De Finse schrijver Kjell Westö werd geboren op 6 augustus 1961 in Helsinki. Zie ook mijn blog van 6 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Kjell Westö op dit blog.

Uit: The perils of being Skrak (Vertaald door David McDuff)

“At the time of Werner's stay in Cleveland Bruno and Maggie had already been divorced for some years, and in an irreconcilable manner. But they were still interested in their grown-up son, each in their own way; Maggie wrote often, and Werner replied, he wrote at length, and truthfully, for he knew that Bruno and Maggie no longer communicated; to Maggie he could admit that he hated corporate law and bookkeeping, and to her he dared to talk about the raw music he had found on the radio station WJW, he wrote to her that the music of the blacks had body and that he had found a great record store, it was called Rendezvous and was situated on Prospect Avenue and there he had also bought a ticket for a blues concert, wrote Werner, he thought that Maggie would understand.
     Bruno was not a great letter-writer, he sometimes dropped a line to Joe McNab on abrupt postcards in which he asked Joe to report on his son's progress in his studies, that was all. On the other hand, he sometimes telephoned, transatlantically and intercontinentally, it was a complicated and expensive and easily interrupted procedure that most often consisted of father and son being silent together at a distance of almost 10,000 kilometres from each other.
     When Bruno discovered by letter that his son, the Latin scholar and athlete and student of law, had by some strange means got hold of a ticket for a Negro concert and had also used it, he immediately booked an international call to McNab. When the call came through it was afternoon in Helsinki and early morning over there in Cleveland. After some preliminary questions and laconic replies and a period of silence accompanied by cosmic crackling and the roar of the mighty Atlantic between them, Bruno came to the point: 'I'm not paying for you to stay over there to be beaten up by Negroes, Werner,' he said. Werner was silent, then he said: 'So Uncle Joe has been gossiping.' 'I wouldn't call it gossiping,' retorted Bruno. 'You live with him, he's responsible for you.' 'I'm a grown man, Dad,' said Werner bitterly.”

Kjell Westö (Helsinki, 6 augustus 1961)

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Diane DiPrima werd geboren op 6 augustus 1934 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 6 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Diane DiPrima op dit blog.

An Exercise in Love

for Jackson Allen

My friend wears my scarf at his waist

I give him moonstones

He gives me shell & seaweeds

He comes from a distant city & I meet him

We will plant eggplants & celery together

He weaves me cloth

                   Many have brought the gifts

                   I use for his pleasure

                   silk, & green hills

                   & heron the color of dawn

My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind

He backlights my dreams

He has built altars beside my bed

I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember

his name, or my own.

Diane DiPrima (New York, 6 augustus 1934)

De Engelse dichter Alfred, Lord Tennyson werd geboren op 6 augustus 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Zie ook mijn blog van 6 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Alfred Tennyson op dit blog.

Come not when I am dead

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by.

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave to where I lie:
Go by, go by.

Late, Late, So Late

Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
No light had we: for that we do repent;
And learning this, the bridegroom will relent.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
No light: so late! and dark and chill the night!
O, let us in, that we may find the light!
Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now.

Have we not heard the bridgegroom is so sweet?
O, let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now."

Move Eastward, Happy Earth

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go:
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister world, and rise
To glass herself in dewey eyes
That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.

Alfred Tennyson (6 augustus 1809 – 6 oktober 1892)

Beeld door George Frederick Watts

De Franse dichter, schrijver en diplomaat Paul Claudel werd geboren op 6 augustus 1868 in Villeneuve-sur-Fère. Zie ook mijn blog van 6 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Paul Claudel op dit blog.

La Vierge à midi

Il est midi. Je vois l’église ouverte. Il faut entrer.
Mère de Jésus-Christ, je ne viens pas prier.
Je n’ai rien à offrir et rien à demander.
Je viens seulement, Mère, pour vous regarder.
Vous regarder, pleurer de bonheur, savoir cela
Que je suis votre fils et que vous êtes là
Rien que pour un moment pendant que tout s’arrête.
Midi !
Être avec vous, Marie, en ce lieu où vous êtes.
Ne rien dire, regarder votre visage,
Laisser le cœur chanter dans son propre langage.
Ne rien dire, mais seulement chanter parce qu’on a le cœur trop plein,
Comme le merle qui suit son idée en ces espèces de couplets soudains.
Parce que vous êtes belle, parce que vous êtes immaculée,
La femme dans la Grâce enfin restituée,
La créature dans son honneur premier et dans son épanouissement final,
Telle qu’elle est sortie de Dieu au matin de sa splendeur originale.
Intacte ineffablement parce que vous êtes la Mère de Jésus-Christ,
Qui est la vérité entre vos bras, et la seule espérance et le seul fruit.
Parce que vous êtes la femme, l’Eden de l’ancienne tendresse oubliée,
Dont le regard trouve le cœur tout à coup et fait jaillir les larmes accumulées.
Parce qu’il est midi, parce que nous sommes en ce jour d’aujourd’hui,
Parce que vous êtes là pour toujours,
Simplement parce que vous êtes Marie,
Simplement parce que vous existez,
Mère de Jésus-Christ, soyez remerciée !

Paul Claudel (6 augustus 1868 – 23 februari 1955)

Sculptuur van een jone Claudel door zijn zus Camille

De Algerijnse schrijver Yacine Kateb werd geboren op 6 augustus 1929 in Zighout-Youcef. Zie en ook alle tags voor Yacine Kateb op dit blog.

Uit: Nedjma

„Mustapha tourne le dos à Mourad, et s'assied sur un ponton... «Elle était revêtue d'une ample cagoule de soie bleu pâle, comme en portent depuis peu les Marocaines émancipées ; cagoules grotesques ; elles escamotent la poitrine, la taille, les hanches, tombent tout d'une pièce aux chevilles ; pour un peu, elles couvriraient les jambelets d'or massif (la cliente en portait un très fin et très lourd)... Ces cagoules dernier cri ne sont qu'un prétexte pour dégager le visage, en couvrant le corps d'un rempart uniforme, afin de ne pas donner prise aux sarcasmes des puritains... Elle m'a parlé en français. Désir de couper les ponts en me traitant non seulement comme un commissionnaire, mais comme un mécréant, à qui l'on signifie qu'on n'a rien de commun avec lui, évitant de lui parler dans la langue maternelle. Pas voulu que je l'accompagne en tramway... Le couffin n'était pas si lourd... J'aurais pu la suivre jusqu'à la villa, si elle ne m'avait vu au moment de descendre ; du tramway, je l'ai vue gravir un talus, disparaître ; puis mon regard s'est porté au sommet du talus. Elle avait ôté sa cagoule ; je l'aurais reconnue entre toutes les femmes, rien qu'à ses cheveux... » Mustapha interrompt sa rêverie, sans quitter le ponton, le regard attiré par l'eau. La nuit tombe ; Mourad n'a pas fini de parler ; il dit qu'il était le seul des trois à se trouver tantôt à la gare... Voyant Rachid s'approcher à son tour du ponton, Mourad gaffe encore, avec une sorte d'insistance :
— je ne peux expliquer décidément ce que le voyageur avait de ridicule et d'attristant ; c'était peut-être, comme Mustapha, un collégien en rupture de ban...“

Yacine Kateb (6 augustus 1929 – 28 oktober 1989)

06-08-2012 om 13:58 geschreven door Romenu  

  De Amerikaanse schrijver Richard Preston werd geboren op 5 augustus 1954 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zie ook mijn blog van 5 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Richard Preston op dit blog.

Uit: The Hot Zone

„The doctors thought he should go to Nairobi Hospital, which is the best private hospital in East Africa. The telephone system hardly worked, and it did not seem worth the effort to call any doctors to tell them that he was coming. He could still walk, and he seemed able to travel by himself. He had money; he understood he had to get to Nairobi. They put him in a taxi to the airport, and he boarded a Kenya Airways flight.

A hot virus from the rain forest lives within a twenty-four hour plane flight from every city on earth. All of the earth’s cities are connected by a web of airline routes. The web is a network. Once a virus hits the net, it can shoot anywhere in a day æParis, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, wherever planes fly. Charles Monet and the life form inside him had entered the net.

The plane was a Fokker Friendship with propellers, a commuter aircraft that seats thirty-five people. It started its engines and took off over Lake Victoria, blue and sparkling, dotted with the dugout canoes of fishermen. The Friendship turned and banked eastward, climbing over green hills quilted with tea plantations and small farms. The commuter flights that drone across Africa are often jammed with people, and this flight was probably full. The plane climbed over belts of forest and clusters of round huts and villages with tin roofs. The land suddenly dropped away, going down in shelves and ravines, and changed in color from green to brown. The plane was crossing the Eastern rift valley. The passengers looked out the windows at the place where the human species was born. They say specks of huts clustered inside circles of thornbush, with cattle trails radiating from the huts. The propellers moaned, and the friendship passed through cloud streets, lines of puffy rift clouds, and began to bounce and sway. Monet became airsick.“

Richard Preston (Cambridge, 5 augustus 1954)

De Nicaraguaanse schrijver en politicus Sergio Ramírez Mercado werd geboren in Masatepe op 5 augustus 1942. Zie ook mijn blog van 5 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Sergio Ramirez op dit blog.

