De Duitse schrijfster Antje Rávic Strubel werd geboren op 12 april 1974 in Potsdam. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Uit: Colder Layers of Air (Vertaald door Zaia Alexander)

„About light they knew everything.

They knew it in every shade. They had seen how it made the sky appear brittle and torn, or waxed blue-black. They knew how the light looked under foaming clouds; how it fell diagonally over the Fjell; how it struck the rocks over the forest and the thick underbrush. They knew how fleeting, how illusive it was. If the lake had just shone turquoise to the bottom, the next moment it lay leaden and sealed like asphalt. They had seen how the light made the pines and blackberry bushes appear matt in the rain; they had seen how the roads looked at four in the morning, devastated by falling rocks, and at noon on neatly mown Swedish front lawns. They knew it in the shimmering yellow from the heat, in the greenish glow of the evening; they could say how it looked above the roof of the tool-shed on overcast days.

They knew how faces change when glaring light falls upon them. Every morning, when they left their tents and went to the wash area, they had to cross the grassy field that had been cleared from the forest. There the faces became stable. They changed from milky-gray, the color of night, into a harsh, polished tan. They knew it. They saw it every morning.

And later, when only a few clouds were left in the sky, this tan had a certain sharpness, as faces only here have, on this peninsula. It was brutal how the sun shone.

Nobody spoke about the light.

There were other things to discuss. They had to take care of the tent walls that had torn in the storm and were lying on the field like shed skins in need of mending. They had to replenish the supplies and food that came every Saturday from Berlin; they telephoned often. They reordered potatoes and coffee, charcoal and sausages and rice, and they never forgot fruit, because fruit was particularly expensive this summer in Sweden. They sent the newly arrived youth groups to the lakes, first to the small Stora Le and then to the wind-whipped Foxen; they gave the crew photocopies of outdoor cookbooks so they knew how many cans of chili to empty into the pans at night. In the kitchen tents, they packed weekly supplies in waterproofed plastic barrels.“

Antje Rávic Strubel (Potsdam,  12 april 1974)

De Amerikaanse schrijver en jurist Scott Turow werd geboren op 12 april 1949 in Chicago. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Uit: Innocent

„A man is sitting on a bed. He is my father.

The body of a woman is beneath the covers. She was my mother.

This is not really where the story starts. Or how it ends. But it is the moment my mind returns to, the way I always see them.

According to what my father will soon tell me, he has been there, in that room, for nearly twenty-three hours, except for bathroom breaks. Yesterday, he awoke, as he does most weekdays, at half past six and could see the mortal change as soon as he glanced back at my mother, just as his feet had found his slippers. He rocked her shoulder, touched her lips. He pumped the heel of his palm against her sternum a few times, but her skin was cool as clay. Her limbs were already moving in a piece, like a mannequin's.

He will tell me he sat then, in a chair across from her. He never cried. He thought, he will say. He does not know how long, except that the sun had moved all the way across the room, when he finally stood again and began to tidy obsessively.

He will say he put the three or four books she was always reading back on the shelf. He hung up the clothes she had a habit of piling on the chaise in front of her dressing mirror, then made the bed around her, pulling the sheets tight, folding the spread down evenly, before laying her hands out like a doll's on the satin binding of the blanket. He threw out two of the flowers that had wilted in the vase on her night table and straightened the papers and magazines on her desk.

He will tell me he called no one, not even the paramedics because he was certain she was dead, and sent only a one-line e-mail to his assistant to say he would not be at work. He did not answer the phone, although it rang several times. Almost an entire day will have passed before he realizes he must contact me.“

Scott Turow (Chicago, 12 april 1949)

De Britse blijspelauteur Alan Ayckbourn werd geboren op 12 april 1939 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.
 

