Berichten van 20 september 2012 tot 21 september 2012

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..

 

I Have Not Lingered In European Monosteries

I Have Not Lingered In European Monosteries
and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights
who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;
I have not parted the grasses
or purposefully left them thatched.

I have not held my breath
so that I might hear the breathing of God
or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise,
or starved for visions.
Although I have watched him often
I have not become the heron,
leaving my body on the shore,
and I have not become the luminous trout,
leaving my body in the air.

I have not worshipped wounds and relics,
or combs of iron,
or bodies wrapped and burnt in scrolls.

I have not been unhappy for ten thousands years.
During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.

 

The only tourist in Havana turns his thoughts homeward

let us govern Canada,
let us find our serious heads,
let us dump asbestos on the White House,
let us make the French talk English,

not only here but everywhere,
let us torture the Senate individually

until they confess,
let us purge the New Party,
let us encourage the dark races

so they'll be lenient

when they take over,
let us make the CBC talk English,
let us all lean in one direction

and float down

to the coast of Florida,
let us have tourism,
let us flirt with the enemy,
let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards,
let us sell snow

to under-developed nations,
(It is true one of our national leaders
was a Roman Catholic?)
let us terrorize Alaska,
let us unite

Church and State,
let us not take it lying down,
let us have two Governor Generals

at the same time,
let us have another official language,
let us determine what it will be,
let us give a Canada Council Fellowship

to the most original suggestion,
let us teach sex in the home

to parents,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.

and pull out at the last moment,
my brothers, come,
our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere

like Gladstone bags abandoned

after a coup d'état,
let us put them on very quickly,
let us maintain a stony silence

on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

 

 

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

  

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Stephen King op dit blog.

 

Uit: The Wind Through The Keyhole

 

“During the days after they left the Green Palace that wasn’t Oz after all—but which was now the tomb of the unpleas- ant fellow Roland’s ka-tet had known as the Tick-Tock Man—the boy Jake began to range farther and farther ahead of Roland, Eddie, and Susannah.

“Don’t you worry about him?” Susannah asked Roland. “Out there on his own?”

“He’s got Oy with him,” Eddie said, referring to the billy-bumbler who had adopted Jake as his special friend. “Mr. Oy gets along with nice folks all right, but he’s got a mouthful of sharp teeth for those who aren’t so nice. As that guy Gasher found out to his sorrow.”

“Jake also has his father’s gun,” Roland said. “And he knows how to use it. That he knows very well. And he won’t leave the Path of the Beam.” He pointed overhead with his reduced hand. The low-hanging sky was mostly still, but a single corridor of clouds moved steadily southeast. Toward the land of Thunderclap, if the note left behind for them by the man who styled himself RF had told the truth.

Toward the Dark Tower.

“But why—” Susannah began, and then her wheelchair hit a bump. She turned to Eddie. “Watch where you’re pushin me, sugar.”

“Sorry,” Eddie said. “Public Works hasn’t been doing any maintenance along this stretch of the turnpike lately. Must be dealing with budget cuts.”

It wasn’t a turnpike, but it was a road . . . or had been: two ghostly ruts with an occasional tumbledown shack to mark the way. Earlier that morning they had even passed an abandoned store with a barely readable sign: TOOK’S OUT- LAND MERCANTILE. They investigated inside for supplies—Jake and Oy had still been with them then—and had found nothing but dust, ancient cobwebs, and the skeleton of what had been either a large raccoon, a small dog, or a billy-bumbler. Oy had taken a cursory sniff and then pissed on the bones before leaving the store to sit on the hump in the middle of the old road with his squiggle of a tail curled around him. He faced back the way they had come, sniffing the air”.

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 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Frédéric Beigbeder op dit blog.

 

Uit: L'Amour dure trois ans

 

" Au début, tout est beau, même vous. Vous n'en revenez pas d'être aussi amoureux. Pendant un an, la vie n'est qu'une succession de matins ensoleillés, même l'après-midi quand il neige. Vous écrivez des livres là-dessus. Vous vous mariez, le plus vite possible - pourquoi réfléchir quand on est heureux ? La deuxième année, les choses commencent à changer. Vous êtes devenu tendre. Vous faites l'amour de moins en moins souvent et vous croyez que ce n'est pas grave. Vous défendez le mariage devant vos copains célibataires qui ne vous reconnaissent plus. Vous-même, êtes-vous sûr de bien vous reconnaître, quand vous récitez la leçon apprise par coeur, en vous retenant de regarder les demoiselles fraîches qui éclairent la rue ? La troisième année, vous ne vous retenez plus de regarder les demoiselles fraîches qui éclairent la rue. Vous sortez de plus en plus souvent : ça vous donne une excuse pour ne plus parler. Vient bientôt le moment où vous ne pouvez plus supporter votre épouse une seconde de plus, puisque vous êtes tombé amoureux, d'une autre. La troisième année, il y a une bonne et une mauvaise nouvelle. La bonne nouvelle : dégoûtée, votre femme vous quitte. La mauvaise nouvelle : vous commencez un nouveau livre. " --

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

 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flag (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en evenneens alle tags voor Fannie Flag op dit blog.

