to lift his eyes from his work to follow, in his mind's eye, his son's course: he has crossed the red path and headed straight toward the scrubland across from the opening in the sparta grass.

To hunt in the scrubland – the boy hunts for pelts – requires patience beyond his young son's capacity. After crossing that island of scrubland, his son will move along the edge of the cactus growth

to the marsh, looking for doves, tucans, or a flock of herons just like those his friend Juan has discovered so recently.“

Horacio Quiroga (31 december 1878 – 19 februari 1939)

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Gottfried August Bürger werd geboren op 31`december 1747 in Molmerswende. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 december 2006  en ook mijn blog van 31 december 2007 en ook mijn blog van 31 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 31 december 2009.

Verlust

Wonnelohn getreuer Huldigungen,

Dem ich mehr als hundert Monden lang,

Tag und Nacht, wie gegen Sturm und Drang

Der Pilot dem Hafen, nachgerungen!

Becher, allgenug für Götterzungen,

Goldnes Kleinod, bis zum Überschwang

Stündlich neu erfüllt mit Labetrank,

O wie bald hat dich das Grab verschlungen!

Nektarkelch, du warest süß genug,

Einen Strom des Lebens zu versüßen,

Sollt' er auch durch Weltenalter fließen.

Wehe mir! Seitdem du schwandest, trug

Bitterkeit mir jeder Tag im Munde.

Honig trägt nur meine Todesstunde.

Auf die Morgenröte

Wann die goldne Frühe, neugeboren,

Am Olymp mein matter Blick erschaut,

Dann erblass' ich, wein' und seufze laut:

Dort im Glanze wohnt, die ich verloren!

Grauer Tithon! du empfängst Auroren

Froh aufs neu, sobald der Abend taut;

Aber ich umarm' erst meine Braut

An des Schattenlandes schwarzen Thoren.

Tithon! Deines Alters Dämmerung

Mildert mit dem Strahl der Rosenstirne

Deine Gattin, ewig schön und jung:

Aber mir erloschen die Gestirne,

Sank der Tag in öde Finsternis,

Als sich Molly dieser Welt entriß.

Gottfried August Bürger (31 december 1747 – 8 juni 1794)

Monument in Göttingen

De Australische schrijver Dal Stivens werd geboren op 31 december 1911 in Blayney, New South Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 december 2009.

Uit: A Horse of Air

“My room in the mental hospital is pleasant enough as such rooms go.” says our erstwhile narrator, one Harry Craddock, a millionaire made not by himself but by his father, an amateur at “everything” and a master of nothing, a fool, an excited scientist, a rich open purse, a – a murder? Perhaps, or perhaps not, but either way he is currently residing in a mental institute after shooting a nameless young man. Craddock is a man who

spout[s] words. I envelope people in words, I spit words at them, I want to swallow them with words.”

(...)

At intervals between the sandhills were great stony or gibber plains. Aeons of wind and water have smashed the once solid siliceous or flinty horizontal strata and winds have carried away the loose soil cover until only a gleaming stony rubble remains. Windblown sand has abraded the stones and small boulders into smooth shiny pebbles with sloping sides. Pick one up and you'll discover it is shaped like a low tent or a pyramid. They're polished, too, with a coating of “desert varnish” - a deposit of colloidal silica or oxide of iron.“

Dal Stivens (31 december 1911 - 16 juni 1997)