De Amerikaanse schrijver Steven Barnes werd geboren op 1 maart 1952 in Los Angeles. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.
Uit: Zulu Heart
„Mali had been first to touch Bilalistan’s shores, her ships piloted by captains and navigators refused by Abyssinia’s royal court. But that kingdom’s Immortal Empress had swiftly grasped the potential of the storied land far to the west, and had claimed ownership. Egypt likewise had sent ships and men, as had half a dozen other peoples. Bitterly they fought. As kingdoms rose and fell in the Old World, so did they in the New.
The derelict’s barnacled ribs shimmered in twenty cubits of crystalline water, not some heroic singularity but merely another of the rivened husks scattered about the sea bottom like broken birds’ nests, once the proud carriages of the bravest sailors the world had ever known. Whether their destroyers’ vessels had flown the flags of their origin or slunk through the islands like sharks in the starlight, death had been the same, the watery graves the same, the end the same: northern Bilalistan belonged to Egypt and Abyssinia alone.
Kai resented the fact that such thoughts had interrupted his swim. This was a time for pleasure, not politics. So despite these waters’ grim history, or the urgency of a mission he dared not share even with his beloved wife, he paddled about like a boy half his age, reveling in the sun and surf.
Kai of Dar Kush had known war, and loss, and twenty-three summers. He was a tall man, so perfectly proportioned that, in repose, he seemed smaller than his actual height. Beardless and smooth-skinned was Kai, of almost weightless carriage, as easily underestimated as a sleeping cobra.
A solid shadow glided beneath him, roiling the water with its passage. Kai blinked his eyes to clarity, bringing into focus the dolphin’s every gray-black digit. Its five cubits of muscle could have shattered him with a flick if it chose, but the creature seemed more inclined merely to float and study him.“
Steven Barnes (Los Angeles, 1 maart 1952)
De Franse schrijver Jean-Edern Hallier werd geboren op 1 maart 1936 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.
Uit: L’enlèvement
« Depuis, je ne pense qu’au Père éternel. J’ai redécouvert la solitude, la solitude orgueilleuse de la Foi. Qu’importe si j’ai fauté : Dieu n’aime que les pécheurs. Comment savoir s’il m’aime ? Perce que tout homme au fond de lui-même vit la souffrance de Jésus -, et se sent abandonné de son père. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani… Sauf qu’au bout de son calvaire, il ne ressuscite pas ; il connaît cette perversion absolue de la mémoire, le redoublement de la vie, et le redoublement plus terrible de la faute. Sa culpabilité, au lieu de s’en libérer, il l’aggrave.. Il porte sans espoir de rémission tous les péchés du monde. Dans un univers partagé entre les possédés et les démons, il a tout juste l’espérance insensée que ces derniers ressuscitent – Angel, mon ange invincible… D’ailleurs, maintenant que je n’ai plus rien à craindre, je lui téléphone tous les matins de mon domicile. Plus de risque d’écoute. La sonnerie retentit longuement dans le vide qu’est devenu ma vie, cette désolation que peuple, seule, la littérature… »
Jean-Edern Hallier (1 maart 1936 – 12 januari 1997)
De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en criticus William Dean Howells werd geboren op 1 maart 1837 in Martinsville, Ohio. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.
From Generation To Generation
Innocent spirits, bright, immaculate ghosts!
Why throng your heavenly hosts,
As eager for their birth
In this sad home of death, this sorrow-haunted earth?
Beware! Beware! Content you where you are,
And shun this evil star
Where we who are doomed to die,
Have our brief being and pass, we know not where or why.
We have not to consent or to refuse;
It is not ours to choose:
We come because we must,
We know not by what law, if unjust or if just.
The doom is on us, as it is on you,
That nothing can undo;
And all in vain you warn:
As your fate is to die, our fate is to be born.
Living
How passionately I will my life away
Which I would give all that I have to stay;
How wildly I hurry, for the change I crave.
To hurl myself into the changeless grave!
William Dean Howells (1 maart 1837 – 11 mei 1920)
De Engelse dichter en vertaler John Byrom werd geboren op 29 februari 1692 in Manchester. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.
My Time, O ye Muses, was happily spent
My Time, O ye Muses, was happily spent,
When Phebe went with me wherever I went;
Ten thousand sweet Pleasures I felt in my Breast:
Sure never fond Shepherd like Colin was blest!
But now she is gone, and has left me behind,
What a marvellous Change on a sudden I find!
When Things were as fine as could possibly be,
I thought ’twas the Spring; but alas! it was she.
John Byrom (29 februari 1692 – 26 september 1763)
De Spaans-Amerikaanse schrijfster en dichteres Mercedes de Acosta werd geboren op 1 maart 1893 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.
Uit: Here Lies the Heart
„He rose from where he was sitting against the wall and came toward me, taking my hand and leading me back to a place beside him against the wall. He did not at first speak to me, allowing me to pull myself together. I was able to look around the hall, but my gaze was drawn to Bhagavan, who was sitting absolutely straight in the Buddha posture looking directly in front of him. His eyes did not blink or in any way move. Because they seemed so full of light I had the impression they were gray. I learned later that they were brown, although there have been various opinions as to the color of his eyes. His body was naked except for a loincloth. I discovered soon after, that this and his staff were absolutely his only possessions. His body seemed firm and as if tanned by the sun, although I found that the only exercise he ever took was a twenty-minute walk every afternoon at five o’clock when he walked on the hill and sometimes greeted yogis who came to prostrate themselves at his feet.
He was a strict vegetarian, but he only ate what was placed before him and he never expressed a desire for any kind of food. As he sat there he seemed like a statue, and yet something extraordinary emanated from him. I had a feeling that on some invisible level I was receiving spiritual shocks from him, although his gaze was not directed toward me. He did not seem to be looking at anything, and yet I felt he could see and was conscious of the whole world.
“Bhagavan is in samadhi,” Guy Hague said.“
Mercedes de Acosta (1 maart 1893 – 9 mei 1968)
Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.
De Mauritiaanse dichter, schrijver en journalist Marcel Cabon werd geboren op 29 februari 1912 in Curepipe. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009.