Dag: 26 december 2017

Der Weihnachtsbaum (Hoffmann von Fallersleben)

 

Aan alle bezoekers en mede-bloggers een Prettig Kerstfeest!

 

 
Kerstmis door Felix Ehrlich, 1889

 

Der Weihnachtsbaum

Ich lag und schlief, da träumte mir
ein wunderschöner Traum;
es stand auf unserm Tisch vor mir
ein hoher Weihnachtsbaum.

Und bunte Lichter ohne Zahl,
die brannten ringsumher,
die Zweige waren allzumal
von goldnen Äpfeln schwer.

Und Zuckerpuppen hingen dran:
Das war mal eine Pracht!
Da gab´s, was ich nur wünschen kann
und was mir Freude macht.

Und als ich nach dem Baume sah
und ganz verwundert stand,
nach einem Apfel griff ich da,
und alles, alles schwand.

Da wacht´ ich auf aus meinem Traum.
Und dunkel war´s um mich:
Du lieber, schöner Weihnachtsbaum,
sag an, wo find´ ich dich?

Da war es just, als rief er mir:
“Du darfst nur artig sein,
dann steh´ ich wiederum vor dir —
jetzt aber schlaf nur ein!

Und wenn du folgst und artig bist,
dann ist erfüllt dein Traum,
dann bringet dir der Heil´ge Christ
den schönsten Weihnachtsbaum.”

 

 
Hoffmann von Fallersleben (2 april 1798 – 19 januari 1874)
De Michaeliskirche in Fallersleben. De kerk werd in 1805 gebouwd door de vader van de dichter

 

Zie voor de schrijvers van de 26e december ook mijn drie vorige blogs van vandaag.

David Sedaris, Elizabeth Kostova, Henry Miller, Rainer Malkowski, Mani Beckmann, Alejo Carpentier

De Amerikaanse schrijver David Sedaris werd geboren in Binghamton, New York, op 26 december 1956. Zie ook alle tags voor David Sedaris op dit blog.

Uit: Theft By Finding

„December 28, 1984
Raleigh
Amy, Tiffany, and I sat in the kitchen and talked until three thirty this morning. One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, “What’s the most exotic place you’ve ever made love?” He was likely expecting “the kitchen” or “on a tennis court at night,” but one woman didn’t quite understand the question and answered, “In the butt.”
David Sedaris: ‘There are things nobody wants to hear. But the disturbing things are great’

June 19, 1987
Chicago
I ran into Walt on the L this morning. He owes me $450 and said he was just going to call me the other day because Gail, his wife, is always saying, “We need to pay that David Sedaris.”
I actually don’t hold anything against him. I miss Walt and Gail. Walt said that last week she got a profit-sharing check for $10,000. That was why he planned to call — to pay me. He said he took the check to the bank but lost it along the way. It was physically big, he told me. “I folded it in my top pocket, and wouldn’t you know!”
He called the bank to cancel it, then he called New York for a replacement check, but the woman whose job it would be to write it was on vacation. “Wouldn’t you know it!”
At around five, I took the L home. A woman near me had a three-year-old child on her lap, a girl, who looked at me and said, “Mommy, I hate that man.”
Hours later, walking up Leland, I heard someone running up behind me. It was a guy who lives in the halfway house next door. He is black and wore a long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the neck. The man called me sir and asked how I was doing.
“All right,” I said.
He told me that he had a taste for a steak sandwich and asked me if I’d buy him one. You can’t pull money out of your pocket on Leland Avenue. It’s like ringing a bell, so I said no and he ran across the street to ask a woman the same question.
Later still I saw two men sitting in a car in front of the halfway house. They had the door open and were listening to the radio. As I passed, one of them asked me for a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke,” I told them. Then I thought of the guy who wanted a steak sandwich and of the little girl who hated me and thought, What the hell. I handed the guy in the car one of my cigarettes, and he scowled at me and said, “Fucking liar.”

 

 
David Sedaris (Binghamton, 26 december 1956)

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Jean Toomer, Hans Brinkmann, Willy Corsari, Alfred Huggenberger, René Bazin, Julien Benda

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Jean Toomer werd geboren op 26 december 1894 in Washington, D.C. Zie ook alle tags voor Jean Toomer op dit blog.

Georgia Dusk

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.

Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .
Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars . .

O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

 
Jean Toomer (26 december 1894 – 30 maart 1967)

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Thomas Gray, Jean Galtier-Boissière, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Jean-François de Saint-Lambert

De Engelse dichter en geleerde Thomas Gray werd geboren op 26 december 1716 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Thomas Gray op dit blog.

The Bard

II.1.
“‘Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding sheet of Edward’s race.
Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro’ Berkley’s roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonising King!
She-Wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heav’n. What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combin’d,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.

II.2.
“‘Mighty victor, mighty lord,
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the Sable Warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in thy noon-tide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising Morn.
Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the Zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind’s sway,
That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

 
Thomas Gray (26 december 1716 – 30 juli 1771)
Portret door Benjamin Wilson, ca. 1772

Lees verder “Thomas Gray, Jean Galtier-Boissière, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Jean-François de Saint-Lambert” →

Nigel Cliff

De Britse schrijver, historicus, biograaf, criticus en vertaler Nigel Cliff werd geboren op 26 december 1969 in Manchester. Cliff studeerde met een beurs aan het Winchester College en Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, waar hij een eersteklas diploma behaalde en de Beddington Prize for English Literature. ontving. Hij was film- en theatercriticus voor The Times en medewerker aan The Economist. Hij schrijft voor een reeks publicaties waaronder The New York Times. Cliff geeft veel lezingen, onder andere aan de universiteit van Oxford, het Harry Ransom Center en de British Library. Cliff’s eerste boek, “The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-century America” werd in 2007 in de Verenigde Staten uitgegeven. Het boek was Washington Post boek van het jaar en was een finalist voor de Nationale Award for Arts Writing. Het tweede boek van Cliff was “Holy War: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-old Clash of Civilisations” uit 2011. Het werd vervolgens uitgegeven als “The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama” in 2012. Cliff’s derde boek was een nieuwe vertaling en kritische editie van “Marco Polo’s Travels” voor Penguin Classics, die in 2015 werd uitgebracht in het Verenigd Koninkrijk en de VS. Voor deze eerste geheel nieuwe vertaling sinds een halve eeuw, ging hij terug naar de originele teksten in Frans, Latijn en Italiaans. Cliff’s vierde boek, “Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story – How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War” werd in september 2016 uitgegeven. De Boston Globe noemde het het boek van het jaar. In januari 2017 werd als finalist genoemd voor de National Book Critics Circle Award. Het won de Nautilus Gold And Silver Awards.

Uit: Moscow Nights

““ON MAY 28, 1958, ticker tape snowed from the sky above Broadway, darkening an already gray New York City day and flurrying around rapturous, flag-waving crowds. High school bands marched, Fire Department colors trooped, and at the center of it all was a young American perched on the back of an open-top Continental, grinning in disbelief and crossing his hands over his heart. He was as tall, thin, and blond as Charles Lindbergh, but he was not a record-setting aviator. Nor was he an Olympic athlete or a world statesman or a victor in war. The cause of the commotion was a twenty-three-year-old classical pianist from a small town in Texas who had recently taken part in a music competition.
“What’s goin’ on here?” a stalled taxi driver yelled to a cop. “A  parade? Fer the piano player?”
The cabbie had a point. No musician had ever been honored like this. No American pianist had been front-page news, let alone a household name. But the confetti was whirling, the batons were twirling,
and on a damp morning a hundred thousand New Yorkers were cheering and climbing on cars and screaming and dashing up for a kiss. In the summer of 1958, Van Cliburn was not only the most famous musician in America. He was just about the most famous person in America—and barring the president, quite possibly the most famous American in the world.
Things got stranger. At a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were bitter enemies in a perilous Cold War, the Russians had gone mad for him before Americans had. Two months earlier he had arrived in Moscow, a gangly, wide-eyed kid on his first overseas trip, to try his luck in the First International Tchaikovsky Competition. Such was the desperate state of world affairs that even musical talent counted as ammunition in the battle of beliefs, and everyone understood that the  Soviets had cranked open the gates only to prove that their virtuosos were the best. Yet for once in the tightly plotted Cold War, the authors had to tear up the script, for the real story of the Tchaikovsky Competition was beyond the imagination of the most ingenious propagandist. The moment the young American with the shock of flaxen curls sat before the piano, a powerful new weapon exploded across the Soviet Union. That weapon was love: one man’s love for music, which ignited an impassioned love affair between him and an entire nation. It came at a critical time. Five months earlier the Soviet Union had sensationally beaten the United States into space.”

 
Nigel Cliff (Manchester, 26 december 1969)