Uit: A Thousand Deaths Plus One (Vertaald door Leland H. Chambers)

„The naked body, which in the contrast of the dimly illuminated snapshot looks as white as if it were a leper’s cadaver, barely fits on the work bench where it lies exposed, just as in that other one, fully dressed, it scarcely fits on the bed. And the feet jut out in the foreground of this one too, freed of those seven-league-boots and looking as though they belong to the old Slavic king placidly asleep after a wild night of feverish love, his beard and hair in disarray, his legs still firm, his broad chest covered with a light snow-colored down, the two dark nipples like eyes still alert, and the abdomen flat without a hint of that senile obscenity that is a flaccid belly, swollen with fat. The Slavic monarch seems to be enjoying the majesty of his repose, unaware of his nakedness, and Pauline could be taken for the servant girl who doesn’t dare to wake him, her protuberant eyes fixed on his sex that rises from the furry mat of his pubic region like the pestle belonging to a pharmacist’s mortar.
But all this serene harmony is shattered by the clumsy seam that is marked by long stitches from sternum to stomach. After performing a radical evisceration, necessary because a long journey by train all the way to St. Petersburg awaits the body, the embalmer has injected two liters of formol into his veins and has filled with tow the cavities that used to hold his soft organs before concluding by sewing up the lengthy incision with horse hair.
Flaubert’s hypocritical rule asserts that one should not become involved, Du Camp says again after Primoli separates himself from Castellón, raising his arms as if asking for peace. Thirsty for new experiences, you can go off to Upper Egypt to observe the hunting expeditions for blacks and elephants, but only as an observer whose emotions cannot deflect you from your mission to see. The blacks, the elephants are simply motifs, pretexts of a nature that is rich in varieties of cruelty and the marvelous, destined for the eye.“

Sergio Ramírez (Masatepe, 5 augustus 1942)

De Amerikaanse schrijver en dichter Conrad Potter Aiken werd geboren in Savannah, Georgia op 5 augustus 1889. Zie ook mijn blog van 5 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Conrad Aitken op dit blog.

DISCORDANTS

VERMILIONED mouth, tired with many kisses,

Eyes, that have lighted for so many eyes,--

Are you not weary yet with countless lovers,

Desirous now to take even me for prize?

Draw not my glance, nor set my sick heart beating,--

Body so stripped, for all your silks and lace.

Do not reach out pale hands to me, seductive,

Nor slant sly eyes, O subtly smiling face.

For I am drawn to you, like wind I follow,

Like a warm amorous wind ... though I desire

Even in dream to keep one face before me,

One face like fire, and holier than fire.

* * *

I walk beneath these trees, and in this darkness

Muse beyond seas of her from whom I came,

While you, with catlike step, steal close beside me,

Spreading your perfume round me like soft flame.

Ah! should I once stoop face and forehead to you,

Into and through your sweetness, a night like this,

In the lime-blossomed darkness feel your bosom,

Warm and so soft, and find your lips to kiss.

And tear at your strange flesh with crazy fingers,

And drink with mouth gone mad your eyes' wild wine,

And cleave to you, body with breathless body,

Till bestial were exalted to divine,--

Would I again, O lamia silked and scented,

Out of the slumberous magic of your eyes,

And your narcotic perfume, soft and febrile,

Have the romantic hardihood to rise,

And set my heart across great seas of distance

With love unsullied for her from whom I came?--

With catlike step you steal beside me, past me,

Leaving your perfume round me like soft flame.

Conrad Aiken (5 augustus 1889 – 17 augustus 1973)

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver, essayist en criticus Wendell Berry werd geboren op 5 augustus 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky. Zie ook mijn blog van 5 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Wendell Berry op dit blog.

A Warning To My Readers

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

The Hidden Singer

The gods are less for their love of praise.
Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing
but its own wholeness, its health and ours.
It has made all things by dividing itself.
It will be whole again.
To its joy we come together --
the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten,
the lover and the loved.
In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then,
not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire,
but as a little bird hidden in the leaves
who sings quietly and waits, and sings.

Wendell Berry (Henry County, 5 augustus 1934)

De Franse schrijver Guy de Maupassant werd geboren op 5 augustus 1850 in kasteel Miromesnil bij Dieppe. Zie ook mijn blog van 5 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Guy de Maupassant op dit blog.

Uit: Madame Parisse (Vertaald door Albert M. C. McMaster, A. E. Henderson en Mme. Quesada)

„I was sitting on the pier of the small port of Obernon, near the village of Salis, looking at Antibes, bathed in the setting sun. I had never before seen anything so wonderful and so beautiful.
The small town, enclosed by its massive ramparts, built by Monsieur de Vauban, extended into the open sea, in the middle of the immense Gulf of Nice. The great waves, coming in from the ocean, broke at its feet, surrounding it with a wreath of foam; and beyond the ramparts the houses climbed up the hill, one after the other, as far as the two towers, which rose up into the sky, like the peaks of an ancient helmet. And these two towers were outlined against the milky whiteness of the Alps, that enormous distant wall of snow which enclosed the entire horizon.
Between the white foam at the foot of the walls and the white snow on the sky-line the little city, dazzling against the bluish background of the nearest mountain ranges, presented to the rays of the setting sun a pyramid of red-roofed houses, whose facades were also white, but so different one from another that they seemed to be of all tints.
And the sky above the Alps was itself of a blue that was almost white, as if the snow had tinted it; some silvery clouds were floating just over the pale summits, and on the other side of the gulf Nice, lying close to the water, stretched like a white thread between the sea and the mountain. Two great sails, driven by a strong breeze, seemed to skim over the waves. I looked upon all this, astounded.

This view was one of those sweet, rare, delightful things that seem to permeate you and are unforgettable, like the memory of a great happiness. One sees, thinks, suffers, is moved and loves with the eyes. He who can feel with the eye experiences the same keen, exquisite and deep pleasure in looking at men and things as the man with the delicate and sensitive ear, whose soul music overwhelms.“

Guy de Maupassant (5 augustus 1850 – 6 juli 1893)

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05-08-2012 om 12:13 geschreven door Romenu  

De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Rutger Kopland (eig. Rutger Hendrik van den Hoofdakker) werd geboren in Goor op 4 augustus 1934. Zie ook mijn blog van 4 augustus 2010 en ook alle tags voor Rutger Kopland op dit blog.

Jeneverbessen

We liepen door een landschap
met heide en jeneverbessen
een landschap zo oud
als de wereld zelf

zo moest het ooit begonnen zijn
zo moest het gebleven zijn
zo moest het zijn
zo als nu

we keken naar de jeneverbessen
ze stonden daar duister en zwijgend
zwijgend over het verdwijnen

Narcissen

We stonden aan de rand van een vijver

het was kil en om ons heen dat kille gras

met die veel te mooie narcissen

we keken in het water – waarom staan we hier

stond ik te denken en ik zag hoe zich

een stille voorjaarshemel voor ons uitstrekte

ken je het verhaal, zei ik, dat ergens

waar nu een narcis staat een jongen stierf

hij keek in het water en zag iemand

iemand die hem aankeek, eindeloos aankeek

en ging verlangen naar die ander daar

voelde de diepte van zijn onvervuldheid

tot hij daaraan stierf

we keken naar de narcissen om ons heen

welke van hen zou het zijn

De kunst van doodgaan

Als het zover is – zal ik dan eindelijk

weten wat dat is, doodgaan

jezelf verlaten en weten

dat je nooit terugkeert

soms wanneer ik het koraal hoor

Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland

doorstroomt mij een vermoeden van

onontkoombaar verlies –

maar wat geeft het

bij het zien van een uitzicht over bergen

een verte die verdwijnt in zichzelf

kan ik worden bevangen door een huiver

voor de eenzaamheid die mij wacht –

maar wat geeft het

er is wel eens zo’n avond dat over het gras

in de tuin het mooiste licht strijkt

dat er is: dit was het dus

en het komt nooit meer terug –

maar wat geeft het

ik hoop dat dit het is want ik ben bang

dat het anders zal zijn.

Rutger Kopland (4 augustus 1934 – 11 juli 2012)

De Nederlandse choreograaf, balletdanser en schrijver Rudi van Dantzig werd geboren in Amsterdam op 4 augustus 1933. Zie ook alle tags voor Rudi van Dantzig op dit blog.

Uit: De Bruid Staat Rechts Van U

“Hang jij soms weer uit dat kostschoolraam, tegenwoordig?” had Gertie hem plagerig gevraagd. Heel traag, na veel depressies, was er een verhaal gekomen. Ewout vertelt Gertie dat hij op de kostschool sex met een leraar heeft gehad en hij vond het best lekker. Gertie zegt dat dat normaal was voor leeftijd, omdat jongens dan wel vaker in de knoop zitten. “Denk je?” had Ewout geantwoord.

(...)

