Berichten van 14 juli 2015 tot 15 juli 2015

Dolce far niente

Zomerdijkstraat, Amsterdam 

Zomerdijkstraat 1950
(met Remco Campert bij
Wil en Sjaantje Bakker)

Ooit dronk ik er zoveel
dat ik een halve dag
van mijn leven mis.
Wat zou ik anders in
die bewusteloze uren
hebben gedaan: een
gedicht geschreven
dat de hele wereld zou
lezen, of dat me het
dichten juist deed vergaan?
Naar schilderijen van
Sjaantje hebben gekeken,
een verhaal verteld aan
Wil over Harderwijk?
Met Remco een intelligent
gesprek gevoerd over
het nieuwe dichten dat
we deden? Of nog meer
jenever gedronken?
De Zomerdijkstraat heeft
ten eeuwigen dage
een ongewilde schuld aan
mij van misschien wel
zegge of al dan niet schrijve
een halve dag.

 
Karel N.L. Grazell (Amsterdam, 3 april 1928)

De Iers-Britse schrijfster en filosofe Iris Murdoch werd geboren in Dublin op 15 juli 1919. Zie ook alle tags voor Iris Murdoch op dit blog.

Uit: The sea, the sea

“Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.”
(…)

“However, on one occasion, several years ago, I was idiot enough to take a dose of LSD. (I did it to please a woman.) I had what is known as a 'bad trip'. It was a very bad trip. I shall not attempt to describe what I experienced on that dreadful and rather shameful occasion. (I will only add: it concerned entrails.) In fact it would be extremely hard, even impossible, to put it properly into words. It was something morally, spiritually horrible, as if one's stinking inside had emerged and become the universe: a surging emanation of dark half-formed spiritual evil, something never ever to be escaped from. 'Undetachable,' I remember, was a word which somehow 'came along' with the impression of it. In fact the visual images involved were dreadfully clear and, as it were, authoritative ones and they are rising up in front of me at this moment, and I will not write about them. Of course i never took LSD again.”
(…)

“Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage.”

 
Iris Murdoch (15 juli 1919 – 8 februari 1999)

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 15^e juli ook mijn blog van 15 juli 2011 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata

De Iraanse dichteres, schrijfster en vredesactiviste Rira Abbasi werd geboren in 1962 in Khorramabad, Iran. Zij werd benoemd tot vrouwelijke Poet Laureate en was winnares van de Parvin Etesami Poëzie Prijs in 2005, Rira is ook lid van de Iraanse Writers Association en directrice van het tweejaarlijkse International Peace Poëzie festival sinds 2007. “Zwarte fee van woensdag” (2000), “Geen geweren meer voor deze Lors vrouw” (2001) en haar gewaagde bundel liefdesgedichten “Wie bemint je discreter?” (Engels:”Who Loves You More discreet?) (2002) behoren tot haar bekendste werken. Rira Abbasi heeft in 2002 ook de eerste collectie van Iraanse Vredespoëzie geredigeerd en uitgegeven (een bloemlezing).

Had the Sky Been Blue

My friend,
sitting on my little shoulders,
Iranian, Bosnian, Iraqi, Afghan….
my friend
for the same of your smile
my shoulders are born 
every morning early
to remove your wounds
although they have shut your smile
with gunpowder
perhaps in the absence of the first war,
second war
third or the last one.
My friend
when you let your silent fly and you spoke
at a distance, the size of one thousand part of the ant’s wing
then 
all the bombs in the world will grew silent
in front of you.
we all know
you are alive beyond the natural strength of man
when in the plan
you are returning home
tired, wounded and abandoned.
Which home are you returning?
When the sky is empty of peace
and the prevailing war
is tearing away your newborn’s eye
until the end of his life
I grieve for your future 
I grieve for the future.
I am tired 
but
I worry for your future…
I draw a nucleus from the atoms of wounds
your body is thin
tomorrow
tomorrow
I will get my shoulders born wider 
for the same of your smile
had the sky been blue.

Vertaald door M. Alexandrian

 
Rira Abbasi (Khorramabad, 1962)

Dolce far niente

 
Charles Leickert, Rivierlandschap in de zomer, 1853

Vakantie

Geef mij de sfeer van havens
de zoute lucht van zee
witgeklede matrozen
van wie ik verder niets weet

draaiing van geslagen touwen
gummi piepend tussen wal en schip
opgedroogde wieren op de kade
wespen langs een lijn vol vis

Ik leng anijsdrank aan met water
spuw de deksels van een pit
mompel in de zon iets Grieks

Geeft niet waar ik nog moet wezen
vandaag leef ik en hoef niks

 
Diana Ozon (Amsterdam, 7 augustus 1959)
Gezicht op het Singel met de Munttoren in Amsterdam door Isaak Ouwater, 1770

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Irving Stone op dit blog.

 Uit: The Agony and the Ecstasy

 "I had less trouble conquering Perugia and Bologna than I have in subduing you!"
"I am not a Papal State, Holy Father.  Why should you waste your precious time subduing me?"
The room went silent.  The Pope glared at him, thrust out his bearded chin, demanded icily, "Where did you have your religious training, that you dare to question your pontiff's judgment?"
"As your prelate said in Bologna, Holiness, I am but an ignorant artist, without good manners."
"Then you can carve your masterpiece in a cell of Sant'Angelo."
All Julius had to do was wave a hand at a guard, and he could rot in a dungeon for years.  He gritted his teeth.
"That would bring you little honor.  Marble is my profession.  Let me carve the Moses, Victors, Captives.  Many would come to see the statues, offering thanks to Your Holiness for making them possible."
"In short," snapped Julius, "I need your sculptures to assure my place in history."
"They could help, Holy Father."
There was an audible gasp from those around the throne.  The Pope turned to his cardinals and courtiers.
"Do you hear that, gentlemen? I, Julius II, who recovered the long-lost Papal States for the Church and brought stability to Italy, who have cleaned out the scandals of the Borgias, published a constitution abolishing simony and elevated the decorum of the Sacred College, achieved a modern architecture for Rome . . . . I need Michelangelo Buonarotti to establish my historical position."
Sangallo had gone deathly pale.  Cardinal Giovanni stared out a window as though he were not there.  The Pope loosened the collar of his cape against his own warmth, took a deep breath and started again.”

 
Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 14^e juli ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2014.