De Amerikaanse dichter Charles Wright werd geboren op 25 augustus 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

POLAROIDS

Since landscape’s insoluble,
Then loath at last light I leave the landfall, soft and gone.
Or it leaves me.
                           I’ve got a tune in my head I can’t let go,
Unlike the landscape, heavy and wan,
Sunk like a stone in the growing night,
Snuffed in the heart like a candle flame that won’t come back.
 
Our world is of little moment, of course, but it is our world.
Thus it behooves us to contemplate,
                                                           from time to time,
The weight of glory we should wish reset in our hearts,
About the things which are seen,
                                                      and things which are not seen,
That corresponds like to like,
The stone to the dark of the earth, the flame to the star.
 
                                    _____
 
Those without stories are preordained to repeat them,
I saw once in the stars.
                                      Unclear who underwrote that,
But since then I’ve seen it everywhere
I’ve looked, staggering
Noon light and night’s meridian wandering wide and the single sky.
And here it is in the meadow grass, a brutish script.
 
We tend to repeat what we don’t know
Instead of the other way around—
                                                         thus mojo, thus misericordia,
Old cross-work and signature, the catechism in the wind.
We tend to repeat what hurts us, things, and ghosts of things,
The actual green of summer, and summer’s half-truth.
We tend to repeat ourselves.
 
                                    _____
 
One longs for order and permanence,
An order as in the night sky just north of Mt. Caribou,
Permanence like the seasons,
                                                coming in, going out,
Watchman and wanderer. There’s been no cure, however, and no
Ecstasy in transcendent form, so
Don’t look for me here, incipient, now, in the artifice.
 
Florence is much on my mind, gold leaf and golden frame,
Infinite background of the masters—
Mayfire of green in the hills,
                                               watchtower and Belvedere,
The Arno, as Dino said, like a dithering snake,
Sad swipe of forgetfulness.
Last chance, a various universe.
 
                                    _____
 
A few more rising and setting suns.
Always the spike of the purple lupin, always the folded hands of the dog rose.
Childhood, gentle monk.
His eye extinguished,
                                   someone’s red-gold heart-mouth has sealed his lips.
No wind in the evergreens, no singer, no lament.
Summer surrounds us, and wordless, O blue cathedral.
 
A few more sorrowful scenes.
The waters murmur, shadows are moist in the upper meadow.
Silence wide as a wasteland through the black streets of the forest.
Over the white eyelids of the dead,
                                                         white clover is blossoming.
Late snow like a fallen city shimmers the mountain’s riprap and stare.
Unmullioned window, stained light.
 
                                    _____
 
The lapis lazuli dragonflies
                                             of postbelief, rising and falling near
The broken slab wood steps, now one by one, now in pairs,
Are not the dragonflies of death with their blue-black eyes.
These are the tiny ones, the stems, the phosphorescent,
Rising and falling like drowned playthings.
They come and they disappear. They come back and they disappear.
 
Horizon-hump of pine bristles on end toward the south,
Breath-stealer, cloudless drop cloth
Of sky,
             the great meadow beneath like a mirror face down in the earth,
Accepting nothing, giving it back.
We’ll go, as Mandelstam tells us, into a growing numbness of time,
Insoluble, as long as landscape, as indistinct.

Charles Wright (Pickwick Dam,  25 augustus 1935)

De Duitse schrijver Maxim Biller werd geboren op 25 augustus 1960 in Praag. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

Uit: The Mahogany Elephant

“He took a new crate of water out of the closet, pushed it straight back in again with his foot, and opened the bottle of wine that had been standing on the kitchen table for the last six weeks. He picked up the glasses and the bottle, and before going back to the living room he took the elephant out of his trouser pocket and threw it in the garbage.

"Jordi," she said, "I didn't want wine."

"No," he agreed, "it's still too early for wine."

"I didn't drink at all while I was there," she said.

"That's a pity," he said.

"No, I don't think so."

"I think it is."