“ Ik moet nieuw werk gaan zoeken, ik moet het huis opruimen, ik moet aan een ander leven denken, ik moet gaan verhuizen, denk ik, als ik in bed lig.
De telefoon laat ik overgaan: Ewout.
Als ik niet kan slapen neem ik een pil, maar blijf nog wakker, meestal.
Soms hoor ik geluiden uit de tuin, het padje dat een bruid zoekt.
Jhè-kè-kè-kè. Whè-kaah?
Ik moet aan de tuin gaan werken.“

Rudi van Dantzig (4 augustus 1933 – 19 januari 2012)

De Engelse dichter Percy Bysshe Shelley werd op 4 augustus 1792 geboren in Field Place, Sussex. Zie ook alle tags voor Percy Bysshe Shelley op dit blog.

Ode to the West Wind

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 augustus 1792 – 8 juli 1822) 

Buste door William Ordway Partridge

De Poolse schrijver Witold Gombrowicz werd geboren in Małoszyce op 4 augustus 1904. Zie ook mijn blog van 4 augustus 2010 en ook alle tags voor Witold Gombrowicz op dit blog.

Uit: Diary (Vertaald door Lillian Vallee)

“I do not really know if I should continue these confessions. The publicist’s duty compels me to inform the public that rather too cretinous things are happening … too cretinous to be revealed and, I believe, on this all speculation relies—that an excess of cretinism does not allow these things to be revealed, that this is already too stupid to be expressed. Leaving the Café Paris, I went to the Café Rex. There an unknown gentleman who approached me and, having introduced himself as Zamszycki (maybe I heard this wrong), said that he had wanted to make my acquaintance for a long time. I said that it was my pleasure and then he thanked me, bowed, and left. Furious, I wanted to call him a cretin when, at that moment, I noticed that he was not a cretin because, after all, he had wanted to meet me and did, therefore, it was right that he should leave. Then I started to think: cretin or not? In the meantime, first one streetlight went on, then another, and when the second went on, a third lit up, then a fourth and with the fourth a fifth. Hardly had the fifth lit up when the sixth and the seventh go on, eighth, ninth, yet, at the same time, one, two, five cars go by; one, two, ten trams; people are coming, one, two, ten, fifteen; before me, one, two, three houses; the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh story and on the seventh, a balcony and on the balcony, who? Who but Henry and his wife! Beckoning to me.”

Witold Gombrowicz (4 augustus 1904 - 24 juli 1969)

Buste in Kielce

De Australische schrijver Timothy John Winton werd geboren op 4 augustus 1960 in Perth. Zie ook alle tags voor Tim Winton op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 4 augustus 2010

Uit: Breath

„The bedroom in question isn't hard to find. A little mat of vomit in the hall. Splinters of wood. I step over the broken-down door and see the mother at the bed where the boy is laid out, and as I quietly introduce myself I take it all in. The room smells of pot and urine and disinfectant and it's clear that she's cut him down and dressed him and tidied everything up.

I slip in beside her and do the business but the kid's been gone a while. He looks about seventeen. There are ligature marks on his neck and older bruises around them. Even while I'm going through the motions she strokes the boy's dark, curly hair. A nice-looking kid. She's washed him. He smells of Pears soap and freshly laundered clothes. I ask for her name and for her son's, and she tells me that she's June and the boy's name is Aaron.

I'm sorry, June, I murmur, but he's passed away.

I know that.

You found him a while ago. Before you called.

She says nothing.

June, I'm not the police.

They're already on their way.

Can I open the wardrobe? I ask as Jodie steps into the doorway.

I'd prefer that you didn't, says June.

Okay. But you know that the police will.

Do they have to? The mother looks at me properly for the first time. She's a handsome woman in her forties with short, dark hair and arty pendant earrings, and I can imagine that an hour ago, when her lipstick and her life were still intact, she'd have been erect and confident, even a little haughty.

It's their job, June.

You seem to have made some kind of ... assumption.“

Tim Winton (Perth, 4 augustus 1960)
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De Tsjechische schrijver Jáchym Topol werd geboren op 4 augustus 1962 in Praag. Zie ook mijn blog van 4 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Jáchym Topol op dit blog.

Uit: A Trip to the Train Station (Vertaald door Alex Zucker)

„The city was changing. Above it, as dependable as in the 10th century or any other time, the moon hung in the night's dark gateway, sometimes full and puffy like the face of a drunk, at other times floating in the clouds, almost invisible, a glassy bauble that didn't burn but still drove the city mongrels to madness. Here in this glow, whenever the moon climbed to its cool intensity, lovers would drink off the last of their bottle and hurl themselves at one another, lips nibbled raw out of love supreme, the killer would sneer as he twisted his knife in the wound, and here in this light, dear mommy would suddenly do something atrocious to her little papoose, and the golden force flowed down over the tracks of trams and trains and they glistened brilliantly in the flood of light... The Lord of the Earth caught hold of the dark at its centre and turned the night inside out like a freshly-peeled skin. Then the sun would blaze up in the sky, beating down on walls and sidewalks, and only then was filth filth and decay decay and you could see it. This searing sun caused blood to move slowly and lazily, turning sweet, or the other way around, made the pumps work so frantically that the blood seemed ready to burst out of its confines. That's how it seemed to me anyways, nothing too pretty.
The city was changing. Iron grills and shutters left pulled down for years and gone to rust were given fresh coats of paint and often a sign with somebody's name on it. Dusty cellars and dirty beer joints in what used to be the Jewish quarter were cleverly converted into luxury stores. You could find steamer trunks from the last century, a book dictated by Madonna with a piece of her chain included, pineapples and fine tobacco, diaries of dead actresses and trendy wheels from old farmers' wagons, whips and dolls and travel grails with adventurer's blood in them, coins and likenesses of Kafka, shooting galleries with all the proletarian presidents as targets, rags and bones and skins, anything you could think of.“

Jáchym Topol (Praag, 4 augustus 1962)

04-08-2012 om 15:52 geschreven door Romenu  

De Britse dichter Rupert Brooke werd geboren in Rugby, Engeland, op 3 augustus 1887. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Rupert Brooke op dit blog.

1914 III: The Dead

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

1914 V: The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke (3 augustus 1887 – 23 april 1915)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Leon Uris werd geboren in Baltimore op 3 augustus 1924. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leon Uris op dit blog.

Uit: Exodus

“WELCOME TO CYPRUS
The airplane plip-plopped down the runway to a halt before the big sign: WELCOME TO CYPRUS. Mark Parker looked out of the window and in the distance he could see the jagged wonder of the Peak of Five Fingers of the northern coastal range. In an hour or so he would be driving through the pass to Kyrenia. He stepped into the aisle, straightened out his necktie, rolled down his sleeves, and slipped into his jacket. "Welcome to Cyprus, welcome to Cyprus . . ." It ran through his head. It was from Othello, he thought, but the full quotation slipped his mind.
"Anything to declare?" the customs inspector said.
"Two pounds of uncut heroin and a manual of pornographic art," Mark answered, looking about for Kitty.
All Americans are comedians, the inspector thought, as he passed Parker through. A government tourist hostess approached him. "Are you Mr. Mark Parker?"
"Guilty."
"Mrs. Kitty Fremont phoned to say she is unable to meet you at the airport and for you to come straight to Kyrenia to the Dome Hotel. She has a room there for you."
"Thanks, angel. Where can I get a taxi to Kyrenia?"
"I ll arrange a car for you, sir. It will take a few moments."
"Can I get a transfusion around here?"
"Yes, sir. The coffee counter is straight down the hall."

Leon Uris (3 augustus 1924 – 21 juni 2003)

Scene uit de film “Exodus” uit 1960 met o.a. Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint en Ralph Richardson

De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Marica Bodrožić werd geboren op 3 augustus 1973 in Zadvarje in het toenmalige Joegoslavië. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Marica Bodrožić op dit blog.

Uit: Lichtorgeln: Gedichte

"ZAUBERKLEIDER!, so etwas hatte Isis. Die Kleider waren aus Nacktheit gemacht, aus tieferen Schichten der Sonnenstrahlen. Sie wurden einst angezogen, um sich bei jedem Gedanken zu verändern. Heute haben wir erfundene Währungen, gestrichelte Länder und die Gefährdung vom Soll her, niemand kommt mehr auf die Idee, Zauberkleider zu bestellen. Dabei kann alles aus Zahlen und Buchstaben mit tiefen Wünschen gebastelt werden. Im Sommer ist es besonders einfach. Nach einem slowenischen Kuss ist es mir, am Anfang eines Sommers, gut gelungen. Im Café aß ich ein Stück Kuchen und setzte mich an den Rand des Bürgersteigs. Ich zog meine Schuhe aus, die weiten Seidenhosen, das weiße bestickte Hemd, meine Schultern leuchteten, mein Mund, und ich ging aus der Stadt hinaus, barfuß, hatte Zeit, wollte das Meer suchen."

Marica Bodrožić (Zadvarje, 3 augustus 1973)

De Duitse dichter Mirko Wenig werd geboren op 3 augustus 1977 in Gera. Hij studeerde germanistiek, sociologie en pedagogie in Jena en publiceerde in diverse tijdschriften en bloemlezingen. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Mirko Wenig op dit blog.

Nachtspaziergang

Sie hausen in Industriebaracken, klettern über Zäune
und Garagendächer, beißen Ratten tot.
Sie machen Katzen den Fressnapf streitig.

