De Zweedse dichteres en schrijfster Karin Maria Boye werd geboren op 26 oktober 1900 in Göteborg. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Du sollst danken

Du sollst deinen Göttern danken

für den harten Zwang,

da du ohne Fußspur

irrst auf deinem Gang.

Du sollst deinen Göttern danken

für den schweren Schlag,

da du keine Zuflucht

hast bei Nacht und Tag.

Was die ganze Welt verworfen

ordnet sich im Kreise ein.

Vogelfrei gewinnst du

erst dein eignes Sein.

Ausgesetzt im Sand der Wüste

suchst du nach der Quelle Grund,

und du trinkst am Leben

dankbar dich gesund.

Du sollst deinen Göttem danken

für die zersprengende Qual.

Wirklichkeit und Kern

bleibt dir nur zur Wahl.

Reif wie eine Frucht

Reif wie eine Frucht liegt die Welt in meinen Armen,

sie ist gereift heute nacht,

und ihre Schale ist die zarte blaue Haut, die sich

um sie wölbt,

und ihr Saft ist die süße und duftende, glühende,

  sprühende Sonnenlichtflut.

Tief hinein in dies silbemschimmernde Weltall springe

  ich als Schwimmer,

getauft in Reife, wiedergeboren zur Fülle.

Geheiligt zur Tat.

Leicht wie ein Lachen

zerteile ich ein goldenes Honigmeer,

das begehrt nach meinen hungrigen Händen.

Vertaald door Hildegard Dietrich

Karin Boye (26 oktober 1900 – 24 april 1941)

Standbeeld in Huddinge

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

The Fall

I have mouthed names
that are names no longer,
draw no reply now
only hard silence and an image
of graven stone.

Yew-trees, evergreen,
viridian intensity of growth;
gravity derived from dirt.

The names draw no reply,
only a silence in the mind,
movement of smoke.
familiar shadows that are only smoke.

The sun marks time
among the evergreens:
posture of green fire.

Stone cracked in the jaws of ice,
splintered, grinding,
mixed with moisture,
becoming dirt.

There is no grave memorial in carven stone.
There is one gravity.

The names falling from use
down into stone,
down into my mind.
There is no grave memorial in the future of my mind.

All names will fall from use.

Parallax

Figures group on the frozen square,

into the black shadow of flats;

dark path of snow from the abattoir:

and sills of an old debtor's prison

double this red-gold dusk.

call of a woman, a withered star,

falls, broken, through the resonant light.

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.

Uit: The Lords of Discipline

„When I crossed the Ashley River my senior year in my gray 1959 Chevrolet, I was returning with confidence and even joy. I'm a senior now, I thought, looking to my right and seeing the restrained chaste skyline of Charleston again. The gentleness and purity of that skyline had always pleased me. A fleet of small sailboats struggled toward a buoy in the windless river, trapped like pale months in the clear amber of late afternoon.
Then I looked to my left and saw, upriver, the white battlements and parapets of Carolina Military Institute, as stolid and immovable in reality as in memory. The view to the left no longer caused me to shudder involuntarily as it had the first year. No longer was I returning to the cold, inimical eyes of the cadre. Now the cold eyes were mine and those of my classmates, and I felt only the approaching freedom that would come when I graduated in June. After a long childhood with an unbenign father and four years at the Institute, I was looking forward to that day of release when I would no longer be subject to the fixed, irresistible tenets of martial law, that hour when I would be presented with my discharge papers and could walk without cadences for the first time.
I was returning early with the training cadre in the third week of August. It was 1966, the war in Vietnam was gradually escalating, and Charleston had never looked so beautiful, so untouchable, or so completely mine. Yet there was an oddity about my presence on campus at this early date. I would be the only cadet private in the barracks during that week when the cadre would prepare to train the incoming freshmen. The cadre was composed of the highest-ranking cadet officers and non-coms in the corps of cadets. To them fell the serious responsibility of teaching the freshmen the cheerless rudiments of the fourth-class system during plebe week. The cadre was a diminutive regiment of the elite, chosen for their leadership, their military sharpness, their devotion to duty, their ambition, and their unquestioning, uncomplicated belief in the system.“

Pat Conroy (Atlanta, 26 oktober 1945)

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 26 oktober 2008.

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

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