De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op  21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leonard Cohen op dit blog..

 

 

Dear Diary

"You are greater than the Bible
And the Conference of the Birds
And the Upanishads
All put together

"You are more severe
Than the Scriptures
And Hammurabi's Code
More dangerous than Luther's paper
Nailed to the Cathedral door

"You are sweeter
Than the Song of Songs
Mightier by far
Than the Epic of Gilgamesh
And braver
Than the Sagas of Iceland.

"I bow my head in gratitude
To the ones who give their lives
To keep the secret
The daily secret
Under lock and key

"Dear Diary
I mean no disrespect
But you are more sublime
Than any Sacred Text

"Sometimes just a list
Of my events
Is holier than the Bill of Rights
And more intense.”

 

 

 

 

I Wonder How Many People

 

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when i look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

 

 

 

 

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

In 1969 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010

 

Uit: Duma Key

 

“ How to draw a picture

Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember.

How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe.

Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through.

Still, imagine that small hand lifting the pencil ... hesitating ... and then marking the white. Imagine the courage of that first effort to re-establish the world by picturing it. I will always love that little girl, in spite of all she has cost me. I must. I have no choice. Pictures are magic, as you know.

 

 

Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)

 

 

 

 

De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010

 

Uit: 99 Francs

 

„Quand, à force d’économies, vous réussirez à vous payer la bagnole de vos rêves, celle que j’ai shootée dans ma dernière campagne, je l’aurai déjà démodée. J’ai trois vogue d’avance, et m’arrange toujours pour que vous soyez frustré. Le Glamour, c’est le pays où l’on n’arrive jamais. Je vous drogue à la nouveauté, et l’avantage avec la nouveauté, c’est qu’elle ne reste jamais neuve. Il y a toujours une nouvelle nouveauté pour faire vieillir la précédente. Vous faire baver, tel est mon sacerdoce. Dans ma profession, personne ne souhaite votre bonheur, parce que les gens heureux ne consomment pas.

Connaissez-vous la différence entre les riches et les pauvres ? Les pauvres vendent de la drogue pour s’acheter des Nike alors que les riches vendent des Nike pour s’acheter de la drogue.

Les hommes politiques ne contrôlent plus rien ; c’est l’économie qui gouverne. Le marketing est une perversion de la démocratie : c’est l’orchestre qui gouverne le chef. Ce sont les sondages qui font la politique, les tests qui font la publicité, les panels qui choisissent les disques diffusés à la radio, les "sneak previews" qui déterminent la fin des films de cinéma, les audimats qui font la télévision. [...] Big Brother is not watching you, Big Brother is testing you. Mais le sondagisme est un conservatisme. C’est une abdication. On ne veut plus vous proposer quoi que ce soit qui puisse RISQUER de vous déplaire. C’est ainsi qu’on tue l’innovation, l’originalité, la création, la rebellion. Tout le reste en découle. Nos existences clonées... Notre hébétude somnambule... L’isolement des êtres... La laideur universelle anesthésiée....“

 

 

 

Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)

 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flagg (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010

 

Uit: Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

 

„Elmwood Springs, Missouri.
Monday, April 1
9:28 am, 74 degrees and sunny
After Elner Shimfissle accidentally poked that wasps’ nest up in her fig tree, the last thing she remembered was thinking “Uh-oh.” Then, the next thing she knew, she was lying flat on her back in some hospital emergency room, wondering how in the world she had gotten there. There was no emergency room at the walk-in clinic at home, so she figured she had to be at least as far away as Kansas City. “Good Lord,” she thought. “Of all the crazy things to have happen this morning.” She had just wanted to pick a few figs and make a jar of fig preserves for that nice woman who had brought her a basket of tomatoes. And now here she was with some boy wearing a green shower cap and a green smock, looking down at her, all excited, talking a mile a minute to five other people running around the room, also in green shower caps, green smocks, and little green paper booties on their feet. Elner suddenly wondered why they weren’t wearing white anymore. When had they changed that rule? The last time she had been to a hospital was thirty-four years ago, when her niece, Norma, had given birth to Linda; they had all worn white then. Her next-door neighbor Ruby Robinson, a bona fide professional registered nurse, still wore white, with white shoes and stockings and her snappy little cap with the wing tips. Elner thought white looked more professional and doctorlike than the wrinkly, baggy green things these people had on, and it wasn’t even a pretty green to boot.
She had always loved a good neat uniform, but the last time her niece and her niece’s husband had taken her to the picture show, she had been disappointed to see that the movie ushers no longer wore uniforms. In fact, they didn’t even have ushers anymore; you had to find your own seat. “Oh well,” thought Elner, “they must have their reasons.”

