De Amerikaanse schrijver Dominick Dunne werd geboren op 29 oktober 1925 in Hartford, Connecticut. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2009.

Uit: Too Much Money

„Elias Renthal’s release from the federal prison in Las Vegas, Nevada, did not make the front pages of any of the New York papers. While Elias was living out his final moments as a convict, Adele Harcourt died at her apartment on Park Avenue, all alone except for Lil Altemus, who had just told Adele of the name change of the Manhattan Public Library, which would now be called the Konstantin and Perla Zacharias Library, in return for a $100 million gift, to be paid in the full amount, not in increments, from the Konstantin Zacharias Foundation. “She just closed her eyes and died, poor darling,” said Lil.

The next day Adele’s picture was on the front page of every New York paper, and her death was the lead story on all the local news programs. To the relief of Ruby Renthal, who had social aspirations, her husband Elias’s release-from-prison pictures were on the financial pages only and took second place in that section to the story of Leonard Watson’s prison sentence of 24 years for robbing his stockholders of $100 million.

Simon Cabot, in London, heard the news of Adele Harcourt’s death from Perla Zacharias, whose cook was a friend of Adele’s former butler, George, who had been relieved of his job by Mrs. Harcourt’s nephew from Wyoming, who felt that since Adele no longer went about in society she didn’t need a butler. George, whom Ruby had recently hired to be her butler at the house on 78th Street, kept up through hourly telephone calls with the maids still in Mrs. Harcourt’s employ, so concerned was he over the great lady, whom he had served for so many years. George called Perla’s cook one minute after Adele drew her last breath, and one and a half minutes later Perla Zacharias, who admired Adele Harcourt over any person and whose mantle she wanted to assume in New York society, loved having the news of such a piece of social history to pass on to Simon Cabot.“

Dominick Dunne (29 oktober 1925 - 26 augustus 2009)

De Russische schrijver en wetenschapsfilosoof Aleksandr Aleksandrovitsj Zinovjev  werd geboren in Pachtino op 29 oktober 1922. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2009.

Uit: Perestroika in Partygrad (Vertaald door Charles Janson)

„In the old days Partygrad was closed to foreigners. For two reasons.

First, because there was nothing to show them. True, there were a few churches, but without any historical or architectural interest. And all were shut except the most wretched one of all. There was

indeed an old monastery, but they'd put an anti-religious museum in it. In Partygrad one couldn't even find painted spoons, saucers or matryoshka dolls (which the West regards as the highest achievements of Russian national culture, though they've been made in Finland for a long time now). In the whole of Partygrad there was only one samovar, and that was in the museum of folklore.

The second reason why Partygrad was closed to foreigners was that it had a lot that foreigners shouldn't see: many military factories and schools, a chemical complex which turned out not so much

washing-powder as - more to the point - a secret weapon, a microbiological centre for ultra-secret research and a psychiatric hospital with the most lurid reputation in dissident circles. Corrective labour camps were sited round the town, also well known to dissidents; and an atomic factory which, though devoted to peaceful ends, had still managed to turn the whole region into a highly radioactive zone. But what foreigners above all must not see were the monstrous dwellings of the people, the empty shops, the long queues and all the other attributes of Russian provincial life. But when Gorbachev began his perestroika there a fundamental change came about. Not in the sense that the country or the life got bettersometimes they became worse. What did happen was that the government's view of the country and its life worsened. Thus the first period of Soviet history ended: the fault-hiding period; and a new epoch began when deficiencies were laid bare and officially acknowledged. Moreover, the authorities laid the faults bare not so much to their own citizens, who'd been quite aware of them without official guidance, but also to the West. It is not too much to say that the Soviet authorities initiated an orgy of admiration of their own ulcers and of boasting about them to the West.

This breakthrough coincided with the breakthrough in Soviet- Western relations. The West became interested not in the defects of the Soviet way of life but in the fact that Soviet officials recognized the presence of the defects; so that the recognition itself became the greatest virtue of the Soviet way of life.“

Aleksandr Zinovjev (29 oktober 1922 - 10 mei 2006)

De Duitse schrijver Georg Julius Leopold Engel werd geboren op 29 oktober 1866 in Greifswald.

Zie ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2008.

Uit: Die Last

„Es war Tag geworden.

Noch immer rieselte der Regen und troff an den kleinen Fenstern der Krankenstube herunter. Bleigraues Licht stahl sich zögernd durch die Gardinen und mischte sich mit dem Schein der Lampe, die auch jetzt noch vor dem Bette brannte.

Auf dem großen Bauerngutshof erwachte einiges Leben. Man hörte zuweilen ein dumpfes Aufbrüllen der Kühe, und dazwischen das vereinzelte Rufen der Knechte. Doch klang alles gedämpft, als fürchte man, die Kranke zu stören.

Etwas Totes, Gedrücktes lag über dem Gehöft; und je mehr das trübe Sonnenlicht vorrückte, in desto größere Lautlosigkeit verfiel das Anwesen.

In dem weiten, zur ebenen Erde gelegenen Zimmer wurde ein schwacher Ruf laut. Kränklich, hohl, gebrochen, ein wenig gereizt klang er, aber so leise die Stimme auch flüsterte, sofort fuhr aus dem ledernen Sessel neben dem Bette ein Mann von mächtiger, imposanter Gestalt auf, rieb sich ein wenig die Augen, strich ein paarmal energisch über seine dicken, kurzgeschorenen Haare und legte dann seine Finger behutsam auf die Hand der leidenden Frau.

»Na, Elsing,« forschte er aufmunternd, wobei er seine Stimme soviel als möglich herabdämpfte, »geht’s ein bißchen besser?«

Statt einer Antwort rang die Angeredete die Hände und vergrub ihr Antlitz in die Kissen: »Du lieber Gott,« stöhnte sie leise, und es war beinahe, als ob aus dem weißen Linnen ein Schluchzen dränge.

Der Mann ließ seine Hand aufs Knie sinken und starrte auf den hellen, sandbestreuten Estrich der Stube.

Plötzlich warf sich das junge Weib herum und forschte hastig: »Du bist wohl eingeschlafen, Wilms?«

Seltsam, – neidisch fast schien die Frage.

»Ja, ich bin ein wenig eingenickt,« gab der Gatte zu. Und wieder konnte man leise Entschuldigung aus den Worten hören. »Ich sitz’ ja nun auch bald die vierte Nacht so,« murmelte er halb für sich.“

Georg Engel (29 oktober 1866 – 19 oktober 1931)

Greifswald, Fischmarkt (Geen portret beschikbaar)

De Franse schrijver, toneelauteur en beroepsdiplomaat Jean Giraudoux werd geboren op 29 oktober 1882 in Bellac/Haute-Vienne. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2008.

Uit: La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu

„HECTOR

Écoute-là, Cassandre, Écoute ce bloc de négation qui dit oui ! Tous m’ont cédé. Pâris m’a cédé, Priam m’a cédé, Hélène me cède. Et je sens qu’au contraire dans chacune de ces victoires apparentes, j’ai perdu. On croit lutter contre des géants, on va les vaincre, et il se trouve qu’on lutte contre quelque chose d’inflexible qui est un reflet sur la rétine d’une femme. Tu as beau me dire oui, Hélène, tu es comble d’une obstination qui me nargue !

