Dag: 3 januari 2011

J.R.R. Tolkien, Marie Darrieussecq, Alex Wheatle, Cicero, Drieu la Rochelle

De Engelse schrijver J.R.R. Tolkien werd geboren op 3 januari 1892 in Bloemfontein, Zuid-Afrika. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2010.

 

Uit: The Lord of the Rings (The Hobbit)

 

„This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained-well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

The mother of our particular hobbit-what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). Now you know enough to go on with. As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit-of Bilbo Baggins, that is-was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of The Hill. It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures. They discreetly disappeared, and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtedly richer“.

 

 

J.R.R. Tolkien (3 januari 1892 – 2 september 1973)

 

 

Lees verder “J.R.R. Tolkien, Marie Darrieussecq, Alex Wheatle, Cicero, Drieu la Rochelle” →

Henry Handel Richardson, Wolf von Aichelburg, Elsa Asenijeff, John Gould Fletcher, Charles Palissot de Montenoy

De Australische schrijfster Henry Handel Richardson (eig. Ethel Florence) werd geboren op 3 januari 1870 in Melbourne. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2010.

 

Uit: The Way Home

 

“When, having braved the bergs and cyclones of the desolate South Pacific, and rounded the Horn; having lain becalmed in the Doldrums, bartered Cross for Plough, and snatched a glimpse of the Western Isles: when the homeward-bound vessel is come level with Finisterre and begins to skirt the Bay, those aboard her get the impression of passing at one stroke into home waters. Gone alike are polar blasts and perfumed or desert-dry breezes; gone opalescent dawns, orange-green sunsets, and

nights when the very moon shines warm, the black mass of ocean sluggish as pitch. The region the homing wanderer now enters is quick with associations. These tumbling crested marbled seas, now slate-grey, now of a cold ultramarine, seem but the offings of those that wash his native shores; and they are peopled for him by the saltwater ghosts of his ancestors, the great navigators, who traced this road through the high seas on their voyages of adventure and discovery. The fair winds that belly the sails, or the head winds that thwart the vessel’s progress, are the romping south-west gales adrip with moisture, or the bleak north-easters which scour his island home and make it one of the windy corners of the world. Not a breath of balmy softness remains.

There is a rawness in the air, a keener, saltier tang; the sad-coloured sky broods low, or is swept by scud that flies before the wind; trailing mists blot out the horizon. And these and other indelible memories beginning to pull at his heartstrings, it is over with his long patience. After tranquilly enduring the passage of some fifteen thousand watery miles, he now falls to chafing, and to telling off the days that still divide him from port and home.“

 

 

Henry Handel Richardson (3 januari 1870 – 20 maart 1946)

 

 

Lees verder “Henry Handel Richardson, Wolf von Aichelburg, Elsa Asenijeff, John Gould Fletcher, Charles Palissot de Montenoy” →

Douglas Jerrold, Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Hermann von Weinsberg, Jacob Balde S.J., Sven Kivisildnik, Xavier Orville

De Engelse schrijver Douglas William Jerrold werd geboren op 3 januari 1803 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 3 januari 2010.

 

Uit: Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures 

 

„Your wife and children may all be burnt alive in their beds–as all of us to a certainty shall be, for the insurance MUST drop.  And after we’ve insured for so many years!  But how, I should like to know, are people to insure who make ducks and drakes of their five pounds?

“I did think we might go to Margate this summer.  There’s poor little Caroline, I’m sure she wants the sea.  But no, dear creature! She must stop at home–all of us must stop at home–she’ll go into a

consumption, there’s no doubt of that; yes–sweet little angel!–I’ve made up my mind to lose her, NOW.  The child might have been saved; but people can’t save their children and throw away their five pounds too.

“I wonder where poor little Mopsy is!  While you were lending that five pounds, the dog ran out of the shop.  You know, I never let it go into the street, for fear it should be bit by some mad dog, and come home and bite all the children.  It wouldn’t now at all astonish me if the animal was to come back with the hydrophobia, and give it to all the family.  However, what’s your family to you, so you can play the liberal creature with five pounds?

“Do you hear that shutter, how it’s banging to and fro?  Yes,–I know what it wants as well as you; it wants a new fastening.  I was going to send for the blacksmith to-day, but now it’s out of the question:

NOW it must bang of nights, since you’ve thrown away five pounds.

“Ha! there’s the soot falling down the chimney.  If I hate the smell of anything, it’s the smell of soot.  And you know it; but what are my feelings to you?  SWEEP THE CHIMNEY!  Yes, it’s all very fine to say sweep the chimney–but how are chimneys to be swept–how are they to be paid for by people who don’t take care of their five pounds?“

 

 

Douglas Jerrold (3 januari 1803 – 8 juni 1857)

 

Lees verder “Douglas Jerrold, Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Hermann von Weinsberg, Jacob Balde S.J., Sven Kivisildnik, Xavier Orville” →