De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

Why?’
‘To see the ivy.’
It seemed a good enough reason and I went with him. He took my arm as we walked under the walls of Merton.
‘I’ve never been to the Botanical Gardens,’ I said.
‘Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn! There’s a beautiful arch there and more different kinds of ivy than I knew existed. I don’t know where I should be without the Botanical Gardens.’
When at length I returned to my rooms and found them exactly as I had left them that morning, I detected a jejune air that had not irked me before. What was wrong? Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to be real. Was it the screen? I turned it face to the wall. That was better.
It was the end of the screen. Lunt never liked it, and after a few days he took it away, to an obscure refuge he had under the stairs, full of mops and buckets.
That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches.
Presently we drove on and in another hour were hungry. We stopped at an inn, which was half farm also, and ate eggs and bacon, pickled walnuts and cheese, and drank our beer in a sunless parlour where an old clock ticked. in the shadows and a cat slept by the empty grate.
We drove on and in the early afternoon came to our destination: wrought-iron gates and Twin, classical lodges on a village green, an avenue, more gates, open parkland, a turn in the drive and suddenly a new and secret landscape opened before us. We were at the head of a valley and below us, half a mile distant, grey and gold amid a screen of boskage, shone the dome and columns of an old house.
‘Well?’ said Sebastian, stopping the car. Beyond the dome lay receding steps of water and round it, guarding and hiding it, stood the soft hills.
‘Well?’
‘What a place to live in!’ I said.
‘You must see the garden front and the fountain.’ He leaned forward and put the car into gear. ‘It’s where my family live’; and even then, rapt in the vision, I felt, momentarily, an ominous chill at the words he used — not, ‘that is my house’, but ‘it’s where my family live’.
‘Don’t worry,’ he continued, ‘they’re all away. You won’t have to meet them.’
‘But I should like to.’
‘Well, you can’t. They’re in London.’

 

 

De Hongaarse dichter en schrijver István Kemény werd geboren op 28 oktober 1961 in Boedapest. Zie ook alle tags voor István Kemény op dit blog.

 

Twintigste eeuw B-versie

Alle wegen leidden naar de dood.
Ik was verrast en wacht slechts:
Rond Rome een donkergroene zone.
Het is makkelijk om de stad mis te lopen
Alle wegen leiden naar de dood
Op hen allemaal karavanen van auto’s

Naaldwouden, gegronde horror
Dit is niet de rand van Rome, zeker niet.
Onder de strada bewoonde holtes
De meeste auto’s gedeukt en smerig
Een hele eeuw heeft zich hier verzameld
Dit is niet de rand van Rome, zeker niet.

De benzine – als ze verstopt is of uitgevloeid –
Kunnen wij hier niet meer bijvullen.
Hier werkt nu wat er al was
Een te voorziene, grijze toer.
Gek geworden jochies bekogelen het konvooi
En deze eeuw begint opnieuw

Alleen zijn de omstandigheden nu slechter
Ik was verbluft en wacht slechts
Alle wegen leiden naar de dood,
Het is makkelijk om de stad te verliezen.
Rond Rome een groene gifzone
Tot de twee oceanen duurt de stad

 

Vertaald door Mischa Andriessen

 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 28^e oktober ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2018 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.