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De Nigeriaanse schrijver Cyprian Ekwensi werd op 26 september 1921 in Nigeria geboren in Minna. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 september 2006 en ook mijn blog van 26 september 2009.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: Jagua Nana
The sigh was a prayer to God to stay back the years and a challenge to herself to employ all the coquettish arts to help Him. She did not often remember that if her son had lived he would today be roughly as old as her lover. Freddie was hardly more than a boy, with his whole ambitious life before him. He was a teacher at the Nigerian National College who badly wanted to travel overseas to complete his law studies. He had applied for a Government Scholarship, but did not pin his faith on
being selected. She knew Freddie deserved a good girl to marry him, raise his children and 'shadow' him in all his ambitions. But Jagua was too much in love with him to make a reasonable exit. And she wanted Freddie as her husband because only a young man would still be strong enough to work and earn when she would be on the decline. Men would not be wanting her in six years' time, when even
now girls of eighteen could be had. At forty-five, she had her figure and her tact to guide her.
She knew that, seen under the dim lights of her favourite night spot, the
Tropicana from a distance her face looked beautiful. In any light she was proud of her body, which could model for any painter or sculptor. When she walked down a street, male eyes followed the wiggle of her hips which came with studied unconsciousness. Sometimes she was ashamed of her too passionate love-making, but Freddie did not seem so embarrassed now as he used to be at first. When she painted her face and lifted her breasts and exposed what must be concealed and concealed what must be exposed, she could out-class any girl who did not know what to do with her God-given female talent.
Cyprian Ekwensi (26 september 1921 - 4 november 2007)
De Oostenrijkse schrijver Peter Turrini werd geboren op 26. September 1944 in St. Margarethen im Lavanttal. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 september 2009.
Uit: Die Verhaftung des Johann Nepomuk Nestroy
Nestroy geht schnell durch das Bühnentürl des Theaters an der Wien, einige Begeisterte stürzen auf ihn zu und bitten ihn, Witze aus dem Stück zu wiederholen. Nestroy antwortet, er könne nur gegen Bezahlung lustig sein, ohne Gage falle ihm nichts ein, und läuft zu einer wartenden Equipage. Er steigt in die Equipage, sie fährt weg. In der Equipage sitzt eine junge, schöne Frau, sein Frau, Wilhemine, geborene Wilhelmine Phillipine von Nespiensi. Sie ist ein paar Jahre jünger als Nestroy, hat volles, rotes Haar, das von einer Kopfhaube kaum gebändigt wird. Die Eheleute haben sich sechs Jahre lang nicht gesehen. Sie werden von der schnellen Fahrt der Equipage durchgerüttelt und starren einander an. Nestroy geht in Gedanken das ganze Arsenal seiner Vorwürfe durch: "Warum hast du mich verlassen?" wird er sie fragen.
(...)
Nestroy sitzt im Kaffeehaus an seinem Stammtisch und trinkt. Der Besitzer des Kaffehauses, Herr Anselm Weidinger, den sie "die Amsel" nennen, schenkt Nestroy aus einer Weinflasche nach. Nestroy trinkt das Glas in einem Zug aus. "Das wievielte war das?" fragt Nestroy den Besitzer. "Das Vierte", sagt dieser. "Nach meiner Berechnung hab' ich erst drei getrunken", sagt Nestroy. "Ich verlaß mich ganz und gar auf die Berechnungen des Herrn Nestroy", sagt Herr Anselm Weidinger und schenkt ihm das nächste Glas ein. "Erst nach einem Dutzend kann ich vergessen, was für ein Mißerfolg der heutige Abend war", sagt Nestroy. "Aber Herr von Nestroy", antwortet Weidinger lachend, "Sie reden von einem Mißerfolg und das Publikum jubelt. Sie sind wirklich der g'spaßigste Mensch von Wien". Er schenkt ihm ein weiteres Glas ein. Einige Gäste prosten Nestroy zu.