He poured wine first for himself, then for her, and they clinked glasses. She didn't look in his eyes, and she drank only a tiny sip before going into the kitchen to fetch a bottle of water. She sat down on the sofa again, as far from him as she had been just before, and began telling him about her travels — but he was barely listening. While she was away he had kept trying to imagine where she was at any given time, and what it was like there, but now he couldn't care less about India, he just wanted to know what her decision was. Of course, he knew already, but he wanted to hear it from her own mouth. He wanted her to suffer a little, he wanted her to have to say it and feel unhappy about hurting him. No, she would say, we're not going to get married, Jordi, I know that's not what I want now, so we'll never see each other again, the way we agreed.”

Maxim Biller (Praag, 25 augustus 1960)

De Engelse schrijver Martin Amis werd geboren op 25 augustus 1949 in Cardiff, South Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010. 
 

Uit: The Pregnant Widow

“Keith would be staying, for the duration of this hot, endless, and erotically decisive summer, in a castle on a mountainside above a village in Campania, in Italy. And now he walked the backstreets of Montale, from car to bar, at dusk, flanked by two twenty-year-old blondes, Lily and Scheherazade . . . Lily: 5' 5", 34-25-34. Scheherazade: 5' 10", 37-23-33. And Keith? Well, he was the same age, and slender (and dark, with a very misleading chin, stubbled, stubborn-looking); and he occupied that much-disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven.
Vital statistics. The phrase originally referred, in studies of society, to births and marriages and deaths; now it meant bust, waist, hips. In the long days and nights of his early adolescence, Keith showed an abnormal interest in vital statistics; and he used to dream them up for his solitary amusement. Although he could never draw (he was all thumbs with a crayon), he could commit figures to paper, women in outline, rendered numerically. And every possible combination, or at least anything remotely humanoid—35-45-55, for instance, or 60-60-60—seemed well worth thinking about. 46-47-31, 31-47-46: well worth thinking about. But you were always tugged back, somehow, to the archetype of the hourglass, and once you’d run up against (for instance) 97-3-97, there was nowhere new to go; for a contented hour you might stare at the figure eight, upright, and then on its side; until you drowsily resumed your tearful and tender combinations of the thirties, the twenties, the thirties. Mere digits, mere integers. Still, when he was a boy, and he saw vital statistics under the photograph of a singer or a starlet, they seemed garrulously indiscreet, telling him everything he needed to know about what was soon to be. He didn’t want to hug and kiss these women, not yet. He wanted to rescue them. From an island fortress (say) he would rescue them . . .”

Martin Amis (Cardiff, 25 augustus 1949)

De Engelse schrijver Frederick Forsyth werd geboren in Ashford, Kent, op 25 augustus 1938. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

 

Uit: The Day of the Jackal

 

“The last sentence brought a flicker of expression to the grey eyes. ‘No man in the world is proof against an assassin’s bullet,’ said the Englishman. ‘The point is that the chances of escape would not be too high. A fanatic prepared to die in the attempt is always the most certain method. I notice,’ he added, ‘that despite your idealism you have not yet produced such a man.’
‘There are patriotic Frenchmen prepared—’ Casson began hotly, but Rodin silenced him with a gesture.
‘And as regards a professional?’ prompted Rodin.
‘A professional does not act out of fervour and is therefore more calm. Not being idealistic, he is not likely to have last-minute thoughts about who else might get hurt, and being a professional, he has calculated the risks to the last contingency. So his chances of success on schedule are surer than anyone else’s, but he will not even enter into an operation until he has devised a plan enabling him not only to complete the mission, but to escape unharmed.’
‘Do you estimate that such a plan could be worked out to permit a professional to kill de Gaulle and escape?’
‘In principle, yes,’ the Englishman replied. ‘But it would be one of the hardest jobs in the world. But you did not call me here for a chat about political assassination. You called me here because you have concluded that, since your organisation is infiltrated by the secret service, you must have an outsider. And you are right. The only questions that remain are who, and for how much. Now, gentlemen, I think you have had long enough to examine the merchandise.’
Rodin looked sideways at Montclair and raised an eyebrow. Montclair nodded. Casson followed suit. The Englishman gazed out of the window without a shred of interest.