HÉLÈNE

C’est possible. Mais je n’y peux rien. Ce n’est pas la mienne.

HECTOR

Par quelle divagation le monde a-t-il été placé son miroir dans cette tête obtuse.

HÉLÈNE

C’est regrettable, évidemment. Mais vous voyez un moyen de vaincre l’obstination des miroirs ?

HECTOR

Oui. C’est à celà que je songe depuis un moment.

HÉLÈNE

Si on les brise, ce qu’ils reflètaient n’en demeure peut-être pas moins ?

HECTOR

C’est là toute la question.

AUTRE MESSAGER

Hector, hâte-toi. La plage est en révolte. Les navires des Grecs sont en vue, et ils ont hissé leur pavillon non au ramat mais à l’écoutière. L’honneur de notre marine est en jeu. Priam craint que l’envoyé ne soit massacré à son débarquement.

HECTOR

Je te confie Hélène, Cassandre. J’enverrai mes ordres.“

Jean Giraudoux (29 oktober 1882 -  31 januari 1944)

De Franse dichter André Chénier (eigentlich André Marie Chénier ofde Chénier) werd geboren op 29 oktober 1762 in Galata bij Constantinopel. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 oktober 2008.

Art d'aimer, fragment III

Ainsi le jeune amant, seul, loin de ses délices,
S'assied sous un mélèze au bord des précipices,
Et là, revoit la lettre où, dans un doux ennui,
Sa belle amante pleure et ne vit que pour lui.
Il savoure à loisir ces lignes qu'il dévore ;
Il les lit, les relit et les relit encore,
Baise la feuille aimée et la porte à son coeur.
Tout à coup de ses doigts l'aquilon ravisseur
Vient, l'emporte et s'enfuit. Dieux ! il se lève, il crie,
Il voit, par le vallon, par l'air, par la prairie,
Fuir avec ce papier, cher soutien de ses jours,
Son âme et tout lui-même et toutes ses amours.
Il tremble de douleur, de crainte, de colère.
Dans ses yeux égarés roule une larme amère.
Il se jette en aveugle, à le suivre empressé,
Court, saute, vole, et l'oeil sur lui toujours fixé,
Franchit torrents, buissons, rochers, pendantes cimes,
Et l'atteint, hors d'haleine, à travers les abîmes.

André Chénier (29 oktober 1762 – 25 juli 1794)

29-10-2010 om 19:23 geschreven door Romenu  

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

"Isn't it early?" said Sebastian. "The women are still doing whatever women do to themselves before they come downstairs. Sloth has undone them. We're away. God bless Hardcastle."
"Whoever he may be."
"He thought he was coming with us. Sloth undid him too. Well, I did tell him ten. He's a very gloomy man in my college. He leads a double life. At least I assume he does. He couldn't go on being Hardcastle, day and night, always, could he? Or he'd die of it. He says he knows my father, which is impossible."
"Why?"
"No one knows Papa. He's a social leper. Hadn't you heard?"
"It's a pity neither of us can sing," I said.
At Swindon we turned off the main road and, as the sun mounted high, we were among dry-stone walls and ashlar houses. It was about eleven when Sebastian, without warning, turned the car into a cart track and stopped. It was hot enough now to make us seek the shade. On a sheep-cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine - as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together - and we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian's eyes on the leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger's breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.
"Just the place to bury a crock of gold," said Sebastian. "I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember."

Jeremy Irons en Anthony Andrews als Charles en Sebastian

In de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

This was my third term since matriculation, but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian, which had happened, by chance, in the middle of the term before. We were in different colleges and came from different schools; I might well have spent my three or four years in the University and never have met him, but for the chance of his getting drunk one evening in my college and of my having ground-floor rooms in the front quadrangle.
I had been warned against the dangers of these rooms by my cousin Jasper, who alone, when I first came up, thought me a suitable subject for detailed guidance. My father offered me none. Then, as always, he eschewed serious conversation with me. It was not until I was within a fortnight of going up that he mentioned the subject at all; then he said, shyly and rather slyly: "I've been talking about you. I met your future Warden at the Athenæum. I wanted to talk about Etruscan notions of immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for the working-class; so we compromised and talked about you. I asked him what your allowance should be. He said, 'Three hundred a year; on no account give him more; that's all most men have.' I thought that a deplorable answer. I had more than most men when I was up, and my recollection is that nowhere else in the world and at no other time, do a few hundred pounds, one way or the other, make so much difference to one's importance and popularity. I toyed with the idea of giving you six hundred," said my father, snuffling a little, as he did when he was amused, "but I reflected that, should the Warden come to hear of it, it might sound deliberately impolite. So I shall give you five hundred and fifty."

Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

De Vlaamse schrijver JMH Berckmans (Jean-Marie Henri) werd geboren in Leopoldsburg op 28 oktober 1953. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Uit: De wortel in de brievenbus

„Je weet niet wat het is. Nog steeds niet. Na al het dolen en al het dwalen. Door die miljoenen straten van die duizenden steden. Overal ter wereld. Na al het schorremorrie waaraan je overbodige porties van je weinige nog resterende vrienschap hebt geschonken en die je allemaal verraden hebben, de ene na de andere, sommigen overdag, de meesten 's nachts. Wellicht zal je 't ook nooit weten. Ik zeg wellicht. Waarschijnlijk. Misschien. Eventueel. Mogelijkerwijs. Bijwoorden van, van wat eigenlijk, bijwoorden van twijfel en wanhoop. Bijwoorden van radeloosheid. Van kommer en kwel, tot je er krom en knoestig bijloopt en de lui in de straten zeggen kijk daar heb je die sukkelaar weer. Die met z'n beige anorak en z'n vettige jeans. Laat ze maar zeggen. Het zijn de lui in de straten maar. Het zijn Willy en Jeanine en Leo en Sylvia maar. En die zeggen zoveel. Die zeggen dat de zon schijnt of dat het regent. Terwijl het gewoon maar sneeuwt of de apocalyps is losgebarsten en het einde van de tijd nabij is. Dat we moeten verschijnen voor de Alwijze en Hij over ons zal oordelen. Dat sommigen aan z'n rechter en sommige anderen aan z'n linkerhand zullen zitten. Die zeggen dat binnenkort de regering valt, of op z'n minst door de Wetstraat gaat strompelen. Ze weten alles van alles en ze kennen iedereen. Dat helpt. Ze hoeven nooit nog met iemand kennis te maken. Nooit nog iemand de hand te drukken.

