De Vlaamse schrijver Hugo Claus werd in Brugge geboren op 5 april 1929. Zie ook alle tags voor Hugo Claus op dit blog.
Uit: The Sorrow Of Belgium (Vertaald door Arnold J. Pomerans)
“It was sister Imelda who was sitting in Louis’s room, because although her face had been replaced by a featureless, pumicelike tumor, he recognized her peasant bosom, her smell of nature. She spread her knees, and from between the black billows she carefully pulled a skinned rabbit, or was it a cat? Unfortunately he couldn’t see the skull properly, she stroked the naked, blood-spattered carcass to which tufts of fur still clung, the pupils were not slit-shaped but round, like little pink pills.
He was woken by the siren, the antiaircraft guns and Papa calling him. Papa always called him, vigilant watchman of the night, even though he knew that Louis would still not follow him and Mama down to the air raid shelter with its crowds of quaking, praying neighbors.”
(…)
“He was sitting on a train, and for the first time in his life it occurred to him that a train, more so than the idea of a train, was a box so many feet high, so many feet long, so many feet wide, a fragile, futile, and above all simple thing on wheels. I could touch the ceiling of this carriage – who would have thought it? Only a moment ago I was in the playground, in the shadow of my grandfather, who is now lying on his deathbed.”
(…)
“My brother died in a concentration camp,” said Louis. “He was an intellectual working for the Underground, and he never tasted the fruits of his clandestine labours.”
“Is this entry about his experience?”
“His own experience, yes, of course.”
“Het Laatste Nieuws would certainly be interested in that.”
“It doesn’t deal directly with the concentration camp. It’s rather…”
“Which concentration camp?”
“…symbolic. Uh, Neuengamme.” (I’ll be struck down for that. Till the blood runs. Terminal cancer. Starting with the intestines. Then it spreads all over.)
“It’s a good subject. The Belgian people are going to have to learn the facts. From the source.”
“He handed me the text before he was taken away. In a cattle truck. ‘Take good care of it, Louis,’ he said.”
“I thought his name was Louis.”
“He asked me to adopt his name. So as to save his life’s work after his death, to continue it. My real name is Maurice.”
Hugo Claus (5 april 1929 – 19 maart 2008)