Doch dieser Fuchs, mein eigener
verlauster, war zu alt für Beutezüge. Der Rücken
gekrümmt, das Fell voll Wanzen, so
schlich er nachts an den Abfallbehälter, stieß
ihn um und fraß. Langsam nur
näherte ich mich, wollte ihn
nicht aufschrecken.

Ich sah ihm zu. Der Fuchs fraß, wie
ein Tier frisst, schnell und hastig, ohne
viel Aufhebens. Dann lief er davon
und verschwand in den Büschen.

Nichts weiter
passierte. Ich ging heim. Dass ich mich
durch Steine fraß, an den Zitzen der Nacht
saugte, wäre gelogen. Es regnete nicht. Wolken?
Gab es keine.

03-08-2012 om 19:35 geschreven door Romenu  

De Chileense schrijfster Isabel Allende werd geboren in Lima op 2 augustus 1942. Zie ook alle tags voor Isabel Allende op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 2 augustus 2010.

Uit: Eva Luna (Vertaald door Margaret Sayers Peden)

“My name is Eva, which means "life," according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory. My father, an Indian with yellow eyes, came from the place where the hundred rivers meet; he smelled of lush growing things and he never looked directly at the sky, because he had grown up beneath a canopy of trees, and light seemed indecent to him. Consuelo, my mother, spent her childhood in an enchanted region where for centuries adventurers have searched for the city of pure gold the conquistadors saw when they peered into the abyss of their own ambitions. She was marked forever by that landscape, and in some way she managed to pass that sign on to me.
Missionaries took Consuelo in before she learned to walk; she appeared one day, a naked cub caked with mud and excrement, crawling across the footbridge from the dock like a tiny Jonah vomited up by some freshwater whale. When they bathed her, it was clear beyond a shadow of doubt that she was a girl, which must have caused no little consternation among them; but she was already there and it would not do to throw her into the river, so they draped her in a diaper to cover her shame, squeezed a few drops of lemon into her eyes to heal the infection that had prevented her from opening them, and baptized her with the first female name that came to mind. They then proceeded to bring her up, without fuss or effort to find out where she came from; they were sure that if Divine Providence had kept her alive until they found her, it would also watch over her physical and spiritual well-being, or, in the worst of cases, would bear her off to heaven along with the other innocents. Consuelo grew up without any fixed niche in the strict hierarchy of the Mission. She was not exactly a servant, but neither did she have the status of the Indian boys in the school, and when she asked which of the priests was her father, she was cuffed for her insolence. She told me that a Dutch sailor had set her adrift in a rowboat, but that was likely a story that she had invented to protect herself from the onslaught of my questions. I think the truth is that she knew nothing about her origins or how she had come to be where the missionaries found her.“

Isabel Allende (Lima, 2 augustus 1942)

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Baldwin werd op 2 augustus 1924 in Harlem, New York, geboren. Zie ook mijn blog van 2 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor James Baldwin op dit blog.

Uit: The Cross Of Redemption

„Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare

Every writer in the English language, I should imagine, has at some point hated Shakespeare, has turned away from that monstrous achievement with a kind of sick envy. In my most anti-English days I condemned him as a chauvinist ("this England" indeed!) and because I felt it so bitterly anomalous that a black man should be forced to deal with the English language at all — should be forced to assault the English language in order to be able to speak — I condemned him as one of the authors and architects of my oppression.

Again, in the way that some Jews bitterly and mistakenly resent Shylock, I was dubious about Othello (what did he see in Desdemona?) and bitter about Caliban. His great vast gallery of people, whose reality was as contradictory as it was unanswerable, unspeakably oppressed me. I was resenting, of course, the assault on my simplicity; and, in another way, I was a victim of that loveless education which causes so many schoolboys to detest Shakespeare. But I feared him, too, feared him because, in his hands, the English language became the mightiest of instruments. No one would ever write that way again. No one would ever be able to match, much less surpass, him.

Well, I was young and missed the point entirely, was unable to go behind the words and, as it were, the diction, to what the poet was saying. I still remember my shock when I finally heard these lines from the murder scene in Julius Caesar. The assassins are washing their hands in Caesar's blood. Cassius says:

Stoop then, and wash. — How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over,
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

What I suddenly heard, for the first time, was manifold. It was the voice of lonely, dedicated, deluded Cassius, whose life had never been real for me before — I suddenly seemed to know what this moment meant to him. But beneath and beyond that voice I also heard a note yet more rigorous and impersonal — and contemporary: that "lofty scene," in all its blood and necessary folly, its blind and necessary pain, was thrown into a perspective which has never left my mind.“

James Baldwin (2 augustus 1924 – 1 december 1987)

 
De Franse dichter en schrijver Philippe Soupault werd geboren op 2 augustus 1897 in Chaville bij Parijs. Zie ook alle tags voor Philippe Soupault op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 2 augustus 2010.

Ne retournez pas la tête

Etends les bras
et devant toi regarde
et seulement devant toi
C’est un pays notre pays
qui doucement s’approche
Nos pas nos secondes
conquièrent ce sol et cette destinée
Nous pouvons saisir l’air
comme un oiseau
et atteindre ce fleuve
cette lumière qui chante
pour nous
nous pouvons murmurer
avec cette foule cette mer ces maisons
murmurer notre joie
la joie de tous ta joie et la mienne
Crions écoutons
ce grand chant
de l’aube au crépuscule
Vers la face de notre étoile
Voici devant nous
notre pays et notre vie
N’attends plus
ne regrette plus
Car si une fois une seule fois
tu tournais la tête
tu perdrais en ouvrant les mains
ce trésor qui est une seconde
une unique seconde
de ce temps notre temps

Philippe Soupault (2 augustus 1897 – 12 maart 1990)

De Hongaarse dichter en schrijver Zoltán Egressy werd geboren in Boedapest op 2 augustus 1967. Zie ook mijn blog van 2 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Zoltán Egressy op dit blog.

Uit: Portugál (Vertaald door Ryan Craig)

„Radish             (to Publican) Tell me now, Lajos bátyám! Will there be a call for tender, or will there be 
                         not?

Publican            He wants five litres per week. Then there won’t be.

Radish               Why?

Publican            I’m telling you, he wants five litres per week. Then there won’t be.

Radish               What?

Publican            A tender.

Radish              Since he became mayor, he can be talked to. They say he was a rare bad beast 
                         when he was party secretary .

Publican            Yeah. This is different now. It’s democracy.

Radish               Democracy. Why, what was it before?

Publican            The same. But the people’s.

Radish               People’s what?

Publican            A people’s democracy. It was a people’s democracy until then.

Radish               Why, what do we have now?

Publican            Democracy.

Radish               And then?

Publican            That was a people’s democracy, this one’s plain. Don’t you get it?

Radish               I do. Tell you honest, I like politics. I like talking about it. So, plain democracy. Now.   
                         That’s why he can be talked to.

Publican            Yeah. That’s what democracy does. The plain one.

Radish               It does. And it gets women consciousness.“

Zoltán Egressy (Boedapest, 2 augustus 1967)

De Amerikaanse schrijver en historicus Caleb Carr werd geboren op 2 augustus 1955 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Caleb Carr op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 2 augustus 2010

Uit: The Alienist

„I know that one of them was a woman. I remember loving all of the characters – and kind of wishing that I was back in time and part of the group. And the whole setting of New York in 1896 was SO well done – I truly felt like I was reading a novel that had been written IN the 1890s – it had such a breath of reality to it, and it made me look at the streets of Manhattan in a new way (especially Union Square – although I was unable to find the Union Square section this morning … so I’m wondering if that was actually from his second book Angel of Darkness?) Don’t know. I remember almost nothing about The Alienist – no plot points, nothing … But I do remember these elements very well.

I wonder why on EARTH it hasn’t been made into a film. It seems like it is MADE for a Hollywood movie treatment … it feels very cinematic to me, inherently dramatic – with a great cast of characters …

I liked the book so much I even read the second one in the series (which, I think, stopped at 2) – and that one I wasn’t so wacky about. But I think he should have kept going. I would have definitely kept reading. The main draw about the book was the group of investigators and their interactions – it was a pleasaure to read about them.

Anyhoo, I flipped thru the book this morning and was amazed by how much I didn’t remember. And I couldn’t find the Union Square section which I DID remember and wanted to excerpt … so here’s another excerpt I tripped over, that seems to capture the true time-machine appeal of this book.“

Caleb Carr (New York, 2 augustus 1955)
Cover

02-08-2012 om 19:36 geschreven door Romenu  

De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Gerrit Krol werd geboren op 1 augustus 1943 in Groningen. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Gerrit Krol op dit blog.

Uit: Mijn dagen als cavalerist

„Mijn diensttijd, als cavalerist in Assen, duurde precies tien weken. Na de verwarring van de eerste dagen, waarin je marcheren wordt geleerd en in snel tempo allerlei andere gewoontes aangekweekt worden, wist ik al gauw wat mijn plaats was: ergens ter zijde. De spitse uitspraken van de onderofficieren blijken zich nogal 's te herhalen en al jaren oud te zijn; er is tijd voor contemplatie en verder is het één grote padvinderij.