 

Uit: Welcome To The World, Baby Girl

““In the late forties Elmwood Springs, in southern Missouri, seems more or less like a thousand other small towns scattered across America.
Downtown is only a block long with a Rexall drugstore on one end and the Elmwood Springs Masonic Hall on the other. If you walk from the Masonic Hall to the Rexall, you will go by the Blue Ribbon cleaners, a Cat's Paw shoe repair shop with a pink neon shoe in the window, the Morgan Brothers department store, the bank, and a little alley with stairs on one side of a building leading up to the second floor, where the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl is located. If it is a Saturday morning you'll hear a lot of heavy tapping and dropping of batons upstairs by the Tappettes, a troop of blue-spangled Elmwood Springs beauties, or at least their parents think so. Past the alley is the Trolley Car diner, where you can get the world's best chili dog and an orange drink for 15 cents. Just beyond the diner is the New Empress movie theater, and on Saturday afternoons you will see a group of kids lined up outside waiting to go in and see a Western, some cartoons, and a chapter in the Buck Rogers weekly serial. Next is the barber shop and then the Rexall on the corner. Walk down on the other side of the street and you'll come to the First Methodist Church and then Nordstrom's Swedish bakery and luncheonette, with the gold star still in the window in honor of their son. Farther on is Miss Alma's Tea Room, Haygood's photographic studio, the Western Union, and the post office, the telephone company, and Victor's florist shop. A narrow set of stairs leads up to Dr. Orr's "painless" dentist's office. Warren and Son hardware is next. The son is eighteen-year-old Macky Warren, who is getting ready to marry his girlfriend, Norma, and is nervous about it. Then comes the A & P and the VFW Hall on the corner.”

 

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 Outline Of History

“For centuries Assyria was restrained from expansion towards Egypt by a fresh northward thrust and settlement of another group of Semitic peoples, the Arameans, whose chief citiy was Damascus, and whose descendants are the Syrians of to-day.  (There is, we may not, no connection whatever between the words Assyrian and Syrian.  It is an accidental similarity.)  Across these Syrians the Assyrian kings fought for power and expansion south-westward.  In 745 B.C. arose another Tiglath Pileser, Tiglath Pileser III, the Tiglath Pileser of the Bible (II Kings sv.29 & xvi.7 et seq.).  He not only directed the transfer of the Israelites to Media (the 'Lost Ten Tribes' whose ultimate fate has exercised so many curious minds) but he conquered and ruled Babylon, so founding what historians know as the New Assyrian Empire.  His son, Shalmaneser IV (II Kings xvii.3), died during the siege of Samaria, and was succeeded by a usurper, who, no doubt to flatter Babylonian susceptibilities, took the ancient Akkadian Sumerian name of Sargon, Sargon II.  He seems to have armed the Assyrian forces for the first time with iron weapons.  It was probably Sargon II who actually carried out the deportation of the Ten Tribes.Such shiftings about of population became a very distinctive part of the political methods of the Assyrian new empire.  Whole nations wh owere difficult to control in theri native country would be shifted en masse to unaccustomed regions and amidst strange neighbours, where their only hope of survival would lie in obedience to the supreme power.”

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

 

WEIMAR, DIENSTAG DEN 10. Juni 1823.

Vor wenigen Tagen bin ich hier angekommen, heute war ich zuerst bei Goethe. Der Empfang seinerseits war überaus herzlich und der Eindruck seiner Person auf mich der Art, dass ich diesen Tag zu den glücklichsten meines Lebens rechne.

Er hatte mir gestern, als ich anfragen ließ, diesen Mittag zwölf Uhr als die Zeit bestimmt, wo ich ihm willkommen sein würde. Ich ging also zur gedachten Stunde hin und fand den Bedienten auch bereits meiner wartend und sich anschickend mich hinaufzuführen.

Das Innere des Hauses machte auf mich einen sehr angenehmen Eindruck; ohne glänzend zu sein war alles höchst edel und einfach; auch deuteten verschiedene an der Treppe stehende Abgüsse antiker Statuen auf Goethes besondere Neigung zur bildenden Kunst und dem griechischen Altertum. Ich sah verschiedene Frauenzimmer, die unten im Hause geschäftig hin und wieder gingen; auch einen der schönen Knaben Ottiliens, der zutraulich zu mir herankam und mich mit großen Augen anblickte.