Uit: Damsels In Distress (Preface)

“In 2000, having recently reached my sixtieth year and rapidly approaching my 45th working in theatre, I began to yearn, once again, for a permanent acting company which during the 60's, 70's and early 80's were the mainstay of the Theatre in Scarborough. Recently, as with so many regional companies, we had begun to rely more and more on actors visiting us, short term, for one or maybe two productions. Spot casting in this way has its advantages. You tend to get just the right actor for the right part and, given the shorter nature of the engagement, a wider range of performers willing to tear themselves away from family, friends and other more lucrative London based work.
What you lose of course is the true company. The moment when a group of individual (sometimes highly individual) actors through familiarity, growing confidence and trust in each other forms that most unique of all theatrical achievements - a shared 'corporate' identity. The individuality remains - but the sum of the separate parts has generated something greater and stronger.
In my experience, some companies are highly stable and are happy to remain together for months, even years. These, ironically, are often made up of those who offstage prefer to go their separate ways. Their working lives are close-knit and shared; their personal lives are worlds apart. Conversely the group that eats, drinks, sometimes sleeps (and incidentally acts) together proves usually to be short lived and unstable. It is nothing you can plan for. Who can foretell whether X will take an instant dislike to, or have an overwhelming desire for Y? Personally, I try to put together companies consisting of people that I like and trust to luck that this common bond will prove a strong enough glue to hold the elements together.”

Alan Ayckbourn (Londen, 12 april 1939)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Tom Clancy werd geboren op 12 april 1947 in Baltimore County, Maryland. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.
 

Uit: Net Force: State of War

„The wine he was using for the stock was eighty-some odd bucks a bottle, too, but there was no substitute for quality.  If you were going to cook fine food with wine, what was the point in murdering the taste with cheap stuff?

Ames was not a wine snob.  He didn’t bother to learn all the proper terms one used, nose and bouquet and finish and so forth.  But he knew a good wine when he tasted it.  The first time he had sipped anything from Blackwood Canyon, he knew he’d found a vintner who knew exactly what he was doing.  He bought a cellarful of the wines by the case.  He had also invested money in the business, as much as Michael Taylor Moore would let him.

He had others now, but Moore’s first winery was a hole-in-the-wall place at the end of a gravel road out in the middle of Nowhere, Washington.  His first place was hard to find, and it wasn’t even listed on the local guides.  If you didn’t know where the place was, you pretty much had to stumble across it by accident, or else put in a lot of hours doing detective work.  It was worth it, though.  Back then, the only spot you could buy any of his product was at the winery itself, or by the bottle in a few of the world’s finer restaurants.

Moore made his vintages in the old-style European manner, much of it involving a process called “sur lees.”  Ames didn’t quite understand that, but he knew it involved leaving the fruit in the stuff longer than was considered by most to be proper.  As a result, the whites had fullness unmatched by any made in North America.  Those whites could run with almost anybody else’s reds.  And his reds?  Well, they were just unbelievable.“

Tom Clancy (Baltimore County, 12 april 1947)

De Duitse schrijfster Agnes Sapper werd geboren op 12 april 1852 in München. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010. 

Uit: Die Familie Pfäffling. Eine deutsche Wintergeschichte

„Ihr wollt die Familie Pfäffling kennen lernen? Da muß ich euch weit hinausführen bis ans Ende 
einer größeren süddeutschen Stadt, hinaus in die äußere Frühlingsstraße. Wir kommen ganz 
nahe an die Infanteriekaserne, sehen den umzäunten Kasernenhof und Exerzierplatz. Aber vor diesem, 
etwas zurück von der Straße, steht noch ein letztes Haus und dieses geht uns an. Es gehört dem 
Schreiner Hartwig, bei dem der Musiklehrer Pfäffling mit seiner großen Familie in Miete wohnt. 
Um das Haus herum, bis an den Kasernenhof, erstreckt sich ein Lagerplatz für Balken und Bretter, 
auf denen Knaben und Mädchen fröhlich herumklettern, turnen und schaukeln. Meistens sind es junge 
Pfäfflinge, die da ihr Wesen treiben, manchmal sind es auch ihre Kameraden, aber der eine Kleine, 
den man täglich auf den obersten Brettern sitzen und dabei die Ziehharmonika spielen sieht, das 
ist sicher kein anderer als Frieder Pfäffling.
Um die Zeit, da unsere Geschichte beginnt, ist übrigens der Hof verlassen und niemand auf dem 
weiten Platz zu sehen. Heute ist, nach den langen Sommerferien, wieder der erste Schultag. Der 
Musiklehrer Pfäffling, der schlanke Mann, der noch immer ganz jugendlich aussieht, war schon frühzeitig 
mit langen Schritten den gewohnten Weg nach der Musikschule gegangen, um dort Unterricht zu geben. 
Sechs von seinen sieben Kindern hatten zum erstenmal wieder ihre Bücher und Hefte zusammengesucht 
und sich auf den Schulweg gemacht.“