Veel tijd bracht ik in treinen door. Staande en vol verlangen, vooral de eerste tijd. Met een brief van Yvonne die ik op het appèl, vlak voor de afmars naar het station nog ontvangen had. Tussen de weekendtassen opgesteld in het gangpad, schuddend over de wissels, koud van de tocht, warm van de woorden die ik las.

In Rotterdam aangekomen - haast je rep je over de perrons, de trappen af - zag ik aan het eind van die lange uitgang haar al van verre staan.

‘Te laat, schat.’

Altijd, als we een afspraak hebben, ergens, - als ik haar ontdek tussen de mensen, zie ik een gezicht dat, grijnzend, mij allang in het vizier heeft.

Vierentwintig uur zonder uniform, knus in ‘ons’ huisje aan de spoordijk, alsof we een gezinnetje waren. 's Zondagsmorgens gewekt door de vogels, maakte ik het ontbijt klaar, verraste ik haar, nog in bed, met een kopje thee en een erectie.

's Middags, onder de voetbaluitslagen bij haar ouders, het pak weer aan, met zijn tweeën in de tram en dan, weer, het afscheid op het perron, niet langer dan nodig was. Ver voordat de trein vertrok ging ze al heen, zag ik haar, trots en recht, de witte regenjas als een zandloper, in het trapgat verdwijnen, mijn Euridice...

In de trein, op de lange tocht naar het Noorden, schreef ik uitspraken van haar op, allerlei woordjes die zij gezegd had. De sombere bossen op de Veluwe stoven voorbij in de schemering. In Assen was het nacht.“

Gerrit Krol (Groningen, 1 augustus 1934)

Cover

De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Edward van de Vendel werd geboren in Leerdam op 1 augustus 1964. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 augustus 2010 en ook alle tags voor Edward van de Vendel op dit blog.

Ik ben de jongen

Ik ben de jongen die niet kan
voetballen, of tenminste niet
zo goed. Ik weet wel hoe het
moet, maar mijn lichaam doet
iets anders. Ik heb een lijf met
eigenwijze trekjes, twee benen

met een grote bek die zich
heus niet laat trainen. Ze doen
maar wat, ze tackelen mezelf.
Ik ben een elftal in mijn
eentje,
zoveel kanten ga ik op. Alleen
door mijn verschijning ben ik
al
een strafschop waard, ik kijk
en krijg twee rode kaarten.
Alle witte lijnen wijken weg
van mij. Ik ken het gras, dat
is dan nog het enige. Maar
veel te goed. En van dichtbij.

EEN LEESFEEST

Een Leesfeest, een Leesfeest, bij ons in de stad!
Hoera en fantastisch. Maar hoe vieren we dat?
- We gooien met planken en boeken van snoep.
- Nee, nee, we gaan denken, heel stil in een groep.
- Of roepen we schrijvers? Met pen en met gom?
- Ja, dan gaan we zeggen: Dat woordje is stom.
- En: zeg, hoeveel i's staan er in Mississippi?
- En: denk jij dat Potter zou zoenen met Pippi??
Ukkeltjes! Sukkeltjes! Stop en denk mee!
Een Serieus Leesfeest! Niet vechten nu! NEEEE!

(Laat ze maar,
laat ze maar.
Start je PC.
Elke dag Leesfeest:
punt nl, www.)
 

Edward van de Vendel (Leerdam, 1 augustus 1964)

De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Frans Pointl werd geboren in Amsterdam op 1 augustus 1933. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Frans Pointl op dit blog.

Moët & Chandon

weet je het nog
die fles Moët & Chandon
- te mijner ere -
op je treurige kamer?
je radio
dat kale frame
alleen wat lampen en verlichte zenderschaal
Tombe la neige van Adamo
dat ene paar dure schoenen
dat je van die oude zwetser had gekregen

ik ging met je
naar je katholieke kerk
dankte God
als het orgel de einddreun inzette
jong en stom was ik

al dertig jaar
ben je dood
maar dat verdomde merk
Moët & Chandon
brengt je telkens
even terug

Keuze

Vannacht dichtbij een wezen

dat door mijn verlangen

zich beurtelings kameleoneerde

een obscene hoer

een zachte moeder

een mannelijke vadervriend

de hoer: voor jou doe ik alles

de moeder: eindelijk ben je thuisgekomen

de vadervriend: beschermen zal ik je

met mijn harde jonge lijf.

Frans Pointl (Amsterdam, 1 augustus 1933)

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en musicus Jim Carroll werd geboren op 1 augustus 1949 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 augustus 2010 en ook alle tags voor Jim Carroll op dit blog. 

Uit: The Basketball Diaries

“Fucked up yesterday, lost our last game in the summer 15-and-under league up at George Washington High School, and that deuced us out of the championship game today. We had a good squad, mostly cats from down the block in the projects but they had a rule that no Varsity players could play. That ruined our chances of using big Lewie Alcindor even though he’s from the neighborhood and all. I mean, shit, most of the teams got ringers but it’s a little difficult to sneak in a seven foot All-Everything cat onto a court. He can’t exactly use a fucking pair of sunglasses, dig? So I go up to watch the game today and pick up my trophy for the all-league team and what a hassle is steaming as I bop into the gym. THE SUGAR BOWL ALL-STARS, one of the teams playing, are in a rage bitching about the ringers on the RUTGERS team. So true! those cats didn’t have a dude under eighteen running for them, none of them played school ball, but they were some of the best playground players in Harlem. I walked over and was rapping to a few friends, Vaughn Harper, an All-American from Boys High, and Earl Manigault, a Harlem legend of 5 ft. 10 in. who can take a half dollar off the top of a backboard.

Leonardo DiCaprio in de film The Basketball Diaries uit 1995

He’s invariably on and off his school team because of drug scenes and other shit. These two cats are, with big Lew, the best high school players in the city. Finally the captain of SUGAR BOWL points over to us and tells the other team and the man who runs the gig that if they’re gonna use that team, that their team’s gonna use Harper, “Goat” Manigault, and me. The bossman axes the idea of letting in Harper and “Goat” but says they can use me, which is fine with the other team who don’t even know who the fuck this white boy is. Before I say a fucking word I get a uniform tossed in my mug and since there’re bunches of chicks in the stands, my new team mates are huddling around me and I whip on the shit and start warming up. Big fucking difference I’m gonna make ’cause we need leapers for the boards and no backcourt dude like me. Anyway the slaughter starts and I’m hitting long jumpers like a fucker (I gotta say that I always burn up that gym, something about it that I just can’t miss, crazy) so we’re holding our own by the half and I got twenty-eight points, each move of which I make sticks out like a hardon because I’m the only whiteman on the court and looking around, in the entire fucking place, in fact; my bright blond-red hair making me the whitest whitey this league has ever seen.”

Jim Carroll (1 augustus 1949 – 11 september 2009)

01-08-2012 om 22:44 geschreven door Romenu  

In Memoriam Gore Vidal

De Amerikaanse schrijver, dramaticus en essayist Gore Vidal is gisteren op 86-jarige leeftijd overleden. Gore Vidal werd geboren op 3 oktober 1925 in West Point, New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Gore Vidal op dit blog.

Uit: The City and the Pillar

„One by one, great stars appeared. Jim was perfectly contented, loneliness no longer turning in the pit of his stomach, sharp as a knife. He always thought of unhappiness as the "tar sickness." When tar roads melted in the summer, he used to chew the tar and get sick. In some obscure way he had always associated "tar sickness" with being alone. No longer.

    Bob took off his shoes and socks and let the river cool his feet. Jim did the same.

    "I'll miss all this," said Bob for the dozenth time, absently putting his arm around Jim's shoulders.

    They were very still. Jim found the weight of Bob's arm on his shoulders almost unbearable: wonderful but unbearable. Yet he did not dare move for fear the other would take his arm away. Suddenly Bob got to his feet. "Let's make a fire."

In a burst of activity, they built a fire in front of the cabin. Then Bob brought the blankets outside and spread them on the ground.

    "There," he said, looking into the yellow flames, "that's done." For a long moment both stared into the hypnotically quivering flames, each possessed by his own private daydream. Bob's dream ended first. He turned to Jim. "Come on," he said menacingly. "I'll wrestle you."

    They met, grappled, fell to the ground. Pushing and pulling, they fought for position; they were evenly matched, because Jim, though stronger, would not allow Bob to lose or to win. When at last they stopped, both were panting and sweating. They lay exhausted on the blanket.

    Then Bob took off his shirt and Jim did the same. That was better. Jim mopped the sweat from his face while Bob stretched out on the blanket, using his shirt for a pillow. Firelight gleamed on pale skin. Jim stretched out beside him. "Too hot," he said. "Too hot to be wrestling."

    Bob laughed and suddenly grabbed him. They clung to one another. Jim was overwhelmingly conscious of Bob's body. For a moment they pretended to wrestle. Then both stopped. Yet each continued to cling to the other as though waiting for a signal to break or to begin again. For a long time neither moved. Smooth chests touching, sweat mingling, breathing fast in unison.

    Abruptly, Bob pulled away. For a bold moment their eyes met. Then, deliberately, gravely, Bob shut his eyes and Jim touched him, as he had so many times in dreams, without words, without thought, without fear. When the eyes are shut, the true world begins.

