De Vlaamse schrijver Hugo Claus werd in Brugge geboren op 5 april 1929. Zie ook alle tags voor Hugo Claus
op dit blog.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: The Sorrow Of Belgium (Vertaald door Arnold J.
Pomerans)
"It was
sister Imelda who was sitting in Louis's room, because although her face had
been replaced by a featureless, pumicelike tumor, he recognized her peasant
bosom, her smell of nature. She spread her knees, and from between the black
billows she carefully pulled a skinned rabbit, or was it a cat? Unfortunately
he couldn't see the skull properly, she stroked the naked, blood-spattered
carcass to which tufts of fur still clung, the pupils were not slit-shaped but
round, like little pink pills.
He was woken
by the siren, the antiaircraft guns and Papa calling him. Papa always called
him, vigilant watchman of the night, even though he knew that Louis would still
not follow him and Mama down to the air raid shelter with its crowds of
quaking, praying neighbors."
(
)
He was
sitting on a train, and for the first time in his life it occurred to him that
a train, more so than the idea of a train, was a box so many feet high, so many
feet long, so many feet wide, a fragile, futile, and above all simple thing on
wheels. I could touch the ceiling of this carriage who would have thought it?
Only a moment ago I was in the playground, in the shadow of my grandfather, who
is now lying on his deathbed.
(
)
My brother
died in a concentration camp, said Louis. He was an intellectual working for
the Underground, and he never tasted the fruits of his clandestine
labours.
Is this entry
about his experience?
His own
experience, yes, of course.
Het Laatste
Nieuws would certainly be interested in that.
It doesnt
deal directly with the concentration camp. Its rather
Which
concentration camp?
symbolic.
Uh, Neuengamme. (Ill be struck down for that. Till the blood runs. Terminal
cancer. Starting with the intestines. Then it spreads all over.)
Its a good
subject. The Belgian people are going to have to learn the facts. From the
source.
He handed me
the text before he was taken away. In a cattle truck. Take good care of it,
Louis, he said.
I thought his
name was Louis.
He asked me
to adopt his name. So as to save his lifes work after his death, to continue
it. My real name is Maurice.
Hugo
Claus (5 april 1929 19 maart 2008)
De Engelse schrijver en dichter Algernon Charles Swinburne werd geboren op 5 april 1837 in Londen. Zie
ook alle tags
voor Algernon Swinburne op dit blog.
A Ballad of
Dreamland
I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.
Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes,
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart;
Lie still, for the wind on the warm seas dozes,
And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What bids the lips of thy sleep dispart?
Only the song of a secret bird.
The green land's name that a charm encloses,
It never was writ in the traveller's chart,
And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,
It never was sold in the merchant's mart.
The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,
And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;
No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart,
Only the song of a secret bird.
ENVOI
In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.
Algernon Swinburne (5 april 1837 10 april 1909)
Anoniem
portret , ca. 1860 - 1890
De Servische
dichter en schrijver Bora Ćosić werd geboren op 5 april 1932 in Zagreb. Zie
ook alle tags
voor Bora Ćosić op dit blog.
Uit: My unrelenting vice
We carry within
the texts that fall into our hands. There are philosophers who believe: the
things that we find in books are those that we have brought to them. Borges
said that his protagonist writes an already existing book all over again,
convinced that only the repeat exists, not the original. In Musil's novel, by
the way, there is a strange librarian, who guards thousands of books without
every having opened even one of them. But still he knows everything about them,
because we apparently sometimes also read when we are not reading. As it is,
libraries make normal people anxious, seeming like overload, regardless how
orderly the catalogues may be. I therefore do understand those who flee from
reading as if it were the plague. Everyone has a right to their individual
fears. Canetti finds a way out of this in a novel about books by causing the
library to burn down. However, after every barbarian plundering there will
always be someone who reads the few remaining recognisable characters lying in
the ashes.
So my daily
ploughing through the pages continues, my unrelenting vice. There are many
people guilty of making me this way. My grandmother, first and foremost, who
already taught me to read and write at age four. (As we see, there are two
phenomena that run parallel to one another; writing is a form of reading, and
reading means writing.)
Bora Ćosić (Zagreb, 5 april 1932)
De Zwitserse schrijver Werner
J. Egli werd geboren in Luzern op 5 april 1943. Zie ook alle tags voor
Werner J. Egli op dit blog.
Uit: Heul doch
den Mond an
Bevor wir dem Wolf
begegneten, war eigentlich für Paula und für mich die Welt so ziemlich in
Ordnung. Wir hatten keine großen Schwierigkeiten miteinander. Wir lebten
glücklich und zufrieden und planten zusammen eine richtige Reise durch Amerika.
Das war im Sommer 1969. Und im Herbst flogen wir von Frankfurt aus mit einer DC
8 über Winnipeg nach Vancouver in Kanada.
Ich bin Billy.
