De Spaanse dichter en schrijver Rafael Alberti werd geboren op 16 december 1902 in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz). Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 december 2009.
Einladung zu einer Reise in Tönen
Rameau: Menuett
Auf bald, Blume.
Bis später, Lachen.
Gute Nacht, Anmut.
Wind, guten Tag.
Wenn du mir die Blume gibst,
geb ich dir das Lachen.
Bis später, Anmut.
Auf bald. Wind.
Wenn du mir die Anmut gibst,
geb ich dir den Wind.
Gute Nacht, Blume,
Rose, guten Tag.
Auf bald, Anmut.
Bis später, Wind.
Vertaald door Erwin Walter Palm
Les Anges collégiens
Aucun de nous ne comprenait le secret nocturne des ardoises
ni pourquoi la sphère armillaire s’excitait aussi esseulée quand nous la regardions.
Nous savions seulement qu’une circonférence ne peut pas être ronde
et qu’une éclipse de lune abuse les fleurs
et donne de l’avance à l’horloge des oiseaux.
Aucun de nous ne comprenait quoi que ce fût :
ni pourquoi nos doigts étaient d’encre de Chine,
ni pourquoi le soir ouvrait des compas pour ouvrir à l’aube des livres.
Nous savions seulement qu’une droite peut, à son gré, être courbe ou brisée
et que les étoiles errantes sont des enfants qui ignorent l’arithmétique.
Vertaald door Claude Couffon
Rafael Alberti (16 december 1902 – 27 oktober 1999)
De Franse fabeldichter Pierre Lachambeaudie werd geboren op 16 december 1807 bij Sarlat. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 december 2009.
La Locomotive et le Cheval
Un cheval vit, un jour, sur un chemin de fer
Une machine énorme, à la gueule enflammée .
Aux mobiles ressorts, aux longs flots de fumée.
« En vain, s’écria-t-il, ô fille de l’enfer.
En vain tu voudrais nuire à notre renommée.
Une palme immortelle est promise à nos fronts.
Et toi, sous le hangar, honteuse et délaissée,
Tu pleureras ta gloire en naissant éclipsée.
De vitesse avec moi veux-tu lutter? — Luttons !
Dit la machine; enfin ta vanité me lasse. »
Elle roule, elle roule, et dévore l’espace;
Il galope, il galope, et d’un sabot léger
Il soulève le sable et vole dans la plaine.
Mais il se berce, hélas ! d’un espoir mensonger.
Inondé de sueur, épuisé, hors d’haleine,
Bientôt l’imprudent tombe et termine ses jours ;
Et que fait sa rivale? elle roule toujours.
La routine au progrès veut disputer l’empire ;
Le progrès toujours marche, et la routine expire.
Pierre Lachambeaudie (16 december 1807 – 7 juli 1872)
De Britse schrijver en criticus (Victor Sawdon) V. S. Pritchett werd geboren op 16 december 1900 in Ipswich, Suffolk. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 december 2009.
Uit: Essential Stories (The Sack of Lights)
„No one noticed her as she stood on the curb of Piccadilly Circus, nor guessed that at that moment she could have died of laughter, she was so happy. She wanted to shout to see what would happen, but she laughed instead. A miraculous place as high and polished as a ballroom. The façades of the buildings were tall mirrors framed in gold, speeding lights. “Chucking it about,” she cried out. The crowds did not even hear her in the roar. If she jumped, could she see herself in the mirrors? She jumped, but not high enough. She laughed. Rockets shot up in numbere d showers and exploded noiselessly into brief diagrams of green stars. A tilted bottle dripped beads of wine as red as rail- way signals into a glass and there was the General—Smoke the Army Smoke—standing on a house-top, with a white-hot monocle in his eye, and his cigarette pricking red. Diamonds and pearls and rubies were streamers flying into the Circus and flashed so that people’s faces bobbed up and down like Chinese lanterns.