Nachdem ich mich ein wenig umgesehen, ging ich sodann mit dem sehr gesprächigen Bedienten die Treppe hinauf zur ersten Etage. Er öffnete ein Zimmer, vor dessen Schwelle man die Zeichen SALVE als gute Vorbedeutung eines freundlichen Willkommenseins überschritt. Er führte mich durch dieses Zimmer hindurch und öffnete ein zweites, etwas geräumigeres, wo er mich zu verweilen bat, indem er ging, mich seinem Herrn zu melden. Hier war die kühlste erquicklichste Luft, auf dem Boden lag ein Teppich gebreitet, auch war es durch ein rotes Kanapee und Stühle von gleicher Farbe überaus heiter möbliert; gleich zur Seite stand ein Flügel, und an den Wänden sah man Handzeichnungen und Gemälde verschiedener Art und Größe”.

 

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 - 3 december 1854)
Eckermann en Goethe (l), krijttekening door Johann Joseph Schmeller, 1828

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 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Donald Hall op dit blog.

 

 

Gold

 

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.

 

 

 

 

Je Suis une table

 

It has happened suddenly,
by surprise, in an arbor,
or while drinking good coffee,
after speaking, or before,

that I dumbly inhabit
a density; in language,
there is nothing to stop it,
for nothing retains an edge.

Simple ignorance presents,
later, words for a function,
but it is common pretense
of speech, by a convention,

and there is nothing at all
but inner silence, nothing
to relieve on principle
now this intense thickening.

 

 

 

 

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 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Javier Marías op dit blog.

 

Uit: Your Face Tomorrow. Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Vertaald door Margaret Jull Costa)

 

“It’s true that there are still a few people who harbor this deep - seated belief and to whom it does matter, and they are, in fact, acting so that the person they are saving can bear witness, so that he or she will think well of them and remember them with eternal admiration and gratitude; what they don’t realize at that decisive moment, or at least not fully, is that they will never enjoy that admiration or gratitude because they will be the ones who, a moment later, will be dead.’

And what came into my head while he was talking was an expression that was both diffi cult to grasp and possibly untranslatable, which is why, at fi rst, I didn’t mention it to Tupra, it would have taken me too long to explain. My initial thought was: ‘It’s what we call “vergüenza torera,” literally “a bullfi ghter’s sense of shame,” ’ and then: ‘Because bullfi ghters, of course, have loads of witnesses, a whole arenaful, plus sometimes a TV audience of millions, so it’s perfectly understandable that they should think: “I’d rather leave here with a ruptured femoral artery or dead than be thought a coward in the presence of all these people who will go on to talk about it endlessly and forever.” Bullfi ghters fear narrative horror like the plague, that fi nal defi ning wrong move, they really care about how their lives end, it’s the same with Dick Dearlove and almost any other public fi gure, I suppose, whose story is played out in full view of everyone at every stage or chapter, right up to the dénouement that can mark a whole life and give it an entirely false and unfair meaning.’ And then I couldn’t help saying it out loud, even though it meant briefl y interrupting Tupra. But it did, after all, add to what he was saying and was also a way of pretending that this was a dialogue:

‘That’s what we call “vergüenza torera.” ’ And I said the two words in Spanish, then immediately translated them. ‘I’ll explain to you exactly what it means another day, since you don’t have bullfighters here.’ Although at that moment, I wasn’t even sure there would be another day, another day at his side, not one.

‘OK, but don’t forget. And no, you’re right, we don’t have bullfi ghters here.’ Tupra was always curious to hear the turns of phrase in my own language about which I occasionally enlightened him, whenever they seemed relevant or were particularly striking. Now, however, he was enlightening me (I knew where he was heading, and both he and the path he was taking aroused my curiosity over and above the foreseeable revulsion I would feel at the end of the journey), and so he continued: ‘From there to letting someone die in order to save yourself is only a step, and trying to ensure that someone else dies in your place or even bringing that about (you know the kind of thing, it’s him or me) is just one more short step, and both steps are easily taken, especially the fi rst, in fact, in an extreme situation, almost everyone takes that step.”

 

 

 

Javier Marías (Madrid, 20 september 1951)

 

 

 

 

 

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 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Cyriel Buysse op dit blog.

 

Uit: De zwarte kost

 

“Het sloeg juist elf, die zondagmorgen, en in de enkele straat van het dorpje was alles stil en vreedzaam, toen, in een plotselinge opschudding, van huis tot huis de deuren openvlogen, en de bewoners met uitroepingen van verbazing op hun dorpels kwamen.