Peter Turrini (St. Margarethen im Lavanttal, 26. September 1944)
De Engels schrijver, dichter en germanist Edwin Keppel Bennett werd geboren op 26 september 1887 in Wareham, Dorset. Hij werd opgeleid aan Elm House School, Wareham en aan de Universiteit van Straatsburg. Hij ging in 1914 naar het Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, en behaalde zijn BA in 1919 en zijn MA in 1923. In 1923 werd hij 'onofficiële fellow' van het college en een Cambridge University lector voor Duits. Officiële fellow werd hij in 1926, in 1931 werd hij Senior Tutor. Dat bleef hij tot hij in 1952 voorzitter van het College werd. Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog diende Bennett in een inlichtingen-eenheid van het Britse leger in de rang van tweede luitenant (1916-1918), vooral in Palestina. Bennetts eerste boek, Built in Jerusalems Wall: A Book in praise of Jerusalem, werd gepubliceerd onder het pseudoniem 'Francis Keppel' in 1920. Zijn A History of the German Novelle from Goethe to Thomas Mann verscheen bij de Cambridge University Press in 1934
The Stranger
The room grows silent, and the dead return:
Whispering faintly in the corridor,
They try the latch and steal across the floor
Towards my chair; and in the hush I turn
Eagerly to the shadows, and discern
The ghosts of friends whom I shall see no more,
Come back, come back from some Lethean shore
To the old kindly life for which they yearn.
How still they are! O, wherefore can I see
No sign of recognition in the eyes
That gaze in mine? Have they forgotten me
Who was their friend? They fade into the gloom;
And on my heart their plaintive murmur dies:
A stranger now, a stranger fills his room.
Edwin Keppel Bennett (26 september 1887 13 juni 1958)
Wareham, Dorset (Geen portret beschikbaar)
De Australische dichter en schrijver Joseph Furphy werd geboren op 26 september 1843 in Yering, een voorstad van Melbourne Yering. Furphy schreef meestal onder het pseudoniem Tom Collins. Zijn vader, een pachter, was in 1840 geëmigreerd uit Tande Ragee in Ierland naar Australië. In 1905 verhuisde Furphy naar West-Australië, waar zijn zonen woonden. Hij bouwde een huis in Swanbourne, een voorstad van Perth, waar nu het hoofdkantoor is van Fellowship of Australian Writers Zijn bekendste werk is Such Is Life, een fictief verhaal over het leven van de plattelandsbevolking, met inbegrip van veedrijvers, krakers en rondtrekkende reizigers in het zuiden van New South Wales en Victoria tijdens de jaren 1880. Het boek bevat een reeks losjes verwante verhalen van verschillende mensen die de verteller ontmoet op zijn reis door het land. De titel zou zijn afgeleid van de laatste woorden van de beroemdste straatrover van Australë: Ned Kelly.
Uit: Such is Life
Unemployed at last!
***
Scientifically, such a contingency can never have befallen of itself. According to one theory of the Universe, the momentum of Original Impress has been tending toward this far-off, divine event ever since a scrap of fire-mist flew from the solar centre to form our planet. Not this event alone, of course; but every occurrence, past and present, from the fall of captured Troy to the fall of a captured insect. According to another theory, I hold an independent diploma as one of the architects of our Social System, with a commission to use my own judgment, and take my own risks, like any other unit of humanity. This theory, unlike the first, entails frequent hitches and cross-purposes; and to some malign operation of these I should owe my present holiday.
Orthodoxly, we are reduced to one assumption: namely, that my indomitable old Adversary has suddenly called to mind Dr. Watts's friendly hint respecting the easy enlistment of idle hands.
Good. If either of the two first hypotheses be correct, my enforced furlough tacitly conveys the responsibility of extending a ray of information, however narrow and feeble, across the path of such fellow-pilgrims as have led lives more sedentary than my ownparticularly as I have enough money to frank myself in a frugal way for some weeks, as well as to purchase the few requisites of authorship.
If, on the other hand, my supposed safeguard of drudgery has been cut off at the meter by that amusingly short-sighted old Conspirator, it will be only fair to notify him that his age and experience, even his captivating habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me to write; and he is hereby invited to view his own feather on the fatal dart.
Whilst a peculiar defectwhich I scarcely like to call an oversight in mental constructionshuts me out from the flowery pathway of the romancer, a co-ordinate requital endows me, I trust, with the more sterling, if less ornamental qualities of the chronicler. This fairly equitable compensation embraces, I have been told, three distinct attributes: an intuition which reads men like sign-boards; a limpid veracity; and a memory which habitually stereotypes all impressions except those relating to personal injuries.
Submitting, then, to the constitutional interdict already glanced at, and availing myself of the implied license to utilise that homely talent of which I am the bailee, I purpose taking certain entries from my diary, and amplifying these to the minutest detail of occurrence or conversation. This will afford to the observant reader a fair picture of Life, as that engaging problem has presented itself to me.
Joseph Furphy (26 september 1843 - 13 september 1912)
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