 

 

Frederick Forsyth (Ashford, 25 augustus 1938)

Zie voor nog meerschrijvers van de 25e augustus ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

25-08-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Romenu  

De Faeröerse schrijver Jógvan Isaksen werd geboren op 25 augustus 1950 in 25/08/1950 in Tórshavn, Faröer Eilanden. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

Uit: Endstation Färöer (Vertaald door Christel Hildebrandt)

“Sie hatte einen Entschluss gefasst und ging auf die Gestalt zu, die am Ende des Felsens stand. Als sie dorthin gekommen war, blieb sie stehen. Schaute zunächst hinunter auf die still daliegende Bucht, die drei Ortschaften dort unten waren in der Mainacht kaum zu erkennen. Dann blickte sie zum Ritafjall hinauf und südwärts auf den Sigatind und Gøtunestind. Bald würden sie im roten Glanz der Morgensonne schimmern. In dem Augenblick, als sie den Mund öffnete und die ersten Worte sagen wollte, die Worte, die sie reich machen sollten, packten starke Hände ihre Arme von beiden Seiten und in einer gleitenden Bewegung wurde sie über die Kante geschleudert. Der Angriff kam so unerwartet, dass sich ihr Hals zuschnürte und sie keinen Ton von sich gab, als sie durch die Luft wirbelte. Das Letzte, was ihr durch den Kopf fuhr, während sie fiel und Himmel und Erde mit gleichmäßigem Abstand den Platz tauschten, war die Verwunderung darüber, dass sie den Mond am Himmel nicht fand.
1
Der Skiläufer hob ab und schoss durch die Luft, wobei er sich nach vorn und um die eigene Achse drehte. Es war kaum wahrscheinlich, dass jemand, der zum ersten Mal ein Paar Bretter unter den Füßen hatte, stehend herunterkommen würde. Aber in mehr als dreißig Jahren habe ich mich daran gewöhnt, dass im Film nichts unmöglich ist. Der Skiläufer verschwand in rasender Fahrt einen blendend weißen Hügel hinab. Danach kam Werbung, die übliche Süße. Ich überließ den Fernsehschirm sich selbst und sah mich um. Der Anblick war nicht viel besser. Ich bin ziemlich viel gereist, habe mehrere Hauptstädte besucht und war sogar an verschiedenen Badestränden gewesen. Und selbst wenn Letztere stinklangweilig sein können und nur mit einem passenden Affen im Gepäck auszuhalten sind, das Schlimmste sind doch Flughäfen. Nur mit einem starken Willen und viel Training schafft man es, sie ohne einen betäubenden Rausch zu überstehen.”

Jógvan Isaksen (Tórshavn, 25. augustus 1950)

De Congolese dichter en schrijver U Tchicaya Tam'si werd geboren op 25 augustus 1931 in Mpili. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

The Rebels' Conga

Lumumba
Like rumba, conga!
Lumumba
Like rumba, Congo!

In Kin-the-Violent
The hips shake
Though they try to fool them
Down to the belt…
With conga rumba
Congo!

To Kin
Come the blood of strength
Bandolier of the river
Congo!
Like conga
Congo!

The river's got this bridge
For the hands
The river's got this bridge
For the hearts
And he, he is alone.

He flies
From Kin to Kin!
From Kin to Kin,
Down to the blood
He has the sleep
Of those who die
In his ears,
He has the country's insomnia
In his belly
Pitted with grass…

From Kin to Kin!
From Kin to Kin:
Lumumba
Like rumba Congo!
Lumumba
Like rumba conga

What do the rebels search for
In Kin-the-Violent
Women to rape?
No!
Is that all their violence?
Aren't they dancing!

Lumumba, rumba!
Conga!
Like rumba, Congo!

With this rhythm
Is it the clouds that will fall?
Or the lightning storm that will
Burst open the bodies?

