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De Engelse schrijver en essayist William Hazlitt werd geboren op 10 april 1778 in Maidstone. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 april 2007 en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2008 en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2009 xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2010.
Uit: Notes of a journey through France and Italy
Paris is a beast of a city to be into those who cannot get out of it. Rousseau said well, that all the time he was in it, he was only trying how he should leave it. It would still bear Rabelais' double etymology of Par-ris and Lutetia *. There is not a place in it where you can set your foot in peace or comfort, unless you can take refuge in one of their hotels, where you are locked up as in an old-fashioned citadel, without any of the dignity of romance. Stir out of it, and you are in danger of being run over every instant. Either you must be looking behind you the whole time, so as to be in perpetual fear of their hackney-coaches and cabriolets; or, if you summon resolution, and put off the evil to the last moment, they come up against you with a sudden acceleration of pace and a thundering noise, that dislocates your nervous system, till you are brought to yourself by having the same startling process repeated. Fancy yourself in London with the footpath taken away, so that you are forced to walk along the middle of the streets with a dirty gutter running through them, fighting your way through coaches, waggons, and handcarts trundled along by large mastiff-dogs, with the houses twice as high, greasy holes for shop-windows, and piles of wood, green-stalls, and wheelbarrows placed at the doors, and the contents of wash-hand basins pouring out of a dozen storiesfancy all this and worse, and, with a change of scene, you are in Paris.
* The fronts of the houses and of many of the finest buildings seem (so to speak) to have been composed in mud, and translated into stoneso little projection, relief, or airiness have they. They have a look of beiDg stuck together.
William Hazlitt (10 april 1778 18 september 1830)
Portret door John Hazlitt
De Vlaamse dichter en beeldhouwer Marcel van Maele werd geboren in Brugge op 10 april 1931. Zie en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2010.
De pantoffelheld
2
'Hij en zij, met gespreide benen
Voor de open haard.
Haar rokje
korter dan een broeksriem breed
en in zijn kruis
jeukte de plicht.
'Verhoor de krekels
in mijn dichterlijke gewrichten,'
smeekte hij.
'Reuma,' zei ze.
En uitdagend reciteerde zij de namen
van haar vele minnaars zodat hij
moegetergd uit z'n te nauwe schoenen stapte
en zich koesterde in de sloffen van z'n taal.
Marcel van Maele (10 april 1931 - 24 juli 2009)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Lew Wallace werd geboren in Brookville, Indiana, op 10 april 1827. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2010.
Uit: Ben-Hur
It may be doubted if the people of the West ever overcome the impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert. Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little. At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the Bedawin, the Western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen. As is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so that of the desert to its creature. It clothes him with all its mysteries; in such manner, too, that while we are looking at him we are thinking of them: therein is the wonder. The animal which now came out of the wady might well have claimed the customary homage. Its color and height; its breadth of foot; its bulk of body, not fat, but overlaid with muscle; its long, slender neck, of swanlike curvature; the head, wide between the eyes, and tapering to a muzzle which a lady's bracelet might have almost clasped; its motion, step long and elastic, tread sure and soundlessall certified its Syrian blood, old as the days of Cyrus, and absolutely priceless. There was the usual bridle, covering the forehead with scarlet fringe, and garnishing the throat with pendent brazen chains, each ending with a tinkling silver bell; but to the bridle there was neither rein for the rider nor strap for a driver. The furniture perched on the back was an invention which with any other people than of the East would have made the inventor renowned. It consisted of two wooden boxes, scarce four feet in length, balanced so that one hung at each side; the inner space, softly lined and carpeted, was arranged to allow the master to sit or lie half reclined; over it all was stretched a green awning. Broad back and breast straps, and girths, secured with countless knots and ties, held the device in place. In such manner the ingenious sons of Cush had contrived to make comfortable the sunburnt ways of the wilderness, along which lay their duty as often as their pleasure.
Lew Wallace (10 april 1827 15 februari 1905)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Eric Knight werd geboren op 10 april 1897 in Menston in Yorkshire, Engeland. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2010.
Uit: Lassie Come-Home
Its no use raising your price again, Your Lordship, he would say. Its justwell, shes not for sale for no price. The village knew all about that. And that was why Lassie meant so much to them.
Lassie en Timmy uit de televisieserie (1954 1973)
She represented some sort of pride that money had not been able to take away from them.
Yet, dogs are owned by men, and men are bludgeoned by fate. And sometimes there comes a time in a mans life when fate has beaten him to the point that he must bow his head and decide to eat his pride so that his family may eat bread.
Eric Knight (10 april 1897 14 januari 1943)
De schrijver met zijn eigen collie
De Amerikaanse dichter Byron Forceythe Willson werd geboren op 10 april 1837 in Little Genesee, New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 april 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 april 2010.
In State
I.
O Keeper of the Sacred Key,
And the Great Seal of Destiny,
Whose eye is the blue canopy,
Look down upon the warring world, and tell us what the end will be.
"Lo, through the wintry atmosphere,
On the white bosom of the sphere,
A cluster of five lakes appear;
And all the land looks like a couch, or warrior's shield, or sheeted bier.
"And on that vast and hollow field,
With both lips closed and both eyes sealed,
A mighty Figure is revealed,
Stretched at full length, and stiff and stark, as in the hollow of a shield.
"The winds have tied the drifted snow
Around the face and chin; and, lo!
The sceptred Giants come and go,
And shake their shadowy crowns and say: We always feared it would be so!
"She came of an heroic race:
A giants strength, a maidens grace,
Like two in one seem to embrace,
And match, and blend, and thorough-blend, in her colossal form and face.
Where can her dazzling falchion be?
One hand is fallen in the sea;
The Gulf-Stream drifts it far and free;
And in that hand her shining brand gleams from the depths resplendently.
"And by the other, in its rest,
The starry banner of the West
Is clasped forever to her breast;
And of her silver helmet, lo, a soaring eagle is the crest.
"And on her brow, a softened light,
As of a star concealed from sight
By some thin veil of fleecy white,
Or of the rising moon behind the rainy vapors of the night.
"The Sisterhood that was so sweet,
The Starry System sphered complete,
Which the mazed Orient used to greet,
The Four and Thirty fallen Stars glimmer and glitter at her feet.
"And over her,and over all,
For panoply and coronal,
The mighty Immemorial,
And everlasting Canopy and starry Arch and Shield of All."
Forceythe Willson (10 april 1837 2 februari 1867)
Old Genesee County Home and Infirmary
(Geen portret beschikbaar)
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