 

 

 

Fannie Flag (Birmingham, 21 september 1944)

 

 

 

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor H. G. Wells op dit blog.

 

Uit: The Door In The Wall

 

“One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall.  And at the time I thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story.

He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than believe in him.  But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from every-day realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible.  "He was mystifying!" I said, and then: "How well he did it!. . . . .  It isn't quite the thing I should have

expected him, of all people, to do well."

Afterwards, as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, I found myself trying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, convey--I hardly know which word to use--experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell.

Well, I don't resort to that explanation now.  I have got over my intervening doubts.  I believe now, as I believed at the moment of telling, that Wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his secret for me.  But whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege, or the victim of a fantastic dream, I cannot pretend to guess.  Even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts forever, throw no light on that.  That much the reader must judge for himself.“

 

 

H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 - 13 augustus 1946)

 

 

 

 

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Johann Peter Eckermann op dit blog.

 

Uit: Gespräche mit Goethe  in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens

 

»Ich halte dafür, daß diese Gespräche für Leben, Kunst und Wissenschaft nicht allein manche Aufklärung und manche unschätzbare Lehre enthalten, sondern daß diese unmittelbaren Skizzen nach dem Leben auch ganz besonders dazu beitragen werden, das Bild zu vollenden, was man von Goethe aus seinem mannigfaltigen Werk bereits in sich tragen mag.
Weit entfernt aber bin ich auch wiederum, zu glauben, daß hiermit nun der ganze innere Goethe gezeichnet sei. Man kann diesen außerordentlichen Geist und Menschen mit Recht einem vielseitigen Diamanten vergleichen, der nach jeder Richtung hin eine andere Farbe spiegelt. Und wie er nun in verschiedenen Verhältnissen und zu verschiedenen Personen ein anderer war, so kann ich auch in meinem Falle nur in ganz bescheidenem Sinne sagen: dies ist mein Goethe.
Und dieses Wort dürfte nicht bloß davon gelten, wie er sich mir darbot, sondern besonders auch davon, wie ich ihn aufzufassen und wiederzugeben fähig war. Es geht in solchen Fällen eine Spiegelung vor, und es ist sehr selten, daß bei dem Durchgange durch ein anderes Individuum nichts Eigentümliches verloren gehe und nichts Fremdartiges sich beimische. Die körperlichen Bildnisse Goethes von Rauch, Dawe, Stieler und David sind alle in hohem Grade wahr, und doch tragen sie alle mehr oder weniger das Gepräge der Individualität, die sie hervorbrachte. Und wie nun ein solches schon von körperlichen Dingen zu sagen ist, um wieviel mehr wird es von flüchtigen, untastbaren Dingen des Geistes gelten! Wie dem nun aber in meinem Fall auch sei, so werden alle diejenigen, denen aus geistiger Macht oder aus persönlichem Umgange mit Goethe ein Urteil dieses Gegenstandes zusteht, mein Streben nach möglichster Treue hoffentlich nicht verkennen.«

 

 

 

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 - 3 december 1854)

Goethe en Eckermann (rechts)

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Donald Hall werd geboren in Hamden, New Haven County, Connecticut op 20 september 1928. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

 

A Poet at Twenty

 

Images leap with him from branch to branch. His eyes

brighten, his head cocks, he pauses under a green bough,

alert.