    As faces touched, Bob gave a shuddering sigh and gripped Jim tightly in his arms. Now they were complete, each became the other, as their bodies collided with a primal violence, like to like, metal to magnet, half to half and the whole restored.

    So they met. Eyes tight shut against an irrelevant world. A wind warm and sudden shook all the trees, scattered the fire's ashes, threw shadows to the ground.

    But then the wind stopped. The fire went to coals. The trees were silent. No comets marked the dark lovely sky, and the moment was gone. In the fast beat of a double heart, it died.“

01-08-2012 om 08:27 geschreven door Romenu  

De Nederlandse dichter en schrijver Cees Nooteboom werd geboren in Den Haag op 31 juli 1933. Zie ook alle tags voor Cees Nooteboom op dit blog.

Uit: Roads to Santiago (Vertaald door Ina Rilke)

„Spain is brutish, anarchic, egocentric, cruel. Spain is prepared to face disaster on a whim, she is chaotic, dreamy, irrational. Spain conquered the world and then did not know what to do with it, she harks back to her Medieval, Arab, Jewish and Christian past and sits there impassively like a continent that is appended to Europe and yet is not Europe, with her obdurate towns studding those limitless empty landscapes. Those who know only the beaten track do not know Spain. Those who have not roamed the labyrinthine complexity of her history do not know what they are travelling through. It is the love of a lifetime, the amazement is never-ending.

From the ship's rail I watch the dusk settle over the island where I have spent the summer. The approaching night steals into the hills, everything darkens; one by one the tall neon street-lamps come on to illuminate the quay with that dead white glow which is as much a part of the Mediterranean night as the moon. Arrival and departure. For years now I have been crossing to and fro between the Spanish mainland and the islands. The white ships are somewhat bigger than they used to be, but the ritual is unchanged. The quay full of white-uniformed sailors, kinsfolk and lovers come to wave goodbye, the deck crowded with departing holiday-makers, soldiers, children, grandmothers. The gangplank has already been raised, the ship's whistle will give one final farewell that will resound across the harbour and the city will echo the sound: the same, but weaker. Between the high deck and the quay below a last tenuous link, rolls of toilet paper. The beginnings flutter on the quay; up at the rail, the rolls will unwind slowly as the ship moves away, until the final, most fragile link with those staying behind is broken and the diaphanous paper garlands drown in the black water.

There is still some shouting, cries wafting back, but it is already impossible to tell who is calling out and what their messages signify. We sail out through the long narrow harbour, past the lighthouse and the last buoy -- and then the island becomes a dusky shadow within the shadow that is night itself. There is no going back now, we belong to the ship. Guitars and clapping on the afterdeck, people are singing, drinking, the deck passengers are settling down for a long night in their steamer chairs, the dinner bell rings, white-jacketed waiters cross and recross the antique dining room under the earnest regard of the king of Spain.“

Cees Nooteboom (Den Haag, 31 juli 1933)

Santiago de Compostella

De Franse Poetry Slam kunstenaar Grand Corps Malade (eig. Fabien Marsaud) werd geboren op31 juli 1977 in Le Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-Saint-Denis. Zie ook alle tags voor Grand Corps Malade op dit blog.

J'ai Pas Les Mots

Il est de ces événements qui sortent tout le reste de nos pensées,
Certaines circonstances qui nous stoppent nette dans notre lancé,
Il est de ces réalités qu'on n'était pas près à recevoir,
Et qui rendent toute tentative de bien-être illusoire.

J'ai pas les mots pour exprimer la puissance de la douleur,
J'ai lu au fond de tes yeux ce que signifiait le mot malheur,
C'est un souvenir glacial, comme ce soir de décembre,
Où tes espoirs brulant ont laissé place à des cendres.

J'ai pas trouvé les mots pour expliquer l'inexplicable,
J'ai pas trouvé les mots pour consoler l'inconsolable,
Je n'ai trouvé que ma main pour poser sur ton épaule,
Attendant que les lendemains se dépêchent de jouer leur rôle.

J'ai pas les phrases miracles qui pourraient soulager ta peine,
Aucune formule magique parmi ces mots qui saignent,
Je n'ai trouvé que ma présence pour t'aider à souffrir,
Et constater dans ce silence que ta tristesse m'a fait grandir.

J'ai pas trouvé le remède pour réparer un cœur brisé,
Il faudra tellement de temps avant qu'il puisse cicatriser,
Avoir vécu avec elle et apprendre à survivre sans,
Elle avait écrit quelque part que tu verserais des larmes de sang.

Tu as su rester debout et je t'admire de ton courage,
Tu avances la tête haute et tu traverses cet orage,
A coté de ton épreuve, tout me semble dérisoire,
Tous comme ces mots qui pleuvent que j'écris sans espoir.

Pourtant les saisons s'enchaineront saluant ta patience,
En ta force et ton envie, j'ai une totale confiance,
Tu ne seras plus jamais le même mais dans le ciel dès demain,
Son étoile t'éclairera pour te montrer le chemin

Grand Corps Malade (Le Blanc-Mesnil, 31 juli 1977)

De Britse schrijfster Joanne Rowling werd geboren in Chipping Sodbury bij Bristol op 31 juli 1965. Zie ook alle tags voor Joanne Rowling op dit blog.

Uit: Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban

"This Potter," said Aunt Marge loudly, seizing the brandy bottle and splashing more into her glass and over the tablecloth, "you never told me what he did?"
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were looking extremely tense. Dudley had even looked up from his pie to gape at his parents.
"He - didn't work," said Uncle Vernon, with half a glance at Harry. "Unemployed."
"As I expected!" said Aunt Marge, taking a huge swig of brandy and wiping her chin on her sleeve. "A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who -"
"He was not," said Harry suddenly. The table went very quiet. Harry was shaking all over. He had never felt so angry in his life.
"MORE BRANDY!" yelled Uncle Vernon, who had gone very white. He emptied the bottle into Aunt Marge's glass. "You, boy," he snarled at Harry. "Go to bed, go on -"
"No, Vernon," hiccuped Aunt Marge, holding up a hand, her tiny bloodshot eyes fixed on Harry's. "Go on, boy, go on. Proud of your parents, are you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, I expect) -"
"They didn't die in a car crash!" said Harry, who found himself on his feet.
"They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!" screamed Aunt Marge, swelling with fury. "You are an insolent, ungrateful little --"
But Aunt Marge suddenly stopped speaking. For a moment, it looked as though words had failed her. She seemed to be swelling with inexpressible anger - but the swelling didn't stop. Her great red face started to expand, her tiny eyes bulged, and her mouth stretched too tightly for speech - next second, several buttons had just burst from her tweed jacket and pinged off the walls - she was inflating like a monstrous balloon, her stomach bursting free of her tweed waistband, each of her fingers blowing up like a salami –„

Joanne Rowling (Chipping Sodbury, 31 juli 1965)
Scene uit de film uit 2004, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) en Buckbeak

De Italiaanse schrijver Primo Levi werd geboren op 31 juli 1919 in Turijn. Zie ook alle tags voor Primo Levi op dit blog.

Reveille

In the brutal nights we used to dream
Dense violent dreams,
Dreamed with soul and body:
To return; to eat; to tell the story.
Until the dawn command
Sounded brief, low
'Wstawac'
And the heart cracked in the breast.

Now we have found our homes again,
Our bellies are full,
We're through telling the story.
It's time. Soon we'll hear again
The strange command:
'Wstawac'


Vertaald door  Ruth Feldman en Brian Swann

If This Is a Man

You who live safe

In your warm houses,

You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces:

         Consider if this is a man

         Who works in the mud,

         Who does not know peace,

         Who fights for a scrap of bread,

         Who dies because of a yes or a no.

         Consider if this is a woman

         Without hair and without name,

         With no more strength to remember,

         Her eyes empty and her womb cold

         Like a frog in winter.

Meditate that this came about:

I command these words to you.

Carve them in your hearts

At home, in the street,

Going to bed, rising;

Repeat them to your children.

         Or may your house fall apart,

         May illness impede you,

         May your children turn their faces from you.

Vertaald door Stuart Woolf

Primo Levi (31 juli 1919 – 11 april 1987)

Cover biografie

31-07-2012 om 19:52 geschreven door Romenu  

In Memoriam Maeve Binchy

De Ierse schrijfster en columniste Meave Binchy is gisteren op 72-jarige leeftijd overleden.  Maeve Binchy werd geboren op 28 mei 1940 in Dalkey. Zie ook alle tags voor Maeve Binchy op dit blog.

Uit: Circle of Friends

“Annabel Hogan came in carrying three big bags. She was surprised to see her daughter sitting swinging her legs in the kitchen.

"Aren't you home nice and early? Let me put these things upstairs."

Benny ran over to Patsy when her mother's heavy tread was heard on the stairs.

"Do you think she got it?"

"Don't ask me Benny, I know nothing."

"You're saying that because you do know."

"I don't. Really."

"Was she in Dublin? Did she go up on the bus?"

"No, not at all."

"But she must have." Benny seemed very disappointed.

"No, she's not long gone at all. . . . She was only up the town."