A mummy-paleness lingers
And returns to audacity
Blood in the fist
From Kin to Kin.
From Kin to Kin
Like conga Congo!
Where the hips break
Is the Union minière
The rebels' choreograph?
Does one unroot the man
Whose roots are his wounds
In his flesh?

The bazooka opens fire
And that's all
Or here come those who draw water
The women who perpetuate the river's flow
With the thirst of the pounders on their breasts
Clapping their hands:
Lumumba
Like rumba Congo
Lumumba
Like rumba, conga—
From Kin to Kin!
From Kin to Kin
That they die, that they die
as long as they have no grave!

Blowing the quarry
The bitch press of Big Capital
on the Congo
The bitch press of Big Capital
barks
& scrambles for the spoils:
Congo!
Like rumba, conga!
Congo!
The river where the blood of strength
Bandolier of the river
In Kin
Rises.
They throw they throw their garbage
On the human back
That the rebels search for at their head:
Lumumba!
Lumumba
Like rumba, conga

This new source
Bandolier of the river
will link the six provinces
Or else long live the slavery of the Congo

And of that lonely man being drowned
Lumumba
Like rumba, conga
LUMUMBA
Like rumba, Congo!

And that the conga
No longer be a throwing weapon
At the heart of the Union minière.

7 juli1960

Vertaald door Pierre Joris

 U Tchicaya Tam'si (25 augustus 1931 - 22 april 1988)

De Australische schrijfster Thea Astley werd geboren op 25 augustus 1925 in Brisbane. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

Uit: It's Raining in Mango

“He'd brought with him a small Columbian press that had been dumped in its crate outside his tent. Visionary plans for a journal unravelled as his days spent themselves in helping other settlers peg out land, dig storm drains and raise pole frames for the first of the slab-and-tin shanties. More distressing was to watch departing squat­ters riding north and west to select their kingdoms.

     Should he follow?

     At the end of four weeks he managed to bring out a broadsheet, the copy written by candlelight, the type agonisingly hand-set between building bouts in a half-finished shed he had whacked together. The broadsheet was a gossipy farrago of personal encounter and the sort of ferocious political complaint he imagined new settlers expected. He was wrong. They wanted encouragement. They wanted to be amused. His sympathy for the dispossessed blacks infuriated the eighty set­tlers left in town, and someone threatened to horsewhip him.

     Cornelius pulled down his tent, repacked his little press and with the last of his money took passage on a ketch returning to Sydney.

     'That's your grandfather, muttonchopped splendid, the cheeky devil,' Jessica Olive had pointed out to four-year-old Connie, who had been nagging for a face, the photograph album dog-eared, pic­tures spotting with mould from too many Wets, grandfather caught up with after all those years in a magazine clipping of Sydney bohemians her brother had cut out and posted to Jessica Olive when it was too late for forgiveness.

     Found! Sprung! The only non stayer, sprung! Aging in Darlinghurst Road, some one-roomer lodging boxed round him, chilling in his underwear, the family all loyally hoped, when the plane trees dropped their leaves down the length of Hyde Park.”

Thea Astley (25 augustus 1925 – 17 augustus 2004)

De Ierse schrijver Brian Moore werd geboren in Belfast op 25 augustus 1921. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2008 en ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2009 Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010.

Uit: The Luck of Ginger Coffey

“Ah, well. If it was to be a choice between food and begging them to do the least thing, then give him hunger any day. He ate his egg and toast, drank a second cup of tea and went out into the hall to put his coat on. Sheepskin-lined it was, his pride and joy; thirty guineas it had cost him at Aquascutum.
But she came after him before he could flee the coop. “Now, remember to phone me the minute you pick up the tickets,” she said. “And ask them about the connection from Southampton with the boat train for Dublin. Because I want to put that into my letter to Mother this afternoon.”
“Right, dear.”
“And, by the way, Gerry Grosvenor’s coming in at five. So don’t you be stravaging in at six, do you hear?”
What did she have to ask Gerry Grosvenor up here for? They could have said good-by to Gerry downtown. Didn’t she know damn well he didn’t want people seeing the inside of this place? Flute! His eyes assessed their present surroundings as Gerry Grosvenor’s would. The lower half of a duplex apartment on a shabby Montreal street, dark as limbo, jerry-built fifty years ago and going off keel ever since. The doors did not close, the floors buckled and warped, the walls had been repapered and repainted until they bulged. And would bulge more, for it was a place that people on their way up tried to improve, people on their way down to disguise: all in vain. The hegira of tenants would continue.
Still, what was the use in talking? She had asked Gerry: the harm was done. “All right,” he said. “Give us a kiss now. I’m off.”
She kissed him the way she would a child. “Not that I know what I’m going to give Gerry to drink,” she said. “With only beer in the house.”
“Sure, never mind,” he said and kissed her quick again to shut her up. “So long, now. I’ll be home before five.”
And got away clean”..