Misschien dat het je ooit in een flits te binnen schiet, terwijl je ergens straalbezopen in een goot ligt, op de voorlaatste bank van de bus naar het stempellokaal zit te twijfelen aan jezelf, aan de zin van je daden, aan de geldigheid van je roserode stempel straks, terwijl je ergens staat te pissen in een pissijn, in het holst van de nacht in een gore kroeg. Allicht Jean-Jaques.“

JMH Berckmans (28 oktober 1953 - 31 augustus 2008)

De Duitse schrijver Uwe Tellkamp werd geboren op 28 oktober 1968 in Dresden.Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2008 en ook ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Uit: The Tower (Vertaald door Rebecca K. Morrison)

“Ridged like a karst landscape, like the debris of jagged piled up ice floes, the island of coal stretched out in front of the four visitors; three of them showed their passes at the bridge control, then, when Richard had lowered little Philip from his shoulders and slipped his hand into Regine's, they made their way over the 'Copper Sister' to the offices beyond. The mist hung low over Ostrom, dampening the whistle of 'Black Mathilda' as she signalled her arrival through the tunnel at the heating works. The snow on the bridge had been trodden flat by numerous shoes, even at this early morning hour; it was the first Tuesday of the month – administration day. Meno shielded his eyes, the whiteness was dazzling, and he noted the first sharp shafts of the March sun striking off the heavily sloping, frost-encrusted roofs of the buildings, their frozen windows now clear as water, now a concentric whirl, like the splintering drops of dew caught in a spider's web, igniting sparks, flaring into a sudden confusion of light and a multi-faceted prismatic display that was echoed countless times in the broken axels of the buildings' depths: it found its counterpart in the compressed slabs of quartz, the ridges, the needles of ice.
They had arrived before the doors opened and joined the queue that stretched from the colonnaded entrance as far as the Marx and Engels monument area in the centre of the courtyard; cleared of snow, its grey concrete swept clean, the space could hardly be bridged by a human voice. Marx and Engels were holding books of bronze which they appeared to be reading; crows settled on their heads and the sentry on duty, not permitted to budge, tried to shoo them away with regular clicks of his tongue. Some of those waiting looked on with pity and raised their hands ready to clap, only to be discouraged by acquaintances less benevolently inclined, their gaze fixed on the colonnaded entrance. Richard gave up counting at 'one hundred', opened his bag, reassured himself that the report was still there (but who could have taken it – he had packed the bag himself and checked before leaving); Meno had opened his worn briefcase, too, and was rummaging through papers.”

Uwe Tellkamp (Dresden, 28 oktober 1968)

28-10-2010 om 00:00 geschreven door Romenu  

De Amerikaanse dichter en criticus John Hollander werd geboren op 28 oktober 1929 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

The Lady of the Castle

Venus Pudica stands, bent. Where her hand is

Cupping her marble mound a mystery has

Come into being as the sculptor hides what

Stone could not show yet,

Nor bronze expound. The goddess may be guarding

Herself, or in a special mode of pointing

Out (should we call it “curving in” ?) her temple,

Teaching her children

The central and precious, where they may be found.

Or indeed, as the girls say, she is hiding

Nothing, nor instructing—she is caressing

That which she barely

Touches, warming those feelings which for her are

Wisdom blossoming even within marble.

What her maker buried she loves, and thereby

We are revealed it.

Far in the minimal North, some contracted

Hand or eye has carved into senseless clunch an

Impudent and schematic presence, done in

Primal intaglio,

A circle head perched on a larger circle

Of lady body, spidery legs drawn up

And outward showing off on the church tower

Under the clock, and

Cut in a sort of Linear C, her slit.

Her hands touch nothing but her knees held open.

It is not she who joys in it, nor teaches;

But from beneath her

A very well-hung personage indeed is

Climbing up toward her, as if far from having

Merely no words for things, their sculptor had no

Method of using

Images for them: no things, only actions.

And thus translated into language her wedge

Would be a “Let’s-get-up-on-her-and-in-there.”

Hieroglyphic

Of nature’s own cuneiform, she sits high

But almost hiding in the irrelevance

Of a religious building now to the young

Mums of the village.

Ignored, then, or misread by mythographers

—Myopically concluding that a corpus

Christi lies beneath a bungled cross—as a

Crude Deposition,

She with her terrible thin cut is not to

Be any the less feared by those who read signs

And remember instances of their wide truths

Narrowed in darkness:

Hers is the closed door into the stone again.

The soft traps having long since sprung, the marble

Self-adoring dolls long crumbled, hers is the

Linear kingdom.

John Hollander (New York,  28 oktober 1929)

De Nederlandstalige dichter en schrijver Al Galidi (eigenlijk Rodhan Al Khalidi) is van Iraakse afkomst. Zijn geboortedatum is onbekend, omdat zulke gegevens niet geregistreerd worden en verjaardagen niet gevierd worden in zijn streek van herkomst, maar valt waarschijnlijk in 1971. Geboren werd hij in Al-Najaf (een klein dorpje in het Zuiden van Irak). Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

Wandeling door Harlingen

Zonder hond
zonder kat
zonder fiets
loop ik alleen naar zee.
Ik groet een oude man
en zijn hond antwoordt: “Hij is doof.”

Ik loop door
en groet een hond.
Zijn baas antwoordt:
“Hij houdt niet van vreemden.”

Ik blijf lopen en zie een fiets een vrouw leiden.
Ik ren en zie een hond die zijn baas uitlaat.
Ik wandel en zie een hond fietsen.

Ik kijk door een raam, misschien zie ik iemand,
maar ik zie alleen een kat naar me kijken
die roept: “wat een wereld!”

Ik doe mijn ogen dicht en ga verder.
O, wat moeilijk om in Harlingen te wonen
zonder hond
zonder kat
zonder fiets.

Boer

Geen aardappel
probeerde ooit zelfmoord te plegen.
Geen komkommer
zei ooit:
“Ik ben geen komkommer, ik ben een banaan.”
Geen tomaat zal zeggen:
“Ik wil niet in de soep, ik wil in de sla.”
Geen gehandicapte wortels
geen krankzinnige paprika’s

Daarom ben ik boer.

Al Galidi (Al-Najaf, 1971)

De Duitse dichter, schrijver en theoloog Johannes Daniel Falk werd geboren op 28 oktober 1768 in Danzig. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Das Ungewitter im Walde

An Heloisen.

Bin ich allein auf dem Planeten

Mit Heloisen Hand in Hand?

Ob Blitze rings den Himmel röthen,

An deinem Busen ist mein Stand.

An diesen Pol will ich mich heften,

Nun rolle Welt! – ich halte dich.

So triff mit allen Himmelskräften,

Komm, Tod! triff Blizt! vernichte mich.

Mein süßes Licht in Lebensnächten,

Mein holder Wunsch, der mich entzückt,

Der darf getrost mit Göttern rechten,

Der Engel an sein Herz gedrückt.

Siehst du der Lilie Schnee am Stengel,

Sie nickt, sie wankt so lieberoth,

Und von den Himmeln steigt ein Engel,

Und küßt in Feuer sie zu Tod.

So will auch ich im Zeitenflusse

Mein Liebstes auf der Welt umfahn,

So faßt mit Heloisens Kusse

Verzehrend Himmelsgluth mich an.

Ertödtend liebliches Vergnügen!

Was fürchtest du von dem Geschwätz

Der Schwalben, die am Wasser fliegen?

Verschwiegenheit ist ihr Gesetz.

Warum erbebt vor Schamerröthen

Dein süß verschüchtertes Gesicht?

Des Himmels Donner kann uns tödten:

Verrathen? nein, das will er nicht!

Komm, reich’ – ein Engel über Sternen

Mir, Heloise, deine Hand:

Der darf, was Himmel ist, nicht lernen,

Der ihn in deinen Armen fand.

