De Engels-Ierse schrijver Laurence Sterne werd geboren op 24 november 1713 in Clonmel, Tipperary, Ierland. Zie ook alle tags voor Laurence Sterne op dit blog.
Uit: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether : But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy ; — (I forget which) — besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace’s pardon ; — for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived.
To such, however, as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better advice, than that they skip over the remaining part of this Chapter ; for I declare before hand, ’tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.
———- Shut the door. ——–
I was begot in the night, betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was. — But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made public for the better clearing up this point.
My father, you must know, who was originally a Turky merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of —— , was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, — he had made it a rule for many years of his life, — on the first Sunday night of every month throughout the whole year, — as certain as ever the Sunday night came, —- to wind up a large house-clock which we had standing upon the back-stairs head, with his own hands: — And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age, at the time I have been speaking of,– he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pester’d with them the rest of the month.“
Laurence Sterne (24 november 1713 – 18 maart 1768)
Portret door Joshua Reynolds, 1760
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