Eigentlich heiße ich Werner, aber in Amerika nannte man mich Bill oder Billy,
was die Kurzform von William ist. Immer, wenn ich als W. J. Egli unterschrieben
habe, streckten mir die Leute die Hand hin und sagten: Well, how do you do,
Bill?, weil sie glaubten, das W steht für William. Inzwischen habe ich mich
daran gewöhnt. Paula und ich, wir waren schon drei Jahre zusammen. Ohne Hund.
Ohne Katze. Auch ohne Kanarienvogel.
Die Paula wollte
aber schon immer einen Hund haben. Schon seit sie klein war. Aber der
Hausmeister war dagegen. Paulas Mutter auch. Stofftierchen sind besser. Nur,
die Paula wollte lieber einen richtigen Hund haben, und jeden Herbst, wenn sie
Geburtstag hatte, schleppte sie mich in die Tierhandlung und spielte mit den
kleinen Hunden herum, den Dobermännern und den Schäferhunden und Spaniels, und
ich stand griesgrämig daneben
.
Werner J. Egli (Luzern, 5 april 1943)
Cover
De Duitse dichter en schrijver Michael Georg Conrad werd
geboren op 5 april 1846 in Gnodstadt. Zie ook alle tags voor
Michael Georg Conrad op dit blog.
Wochenandacht
Woche spricht in sieben Tagen,
mahnt zum Kämpfen, nicht zum Klagen,
spitz die Ohren halt den Mund,
stillstes Lauschen ist gesund.
In der Zeit der leiblich Not
achte doppelt geistig Brot!
Sonntag
Ob du an Gott glaubst?
Stolzes Menschlein, ach, wie nichtig!
Daß Gott an dich glaubt,
das allein ist wichtig,
damit dein ehrfüchtig erfülltes Leben
den Weltgeist zwingt, auf dich achtzugeben.
Montag
Den Freund ertragen,
den Feind erschlagen -
rettet's dich je,
schaffst du selbst dir Plagen,
bist selbst in dir allen Elendes voll?
Zahl erst des eignen Unwerts Zoll!
Michael
Georg Conrad (5 april 1846 20 december 1927)
De Brits-Canadees schrijver Arthur Hailey werd geboren in Luton, Bedfordshire, op 5 april
1920. Zie ook alle
tags voor Arthur Hailey op dit blog.
Uit: Airport
Air freight
warehouses of all airlines were stacked to their palletized limits with
shipments, their usual high speed transit impeded by the storm. Freight
supervisors were nervously watching perishables hothouse flowers from Wyoming
for New England; a ton of Pennsylvania cheese for Anchorage, Alaska; frozen
peas for Iceland; live lobsters trans-shipped from the east for a polar route
flight destination Europe. The lobsters were for tomorrows menus in
Edinburgh and Paris where they would be billed as fresh local seafood, and
American tourists would order them unknowingly. Storm or not, contracts decreed
that air freight perishables must arrive at destination fresh, and swiftly.
Causing
special anxiety in American Airlines Freight was a shipment of several thousand
turkey poults, hatched in incubators only hours earlier. The precise
hatching-shipping schedule like a complex order of battle was set up weeks
ago, before the turkey eggs were laid. It called for delivery of the live birds
on the West Coast within forty-eight hours of birth, the limit of the tiny
creatures existence without their first food or water. Normally, the
arrangement provided a near-hundred percent survival. Significant also if the
poults were fed en route, they would stink, and so would the airplane conveying
them, for days afterward. Already the poults schedule was out of joint by
several hours. But an airplane had been diverted from passenger to freight
service, and tonight the fledgling turkeys would have priority over everything
else traveling, human VIPs included.
Arthur
Hailey (5 april 1920 - 24 november 2004)
Poster voor de film uit 1970
De Italiaanse
blijspeldichter Paolo Ferrari werd geboren op 5 april 1822 in Modena. Zie
ook alle tags voor
Paolo Ferrari op dit blog.
Uit: Ridicule
Rai. I
know, ninety per cent of the unfaithful wives represent only ninety out of a
hundred husbands who deserve being deceived. But half of them deserve it
through a single mistake they have made an imprudent choice. And your case?
The remedy? To make up for the first mistake with all the good sense possible.
It is difficult, true, but there is a certain sword of Damocles which sharpens
the wit and points the will.
Fed. A
sword of Damocles?
Rai. Yes,
a sword on whose blade a single word stands inscribed, the little word
describing the husband of the 124 faithless wife. It is the Inquisition of our
day. Should the man kill her? Should he forgive her? The law offers him a
wash-basin, and when he has washed his hands he is no better off than he was
before. Because society makes no allowances, but strikes him with a terrible
punishment, which overtakes him and is inflicted on him without his being
conscious of it. Nothing changes; no one denies him the usual bow. Quite the
contrary, poor fellow! His friends shake hands with him; why not, poor devil?
He is always welcome at his club; he is permitted to act as second in duels; he
is invited to shoot at pigeons, to belong to racing committees. But the bows
and hand-shakes have an imperceptible touch of irony, the very least tinge of
mockery, which is most pronounced when he passes arm in arm with his best
friend.
Paolo Ferrari (5 april 1822 9 maart 1889)
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