Benny licked the spoon thoughtfully. "It's nicer raw," she said.

"You always thought that." Patsy looked at her fondly.

"When I'm eighteen and can do what I like, I'll eat all my cakes uncooked," Benny pronounced.

"No you won't, when you're eighteen you'll be so busy getting thin you won't eat cakes at all."

"I'll always want cakes."

"You say that now. Wait till you want some fellow to fancy you."

"Do you want a fellow to fancy you?"

"Of course I do, what else is there?"

"What fellow? I don't want you to go anyway."

"I won't get a fellow, I'm from nowhere, a decent fellow wouldn't be able to talk about me and where I came from. I have no background, no life before, you see."

"But you had a great life," Benny cried. "You'd make them all interested in you."

Maeve Binchy (28 mei 1940 – 30 juli 2012)

31-07-2012 om 13:51 geschreven door Romenu  

De Franse schrijver Patrick Modiano werd geboren in Boulogne-Billancourt op 30 juli 1945. Zie ook alle tags voor Patrick Mondiano op dit blog.

Uit: Unfall in der Nacht (Vertaald door Elisabeth Edl)  

“Vielleicht hatte ich mich bei meinem Sturz am Schädel verletzt. Ich habe mich zu der Frau gedreht. Es überraschte mich, daß sie einen Pelzmantel trug. Mir ist wieder eingefallen, daß Winter war. Außerdem trug der Mann uns gegenüber auch einen Mantel und ich eine von diesen alten Lammfelljacken, wie man sie auf Flohmärkten fand. Ihren Pelzmantel hatte sie bestimmt nicht auf dem Flohmarkt gekauft. Nerz? Zobel? Sie hatte ein sehr gepflegtes Äußeres, was nicht zu den Verletzungen in ihrem Gesicht paßte. Auf meiner Jacke, etwas oberhalb der Taschen, sah ich Blutflecken. Ich hatte eine lange Schramme im linken Handteller, und die Blutflecken auf dem Stoff,

die kamen sicher daher. Sie hielt sich sehr gerade, aber mit geneigtem Kopf, als starre sie auf etwas am Boden. Vielleicht auf meinen schuhlosen Fuß. Die Haare trug sie halblang, und im Licht des Foyers war sie mir blond vorgekommen. Das Polizeiauto war an der Ampel stehengeblieben, auf dem Quai, bei Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. Der Mann beobachtete uns immer noch, mal sie und mal mich,

schweigend, mit seinem kalten Blick. Ich fühlte mich langsam an irgend etwas schuldig. Die Ampel wurde nicht grün. Es brannte noch Licht in dem Café an der Ecke Quai/Place Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, wo mein Vater sich oft mit mir verabredet hatte. Das war der Augenblick, um zu fliehen. Vielleicht brauchten wir auch nur diesen Typen auf der Bank zu bitten, daß er uns gehen ließ. Aber ich fühlte mich außerstande, das kleinste Wort hervorzubringen. Er hat gehustet, ein schleimiges Raucherhusten, und ich war überrascht, einen Ton zu hören. Seit dem Unfall herrschte tiefe Stille um mich, als hätte ich das Gehör verloren. Wir fuhren den Quai hinunter. Als das Polizeiauto auf die Brücke einbog, spürte ich, wie ihre Finger mein Handgelenk umfaßten. Sie lächelte mich an, wie um mich zu beruhigen, aber ich hatte überhaupt keine Angst. Mir schien sogar, als wären wir, sie und ich, uns schon bei anderer Gelegenheit begegnet und als habe sie immer dieses Lächeln. Wo hatte ich sie schon gesehen?”

Patrick Modiano (Boulogne-Billancourt, 30 juli 1945)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Cherie Priest werd geboren in Tampa op 30 juli 1975. Zie ook alle tags voor Cherie Priest op dit blog.

Uit: Hellbent

“It sounded like a good idea at the time, which is probably going to be on my tombstone—along with a catty footnote about poor impulse control. But when Horace Bishop called me, practically breathless with delight and greed, telling me he was in Portland so we should get together and have a drink or something, I said okay, even though I probably should’ve said “I’d sooner wear plaid.”

I don’t wear plaid. Ever.

I don’t wear orange, either—not that there’s anything inherently wrong with it. Really, it’s more of a

coloring thing. I’m a solid winter— blue- black hair and so fair I’m practically translucent; it comes with

being undead. Orange always makes me look like I’m having liver problems, so I skip it—just like deep

down I suspected I ought to skip that date with Horace, but what was I going to do? He already knew where I lived (roughly), and he already knew my price scale (more or less), and he was practically my agent. Or my pimp.

Anyway, Horace was vibrating—talking so fast I could hardly understand him. And what was he doing on the West Coast? He promised to tell me in person, and since he was flying back to New York from the Seattle- Tacoma airport, it wasn’t terribly far out of his way to bounce into town for a conspiratorial adult beverage. I waited for him at a bar on Capitol Hill. I don’t live in that neighborhood anymore, but that’s the point. He knows I live in Seattle, but the less specific his knowledge is, the happier I am.

The truth is, I kind of trust him. I mean, if I were wounded and bloody and practically dying in New York City and I had no place else to go, I could probably fling myself onto his couch and generally assume that he wouldn’t stake me in my sleep. After all, I’ve earned him a metric assload of money over the years. And money has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

Cherie Priest (Tampa, 30 juli 1975)

De Mexicaanse dichter, schrijver, vertaler, televisiepresentator en ondernemer Salvador Novo werd geboren op 30 juli 1904 in Mexico City. Zie ook alle tags voor Salvador Novo op dit blog.

Uit: Pillar Of Salt (Vertaald door Marguerite Feitlowitz)

„A few months before, I had begun a casual friendship with a boy in the class ahead of me: the third and fourth years were sharing classrooms off the large patio. I don’t remember how we began seeing each other. Given his inquisitive spirit, it must have been he who approached me, having learned that I had poems published in the school magazine, Policromías, where his first verses had also appeared.

We did not have classes together, but found times to chat; upon learning that he lived at 95 calle Mina, and I on calle Guerrero, I started calling for him at his house whence we would to walk to Preparatoria, which wasn’t far and took us along quiet, little-used streets.

Xavier [Villaurrutia] had a large family: brothers and sisters. They lived on the lower floors of a stone house shaped like a “7,” with patio and corridor bordered by iron railings, a living room with two balconies giving onto the street, a parallel dining room, and then the numerous bedrooms. Once he invited me home to eat, so I met his mother, Doña Julia González, and a few of his brothers and sisters. They all played tennis, and the girls were champions. Their brothers had a sort of small bank or financial firm on Avenida Cinco de Mayo, and a few times I accompanied Xavier when he went there to receive his monthly allowance. Little by little I learned that the family also included writers, artists, and relatives who were very wealthy.. They possessed original Ruelas, which Xavier showed me with pride. I also learned—for he confided, reticently and swearing me to secrecy—that the family had also had conjugal tragedies and pathetic nervous illnesses.

The predilection that Don Ezequiel showed toward me must have induced him to introduce the “distinguished student” to the young secretary of the Preparatoria, a poet, Xavier informed me, who taught literature classes in another school—Advanced Studies—near our own. Between classes, I began visiting Jaime Torres Bodet. In his office he introduced me to another young poet and friend of his, who seemed always to be there: Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano.“

Salvador Novo (30 juli 1904 – 13 januari 1974)

De Engelse dichteres en schrijfster Emily Brontë werd geboren in Thornton in Yorkshire op 30 juli 1818. Zie ook alle tags voor Emily Brontë op dit blog.

Uit: Wuthering Heights

„But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark- skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling - to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He'll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. No, I'm running on too fast: I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr. Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. Let me hope my constitution is almost peculiar: my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home; and only last summer I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one.

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.“

Emily Brontë (30 juli 1818 - 19 december 1848)

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in de film “Wuthering Heights” uit 1939

De Schotse schrijver Alexander Trocchi werd geboren op 30 juli 1925 in Glasgow. Zie ook alle tags voor Alexander Trocchi op dit blog.

Uit: Young Adam

„I seldom talked to Ella. She appeared to dislike me and gave the impression that she only put up with me because of her husband.

And then I noticed Ella hanging out some clothes at the stern.

I had often seen her do it before, but it had never struck me in the same way. I had always thought of her as Les's wife--she was always screaming at him about something or calling him Mr. High-and-Mighty in a thick sarcastic voice. I never saw her as a woman who could attract another man. That had never occurred to me--until now.

But there she was, trying very hard not to look round, pretending she wasn't interested in what was going on, and I found myself looking at her in a new way.

She was one of those heavy women, not more than thirty-five, with strong buttocks and big thighs. She was wearing a tight green cotton dress that pulled up above the backs of her knees as she stretched up to put the clothes on the line. I could see the flesh of her pink ankles growing over the rim at the back of her shoes. She was heavy all right, but her waist was small and her legs were not bad. I could imagine being between them, belly to belly, wrapped securely in the oval of their embrace.