    And when I see him I want to hide him somewhere.

    The other wood is past the hill. But he will enter it, and find the particular maple. He will walk through the door of the maple, and his arms will pull out of their sockets, and the blood will bubble from his mouth, his ears, his penis, and his nostrils. His body will rot. His body will dry in ropey tatters. Maybe he will grow his body again, three years later. Maybe he won't.

    There is nothing to do, to keep this from happening.

    It occurs to me that the greatest gentleness would put a bullet into his bright eye. And when I look in his eye, it is not his eye that I see.

 

 

 

Villanelle

 

Katie could put her feet behind her head

Or do a grand plié, position two,

Her suppleness magnificent in bed.

 

I strained my lower back, and Katie bled,

Only a little, doing what we could do

When Katie tucked her feet behind her head.

 

Her torso was a C-cup'd figurehead,

Wearing below its navel a tattoo

That writhed in suppleness upon the bed.

 

As love led on to love, love's goddess said,

"No lovers ever fucked as fucked these two!

Katie could put her feet behind her head!"

 

When Katie came she never stopped. Instead,

She came, cried "God!," and came, this dancer who

Brought ballerina suppleness to bed.

 

She curled her legs around my neck, which led

To depths unplumbed by lovers hitherto.

Katie could tuck her feet behind her head

And by her suppleness unmake the bed.

 

 

 

Donald Hall (Hamden, 20 september 1928)

 

 

 

 

De Spaanse schrijver Javier Marías Franco werd op 20 september 1951 in Madrid geboren. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

Uit: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Vertaald door Margaret Jull Costa)

 

‘While it isn’t ever something we would wish for, we would all nonetheless always prefer it to be the person beside us who dies, whether on a mission or in battle, in an air squadron or under bombardment or in the trenches when there were trenches, in a mugging or a raid on a shop or when a group of tourists is kidnapped, in an earthquake, an explosion, a terrorist attack, in a fire, it doesn’t matter: even if it’s our colleague, brother, father or even our child, however young. Or even the person we most love, yes, even them, anyone but us. Whenever someone covers another person with his own body, or places himself in the path of a bullet or a knife, these are all extraordinary exceptions,

which is why they stand out, and most are fi ctitious and only appear in novels and fi lms. The few real - life instances are the result of unthinking refl exes or else dictated by a strong sense of decorum of a sort that is becoming ever rarer, there are some who couldn’t bear for a child or a loved one to pass into the next world with, as their fi nal thought, the knowledge that a parent or lover had done nothing to prevent their death, had not sacrificed themselves, had not given their own life to save them, it’s as if such people had internalized a hierarchy of the living, which seems so quaint and antiquated now, whereby children have more right to live than women and women more than men and men more than the old, or something of the sort, at least that’s how it used to be, and such old - fashioned chivalry still persists in a dwindling band of people, those who still believe in that decorum, which, when you think about it, is quite absurd, after all, what do such fi nal thoughts, such transient feelings of pique or disappointment matter when, a moment later, the person concerned will be dead and incapable of feeling either pique or disappointment, incapable, indeed, of thinking?“

 

 

Javier Marías (Madrid, 20 september 1951)

 

 

 

 

De Duitse schrijver en journalist Joseph Breitbach werd geboren op 20 september 1903 in Ehrenbreitstein bij Koblenz. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

Uit: Die Wandlung der Susanne Dasseldorf

 

"'Der Generalstreik hat in Paris Eindruck gemacht', erzählte Cather, als sie sich wieder oben in Cathers Zimmer gegenübersaßen, 'Wilson hat sich diesmal zu einem formalen Einspruch gegen die französische Rheinpolitik aufgerafft. Sicher werden die Rheinländer jetzt eine Zeitlang Ruhe vor diesen Abenteuern haben.'
'Aber sonst! Wie sieht es dafür bei uns aus! Diese Friedensbedingungen!' sagte Louis traurig.
Cather schwieg eine Weile. 'Ja, was hat man aus Wilsons idealem Programm gemacht', sagte er endlich.......Louis sah ihn erstaunt an.
'Ja', sagte Cather, 'etwas haben die amerikanischen Delegierten doch gegen die Franzosen durchgesetzt...... Diese Pläne der Franzosen haben wir verhindert. Die Freiheit der deutschen Verwaltung ist doch im großen ganzen sichergestellt, und vor allem ist die Legitimierung des Belagerungszustandes verhindert."