Johannes Daniel Falk (28 oktober 1768 – 14 februari 1826)

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Karl Philipp Conz werd geboren op 28 oktober 1762 in Lorch. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Trostlied

Und wenn es trüb und unstöt geht,

Des Himmels Wolken sich verdüstern,

Und bangend Weid' und Esche flüstern,

Vorm Nordwind, der sie rauh umweht;

Zum Himmel doch schaut auf der Glaube,

Mit Augen, gleich der frommen Taube.   

Auch ist im Herzen nimmer fern,

Wo Glaube wohnet und Vertrauen,

Des Trostes Samen anzubauen,

Der Liebe milder Hoffnungsstern.

Der selbst die Sonn' ist und in trüben

Eewölken stralt, muß ewig lieben.    

Hast du verschuldet nicht die Roth,

Die dich umdrängt; gelaßner tragen

Kannst du sie leicht, und ihr entschlagen

Wird nach der Prüfung dich der Gott,

Zur Stunde, denn er kennt die rechten,

Der Licht oft schafft aus Mitternächten.    

Auch in der Trübsal thut sich kund

Sein Vaterherz, das Herz der Herzen.

Kann Liebe Liebe je verscherzen?

Was ausgesprochen hat sein Mund,

Das sprach er aus für alle Zeiten,

Und Altes kann dir Neues deuten.   

Mehr als die Gaben liebe nur

Den Geber immer aller Gaben,

Und mehr am Schöpfer Freude haben

Mußt du denn an der Kreatur;

So bleibt in deines Herzens Nähe

Der hohe Frieden aus der Hohe.

Karl Philipp Conz (28 oktober 1762 – 20 juni 1827)

Lorch

28-10-2010 om 00:00 geschreven door Romenu  

De Engelse dichter Dylan Thomas werd geboren op 27 oktober 1914 in Swansea in Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2009.

Uit: A Child's Christmas in Wales

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.”

Dylan Thomas (27 oktober 1914 – 9 november 1953)

Standbeeld in Swansea Marine

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008 ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2009.

Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.

I want to fill it with color and ducks,

The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate ---

April snowdrop, Indian pipe,

Little

Stalk without wrinkle,

Pool in which images

Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous

Wringing of hands, this dark

Ceiling without a star.

Sonnet : To Eva

All right, let's say you could take a skull and break it

The way you'd crack a clock; you'd crush the bone

Between steel palms of inclination, take it,

Observing the wreck of metal and rare stone.

This was a woman : her loves and stratagems

Betrayed in mute geometry of broken

Cogs and disks, inane mechanic whims,

And idle coils of jargon yet unspoken.

Not man nor demigod could put together

The scraps of rusted reverie, the wheels

Of notched tin platitudes concerning weather,

Perfume, politics, and fixed ideals.

The idiot bird leaps up and drunken leans

To chirp the hour in lunatic thirteens.

Wintering

This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.

I have whirled the midwife's extractor,

I have my honey,

Six jars of it,

Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,

Wintering in a dark without window

At the heart of the house

Next to the last tenant's rancid jam

and the bottles of empty glitters--

Sir So-and-so's gin.

This is the room I have never been in

This is the room I could never breathe in.

The black bunched in there like a bat,

No light

But the torch and its faint

Chinese yellow on appalling objects--

Black asininity. Decay.

Possession.

It is they who own me.

Neither cruel nor indifferent,

Only ignorant.

This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees

So slow I hardly know them,

Filing like soldiers

To the syrup tin

To make up for the honey I've taken.

Tate and Lyle keeps them going,

The refined snow.

It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.

They take it. The cold sets in.

Now they ball in a mass,

Black

Mind against all that white.

The smile of the snow is white.

It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,

Into which, on warm days,

They can only carry their dead.

The bees are all women,

Maids and the long royal lady.

They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.

Winter is for women--

The woman, still at her knitting,

At the cradle of Spanis walnut,

Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas

Succeed in banking their fires

To enter another year?

What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?

The bees are flying. They taste the spring.

Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)

De Egyptische schrijfster, gynaecologe, moslimfeministe en politiek activiste Nawal el Saadawi werd geboren in Kafr Tahla op 27 oktober 1931. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2009.

Uit: Woman at Point Zero

““A little boy called Mohammadain used to pinch me under water and follow me into the small shelter made of maize stalks. He would make me lie down beneath a pile of straw, and lift up my galabeya. We played at ‘bride and bridegroom’. From some part of my body, where, exactly I did not know, would come a sensation of sharp pleasure. Later I would close my eyes and feel with my hand for the exact spot. The moment I touched it, I would realize that I had felt the sensation before. Then we would start to play again until the sun went down, and we could hear his father’s voice calling to him from the neighbouring field.”

(…)

“To knead the dough, I squatted on the ground with the trough between my legs. At regular intervals I lifted the elastic mass up into the air and let it fall back into the trough. The heat of the oven was full on my face, singeing the edges of my hair. My galabeya often slipped up my thighs, but I paid no attention until the moment when I would glimpse my uncle’s hand moving slowly from behind the book he was reading to touch my leg. The next moment I could feel it travelling up my thigh with a cautious, stealthy, trembling movement. Every time there was the sound of a footstep at the entrance to our house, his hand would withdraw quickly. But whenever everything around us lapsed into silence, broken only every now and then by the snap of dry twigs between my fingers as I fed the oven, and the sound of his regular breathing reaching me from behind the book so that I could not tell whether he was snoring quietly in his sleep or wide awake and panting, his hand could continue to press against my thigh with a grasping, almost brutal insistence.”

Nawal el Saadawi (Kafr Tahla, 27 oktober 1931)

27-10-2010 om 15:22 geschreven door Romenu  

De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2009.

Uit: The Autograph Man

„You're either for me or against me, thought Alex-Li Tandem, referring to the daylight and, more generally, to the day. He stretched flat and made two fists. He was fully determined to lie right here until he was given something to work with, something noble, something fine. He saw no purpose in leaving his bed for a day that was against him from the get-go. He had tried it before; no good could come from it.
A moment later he was surprised to feel a flush of warm light dappled over him, filtered through a blind. Nonviolent light. This was encouraging. Compare and contrast with yesterday morning's light, pettily fascist, cruel as the strip lighting in a hospital hallway. Or the morning before yesterday morning, when he had kept his eyes closed for the duration, afraid of whatever was causing that ominous red throb beneath the eyelids. Or the morning before that, the Morning of Doom, which no one could have supposed would continue for seventy-two hours.
NOW OPTIMISTIC, ALEX grabbed the bauble that must be twisted to open blinds. His fingers were too sweaty. He shuttled up the bed, dried his left hand on the wall, gripped and pulled. The rain had come in the night. It looked as if the Flood had passed through Mountjoy, scrubbed it clean. The whole place seemed to have undergone an act of accidental restoration. He could see brickwork, newly red-faced and streaky as after a good weep, balconies with their clean crop of wet white socks, shirts and sheets. Shiny black aerials. Oh, it was fine. Collected water had transformed every gutter, every depression in the pavement, into prism puddles. There were rainbows everywhere.

Alex took a minute to admire the gentle sun that kept its mildness even as it escaped a gray ceiling of cloud. On the horizon a spindly church steeple had been etched by a child over a skyline perfectly blue and flatly colored in. To the left of that sat the swollen cupola of a mosque, described with more skill. So people were off to see God, then, this morning. All of that was still happening. Alex smiled, weakly. He wished them well.“

Zadie Smith (Londen, 27 oktober 1975)

De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2009.

