De Amerikaanse schrijfster Flannery O’Connor werd geboren op 25 maart 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. Zie ook alle tags voor Flannery O’Connor op dit blog.
Uit: Everything That Rises Must Converge
„HER DOCTOR had told Julian’s mother that she must lose twenty pounds on account of her blood pressure, so on Wednesday nights Julian had to take her downtown on the bus for a reducing class at the Y. The reducing class was de-signed for working girls over fifty, who weighed from 165 to 200 pounds. His mother was one of the slimmer ones, but she said ladies did not tell their age or weight. She would not ride the buses by herself at night since they had been integrated, and because the reducing class was one of her few pleasures, necessary for her health, and free, she said Julian could at least put himself out to take her, considering all she did for him. Julian did not like to consider all she did for him, but every Wednesday night he braced himself and took her.
She was almost ready to go, standing before the hall mirror, putting on her hat, while he, his hands behind him, ap-peared pinned to the door frame, waiting like Saint Sebastian for the arrows to begin piercing him. The hat was new and had cost her seven dollars and a half. She kept saying, “Maybe I shouldn’t have paid that for it. No, I shouldn’t have. I’ll take it off and return it tomorrow. I shouldn’t have bought it.”
Julian raised his eyes to heaven. “Yes, you should have bought it,” he said. “Put it on and let’s go.” It was a hideous hat A purple velvet flap came down on one side of it and mood up on the other; the rest of it was green and looked like a cushion with the stuffing out. He decided it was less comical than jaunty and pathetic. Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.
She lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head. Two wings of gray hair protruded on either side of her florid face, but her eyes, sky-blue, were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten. Were it not that she was a widow who had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and who was supporting him still, “until he got on his feet,” she might have been a little girl that he had to take to town. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said. “Let’s go.” He opened door himself and started down the walk to get her going.“
De Franse dichter en schrijver Jacques Bens werd geboren op 25 maart 1931 in Cadolive (Bouches-du-Rhône). Zie ook alle tags voor Jacques Bens op dit blog.
Sonnet
Madame, je vous donne un oiseau pour étrenne
Duquel on ne saurait estimer la valeur ;
S’il vous vient quelque ennui, maladie ou douleur,
Il vous rendra soudain à votre aise et bien saine.
Il n’est mal d’estomac, colique ni migraine
Qu’il ne puisse guérir, mais sur tout il a l’heur
Que contre l’accident de la pâle couleur
Il porte avecque soi la drogue souveraine.
Une dame le vit dans ma main, l’autre jour
Qui me dit que c’était un perroquet d’amour,
Et dès lors m’en offrit bon nombre de monnoie
Des autres perroquets il diffère pourtant :
Car eux fuient la cage, et lui, il l’aime tant
Qu’il n’y est jamais mis qu’il n’en pleure de joie.
Sur la ville de Paris
Rien n’égale Paris ; on le blâme, on le louë ;
L’un y suit son plaisir, l’autre son interest ;
Mal ou bien, tout s’y fait, vaste grand comme il est
On y vole, on y tuë, on y pend, on y rouë.
On s’y montre, on s’y cache, on y plaide, on y jouë ;
On y rit, on y pleure, on y meurt, on y naist :
Dans sa diversité tout amuse, tout plaist,
Jusques à son tumulte et jusques à sa bouë.
Mais il a ses défauts, comme il a ses appas,
Fatal au courtisan, le roy n’y venant pas ;
Avecque sûreté nul ne s’y peut conduire :
Trop loin de son salut pour être au rang des saints,
Par les occasions de pécher et de nuire,
Et pour vivre long-temps trop prés des médecins.
Cadolive (Bouches-du-Rhône)
De Mexicaanse dichter en schrijver Jaime Sabines Gutiérrez werd geboren op 25 maart 1926 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Zie ook alle tags voor Jaime Sabines op dit blog.
(Prose poem)
I love you at ten in the morning, at eleven, and at twelve noon. I love
you with all my soul and with all my body, sometimes, on rainy afternoons.
But at two in the afternoon, or at three, when I begin to think of the two
of us, and you think of dinner or the daily chores, or the amusements you
lack, I begin to hate you silently, with the half of hate that I keep for
myself.
Later I return to love you, when we lie down together and I see that
you’re there for me, that in some way your knee and your belly speak to me,
that my hands convince me of it, and that there is no other place where I
can come and go more easily than your body. You come whole to my seeking,
and we two disappear in an instant, we plunge into the mouth of God, until I
tell you of my hunger or my dream.
Every day I love you and hate you hopelessly. And there are days, there
are hours, in which I don’t know you, in which you are another’s–like the
other woman. Men worry me, I worry myself, my griefs distract me. I probably
don’t think of you too much. You know that. Who could love you less than I,
my love?
Vertaald door Athena Kildegaard
Jaime Sabines (25 maart 1926 – 19 maart 1999)
De Nederlandse cartoonist en striptekenaar Peter van Straaten werd geboren in Arnhem op 25 maart 1935. Zie ook alle tags voor Peter van Straaten op dit blog.
De Amerikaanse schrijfster en sociale activiste Toni Cade Bambara werd als Miltona Mirkin Cade geboren op 25 maart 1939 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Toni Cade Bambara op dit blog.
Uit: The Lesson
„Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. And quite naturally we laughed at her, laughed the way we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her too, hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and stairs so you couldn’t halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask. Miss Moore was her name. The only woman on the block with no first name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky. And she was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin, mostly, who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same apartment then spread out gradual to breathe. And our parents would yank our heads into some kinda shape and crisp up our clothes so we’d be presentable for travel with Miss Moore, who always looked like she was going to church though she never did. Which is just one of the things the grownups talked about when they talked behind her back like a dog. But when she came calling with some sachet she’d sewed up or some gingerbread she’d made or some book, why then they’d all be too embarrassed to turn her down and we’d get handed over all spruced up. She’d been to college and said it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones’ education, and she not even related by marriage or blood. So they’d go for it. Specially Aunt Gretchen. She was the main gofer in the family. You got some ole dumb shit foolishness you want somebody to go for, you send for Aunt Gretchen. She been screwed into the go-along for so long, it’s a blood-deep natural thing with her. Which is how she got saddled with me and Sugar and Junior in the first place while our mothers were in a la-de-da apartment up the block having a good ole time.”
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 25e maart ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag en eveneens mijn eerste blog van vandaag.