De Italiaanse schrijver en vertaler Aldo Busi werd geboren op 25 februari 1948 in Montichiari, Brescia. Zie ook alle tags voor Aldo Busi op dit blog.
Uit: Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman (Vertaald door Ercole Guidi)
“He had called him and now he was telling him he didn’t wish to speak with him or know him because it wasn’t him. He had returned to his rock; he didn’t feel like swimming anymore. He’d have only done it to drown himself.
He felt smothered by that humiliation mixed with the attraction which now, confused, acquired from the refusal an uncontainable acumen that shook his lungs. It was stimulating to be turned down, to be mistaken for another, it had to be admitted. One was forced out of the rite, the brain skidding off the usual tracks of costless renunciations. The sudden hatred, mingled with desire and by now shattered into petty self-justifications, dazed in an unusual way; it called to life.
That afternoon he had been fiddling about what to do, without ever again turning his head toward the place of the offense or turning it elsewhere. The colors plunged into a self-pitying languor, of uncommitted punishments to be given in his mind. He beheld under his fastened eyelids – of himself who had the air of one who’s basking in the sun – the death’s head: it stripped the flesh from his scalp with his own teeth, stripped the flesh off his skull, spit the gray matter to the frogs.
To be able to tear him to pieces! He put on his trousers very slowly; someone asked him mundane explanations as to his leaving so early, and, as he was out of everyone’s view, he started running on the other side of the fence.
He thought he had always been kind and brotherly when he said «no». He knew he wasn’t being sincere.
In the evening he received a phone call from Galeazzo, a cop from Naples, an invitation. He had yet to finish the baths; but he thought that after the inhalations he’d have gone back to the Grotte, see him again, perhaps consume himself in that inconclusive hatred for another week.”
Aldo Busi (Montichiari, 25 februari 1948)
Hier links bij de opname van de film “Mutande pazze” , 1992
De Libanese (Franstalige) schrijver Amin Maalouf werd geboren in Beiroet, Libanon, op 25 februari 1949. Zie ook alle tags voor Amin Maalouf op dit blog.
Uit: In the Name of Identity (Vertaald door Barbara Bray)
“What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself”
(…)
“Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual’s special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.
The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that–the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love.”
Amin Maalouf (Beiroet, 25 februari 1949)
De Britse dichter en schrijver Anthony Burgess werd geboren op 25 februari 1917 in Manchester, Engeland. Zie ook alle tags voor Anthony Burgess op dit blog.
Uit: A Clockwork Orange
“An old man of your age, brother,’ I said, and I started to rip up the book I’d got, and the others did the same with the ones they had, Dim and Pete doing a tug-of-war with The Rhombohedral System. The starry prof type began to creech: ‘But those are not mine, those are the property of the municipality, this is sheer wantonness and vandal work,’ or some such slovos. And he tried to sort of wrest the books back off of us, which was like pathetic. ‘You deserve to be taught a lesson, brother,’ I said, ’that you do.’ This crystal book I had was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to bits, being real starry and made in days when things were made to last like, but I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls of like snowflakes, though big, all over this creeching old veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim just dancing about like the clown he was. ‘There you are,’ said Pete. ‘There’s the mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty reader of filth and nastiness.’
‘You naughty old veck, you,’ I said, and then we began to filly about with him. Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his false zoobies, upper and lower. He threw these down on the pavement and then I treated them to the old boot-crush, though they were hard bastards like, being made of some new horrorshow plastic stuff. The old veck began to make sort of chumbling shooms – ‘wuf waf wof’ – so Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful. So all we did then was to pull his outer platties off, stripping him down to his vest and long underpants (very starry; Dim smecked his head off near), and then Pete kicks him lovely in his pot, and we let him go. He went sort of staggering off, it not having been too hard of a tolchock really, going ‘Oh oh oh’, not knowing where or what was what really, and we had a snigger at him and then riffled through his pockets, Dim dancing round with his crappy umbrella meanwhile, but there wasn’t much in them. There were a few starry letters, some of them dating right back to i96o with ‘My dearest dearest’ in them and all that chepooka, and a keyring and a starry leaky pen.”