Uit de dichterliefde

Een knecht bemint een meiske,
't bemint ene andere knecht,
die andere bemint nog ene andere
en stort zich met haar in de echt.

Uit wanhoop neemt het meiske,
goed kome het uit, een vent,
de eerste de gereedste;
de knecht, hij, is miscontent:

Dat is een oude historie,
maar ze is nog altijd nieuw,
en wie zij voorvalt gaat het
alsof men hem 't hert doorhiew.

Fantasiën

Het drijven watten wolkjes,

van zonnelicht doorboomd.

De jongeling ziet ze drijven

en droomt...

En onbewust elk wolkje na

drijft zachtjes een fantasia,

doch in de ruimte smelten bei

voorbij, voorbij,

voorbij.

Het drijven blanke zeilen,

waar 't meer de hemel zoomt.

De jongeling ziet ze drijven

en droomt...

En onbewust elk schipje na

drijft zachtjes een fantasia,

doch over zee verzinken zij

voorbij, voorbij,

voorbij.

Het drijven wondere beelden,

van tovermacht omstroomd.

De jongeling ziet ze drijven

en droomt...

En elke omstraalde beeltnis na

ijlt jagend een fantasia,

doch naar de Lethe* spoeden zij

voorbij, voorbij,

voorbij.

Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 – 23 juni 1880)

Beeld in Roeselare

De Britse schrijfster Enid Algerine Bagnold werd geboren op 27 oktober 1889 in Rochester, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2009.

Uit: A Diary Without Dates (1917)

“I suffer awfully from my language in this ward. I seem to be the only VAD nurse of whom they continually ask, "What say, nurse?' It isn't that I use long words, but my sentences seem to be inverted.
"An antitetanic injection for Corrigan," said Sister. And I went to the dispensary to fetch the syringe and the needles.
"But has he any symptoms?" I asked. In the Tommies' ward one dare ask anything; their isn't that mystery which used to surround the officers' illnesses.
"Oh, no," she said, "it's just that he hasn't had his full amount in France."
So I hunted up the spirit-lamp and we prepared it, talking of it.
But we forget to talk of it to Corrigan. The needle was into his shoulder before he knew why his shirt was held up.
His wrath came like an avalanche; the discipline of two years was forgotten, his Irish tongue was loosened. Sister shrugged her shoulders and laughed; I listened to him as I cleaned the syringe.
I gathered that it was the indignity that had shocked his sense of individual pride. "Treating me like a cow" I heard him say to Smiff - who laughed, since it wasn't his shoulder that carried the serum.“

Enid Bagnold ( 27 oktober 1889 – 3 maart 1981)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Frances Ann "Fran" Lebowitz werd geboren op 27 oktober 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008

Uit: Taking a Letter

„My neighborhood is located in Greenwich Village, a quarter of the city well known for its interesting artistic qualities. These qualities are to be found not only in its atmosphere and residents but also in its public servants. There is, in fact, not a single local postal employee who does not possess a temperament of such lush moodiness that one assumes that only an unfortunate lack of rhythm has kept them from careers devoted to the composition of tragic opera. Exhaustive research soon established that this was no accident but a carefully planned effort to bring the post office closer to those it serves. The Greenwich Village Postal System is a separate entity dedicated to the proposition that nowhere on earth are men created more equal than downtown on the West Side. Thus its offices exhibit a clean Bauhaus influence. The wanted posters refer to desires more personal than federal. Uniforms are chosen on the basis of cut and fabric. And they have punched up the official motto with the Greenwich Village Addendum so that it reads as follows: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can stay these couriers from swift completion of their appointed rounds. However, offended sensibility, painful memory, postman's block, and previous engagements may stay the courier for an indefinite period of time. C'est la vie."

Fran Lebowitz (Morristown, 27 oktober 1950)

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

De Iraanse schrijver en filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh werd geboren op 27 oktober 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran.

De Poolse schrijver Kazimierz Brandys werd geboren op 27 oktober 1916 in Lodz.

27-10-2010 om 15:16 geschreven door Romenu  

De Nederlandse dichter, schrijver en beeldend kunstenaar Jan Wolkers werd geboren in Oegstgeest op 26 oktober 1925. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 oktober 2007 en mijn blog van 26 oktober 2006 en ook ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2009.

Uit: De verschrikkelijke sneeuwman

‘Hoe lang ben ik er niet geweest, en hoe gelukkig was ik vroeger als ik er insecten en kikkers zocht. Als ik werkelijk blind was, zou ik op de tast zelfs de onder hanepoten en muur verborgen stenen feilloos kunnen vinden. Ik zou de namen kunnen noemen van de dieren die er onder wonen. Dit is een duizendpoot, rood als een Ierse setter, en dat daar dat zich tot een geschubd balletje maakt, een pissebed, kwalblauw. Als je hem tussen twee steentjes fijn knijpt komt er een bergje gele vla uit. Amberkleurige salamanders zoeken er ieder voorjaar vergeefs naar de sloot. Maar die is sinds jaren gedempt. Ze voelen aan als stukjes rubber. In water worden ze zilverachtig en glimmend als een meisjesbroche. Vlezige regenwormen met een gele band midden in het lichaam, of ze een verstuikte knie hebben. Als je een steen optilt waar er veel onder zitten is het net of het dak van een bordeel wordt opgelicht, zoals die naakte roze lijven zich wegreppen.’

(…)

‘Hoe heb ik ooit voor deze mensen kunnen voelen, dacht Herman. Hoe heb ik ooit als kind in bed nachten lang kunnen huilen bij de gedachte dat ze eens dood zouden gaan. Als een duif van mij dood ging mocht ik hem niet in de tuin begraven, en geen teken voor hem oprichten. Hij moest in de vuilnisbak. Een dier komt niet in de hemel, zei mijn vader. De eeuwigheid is voor de mens die naar Gods wil leeft, hij hoort in een graf, om daar te wachten tot de jongste dag. En de vogel wierp hij tussen de groenteafval.’

(…)

„Ze trok haar rok op, stak haar benen omhoog, zocht met haar handen het elastiek van haar broekje.

Herman keek tussen haar benen. Het schaamhaar puilde aan beide kanten uit haar broek, of men een veiligheidsscheermes over het midden van een behaarde kin had gehaald. Ze wipte met haar billen omhoog, trok het nylon er in één beweging vanaf en meteen door tot halverwege haar dijen. Ze hield de linkerpijp vast, trok haar been eruit, en liet het broekje op de wreef van haar rechtervoet hangen als een verlepte bloem. Toen drukte hij zich tegen haar aan.

- Vind je het niet vervelend in deze houding, vroeg hij.

- Ik vind het op iedere manier prettig, zei ze, maar doe een kussen onder je knieën, dan kom je er beter voor.’

Jan Wolkers (26 oktober 1925 – 19 oktober 2007)

De Engelse dichter, schrijver en biograaf  Andrew Motion werd geboren op 26 oktober 1952 in Braintree in Essex. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2009.

Holy Island

I am behind you on the mainland, leaning
on your shoulder and pointing with one arm
in front of your face at weightless cinders
which are ravens blustering above the island.