 

 

 

Joseph Breitbach (20 september 1903 – 9 mei 1980)

 

 

 

 

De Duitse dichter, schrijver en essayist Adolf Endler werd geboren op 20 september 1930 in Düsseldorf. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

 

Dies Sirren

Und wieder dies Sirren am Abend. Es gilt ihnen scheint es für Singen
Ich boxe den Fensterladen auf und rufe He laßt mich nicht raten
Ihr seid es Liliputaner das greise Zwergenpaar van der Klompen
Cui bono ihr lieben Alterchen mit der Zirpstimm im Dunkel cui bono

 

 

 

Resumé

 

Bis heute kein einziger Seepapagei in meinen vielen Gedichten

(Stattdessen schon wieder’n Dutzend Fadennudeln im Bart);

Auch dem Sabberlatz nicht das ärmste Denkmal gesetzt in Vers

oder Prosa,

So wenig wie der Elbe-Schiffahrt oder der Karpfenernte bei Peitz.

 

Geschiebemergel dagegen ja!, fast zu häufig die Rede von diesem

(Und meistens mit Fadennudeln im verwahrlosten Bart)!

Nicht vergessen die Gelbhalsmaus, nicht fehlt die sogenannte

            Naschmarktfassade!

Selbst Sägeblätter, selbst Kühlhaus-Eier  weiß ich irgendwo

untergebracht.

 

Indessen nicht der kleinste Seepapagei in meinem Scheiße-Gesamtwerk!

Um ehrlich zu sein: Das Gleiche gilt für den Hüfthalter oder den

Kronenverschluß.

Und wie konnte ich fünfzig Jahre lang das Wörtchen "Wadenwickel"

            verfehlen?

Es gibt keine ausreichend lichte Erklärung für das und für dies

und für das.

 

"Darf ich dir die Fadennudeln aus dem Bart nehmen?"

        (Sagt Georg Maurer.)

                                                                       

 

 

 

Adolf Endler (20 september 1930 - 2 augustus 2009)

 

 

 

 

De Engelse schrijver Henry Arthur Jones werd geboren op 20 september 1851 in Granborough, Buckinghamshire. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

Uit: Dolly Reforming Herself

 

TIME: _The afternoon of_ 1ST _January_, 1907.

_Discover at writing-table, back to audience_, DOLLY TELFER, _a bright little woman about thirty, busied with bills and papers. Bending over her, back to audience, is her father_, MATT BARRON, _a pleasant-looking, easy-going cynic of sixty._ HARRY TELFER, DOLLY'S _husband, an ordinary good-natured, weakish, impulsive Englishman about thirty-five, is standing with his back to the fire. Sitting on sofa, reading a scientific book, is_ PROFESSOR STURGESS, _a hard, dry, narrow, fattish scientific man about forty-five. At the table, right, reading a French novel, is_ RENIE STURGESS, _the Professor's wife, a tall, dark, handsome woman about thirty_.

 

_Harry_. No, I can't say that I pay very much attention to sermons as a rule, but Pilcher gave us a regular downright, no-mistake-about-it, rouser at the Watch-night Service last night.

_Matt_. [_Turning round_.] I wonder what precise difference this rousing sermon will make in the conduct of any person who heard it.

_Harry_. Well, it's going to make a lot of difference in my conduct. At least, I won't say a lot of difference, because I don't call myself a very bad sort of fellow, do you?

_Matt_. N-o--No----

_Harry_. At any rate I'm a thundering good husband, ain't I, Dolly?