Er moest voorwaar geen gewichtige gebeurtenis in het rustig Akspoele plaatsgrijpen, om er terstond de lieden op de straat te lokken: de enkele voorbijtocht van een ongewoon rijtuig of de verschijning van een onbekende waren daartoe ruim voldoende. Doch ditmaal gold het iets zó buitengewoon ontzettends, dat het er terstond als een klein oproer werd.

Dáár, aan het uiteinde van de straat, komend in het dorp langs de weg van het station Bavel, naderde met rasse tred, vergezeld van een joelende bende knapen en meisjes, een groep van drie personen.

Hij, die in het midden liep, werd dadelijk herkend. Het was Massijn, Fortuné Massijn, de klerk van notaris Potvlieghe. Maar of de twee anderen mensen of dieren waren, dat konden de stomverbaasde dorpelingen nog niet bevestigen.

Zij hadden de gestalte en de lichaamsvormen van twee magere, te vroeg opgeschoten vijftienjarige knapen. Beiden droegen een zwartfluwelen pak, met korte broek en koperen knopen op het wambuis; beiden hadden lange rode kousen aan, en op het hoofd een zonderlinge rode pet, met zwarte, schuins afhangende kwast. Doch wat volstrekt op niets menselijks meer leek was hun gezicht: een glimmend-zwarte, monsterlelijke tronie met vervaarlijke ogen en vingerdikke lippen; en hun handen: afschuwelijke handen, zwart, lang en mager gelijk beestenklauwen. Een soort van zwarte, dicht-kroezende wol bedekte hun slapen; en door hun oorlellen staken overgrote koperen ringen, woest schitterend in de ochtend-zonneglans.

Massijn was in het dorp bekend als een allerzonderlingste kerel. Het greintje hoogmoedswaanzin, waaraan hij laboreerde, openbaarde zich bij hem in een zeer curieus verschijnsel: hij was bezeten door de manie der kennismaking met vreemdelingen. Men wist maar niet waar hij die steeds vandaan haalde, doch weinig zondagen gingen er voorbij dat hij niet de een of andere onbekende bij zich had, waarmee hij, opgeblazen van trots, de herbergen van Akspoele bezocht, met zijn verwarde uitspraak van hakkelaar de vreemdeling aan zijn kennissen voorstellend als ‘zij...ijn bêêêsten vri...iend’ van deze of gene, door de dorpelingen nooit gehoorde stad of streek; hem gul onthalend op al wat hij maar drinken wilde; hem eindelijk aan tafel uitnodigend en hem zelfs vaak met een rijtuig naar het naastgelegen station terugbrengend, dit alles tot grote ergernis van zijn moeder en zuster, die in dergelijke kennismakingen niet het minste genoegen vonden, en er integendeel zeer tegen opzagen een deel van het beperkt huiselijk inkomen zo nutteloos te zien verspillen.

 

 

 

 

Cyriel Buysse (20 september 1859 - 25 juli 1932)

Gedenkplaat van Cyriel Buysse aan zijn voormalige woning in Nevele.

 

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Upton Beall Sinclair werd geboren op 20 september 1878. Zie ook mijn blog van 20 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Upton Sinclair op dit blog.

 

Uit: The Jungle

 

"Z. Graiczunas, Pasilinksminimams darzas. Vynas. Sznapsas. Wines and Liquors. Union Headquarters"—that was the way the signs ran. The reader, who perhaps has never held much converse in the language of far-off Lithuania, will be glad of the explanation that the place was the rear room of a saloon in that part of Chicago known as "back of the yards." This information is definite and suited to the matter of fact; but how pitifully inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood that it was also the supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of God's gentlest creatures, the scene of the wedding feast and the joy-transfiguration of little Ona Lukoszaite!

She stood in the doorway, shepherded by Cousin Marija, breathless from pushing through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon. There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her otherwise wan little face was flushed. She wore a muslin dress, conspicuously white, and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders. There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil, and eleven bright green rose leaves. There were new white cotton gloves upon her hands, and as she stood staring about her she twisted them together feverishly. It was almost too much for her—you could see the pain of too great emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was so young—not quite sixteen—and small for her age, a mere child; and she had just been married—and married to Jurgis,* (*Pronounced Yoorghis) of all men, to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands.

Ona was blue-eyed and fair, while Jurgis had great black eyes with beetling brows, and thick black hair that curled in waves about his ears—in short, they were one of those incongruous and impossible married couples with which Mother Nature so often wills to confound all prophets, before and after. Jurgis could take up a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarter of beef and carry it into a car without a stagger, or even a thought; and now he stood in a far corner, frightened as a hunted animal, and obliged to moisten his lips with his tongue each time before he could answer the congratulations of his friends.

 

 

 

Upton Sinclair (20 september 1878 – 25 november 1968)

 

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 20e september ook mijn blog van 20 september 2011 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.