Boulder clay on the outcrops, and beaches
dotted and dashed with coal dust. Guillemots
whitening the cliff face. Small orchids definitely
still evolving in a downpour of Arctic sunlight.

How many years are there left to cross over
and show you things themselves, not my idea
of things? Thirty, if I live to the age of my father.
I cannot explain why I have left it as late as this.

Your black hair blows into my eyes but I can see
everything moving fast now. Weather polishes
the silver fields ahead; the ravens swoop down
and settle among the gorgeous pages of the gospels.

Red Gloves

Reaching the restaurant late

I find the empty shells

Of your gloves on the cold kerb:

Stretchy, crushed red velvet

Which slithered off your lap

To float in the sodium stream.

What could they mean, except

You have arrived before me,

And simply taken your place?

The things we forget, or lose,

Live in a heaven of debris,

Waiting for us to collect them;

Already your naked hands

Are fluttering over the table,

Missing they don't know what.

Andrew Motion (Braintree, 26 oktober 1952)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen L. Carter werd geboren op 26 oktober 1954 in Washington, D.C. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008 en en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2009.

Uit: The Emperor of Ocean Park

„When my father finally died, he left the Redskins tickets to my brother, the house on Shepard Street to my sister, and the house on the Vineyard to me. The football tickets, of course, were the most valuable item in the estate, but then Addison was always the biggest favorite and the biggest fan, the only one of the children who came close to sharing my father's obsession, as well as the only one of us actually on speaking terms with my father the last time he drew his will. Addison is a gem, if you don't mind the religious nonsense, but Mariah and I have not been close in the years since I joined the enemy, as she puts it, which is why my father bequeathed us houses four hundred miles apart.
I was glad to have the Vineyard house, a tidy little Victorian on Ocean Park in the town of Oak Bluffs, with lots of frilly carpenter's Gothic along the sagging porch and a lovely morning view of the white band shell set amidst a vast sea of smooth green grass and outlined against a vaster sea of bright blue water. My parents liked to tell how they bought the house for a song back in the sixties, when Martha's Vineyard, and the black middle-class colony that summers there, were still smart and secret. Lately, in my father's oft-repeated view, the Vineyard had tumbled downhill, for it was crowded and noisy and, besides, they let everyone in now, by which he meant black people less well off than we. There were too many new houses going up, he would moan, many of them despoiling the roads and woods near the best beaches. There were even condominiums, of all things, especially near Edgartown, which he could not understand, because the southern part of the island is what he always called Kennedy country, the land where rich white vacationers and their bratty children congregate, and a part-angry, part-jealous article of my father's faith held that white people allow the members of what he liked to call the darker nation to swarm and crowd while keeping the open spaces for themselves.

Stephen L. Carter (Washington, 26 oktober 1954)

De Zweedse dichteres en schrijfster Karin Maria Boye werd geboren op 26 oktober 1900 in Göteborg. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2009.

Das Beste

Das Beste, das wir haben,

das kann man nicht beschreiben,

nicht geben und nicht sagen;

es muß verborgen bleiben.

Das Tiefste deiner Seele

kann niemand je berühren.

Die unerreichte Stelle

kannst du und Gott nur spüren.

Das ist des Reichtums Quelle,

daß keiner sonst sie kennt.

Das ist der Armut Hölle,

daß sie vom andern trennt.

Waffenlos

Kampfbereit und zugeschlossen
einst ich kam-
Panzer war aus Schreck gegossen
und aus Scham.

Ich will abtun meine Waffen,
Schild und Schwert.
Feindschaft kann nichts Gutes schaffen,
Kälte zehrt.

Ich sah manchen trocknen Samen
noch erblühn,sah,
wie Zweige aus ihm kamen,
licht und grün.

Kraftvoll ist das zarte Leben,
mehr als Stahl,
allem schutzlos preisgegeben
ohne Wahl.

Frühling tagt in Winternächten,
Mutterschoß-
Ich will ringen mit den Mächten
waffenlos.

Vertaald door Hildegard Dietrich

Karin Boye (26 oktober 1900 – 24 april 1941)

Standbeeld in Göteborg

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e oktober ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

26-10-2010 om 19:37 geschreven door Romenu  

De Ierse dichter Trevor Joyce werd geboren op 26 oktober 1947 in Dublin. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2009.

o tiny

universe

alongside

the many other

possible

universes

some of which

could easily

be ten

or a thousand

times more

vast

you are

small

pretentious

and a little

pathetic

i will

keep you

for later

*

She is my love

was most my misery

preferred for wasting me

to her could cure

She is my fair

would fast enfeeble me

not whisper for my going oh!

or mind my grave

She is my dear

nature’s accessory

wouldn’t reach a hand to hold my head

lay me for gold

She is my why

drops not a hint to me

heeds no true word

spares no regard

Great is my grief

too long this lingering

who most suspects me

is all my love

Trevor Joyce (Dublin, 26 oktober 1947)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Pat Conroy werd geboren op 26 oktober 1945 in Atlanta, Georgia. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2009.

Uit: South of Broad

„It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River.
He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father's ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I've never lost nor ever will. I'm Charleston-born, and bred. The city's two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula.
I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael's calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory.
As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts“.

Pat Conroy (Atlanta, 26 oktober 1945)

De Duitse schrijver Ulrich Plenzdorf werd geboren op 26 oktober 1934 in Berlijn. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008.

Uit: Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.

"Bei Ed wußte man nie. Der dachte sich noch ganz andere Sachen aus. Ganze Songs zum Beispiel. Text und Melodie! Irgendein Instrument, das er nach zwei Tagen nicht spielen konnte, gab's überhaupt nicht. Oder nach einer Woche, von mir aus. Er konnte Rechenmaschinen aus Pappe baun, die funktionieren heute noch. Aber die meiste Zeit haben wir gemalt."
"Edgar hat gemalt? - Was waren das für Bilder?"
"Immer DIN A 2."
"Ich meine: was für Motive? Oder kann man welche sehen?"
"Nicht möglich. Die hatte er alle bei sich. Und "Motive" kann man nicht sagen. Wir malten durchweg abstrakt. Eins hieß Physik. Und: Chemie. Oder: Hirn eines Mathematikers. Bloß, seine Mutter war dagegen. Edgar sollte erst einen "ordentlichen" Beruf haben. Ed hatte ziemlich viel Ärger deswegen, wenn sie das interessiert. Aber am sauersten war er immer, wenn er rauskriegte, daß sie, also seine Mutter, mal wieder eine Karte von seinem Erzeuger..., ich meine: von seinem Vater..., ich meine: von Ihnen zurückgehalten hatte. Das kam hin und wieder vor. Dann war er immer ungeheuer sauer."
Das stimmt. Das stank mich immer fast gar nicht an. Schließlich gab es immer noch so was wie ein Briefgeheimnis und die Karten waren eindeutig an mich. An Herrn Edgar Wibeau, den ollen Hugenotten. Jeder Blöde hätte gemerkt, daß ich eben nichts wissen sollte über meinen Erzeuger, diesen Schlamper, der soff und der es ewig mit den Weibern hatte. Der schwarze Mann von Mittenberg. Der mit seiner Malerei, die kein Mensch verstand, was natürlich allemal an der Malerei lag.

