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De Poolse dichter, vertaler en literatuurwetenschapper Stanisław Barańczak werd geboren op 13 november 1946 in Poznań. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 november 2008.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: Garden Of Amzing Delights
AT first sight, Czeslaw Milosz's most recent collection seems to be a poet's scrapbook rather than a book of poems. It reminds one of the silva rerum, a ''forest of things,'' the 17th-century term for a fascicle containing loosely arranged notes, occasional poems, copies of letters and memorable quotations. In the same way, ''Unattainable Earth'' consists only in part of Mr. Milosz's own poems. The rest of the volume is filled with his prose notes or aphorisms, letters from his friends and what he calls ''inscripts'' - fragments from sources as diverse as ''Corpus Hermeticum,'' Casanova's memoirs, Zen philosophy, the Russian emigre philosopher Lev Shestov, the poet Oscar Milosz and the French philosopher Simone Weil. There are even several poems by Walt Whitman and D. H. Lawrence, translated by the author into Polish in the book's original edition and here restored to their English versions and included as ''an homage to tutelary spirits.''
A veritable mosaic, then; yet its diversity is carefully arranged. Unlike Mr. Milosz's three previous collections in English, each of which offered a mix of his older and more recent poems, ''Unattainable Earth'' is a faithful replica of his latest Polish book, published in 1984. A few minor omissions and additions are all that distinguish the translation (a splendid job done by Mr. Milosz himself with the help of one of his steady collaborators, the poet Robert Hass) from the original. This fact alone indicates that Mr. Milosz's forest of things is not as wild as it seems to be; that, as the author's preface puts it, ''under the surface of somewhat odd multiformity, the reader will recognize a deeper unity.''
What provides this unity is, first and foremost, Mr. Milosz's basic philosophical problem, compressed in the two words that form the book's title. In its Polish version, the meaning of the title is, more precisely, ''earth too huge to be grasped.'' This notion is, indeed, the key to Mr. Milosz's poetic philosophy. On the one hand, his is a poetry obsessed with the very fact of the world's being. ''What use are you? In your writings there is nothing except immense amazement,'' he addresses himself in one of his prose notes. Despite the ironic tone, there is much truth in this. Mr. Milosz's constant, perpetually renewed ''amazement'' with the richness of ''The Garden of Earthly Delights'' (as he calls the world in a poem that borrows its title from Hieronymus Bosch's triptych) can often reach the heights of an ecstatic hymn of praise and thankfulness: ''You watch what is, though it fades away, / And are grateful every moment for your being.''
Stanisław Barańczak (Poznań, 13 november 1946)
De Italiaanse schrijfster Dacia Maraini werd geboren op 13 november 1936 in Fiesole. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 november 2008.
Uit: Die stumme Herzogin (Vertaald door Eva-Maria Wagner)
Filas Hände dort im Spiegel entwirren mit plumpen und raschen Bewegungen die Masse von Mariannas Haar. Die Herzogin beobachtet die Finger ihrer jungen Dienerin, die mit dem elfenbeinernen Kamm hantieren, als sei er ein Pflug. Bei jedem Knäuel ein Riß, bei jedem Widerstand ein Ziepen. Etwas Wütendes und Grausames liegt in diesen Fingerballen, die in ihre Haare fahren, als wollten sie Nester zerrupfen und Unkraut ausreißen.
Ganz plötzlich reißt die Herrin dem Mädchen das Instrument aus der Hand und zerbricht es in 2 Stücke; diese wirft sie aus dem Fenster. Die Dienerin steht da und sieht sie bestürzt an. Noch nie hat sie ihre Herrin so wütend gesehen. Zwar weiß sie, daß sie seit dem Tod ihres jüngsten Kindes oft die Geduld verliert, aber jetzt scheint sie es zu übertreiben: Was kann sie dafür, daß diese Haare so struppig und verfilzt sind?
Die Herrin betrachtet ihr eigenes verkrampftes Gesicht neben dem betroffenen der Magd. Mit einem Gurgeln, das aus tiefer Kehle kommt, scheint sich ein Wort aus ihrem zusammengeschrumpften Gedächtnis befreien zu wollen: Der Mund geht auf, doch die Zunge bleibt untätig, sie vibriert nicht, klingt nicht. Aus der verkrampften Kehle löst sich endlich ein schriller Schrei, der sich zum Fürchten anhört. Fila fährt sichtlich zusammen, und Marianna bedeutet ihr, sich zu entfernen.
Nun ist sie alleinund hebt den Blick zum Spiegel. Ein nacktes, ausgebranntes Gesicht mit verzweifelten Augen sieht sie aus dem Silberglas an. Soll sie das sein, diese von Verzweiflung getrübte Frau mit der Falte, die wie ein senkrechter Säbelhieb die großflächige Stirn durchschneidet? Wo ist die Sanftheit geblieben, in die sich der Intermassini verliebte? Wo die runde Weichheit der Wangen, die sanfte Farbe ihrer Augen, das ansteckende Lächeln?
Dacia Maraini (Fiesole, 13 november 1936)
De Frans-Canadese dichter en politicus Gérald Godin werd geboren op 13 november 1938 in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 november 2008.
Ses mots
Quand je veux délasser mon
esprit, ce n'est pas l'honneur
que je cherche, c'est la liberté.
La langue de ma mère
a des mots pour tout
dans la grande famille des mots
je m'en choisis pour passer l'hiver
des mots en laine du pays
cette année j'ai choisi le mot guérison
le mot liberté
des mots qui tiennent bien au chaud
Pays
J'ai vu le soleil se lever
dans tant et tant de pays
je ne savais plus lequel
était le mien
le jour oscillait
lampe incertaine dans ma nuit
le rif le souk le môle
la vallée millénaire
bergers de l'Atlas
boutre coutre Seychelles
je l'ai vu se coucher
le jour passait comme une flèche
et chaque soir me frappait en plein coeur
comme le dernier
Gérald Godin (13 november 1938 12 okrober 1994)
De Schotse schrijver Robert Louis Stevenson werd geboren in het Schotse Edinburgh op 13 november 1850. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 november 2006 en ook mijn blog van 13 november 2008.
Uit: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. "I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way." In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
Robert Louis Stevenson (13 november 1850 3 december 1894)
Portret door Graaf Girolamo Nerli
Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 13 november 2008.
De Bengaalse schrijver Humayun Ahmed werd geboren op 13 november 1948 in Kutubpur in het toenmalige Oost-Pakistan, nu Bangladesh.
De Zweedse dichter Esaias Tegnér werd geboren op 13 november 1782 in Kyrkerud.
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