Agnes Sapper (12 april 1852 – 19 maart 1929)

12-04-2011 om 20:17 geschreven door Romenu  

De Puertoricaanse dichter José Gautier Benítez werd geboren op 12 april 1848 in Caguas. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Uit: Puerto Rico (Fragment)

Above the waters of the sea, which you rule;

A vase of flowers, swaying

Among foam and coral, perfumes and pearls;

You, that at evening pour over the sea,

With the colors that your sunset put on,

Another ocean of floating flames;

You, that give me the air I breathe,

And life, and the song that breaks forth of its own accord! . . .

of this (American) world, you are the most beautiful fragment,

O my fatherland! broken off and flung into the sea

By a violent cataclysm.

But you brought only the beauty of the vast continent.

Without copying its pomp, or the terrors of its greatness.

Upon your mountains, neither the tiger, the lion, nor the jaguar

Utters its fierce and terrifying cry,

Nor does the boa constrictor coil upon the plains,

Nor does the untamed and savage alligator

Disturb the pure, transparent water

Of your gentle rivers . . .

Nor do your mountains, shaken upon their foundations,

Sound with sudden tumult.

When, with hoarse, titanic breathing,

Orizaba and Cotopaxi roar.

No Niagara makes your soil tremble

With the fall of its immense cataract.

Where Iris, painter of heaven,

Joins to its borders of shining silver,

Gold and crimson, purple and topaz.

While the condor, monarch of space,

Mirrors himself proudly in its crystal;

José Gautier Benítez (12 april 1848 – 24 januari 1880)

Standbeeld in Caguas, Puerto Rico

De Russische toneelschrijver Alexander Nikolajewitsj Ostrovski werd geboren op 12 april 1823 in Moskou. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Uit: The Storm (Vertaald door Constance Garnett)

„SHAPKIN.

Old Dame Kabanova's a good hand at that too!

KUDRIASH.

Yes, but she at least does it all under pretence of morality; he's like a wild beast broken loose!

SHAPKIN.

There's no one to bring him to his senses, so he rages about as he likes!

KUDRIASH.

There are too few lads of my stamp or we'd have broken him of it.

SHAPKIN.

Why, what would you have done?

KUDRIASH.

We'd have given him a good scare.

SHAPKIN.

How'd you do that?

KUDRIASH.

Why, four or five of us would have had a few words with him, face to face, in some back street, and he'd soon have been as soft as silk. And he'd never have let on to a soul about the lesson we'd given him; he'd just have walked off and taken care to look behind him.

SHAPKIN.

I see he'd some reason for wanting to get you sent for a soldier.

KUDRIASH.

He wanted to, right enough, but he didn't do it. No, he won't get rid of me; he's an inkling that I'd make him pay too dear for it. You're afraid of him, but I know how to talk to him.“

Alexander Ostrovski (12 april 1823 – 14 juni 1886) 
Standbeeld in Moskou

De Franse schrijver Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (Abbé Raynal ) werd geboren op 12 april 1713 in Lapanouse de Séverac. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Uit: l'Histoire des deux Indes

„Le département de Saint-Marc est formé par le territoire même du chef-lieu, par la belle plaine des Vérettes, par la petite rivière , et par les Gonaives. Il compte vingt-deux sucreries en blanc, vingt-une en brut, deux cent quatre-vingt-dixhuit cafeteries, trois cent quinze cotonneries, onze cent quatre-vingt-quatre indigoteries , et une cacaotière, quioccupent cinquante mille deux' cent seize noirs.