Ulrich Plenzdorf (26 oktober 1934 – 9 augustus 2007)

De Schotse dichter Sorley MacLean (Schots Gaelic: Somhairle MacGill-Eain) werd geboren op 26 oktober 1911 Osgaig op het eiland Raasay. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008.

The Choice

I walked with my reason
out beside the sea.
We were together but it was
keeping a little distance from me.

Then it turned saying:
is it true you heard
that your beautiful white love
is getting married early on Monday?

I checked the heart that was rising
in my torn swift breast
and I said: most likely;
why should I lie about it?

How should I think that I would grab
the radiant golden star,
that I would catch it and put it
prudently in my pocket?

I did not take a cross’s death
in the hard extremity of Spain
and how then should I expect
the one new prize of fate?

I followed only a way
that was small, mean, low, dry, lukewarm,
and how then should I meet
the thunderbolt of love?

But if I had the choice again
and stood on that headland,
I would leap from heaven or hell
with a whole spirit and heart.

Sorley MacLean (26 october 1911 - 24 november 1996)

De Russische schrijver en theoreticus van het symbolisme Andrej Bely werd geboren op 26 oktober 1880 in Moskou. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008.

Uit: Glossolalia (Vertaald door Thomas R. Beyer)

„All motion of the tongue in the cavity of our mouth is - a gesture of an armless dancer, twirling the air, like a gaseous, dancing veil; as they fly off to the sides, the tips of the veil tickle the larynx; and - out comes a dry, aery, quick "h," pronounced like the Russian "kh"; the gesture of arms extended (
upwards and to the side) is - "h". The gestures of the arms reflect all the gestures of the armless dancer, dancing in a murky dungeon: beneath the arches of the palate; the movement of the arms relfects an armless mimicry; these movements are - giants of an enormous world, invisible to sound; in this way the tongue directs its bulk, the body, from out os its cave; and the body draws for us gestures; and the storms of meaning are - beneath them. Out armless tongue observed the gesture of the arm; and duplicated it in sounds; sounds know the mysteries of ancient movements of our spirits; just as we pronounce the sounding meanings of words, so too were we once created; pronounced with meaning; our sounds - words - will become the world: we create people out of words; and the words are acts. Sounds are - ancient gestures in the millenia of meaning; in the millenia of my coming being an arm will sing to me with cosmic meaning. Gestures are - youthful sounds of meanings implanted in my body, but not yet composed; the same thing that is occuring for the time being in a single place of the bosy, under the skullbone, will with the flow of time occur throughout my entire body. My entire body will brim full of meaning.“

Andrej Bely (26 oktober 1880 – 8 januari 1934)

Portret door Leon Bakst

26-10-2010 om 19:29 geschreven door Romenu  

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Anne Tyler werd geboren op 25 oktober 1941 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009.

Uit: Noah's Compass

“In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job. It wasn’t such a good job, anyhow. He’d been teaching fifth grade in a second-rate private boys’ school. Fifth grade wasn’t even what he’d been trained for. Teaching wasn’t what he’d been trained for. His degree was in philosophy. Oh, don’t ask. Things seemed to have taken a downward turn a long, long time ago, and perhaps it was just as well that he had seen the last of St. Dyfrig’s dusty, scuffed corridors and those interminable after-school meetings and the reams of niggling paperwork.
In fact, this might be a sign. It could be just the nudge he needed to push him on to the next stage—the final stage, the summing-up stage. The stage where he sat in his rocking chair and reflected on what it all meant, in the end.
He had a respectable savings account and the promise of a pension, so his money situation wasn’t out-and-out desperate. Still, he would have to economize. The prospect of economizing interested him. He plunged into it with more enthusiasm than he’d felt in years—gave up his big old-fashioned apartment within the week and signed a lease on a smaller place, a one-bedroom-plus-den in a modern complex out toward the Baltimore Beltway. Of course this meant paring down his possessions, but so much the better. Simplify, simplify! Somehow he had accumulated far too many encumbrances. He tossed out bales of old magazines and manila envelopes stuffed with letters and three shoe boxes of index cards for the dissertation that he had never gotten around to writing. He tried to palm off his extra furniture on his daughters, two of whom were grown-ups with places of their own, but they said it was too shabby. He had to donate it to Goodwill. Even Goodwill refused his couch, and he ended up paying 1-800-GOT-JUNK to truck it away. What was left, finally, was compact enough that he could reserve the next-smallest-size U-Haul, a fourteen-footer, for moving day.
On a breezy, bright Saturday morning in June, he and his friend Bundy and his youngest daughter’s boyfriend lugged everything out of his old apartment and set it along the curb. (Bundy had decreed that they should develop a strategy before they started loading.) Liam was reminded of a photographic series that he’d seen in one of those magazines he had just thrown away“.

Anne Tyler (Minneapolis, 25 oktober 1941)

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Peter Rühmkorf werd geboren op 25 oktober 1929 in Dortmund. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009.

Drei Variationen über das Zeitgedicht

Das Zeitgedicht, das Zeitgedicht,

ist schon ein Tutmirleidgedicht,

mit Kunst geschliffen und gefeilt,

entgeht ihm, wie die Zeit enteilt,

ojeh!

Das Zeitgedicht, das Zeitgedicht,

so schnell wie Zeitung kann es nicht,

weil wo es sich mit Sinn verfaßt,

ist prompt der Drucktermin verpaßt,

oweh!

Das Zeitgedicht, das Zeitgedicht,

hat nur ein kurzes Lebenslicht,

und wenn es auch die Wahrheit spricht,

man dankt’s ihm nicht!

Olé !

Komm raus

Komm raus aus deiner Eber-Einzelbucht,

aus deiner Ludergrube.

Komm raus aus deiner kaskoversicherten Dunkelkammer!

Auch dein Innenleben

findet öfter statt, merk ich grade --

(Komm raus aus deinem Farbbandkäfig)

Im Prinzip -- ja? -- P r i n z i p

sind doch längst alle Schleusen geöffnet, Gitter gefallen ...

Immer noch vierlerlei Lichter hier, wo sich

keine Anzeigenseite dazwischenschiebt,

keine Helium-Annonce --:

D I E S O N N E

unverwandt, mit angezogenen Strahlen --

(Komm raus aus deinem Leichen-Entsafter)

Vor dir das Meer und hinter dir

die Waschmaschine ...

(aus deinem Metzelwerk, aus deinem Familien-Gefrierfach)

Hier nichts gewollt zu haben,

ist soviel wie verspielt, das weißt du, oder?

Heda, eingerahmtes Tier, du kriegst

den Kopf wohl gar nicht mehr raus aus dieser Pate, laß sehn!

Unbeugsam reflektierst du dich

an der Schreibtischkante --

(eisern nach innen blickend, ein Vesuv mit geschlossenen Augen)

Komm raus aus deinem handversiegelten Hockergrab!

A u c h K u l t u r

ist nur eine unmaßgebliche Schutzbehauptung.

Eine Schlacht im Sitzen gewinnen:

s c h ö n w ä r `s ! ?

Und schön der Gedankeda wer sich nicht rührt,

hat wenigstens Anspruch auf Schicksal -- Aus deiner Tropfsteintruhe!