I watched her, and I could see her walk through a park at night, her heels clacking, just a little bit hurriedly, and her heavy white calves were moving just ahead of me. Even in the dark I was able to see them. And I imagined the soft sound of her thighs as their surfaces grazed, as whatever she wore beneath her dress was wedged softly in their damp and tremulous moving. As she reached up, her buttocks tightened, the cotton dress fitting itself to their thrust, and then she alighted on her heels, bent down, and shook out the next garment.

My manhood stirred at the sight. The rest of the world slipped away and my mind filled with the thought of her. I longed to possess her and put her body to the test. Inspired by the back view I had now, I thought of raising that thin membrane of material as she bent, forcing her forward and belly down and mounting her from behind.“

Alexander Trocchi (30 juli 1925 – 15 april 1984)

De Nederlandse schrijfster Pauline van der Lans werd geboren op 30 juli 1963 in Den Haag. Zie ook alle tags voor Pauline van der Lans op dit blog.

Uit: Cadeauverpakking 

“Ik open het raam en snuif de avondlucht door beide neusgaten naar binnen. Het is donker en het ruikt naar rook en houtsnippers. Morris, onze tuinman heeft een vuurtje aangelegd om gesnoeide takken te verbranden. Met een lange stok pookt hij het vuur op. Het knettert en knispert. Als hij me in het raam ziet staan, zwaait hij naar me.
Ik heb geen idee hoe laat het is. Tegen achten denk ik. De verlichting in en om het huis floept automatisch aan als het begint te schemeren. Ik sluit het raam en ga voor de spiegel zitten. God, wat zie ik eruit. Ben ik het wel? Ja, ik ben het wel. Het zijn mijn rimpeltjes op mijn bovenlip, het zijn mijn kraaienpootjes, mijn uitgroei bij de haargrens. Het zijn mijn oneffenheden die door Michel zo mooi weggewerkt zijn. Op een schilderij kan alles. God, het schilderij. Ik hoef me niet om te draaien om het te zien. De cadeauverpakking zit er nog om. Het was een goed idee toch? Ik vind het nog steeds een wereldidee. Je man wordt tenslotte niet ieder jaar vijftig. Wat zit ik nou te doen? Ik ga gewoon door met poederen en smeren alsof er niets aan de hand is. Alsof hier niet vanaf twee uur vanmiddag twee politieagenten op de rand van mijn chaise longue hebben gezeten.
‘Mevrouw Helène de Vos?’
Ik knikte.
‘Klopt.’
‘Geboren 12 juni 1953?’
‘Tut tut, heren, zoiets vraagt men niet aan een dame.’
‘Gehuwd met Herbert Johan de Vos.’
Ik knikte.
Ze rommelden met allerlei papieren die twee kerels, de een was nog Surinaams ook. Ik kon hen niet goed verstaan, er zat geraas in mijn oren. Het geraas van de branding in zo’n grote toeristische zeeschelp.“

Pauline van der Lans (Den Haag, 30 juli 1963)

Den Haag

30-07-2012 om 18:56 geschreven door Romenu  

De Nederlandse schrijver Harry Mulisch werd geboren op 29 juli 1927 in Haarlem. Zie ook alle tags voor Harry Mulisch op dit blog.

Uit; The Procedure (Vertaald door Paul Vincent)

„FIRST DOCUMENT

MAN

yes, of course I can come straight to the point and start with a sentence like: The telephone rang. Who's ringing whom? Why? It must be something important, otherwise the file wouldn't open with it. Suspense! Action! But I can't do it that way this time. On the contrary. Before anything can come to life here, we must both prepare ourselves through introspection and prayer. Anyone who wants to be swept along immediately, in order to kill time, would do better to close this book at once, put the television on, and sink back on the settee as one does in a hot foam bath. So before writing and reading any further we're going to fast for a day, and then bathe in cool, pure water, after which we will shroud ourselves in robes of the finest white linen.

I've switched the telephone and the front doorbell off and turned the clock on my desk away from me; everything in my study is waiting for the events to come. The first luminous words have appeared in the ultramarine of the computer screen, while outside the dazzling, setting autumn sun shines over the square. From the blazing western sky tram rails stream like molten gold from a blast furnace; between the black trees cars appear from the chaos, disappear into it, people walk at the tips of shadows that are yards long. From the position of the sun in my room I can see what time it is: the light is falling diagonally, it's six o'clock, rush hour, for most people the day's work is over.

The origin of man was a complicated affair. Much of it is still obscure, not only in biological, but also in theological circles. In the Bible, indeed, this creature is actually created twice, and to a certain extent three times. Genesis 1:27 tells us that on the sixth and last day of creation the following happened: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." So there were two of them; immediately afterward God says: "Be fruitful, and multiply." So the man was Adam, but the woman wasn't Eve, because the primeval mother of us all saw the light of day only later, when the week of creation was long since over; she wasn't created separately, but came forth from a rib of Adam's.“

Harry Mulisch (29 juli 1927 – 30 oktober 2010)

De Koreaans-Amerikaanse schrijver Chang-Rae Lee werd geboren op 29 juli 1965 in Seoel. Zie ook alle tags voor Chang-Rae Lee op dit blog.

Uit: A Gesture Life

„In my first years in Bedley Run, things were a bit different. Even the town had another name, Bedleyville (this my attribution), which was changed sometime in the early 1970s because the town board decided it wasn't affluent-sounding enough. The town in fact wasn't affluent at the time, being just a shabby tan brick train station and the few stores that served it, some older village homes, several new housing developments, and the surrounding dairy cow pastures and wooded meadows, nothing fancy at all, which was how I was able to afford to move here and open a business. There were perhaps a few thousand residents, mostly shopkeepers and service people, and the small bedroom community who were their patronage.

    I'd read about the town in the paper, a brief slice-of-life article with a picture of a meadow that had been completely cleared for new suburban-style homes, just white stakes in the frozen ground to mark where the streets would be. It looked sterile and desolate, like fresh blast ground, not in the least hopeful, and yet I felt strangely drawn to the town, in part because of the peaceful pace of life that the article noted, the simple tranquillity of the older, village section that made me think of the small city where I lived my youth, on the southwestern coast of Japan. I had already driven through the more established suburbs nearer to the city and found them distinctly cold, as well as too expensive. I'd ask for directions at a garage, or buy some gum at a candy store, and an awkward quiet would arise, that certain clippedness, and though I never heard any comments, I could tell I wasn't being welcomed to remain too long.“

Chang-Rae Lee (Seoel, 29 juli 1965)
Hier links

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Wolfgang Bittner werd geboren op 29 juli 1941 in Gleiwitz, Oberschlesien (tegenwoordig Gliwice, Polen). Zie ook alle tags voor Wolfgang Bittner op dit blog.

Gedichte

Was aber finden wir vor,

verurteilt und fremd,

und wonach suchen wir,

trauernd,

in unseren Hoffnungsgedichten,

den empfindsamen Spielen,

Ablichtungen.

So mauern wir Bunker,

zu überleben,

und schreiben uns

frierend

über den Winter.

Gedichte

wie Leuchtfeuer an Land,

wie Botschaften einer anderen Kultur,

Pflugschar,

brechend den Boden,

Gedichte wie Furchen,

in denen Saat aufgeht.

Dem Vollmond entgegen ...

Ließen mich einst den Neumond gebären
Nun laß ich ihn einfach gewähren
Wenn er sich mutwillens  voll - säuft
Wie ein lüsterner Hund
Trunken  sich selbst überläuft
Verliert er ganz ohne mein Tun
Das so ersehnte vollmundige Rund
Kehrt betrübt – doch mehr klug als zuvor
Zurück zu dem lichtlosen Anbeginn
Den ich ihm einst verlieh'n
Vielleicht kommt's ihm dann in den Sinn
Endlich vor mir zu k n i e n
Dann wäre ich wahrlich aufgeschmissen
Aus meiner Selbstherrlichkeit rausgerissen
Und müßte bekennen:
Ich war es nicht
Der Dich formloses Mondgesicht
Einst aus düsterem Dunkel gebar
Du bist das Geschöpf einer namlosen Kraft
Die mir bis heute nicht offenbar

Doch bis dies zur Wirklichkeit wird
Mag ruhig weiter die Mode sein:
In der Regel schlafen die Frauen allein

Wolfgang Bittner (Gliwice, 29 juli 1941)

Gleiwitz (Gliwice), der Schlesische Hof

De Amerikaanse dichter en vertaler Stanley Jasspon Kunitz werd geboren in Worcester, Massachusetts, op 29 juli 1905. Zie ook alle tags voor Stanley Kunitz op dit blog.

The Testing-Tree

1

On my way home from school

   up tribal Providence Hill

      past the Academy ballpark

where I could never hope to play

   I scuffed in the drainage ditch

      among the sodden seethe of leaves

hunting for perfect stones

   rolled out of glacial time

      into my pitcher's hand;

then sprinted lickety-

   split on my magic Keds

      from a crouching start,

scarcely touching the ground

   with my flying skin

      as I poured it on

for the prize of the mastery

   over that stretch of road,

      with no one no where to deny

when I flung myself down

   that on the given course

      I was the world's fastest human.

2

Around the bend

   that tried to loop me home

      dawdling came natural

across a nettled field

   riddled with rabbit-life

      where the bees sank sugar-wells

in the trunks of the maples