Anthony Burgess (25 februari 1917 – 22 november 1993)
Scene uit de film van Stanley Kubrick uit 1971
De Franse dichter Robert Rius werd geboren op 25 februari 1914 in Château-Roussillon. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Rius op dit blog
Uit: Picasso
« LA SCULPTURE DE PLATRE. – Regardez comme je suis belle. J’étais un fil de fer autour duquel le désir s’est cristallisé.
LA SCULPTURE DE BRONZE (rêveuse). – Je suis le souvenir d’une promenade à travers le feu.
LA VITRINE. – J’ai été trop souvent traitée de philosophie aveugle. Je me retire.
UN VIEUX TUBE. – Mes désirs sont assouvis. Ma race crie vengeance.
LA GUITARE. – Vedette des grands jours, ma vogue reviendra-t-elle?
LA CARTE A JOUER. – Fille d’un siphon et d’une marchande de fleurs, je ne suis plus qu’une plante aromatique.
UN MEGOT (se secouant comme un chien). – Moi, je suis une auto garée dans une impasse.
L’ESCALIER. – Ma mère croyait aux miracles. (Il s’étire) … Mon père était ivrogne. Moi, je reçois les confidences.
LE FAUTEUIL. – J’étais femme. On m’a habillé à coups de crayon.
LE POELE. – Un jour l’on m’a endimanché. Depuis, on me regarde et je souffre du froid.
LA BALANCE. – J’aurais bien aimé être autre chose.
LES FENETRES (en chœur). – Comme c’est ennuyeux de rester toujours à la même place. »
Robert Rius (25 februari 1914 – 21 juli 1944)
Portret door Pedro Florès, 1940
De Duitse schrijver Karl May werd geboren op 25 februari 1842 in Hohenstein-Ernstthal. Zie ook alle tags voor Karl May op dit blog.
Die wilde Rose
Es glänzt der helle Thränenthau
In Deinem Kelch, dem todesmatten;
Du sehnst Dich nach des Himmels Blau
Hinaus aus düstrem Waldesschatten.
Es rauscht der Bach am Felsenspalt
Sein melancholisch Lied.
Hier ists so eng, hier ists so kalt,
Wo nie der Nebel flieht.
Du meine süße Himmelslust,
O traure nicht und laß das Weinen!
Dir soll ja stets an treuer Brust
Die Sonne meiner Liebe scheinen.
Drum schließe Deine Augen zu,
Worin die Thränen glühn.
Ja, meine wilde Rose, Du
Sollst nicht im Wald verblühn!
Karl May (25 februari 1842 – 30 maart 1912)
Geboortehuis in Hohenstein-Ernstthal
De Oekraïense dichteres, schrijfster en vertaalster Lesja Oekrajinka werd geboren op 25 februari 1871 in Novograd-Volynsky. Zie ook alle tags voor Lesja Oekrajinka op dit blog.
Why are my words not like steel brightly flashing
Why are my words not like steel brightly flashing
Out in the field where two armies are clashing ?
Why not a sabre whose pitiless blows
Cut off the heads of our bitterest foes ?
You dagger-words, that I tempered and tested,
Gladly I’ll draw from my breast where you rested,
But it is my heart to the purpose applying,
I’ll shape a weapon with sparks from it flying,
Then I shall hang it up high on the wall
Others to gratify, me to appall.
My only weapon, dear words that I cherish,
We must ensure that not both of us perish !
Wielded by brothers we do not yet know,
You may do better in routing the foe.
My blade shall sever the fetters of iron,
Echo aloud in the forts of all tyrants.
Other blades also shall join it to bring
New days when speeches of free men will ring.
Mighty avengers my sword shall inherit,
With it they’ll race to do battle with merit…
Sword, better service go render the brave
Than to my feeble hands you ever gave !
Vertaald door Peter Tempest
Lesja Oekrajinka (25 februari 1871 – 1 augustus 1913)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 25e februari ook mijn drie blogs van 25 februari 2012.