[DOLLY _takes no notice_.] And I've got no flagrant vices. But I've got a heap of--well a heap of selfish little habits, such as temper, and so on, and for the coming year I'm going to knock them all off.“

 

 

 

Henry Arthur Jones (20 september 1851 – 7 januari 1929)
Cartoon uit Vanity Fair

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 20e september ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

De Vlaamse schrijver Cyriel Buysse werd geboren op 20 september 1859 in Nevele. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2007. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

Uit: Broeder en zuster

 

„Zij keek, half over het portier gebogen, door het open venstertje, als de trein in het station aankwam. Hij stond haar af te wachten; doch eerst herkende hij haar schier niet meer. Het was zoolang geleden dat zij elkaar[1] gezien hadden. Hij nam haar vriendelijk bij beide handen, terwijl zij blozend en glimlachend van den spoorbaanwagen stapte, en kuste haar bewogen op beide hare wangen. Zij zag er zoo goed uit, sprak hij. Hij droeg haar pakje in de hand en leidde haar tot aan zijn rijtuig, dat naar hen stond te wachten. Zij namen plaats nevens elkander. Dáár zaten zij nu nog bijeen, de broeder en de zuster, na zulke lange scheiding. Eenige grijze haren doorkruisten reeds als zilverdraadjes zijne zwarte lokken; zij kwam slechts in den bloei des levens. Zij was ook lang en slank van gestalte zooals hij, doch iets kleiner; zij had ook donkerbruin haar, bruine oogen, en op haar aangezicht iets zachts en liefelijks, dat thans onder den indruk van hare gevoelens in een weemoedvollen glimlach scheen te versmelten. Van het verledene werd niet gesproken; hij vroeg haar niet, waarom zij sinds tien jaren niet eens bij hem gekomen was, niet eenmaal had geschreven; hij zei haar enkel, dat hij zoo gelukkig was haar terug te zien en zij zoo verschoond en zoo veranderd was, dat hij haar nimmermeer erkend zou hebben. Hij sprak haar ook van Tante, die gestorven was, en vroeg of deze gedurende hare ziekte veel had geleden. Een stille traan schoot langzaam in haar oog.

"O! zooveel!" zuchtte zij. Zij bleven beiden eene wijle stilzwijgend en lieten hunnen blik langs wederskanten van den weg over het landschap drijven, terwijl het open rijtuig hen door de zachte avondschemering naar hunne woning voerde. Zij dacht aan Tante, die zij zoo bemind had en die voor haar steeds zoo goed was geweest; aan Tante, die zij wellicht nooit zou verlaten hebben, hadde deze nog mogen leven. En hij dacht ook aan zijne eenzame en treurige levenswijze, en of zijne zuster het bij hem wel gewoon zou kunnen worden. Zij kwamen met de duisternis te M... aan, het dorp waar René woonde. Sinds den dood van vader was zij tehuis niet meer geweest. Hij leidde haar op de kamer, die hij voor haar had doen bereiden, en wees haar de kast en de commodes aan, waarin zij hare kleederen kon leggen. "Hier was het steeds uw vertrek," sprak hij, "als gij kind waart." Zij glimlachte bewogen en stak een binnendeurken open, en terwijl een traan van zachte ontroering haar oog schielijk verduisterde: "En hier was het de kamer van Moeder," antwoordde zij. Zij zagen elkander met aandoening aan. Hij leidde haar door al de plaatsen van het huis en zegde, dat zij alles volgens haren zin zou mogen schikken. En zij bedankte hem erkentelijk en dacht, dat hij toch goed was voor haar.“

 

 

 

Cyriel Buysse (20 september 1859 -  25 juli 1932)

 

 

 

 

De Engelse dichteres en schrijfster Stevie (eig. Florence Margaret) Smith werd geboren op 20 september 1902 in Kingston upon Hull. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

 

Alone in the Woods

 

Alone in the woods I felt

The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees

Nature has taught her creatures to hate

Man that fusses and fumes

Unquiet man

As the sap rises in the trees

As the sap paints the trees a violent green

So rises the wrath of Nature's creatures

At man

So paints the face of Nature a violent green.