But below the streaming lights everything was dancing. That was what she noticed. Below it was “Valencia, land of oranges . . .” She sang it out and waved to the cars as they passed. “Valencia . . .” The dark couples of taxis waltzed down dipping to the roll of the tune, and the big dowager cars slipped by, their jewelled bosoms beaming. The young sparking cars darted like dragon-flies—those were the ones she liked, the noisy, erratic ones. The perfume of the dance rose among them. Low horns breathed out flights of warning. The saxophone horns wailed, the jazz engines drummed—how her heart was dancing—and under all was the everlasting undertone, the deep ’cello vibration of the wheels. The ’cello, the voice of movement being born, the voice of the soul. That sound caught her by the waist like a lover. “Valencia . . .” She ran out into the traffic, not to cross the road, but to dance in it!“
V.S. Pritchett ( 16 december 1900 – 20 maart 1997)
De Engelse schrijfster Mary Russell Mitford werd geboren op 16 december 1787 in Alresford, Hampshire. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 december 2009.
Uit: The Widow’s Dog
„One of the most beautiful spots in the north of Hampshire–a part of the country which, from its winding green lanes, with the trees meeting over head-like a cradle, its winding roads between coppices, with wide turfy margents on either side, as if left on purpose for the picturesque and
frequent gipsy camp, its abundance of hedgerow timber, and its extensive tracts of woodland, seems as if the fields were just dug out of the forest, as might have happened in the days of William Rufus–one of the loveliest scenes in this lovely county is the Great Pond at Ashley End.
Ashley End is itself a romantic and beautiful village, struggling down a steep hill to a clear and narrow running stream, which crosses the road in the bottom, crossed in its turn by a picturesque wooden bridge, and then winding with equal abruptness up the opposite acclivity, so that the scattered cottages, separated from each other by long strips of garden ground, the little country inn, and two or three old-fashioned tenements of somewhat higher pretensions, surrounded by their own moss-grown orchards, seemed to be completely shut out from this bustling world, buried in the sloping meadows so deeply green, and the hanging woods so rich in their various tinting, along which the slender wreaths
of smoke from the old clustered chimneys went smiling peacefully in the pleasant autumn air. So profound was the tranquillity, that the slender streamlet which gushed along the valley, following its natural windings, and glittering in the noonday sun like a thread of silver, seemed to the unfrequent visiters of that remote hamlet the only trace of life and motion in the picture.
The source of this pretty brook was undoubtedly the Great Pond, although there was no other road to it than by climbing the steep hill beyond the village, and then turning suddenly to the right, and descending by a deep cart-track, which led between wild banks covered with heath and feathery broom, garlanded with bramble and briar roses, and gay with the purple heath-flower and the delicate harebell,* to a scene even more beautiful and more solitary than the hamlet itself.“
Mary Russell Mitford (16 dcember 1787 – 10 januari 1855)
De Braziliaanse dichter Olavo Bilac werd geboren op 16 december 1865 in Rio de Janeiro. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 december 2009.
VIA LÁCTEA – Soneto XIII
“Ora (direis) ouvir estrelas! Certo
Perdeste o senso!” E eu vos direi, no entanto,
Que, para ouvi-las, muitas vezes desperto
E abro as janelas, pálido de espanto…
E conversamos toda a noite, enquanto
A via-láctea, como um pálio aberto,
Cintila. E, ao vir do sol, saudoso e em pranto,
Inda as procuro pelo céu deserto.
Direis agora: “Tresloucado amigo!
Que conversas com elas? Que sentido
Tem o que dizem, quando estão contigo?”
E eu vos direi: “Amai para entendê-las!
Pois só quem ama pode ter ouvido
Capaz de ouvir e de entender estrelas.”
MILKY WAY – Sonnet XIII
“Well (thou´ll say) hearing stars! Certainly
Thou´ve lost your mind!” And I´ll say to thee, however
That, to hear them, many times I wake
And open the windows, palid in awe…
And we talk all night long, while
The milky way, as an open canopy,
Shines. And, at the coming of the sun, missing and crying,
I still look for them in the desert sky.
Thou´ll now say: “Crazed friend!
What do thou talk to them? What sense
Has what they say, when they are with thee?”
And I´ll say to thou: “Love to understand them!
Because only he who loves may have ears
Capable of hearing and understanding stars.”
Vertaald door Doidimais Brasil
Olavo Bilac (16 december 1865 – 28 december 1918)