Brian Moore (25 augustus 1921 – 10 januari 1999)

De Duitse dichter, schrijver, theoloog en cultuur-filosoof Johann Gottfried von Herder werd geboren in Mohrungen op 25 augustus 1744. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 augustus 2010  en eveneens alle tags voor Johann Gottfried von Herder op dit blog.

Uit: Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769

“Ich beklage mich, ich habe gewisse Jahre von meinem menschlichen Leben verloren: und lag's nicht bloß an mir sie zu genießen? bot mir nicht das Schicksal selbst die ganze fertige Anlage dazu dar? Die vorigen leichten Studien gewählt, französische Sprache, Geschichte, Naturkenntnis, schöne Mathematik, Zeichnung, Umgang, Talente des lebendigen Vortrages zum Hauptzwecke gemacht – in welche Gesellschaften hätten sie mich nicht bringen können? wie sehr nicht den Genuß meiner Jahre vorbereiten können? – Autor wäre ich alsdenn gottlob! nicht geworden, und wieviel Zeit damit nicht gewonnen? in wieviel Kühnheiten und Vielbeschäftigungen mich nicht verstiegen? wieviel falscher Ehre, Rangsucht, Empfindlichkeit, falscher Liebe zur Wissenschaft, wieviel betäubten Stunden des Kopfs, wie vielem Unsinn im Lesen, Schreiben und Denken dabei entgangen? – Prediger wäre ich alsdenn wahrscheinlicherweise nicht oder noch nicht geworden, und freilich so hätte ich viele Gelegenheit verloren, wo ich glaube, die besten Eindrücke gemacht zu haben; aber welcher übeln Falte wäre ich auch damit entwichen! Ich hätte meine Jahre genießen, gründliche, reelle Wissenschaft kennen, und alles anwenden gelernt, was ich lernte. Ich wäre nicht ein Tintenfaß von gelehrter Schriftstellerei, nicht ein Wörterbuch von Künsten und Wissenschaften geworden, die ich nicht gesehen habe und nicht verstehe: ich wäre nicht ein Repositorium voll Papiere und Bücher geworden, das nur in die Studierstube gehört. Ich wäre Situationen entgangen, die meinen Geist einschlossen und also auf eine falsche intensive Menschenkenntnis einschränkten, da er Welt, Menschen, Gesellschaften, Frauenzimmer, Vergnügen, lieber extensiv, mit der edlen feurigen Neubegierde eines Jünglinges, der in die Welt eintritt, und rasch und unermüdet von einem zum andern läuft, hätte kennenlernen sollen. Welch ein andres Gebäude einer andern Seele! Zart, reich, sachenvoll, nicht wort gelehrt, munter, lebend, wie ein Jüngling! einst ein glücklicher Mann! einst ein glücklicher Greis! – O was ist's für ein unersetzlicher Schade, Früchte affektieren zu wollen, und zu müssen, wenn man nur Blüte tragen soll! Jene sind unecht, zu frühzeitig, fallen nicht bloß selbst ab, sondern zeigen auch vom Verderben des Baums! »Ich wäre aber alsdenn das nicht geworden, was ich bin!« Gut, und was hätte ich daran verloren? wieviel hätte ich dabei gewonnen!”

25-08-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Romenu