Nature is sick at man

Sick at his fuss and fume

Sick at his agonies

Sick at his gaudy mind

That drives his body

Ever more quickly

More and more

In the wrong direction.

 

 

 

The Suburban Classes

 

There is far too much of the suburban classes

Spiritually not geographically speaking. They’re asses.

Menacing the greatness of our beloved England, they lie

Propagating their kind in an eightroomed stye.

Now I have a plan which I will enfold

(There’s this to be said for them, they do as they’re told)

Then tell them their country’s in mortal peril

They believed it before and again will not cavil

Put it in caption form firm and slick

If they see it in print it is bound to stick:

‘Your King and your Country need you Dead’

You see the idea? Well, let it spread.

Have a suitable drug under string and label

Free for every Registered Reader’s table.

For the rest of the gang who are not patriotic

I’ve another appeal they’ll discover hypnotic:

Tell them it’s smart to be dead and won’t hurt

And they’ll gobble up drug as they gobble up dirt.

 

 

Stevie Smith (20 september 1902 – 7 maart 1971)

 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Upton Beall Sinclair werd geboren op 20 september 1878. Zie voor onderstaande schrijver mijn blog van 20 september 2006 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

Uit: The Jungle

 

„It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon Marija's broad shoulders--it was her task to see that all things went in due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly hither and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to see that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself. She had left the church last of all, and, desiring to arrive first at the hall, had issued orders to the coachman to drive faster. When that personage had developed a will of his own in the matter, Marija had flung up the window of the carriage, and, leaning out, proceeded to tell him her opinion of him, first in Lithuanian, which he did not understand, and then in Polish, which he did. Having the advantage of her in altitude, the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to attempt to speak; and the result had been a furious altercation, which, continuing all the way down Ashland Avenue, had added a new swarm of urchins to the cortege at each side street for half a mile.

This was unfortunate, for already there was a throng before the door. The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull "broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from the moving carriage, plunged in and proceeded to clear a way to the hall. Once within, she turned and began to push the other way, roaring, meantime, "Eik! Eik! Uzdaryk-duris!" in tones which made the orchestral uproar sound like fairy music.“

 

 

 

Upton Sinclair (20 september 1878 – 25 november 1968)

 

 

 

 

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Hanns Cibulka werd geboren op 20 september 1920 in Jägerndorf, in het toenmalige Tsjechoslowakije. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2009 en ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010.

 

 

Haus Seedorn

 

Wildganse

fliegen uber das Haus,

Dezemberschnee

auf den Flugeln.

Auf dem Lesepult

ein geoffnetes Buch,

hier sprach sein Mund

die Worte aus:

Ich starb drei Tode:

zu Aulis

starb ich meinem Vater ab,

wie meiner Mutter,

und in meinem Tod beschlossen

starben Elternhaus

und Vaterland…

Vor dem Fenster,

wie sich das Laub der Jahre setzt

und wie die Wege

heller werden.

 

Lagebericht III

 

Kein Hölderlin-Hymnus

auf die Natur,

die Herzwand verkarstet,

zauberkundig

die Polypenarme der Chemie,

vom Anblick der toten Fische

kaufen wir uns frei

durch Wachstumsraten der Wirtschaft,

zur Sage geworden

das Wasser

im Brunnen.

 

Eingesprengt in den Salzstock

die Stollen,

keine radioaktiven Pulks,

Partikeltod

im Grundwasser,

unterirdisch.

 

Wie die Pilze schießen sie hoch,

die tausend kleinen

Tode.

 

Es muß sehr dunkel sein

in den Lichterstädten der Welt,

dass wir so wenig sehen,

sehr laut,

dass wir so wenig hören.

 

Kein Landgewinn,

die Einäugigen lehren.«

 

 

 

Hanns Cibulka (20 september 1920 – 20 juni 2004) 

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