|
De Britse staatsman en schrijver Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill werd geboren in Woodstock op 30 november 1874. Zie ook alle tags voor Winston Churchill op dit blog.
Uit:The Crossing
“These lapses of my father's were a perpetual source of wonder to me,--and, I must say, of delight. They occurred only when a passing traveller who hit his fancy chanced that way, or, what was almost as rare, a neighbor. Many a winter night I have lain awake under the skins, listening to a flow of language that held me spellbound, though I understood scarce a word of it.
"Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in the extreme, but all in a degree."
The chance neighbor or traveller was no less struck with wonder. And many the time have I heard the query, at the Cross-Roads and elsewhere, "Whar Alec Trimble got his larnin'?"
The truth is, my father was an object of suspicion to the frontiersmen. Even as a child I knew this, and resented it. He had brought me up in solitude, and I was old for my age, learned in some things far beyond my years, and ignorant of others I should have known. I loved the man passionately. In the long winter evenings, when the howl of wolves and "painters" rose as the wind lulled, he taught me to read from the Bible and the "Pilgrim's Progress." I can see his long, slim fingers on the page. They seemed but ill fitted for the life he led.
The love of rhythmic language was somehow born into me, and many's the time I have held watch in the cabin day and night while my father was away on his hunts, spelling out the verses that have since become part of my life.“
Winston Churchill (30 november 1874 - 24 januari 1965)
De Canadese schrijfster Lucy Maud Montgomery werd geboren in Clifton op 30 november 1874. Zie ook alle tags voor Lucy Maud Montgomery op dit blog.
Uit: Anne Of Green Gables
“Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that didn't happen often. Mrs. Rachel, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon's enjoyment was spoiled.
"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla where he's gone and why," the worthy woman finally concluded. "He doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he NEVER visits; if he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today."
Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert's father, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place LIVING at all.”
Lucy Maud Montgomery (30 november 1874 – 24 april 1942)
Megan Follows (Anne) en Jonathan Crombie (Gilbert) in de tv-film uit 1985
De Duitse dichter en schrijver Rudolf Lavant (eig. Richard Cramer) werd geboren op 30 november 1844 in Leipzig. Zie ook alle tags voor Rudolf Lavant op dit blog.
Rothe Weihnachten (Fragment)
Wie seinen Arm im Licht des jungen Tages
Der Zecher seufzend auf die Tafel stemmt,
Die man im wüsten Toben des Gelages
Mit Blut der Reben achtlos überschwemmt;
Wie in die Hand er müde senkt die Stirne,
Und wie ein Frösteln seinen Leib durchbebt
Und wie ihm leise schaudert vor der Dirne,
Die stieren Blicks das Glas noch immer hebt;
Wie er sich schämt, daß dem verbuhlten Flüstern
Er Nachts gelauscht – wie er in Ueberdruß
Sie von sich stößt, die ihm die Lippe lüstern
Noch immer bietet zu verbotnem Kuß;
Und wie, voll Ekels vor dem Wein, der Schlaffe
Das Glas, das vor ihm, hastig von sich stößt
Und gierig ein aus blitzender Karaffe
Des Wassers kalte, reine Fluth sich flößt –
So schüttelt langsam ab des Rausches Bande,
Von Frost durchrieselt, müde, stumpf und bleich,
Und so besinnt sich auf die eigne Schande
Das arme Volk im neuen Deutschen Reich.
Es weist zurück in Ungeduld und Grauen
Den Taumelkelch, mit Lolch und Mohn bekränzt,
Und runzelt drohend seine dunklen Brauen,
Wenn er ihm gleißend vor der Lippe glänzt.
Es ist der Lüge satt, die ihm geschmeichelt,
Die es berauscht, die seinen Blick verhängt,
Die ihm die Wange dirnenhaft gestreichelt
Und immer dichter sich an ihn gedrängt.
Der Rausch der Siege und der Macht – verflogen!
Die goldne Zeit, die man verhieß – ein Schein!
Wie plump und frech die Presse dich betrogen –
Mein armes Volk, siehst du es endlich ein?
Rudolf Lavant (30 november 1844 – 6 december 1915)
Kerstmarkt in Leipzig
De Engelse dichter en schrijver John Bunyan werd geboren op 30 november 1628 in Harrowden bij Bedford. Zie ook alle tags voor John Bunyan op dit blog.
Of Holiness Of Life
Now, then, if holiness thou wouldst obtain,
And wouldst a tender Christian man remain,
Keep faith in action, let that righteousness
That Christ fulfilled always have express
And clear distinction in thy heart, from all
That men by Scripture, or besides, it, call
Inherent gospel holiness, or what
Terms else they please to give it; for 'tis that,
And that alone, by which all graces come
Into the heart; for else there is no room
For ought but pride, presumption, or despair,
No love or other graces can be there.
Received you the Spirit, saith St. Paul,
By hearing, faith, or works? not works, and shall
No ways retain the same, except you do
Hear faith, embrace the same, and stick thereto.
John Bunyan (30 november 1628 - 31 augustus 1688)
De Chileense dichter en schrijver Sergio Badilla Castillo werd geboren in Valparaíso op 30 november 1947. Zie ook alle tags voor Sergio Badilla Castillo op dit blog.
Epiphany
A courtyard filled with prophets
all hoping for a miracle.
Insomniac virgins doze and start
in the endless wait
and my dead legs come back to life.
A bank alarm goes off and an unfazed youth
keeps talking on his mobile phone.
Interviewed for radio I state that I’m a believer
pointlessly quoting St Augustine’s Confessions.
The prophets are impatient on the cloister steps.
Loudspeakers let loose a heavenly music
and a pack of dogs growls among the crowd.
My ears and extremities feel cold.
I look to the horizon and see a mass of cumulus
and a pale moon fade into the black cosmos
supposedly plotting an escape.
The prophets withdraw quietly to the temple.
False alarm: no epiphany today.
Vertaald door Roger Hickin en Sergio Badilla Castillo
Sergio Badilla Castillo (Valparaíso, 30 november 1947)
De Amerikaanse toneelschrijver en filmregisseur David Mamet werd geboren op 30 november 1947 in Chicago. Zie ook alle tags voor David Mamet op dit blog.
Uit: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
“These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.”
David Mamet (Chicago, 30 november 1947)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Wil Mara werd geboren op 30 november 1966 in de buurt van Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Zie ook alle tags voor Wil Mara op dit blog.
Uit: Blown Away!
"Yeah, it'll take some doing to get these animals situated," Sharkey agreed.
"Thank you." Mara smiled at me gratefully.
I took her suitcase. "Come on. Miss Edith's place is just up the road a way. One thing about Upper Matecumbe Key is that it's a narrow island, so everything is pretty close together in the town of Islamorada. Folks live on one side of the tracks or the other. These railroad tracks were built up so high above the main road, we think of them as hills."
Mara laughed. "You should see the hills in Pennsylvania, where I come from!"
We walked along quietly for a while, and then Mara said, "You look a lot like your dad."
"Everyone tells me that," I said. Dad and I both had kind of bronze-colored hair and dark eyes. Mom and Star looked alike too, with blond hair and pale blue eyes.
"You live here all the time?"
"Yep, I'm a real conch. I was born here."
"What's a conch?"
"It's really a shellfish, but people who live on the Keys are called conchs."
"Do you go to school here?"
"We go to school up in Tavernier, about fifteen miles north of here. They have electricity for two or three hours in the morning. But when I go to high school next year, I'll have to board down in Key West. What grade are you in?"
"I'm going into tenth grade. I'll be fifteen next year."
Wil Mara (Long Beach Island, 30 november 1966)
|