Komm raus aus deinem Todeskoben, überleg dir das Leben:

Die Morgenschiffe rauschen schon an --

Ein Tag aus Gold und Grau:

willst du mit rein? --

Peter Rühmkorf (25 oktober 1929 – 8 juni 2008)

Hier met Günter Grass (rechts)

De  Nederlandse dichter, schrijver en zanger Willem Andries Wilmink werd geboren in Enschede op 25 oktober 1936. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009.

Jij en ik

Later zul je bij me wonen.
Later zijn we met z'n beiden.
Dat bedenk ik soms, wanneer je
giechelt met de an'dre meiden.

't Is voorlopig nog maar beter
om de zaak geheim te houden,
'k zal je nog maar niet gaan zeggen
dat ik van je ben gaan houden.

Later ga ik reizen maken
heel alleen, naar verre landen,
en daar ga ik mensen redden,
redden met mijn eigen handen.

Iedereen zal in de kranten
van mijn grote daden lezen.
'Waarom zou die mensenredder
zo ontzettend moedig wezen?'

Niemand zal de waarheid weten,
jóu alleen zal ik 't vertellen:
later, als ik zó beroemd ben
dat ik bij je aan durf bellen.

Televisie

men was allang vergeten dat het kon
maar het gebeurde: met een zacht gereutel
stierf de tv. het sprekend paard verbleekte
het licht werd opgestoken en de vader
aanzag zijn zoon die bij een storing werd verwekt
en zei: wat ben je oud geworden, jongen.

Willem Wilmink (25 oktober 1936 – 2 augustus 2003)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Harold Brodkey werd geboren op 25 oktober 1930 als Aaron Roy Weintraub in Staunton, Illinois. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009.

Uit: Profane Friendship

„Confession, with redemption possible: a love story. Well, I was refusing love. I often have, it seems . . . I am a very odd sort of romantic. . . .

The competition, the use of each other went on being real, as real as ever. Hatred, exile, love still in the new way. The as-if-brutal -- and breakable, brittle -- weary clemency, the modified clemency, ah, ah . . . We are at arm's length. He comes over, sits on the foot of the chaise, carefully soft and alert, aware of my rage . . . This is a form of respect and very winning. He leans toward me. I lean back.

"We are friends," he says, a little falsely, a little truly. He can't let me go easily but he has driven me away. I also know that if I tried to go on in his manner, when he turned and engaged with the situation and was truly present, I would not be able to manage it any more short of horror, I did so thoroughly, in some sense, "hate" him. I mean the history of our connection would go on being a live thing and ugly, and, in truth, to the death. Even embracing death and inanition and merely backing off I would have to undergo Onni's getting even now. . . .

I say I knew this then, that night. "We are friends," I said. "In our way." Then I muttered the next word: "Profanely."

"Profoundly? Is that what you said?"

"No, caro amico. I said profanely."

Harold Brodkey (25 oktober 1930 - 26 januari 1996)

De Duitse schrijver en arts Jakob Hein werd geboren op 25 oktober 1971 in Leipzig. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2008.en ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009.

Uit: Liebe ist ein hormonell bedingter Zustand

„Beigebracht wurde uns die Bewegung zur Musik im Kindergarten. Wir mussten uns im Kreis aufstellen, und ein Bi-Ba-Butzemann tanzte um unser Haus herum, der Regen fiel, Frau Sonne lachte. Wie wir uns dazu bewegen durften, gab die Kindergartentante vor. Wir nannten die Kindergartentanten bei ihren Nachnamen, die besonders freundlichen erlaubten uns, sie trotzdem zu duzen. Das klang so wie heute im Kaufhaus : » Du, Frau Becker, guck mal ! « Meine Kindergartentante hieß Frau Kant. Sie war dick, kurzatmig, schlecht gelaunt und trug eine Kittelschürze aus Nylon über ihren Stützstrümpfen. Bewegung zu Musik machte sie mit uns nur, weil es Vorschrift war, weil in ihrer o∞ziellen Bedienungsanleitung für Kinder geschrieben stand, dass eine Kindergärtnerin mindestens zweimal monatlich mit den ihr unterstellten Kindern Tanz- und Singspiele einüben musste. Frau Kant hasste Musik und Bewegung, und Musik und Bewegung hassten Frau Kant. Alle paar Augenblicke griff sie in die Kitteltasche, holte ein Stofftaschentuch heraus

und wischte sich damit den Schweiß von der hochroten Stirn. Die Sonne waren zwei Arme, die wir von unten kreisförmig nach außen bringen mussten. Wenn sich ein Kind im Überschwang der Gefühle spontan anders als vorgeschrieben bewegte, brüllte Frau Kant herum. Bei wiederholtem Abweichen gegen die Bewegungsmuster drohten Nachholstunden. Mit Tanzen hatte das nichts zu tun.

Auf dem Spielplatz gab es Chauli und Jimmy Glitschi, unsere selbst erfundenen Sagenfiguren. Chauli, das war der Kumpel, der robuste Kämpfer, der verlässliche Gefährte mit Bauarbeiterhelm oder Polizeimütze, Jimmy Glitschi war niemand. Er war nur ein sagenumwobener Held aus einem umfangreichen Gedichtzyklus, der ausschließlich aus Zweizeilern bestand und auch sonst von

ungeheuerer formaler Strenge gekennzeichnet war.“

Jakob Hein (Leipzig, 25 oktober 1971)

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en biograaf Daniel Mark Epstein werd geboren op 25 October 1948 in Washington, D.C. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 oktober 2009.

Uit: Nat King Cole

„The kid was wearing a light green gabardine suit that draped his long, slender frame so loosely it looked like the first high-note blast of a trumpet might blow his coat off. His mouth was set, his dark face brooding like the rain-fixed clouds on that warm night in September. Approaching the bandstand with a flat-footed, pigeon-toed shamble, he held his head down and to one side, his slanted eyes averted, as if afraid to meet the gaze of several thousand dancers, jazz lovers, and curiosity seekers who filled the Savoy Ballroom. 

The kid was shy, and he was amazingly bold. He was the one the young dancers had come to see. They came to hear him play, the boy who would be King, a skinny sixteen-year-old pianist who dared to go up against Earl Hines in the Battle of Rhythm. In 1935 Hines was King of the Ivories, pianist without peer, leader of the hottest dance band on the South Side of Chicago, which was the jazz mecca of America at the very moment the music had achieved a peak of perfection it could not sustain or regain, ever. The music would never be better. 

Earl Hines smiled at the people. They called him Gatemouth because of his long smile, full of teeth. He had a dapper pencil-thin mustache and wide-set eyes with high arched brows. He grinned at the jitterbugs on the dance floor, and he smiled up at the slim kid who was whispering orders to his sidemen setting up on their side of the double bandstand. 

Gatemouth beamed at the crowd of thousands milling and jostling on the half-acre dance floor of the Savoy Ballroom. The bar in the northwest corner of the room was busy serving drinks to parties at the tables around the three sides of the dance floor. There were 3,000 people in the joint already and it would hold 6,000, at 40 cents a head. It was 30 cents a head before 8:30, when the show was to begin, but most folks couldn't get to the Savoy much before the show started. Gatemouth smiled at his competitor, but the youngster, self-absorbed, earnest, did not smile back, not because he was rude or hostile but because he was going about his business. „