De Amerikaanse schrijfster Anne Rivers Siddons werd geboren op 9 januari 1936 in Atlanta, Georgia. Zie ook mijn blog van 9 januari 2009.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Uit: Sweetwater Creek

„On a Thanksgiving eve, just before sunset, Emily and Elvis sat on the bank of a hummock where it slid down into Sweetwater Creek. Autumn in the Lowcountry of South Carolina is usually as slow and sweet as thick tawny port, and just as sleepily intoxicating. But this one had been born cold, with frosts searing late annuals in early October and chill nights so clear and still that the stars over the marshes and creeks bloomed like white chrysanthemums. Sweaters came out a full two months early, and furnaces rumbled dustily on in late September. Already Emily was shivering hard in her thin denim jacket, and had pulled Elvis closer for his body heat. In the morning, the spartina grass would be tinkling with a skin of ice and rime and the tidal creek would run as dark and clear as iced tea, the opaque, teeming strata of creek life having died out early or gone south with migratory birds. Emily missed the ribbons of birdsong you could usually hear well after Thanksgiving, but the whistle of quail and the blatting chorus of ducks and other waterfowl rang clearer, and the chuff and cough of deer come close. Emily loved the sounds of the winter animals; they said that life on the marsh would go on.

They sat on the bank overlooking the little sand beach where the river dolphins came to hurl themselves out of the water after the fish they had herded there. The dolphins were long gone to warmer seas, but at low tide the slide marks they wore into the sand were still distinct. They would not fade away until many more tides had washed them.

"There won't be any of them this late," Emily told Elvis. Elvis grinned up at her; he knew this. The dolphins were for heat and low tide. Girl and spaniel came almost every day in the summer and fall to watch them. Elvis's internal clock was better by far than the motley collection of timepieces back in the farmhouse.”

Anne Rivers Siddons (Atlanta, 9 januari 1936)

De Italiaanse schrijver Giovanni Papini werd geboren op 9 januari 1881 in Florence. Zie ook mijn blog van 9 januari 2009.

Uit: Black Book (Il libro nero)

„A dear Maronite priest I met a few days before and that shows sincere appreciation to me, told me this morning:

- You've seen all the wonders that are expected to be seen in Constantinople, from Hagia Sophia to the Great Bazaar. But you haven’t seen yet the most peculiar curiosity of this amazing Byzantium: the Museum of the Remains.

- I’ve never heard about it.

- Do you have time? We can go at once. The owner of the museum, Muzafer, is my friend. Let's go.

Already in one of the oldest and tortuous streets of the imperial sector, the good Maronite let me in by a little door leading to a beautiful courtyard, where a singing fountain let it sound a note of joy. A few moments later, the owner, a venerable Turk, dressed old-fashioned, corpulent and obsequious, accompanied us to visit his small but unique museum.

- My friend Muzafer, the good priest said, has wanted to gather here those complements of life that men, usually, discard or disdain.

In the first room there were displayed in boxes or tasteful cases, glasses of all shapes and colors, old mirrors with iron or horn handles, some misted up, dusty, striated by cracks.

Along with the lenses there were glass eyes, light-blue and chestnut-colored, which showed a motionless and sinister look.

Then we saw a rich collection of teeth and dentures, with old gold straps and gutta-percha palates that seemed to be taken from skulls with squeaking jaws.

The wigs were coming next, for men and women, as black as brushes to shine shoes, blondes as leftovers of corn ears, white, with a dirty and yellowish whiteness, similar to cut-off tails of decrepit horses, almost all of them worm-eaten, miserable trophies of dead coquetry.

In another room, they displayed rows of rubber breasts, elastic girdles, and belts for hernias, unctuous and stripped. In a big glass display case there were aligned crutches of all shapes and sizes, artificial hands, mechanical arms, orthopedic legs, leather and metallic ribs for paralyzed people.“

Giovanni Papini (9 januari 1881 - 8 juli 1956)

De Engelse dichter en criticus Lascelles Abercrombie werd geboren op 9 januari 1881 in Ashton upon Mersey. Zie ook mijn blog van 9 januari 2009.

Hymn to Love 

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,

As théou, Léove, were the déep thought

And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,

Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn’d not through us thy imagining

Like fiérce méood in a séong céaught,

We were as clamour’d words a fool may fling,

Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,—

The lives travelling dark fears,

And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool

Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth

And our journeying time theirs;

As words of air, life makes of starry earth

Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;

The great wind of the world’s fate

Is turn’d, as air to a shapen sound, to mind

And marvellous desires.

But not in the world as voices storm-shatter’d,

Not borne down by the wind’s weight;

The rushing time rings with our splendid word

Like darkness fill’d with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,

And Love’s meaning our life wields,

Making our souls like syllables to throng

His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,

As rain blown along earth’s fields;

Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,

Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,

We go charged with a strong flame;

For as a language Love hath seized on life

His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee,

Thy thought’s golden and glad name,

The mortal conscience of immortal glee,

Love’s zeal in Love’s own glory.

De Franse dichter Pierre Garnier werd geboren op 9 januari 1928 in Amiens. Zie ook mijn blog van 9 januari 2009.

Après nous le soleil

Ils sont venus

Avec leurs rêves dans leurs mains

Avec le pommier du jardin debout dans leurs poitrines

Les enfants nus les enfants teints

Les enfants éclairés comme des ballerines

Près de l’âne doré et de la vierge peinte

Près du beau jour qui tinte

Près du soir habillé en carême tzigane

Les enfants qui cueillirent les étoiles des mers

Les cloches qui baignent d’eau pure les déserts

Les soleils obscurcis comme des cathédrales

Les enfants purs les enfants chauds

Aux cris éclatés comme des châtaignes

Au dernier horizon nouveau

Qui est comme un homme qui saigne

Avec leurs noms leurs paysages

Tirant sur la corde des mots

Des yeux de paix sur leurs visages

Des bruits d’étoiles sur leur os.

Pierre Garnier (Amiens, 9 januari 1928)

De Engels dichter en literair criticus Thomas Warton werd geboren in Basingstoke, Hampshire, op 9 januari 1728. Zie ook mijn blog van 9 januari 2009.

Written at Stonehenge 

Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!

Whether by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore,

To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,

Huge frame of giant-hands, the mighty pile

T' entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile:

Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,

Taught 'mid thy massy maze their mystic lore:

Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,

To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,

Rear'd the rude heap: or, in thy hallow'd round,

Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;

Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd:

Studious to trace thy wondrous origine,

We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd.

Thomas Warton (9 januari 1728 – 21 mei 1790)