Le produit de tant de cultures est embarqué à Saint - Marc, où se sont successivement élevées trois cents maisons agréablement bâties. Deux ruisseaux traversent cette ville, et l'air qu'on y respire est pur; mais la rade en est mauvaise. Les fortifications qui l'entourent ont été élevées en partie aux dépens d'un colon qui fut condamné à une amende de cent cinquante mille livres pour avoir fait périr avec une inhumanité sans exemple cinq de ses esclaves.

Vraisemblablement Saint-Marc ne serait pas devenu l'entrepôt de cette partie de la colonie, si les Gonaives eussent été plus tôt peuplées. Ce bourg possède le meilleur port de la côte , et un port qu'il serait aisé de défendre. Il a d*e plus des eaux thermales d'une grande perfection. On les négligea long-temps dans un pays rempli de convalescens et de malades. .Ce ne fut qu'en i772 qu'on y bâtit des bains , des fontaines , quelques logemens commodes, un hôpital pour les soldats et les matelots. xuv- Les colonies nous offrent quelques phénomènes sur le peu contradictoires qu il est impossible de nier, et qui semblent difficiles à concilier.“

Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (12 april 1713 – 6 maart 1796)

De Engelse hoveling, dichter en toneelschrijver Edward de Vere, 17e graaf van Oxford, werd geboren op 12 april 1550 in Castle Hedingham. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Woman’s Changeableness

If women could be fair and yet not fond,
Or that their love were firm not fickle, still,
I would not marvel that they make men bond,
By service long to purchase their good will;
But when I see how frail those creatures are,
I muse that men forget themselves so far.

To mark the choice they make, and how they change,
How oft from Phacbus do they flee to Pan,
Unsettled still like haggards wild they range,
These gentle birds that fly from man to man;
Who would not scorn and shake them from the fist
And let them fly fair fools which way they list.

Yet for disport we fawn and flatter both,
To pass the time when nothing else can please,
And train them to our lure with subtle oath,
Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease;
And then we say when we their fancy try,
To play with fools, O what a fool was I.

Edward de Vere (12 april 1550 – 24 juni 1604)

Boekcover

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata:

De Oostenrijkse schrijver Constantin Göttfert werd in 1979 in Wenen geboren. Zie ook mijn blog van 12 april 2010.

Uit: In dieser Wildnis

Zwei Nächte verbrachte ich bei meinem Vater. Du denkst an Berge, wenn du an Österreich denkst, du erinnerst dich an die Luft, die du auf einer deiner Reisen in die Lunge gezogen hast. Vielleicht denkst du daran, wie der Schnee unter deinen Schiern knarzt, oder an Seilbahnen, die über dicht bewaldeten Hängen schaukeln; in Wahrheit jedoch ist das, was ich meine Heimat nenne, eine flachgedrückte Ebene.
  Kein Fremder ist jemals an diesem Ort dem Zug entstiegen. Du wärest der erste. Und würdest du dann an der Eingangstür meines Vaterhauses stehen und dich noch einmal zurückwenden, so ginge dein Auge über eine unendliche Fläche aus Feldern und brachliegendem Land, und nichts finge deinen Blick auf, keine Erhebung, kein Wald, nicht die Lichter einer Stadt. Nur die Felder der Sonnenblumen würdest du sehen, die bis an den Horizont reichen, deren Köpfe so schwer sind, dass sie sich kaum bewegen, wenn der Wind an ihnen reißt, und die Stimmen der Kinder hören, die aus der Schule am Ende der Straße kommen; immer noch laufen sie durch dieselben Tore, durch die auch ich gelaufen bin, immer noch lachen sie, stellen sich ein Bein, stecken sich Sonnenblumenkerne zwischen die Zähne und treten sich mit den Spitzen ihrer Schuhe gegen die Schienbeine.
  Eben dort, am Rande der Sonnenblumenfelder, stand ich und wartete, bis die Stimmen verstummt waren. In der plötzlichen Stille hörte ich, wie eine leere Medikamentendose über die ­Gitterstäbe eines Kanaldeckels rollte.

Constantin Göttfert (Wenen, 1979)

12-04-2011 om 20:08 geschreven door Romenu