De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en literatuurcriticus Bruce Bawer werd geboren op 31 oktober 1956 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Bruce Bawer op dit blog.
Uit: Gays in the Era of Trump (Artikel in Frontpage Magazine, februari 2017)
“Certainly, given what Islamic immigration has meant for gay people in Europe, you’d think that every half-aware gay American would have cheered Trump’s executive order temporarily blocking entry into the U.S. by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries. In three of those nations, Syria, Somalia, and Libya, being gay is punishable by imprisonment; in three others, Yemen, Sudan, and Iran, it’s a capital offense. (In the seventh, Iraq, homosexuality is technically legal, thanks to the U.S. influence over its post-Saddam constitution, although it’s still not exactly the ideal spot for a gay honeymoon.) And yet on February 4, thousands of gays rallied outside the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village – where the modern gay-rights movement is generally viewed as having begun – to protest the visa ban. These protesters (like the gay idiots of the BDS movement who march in “solidarity” with Palestine) haven’t just been fed lies about Islam; they’ve failed to grasp – yet – that they’re being used by the left to whitewash a “victim group” many of whose members, if given the power, would toss them to their deaths from the tops of buildings.
But this will change. Across Europe, gays have been deserting the left in growing numbers for the so-called “far-right” parties that are standing up to Islam – and they’re making that move because they’ve seen enough of Islam to know that it represents a threat to their very lives. With Islam continuing its dread incursion into the U.S., with President Trump pronouncing the question of same-sex marriage “settled,” and (not least) with the staggeringly popular, flagrantly gay, and passionately pro-Trump Milo Yiannopoulos out there providing young audiences with desperately needed reality checks about Islam and the left, it only makes sense that gay Americans, like their European counterparts, will over time be increasingly suspicious of Islam’s apologists – and increasingly receptive to Trump’s blunt truth-telling about the Religion of Peace.”
Bruce Bawer (New York, 31 oktober 1956)
De USA Gay Pride vlag
De Canadese schrijver Joseph Boyden werd geboren op 31 oktober 1966 in Willowdale, Ontario. Zie ook mijn blog van 31 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Joseph Boyden op dit blog.
Uit: The Orenda
“And when the dogs are within a few minutes of reaching me, I will suddenly begin to feel a warmth creeping. My body will continue its hard seizures, but my toes and fingers and testicles will stop burning. I will begin to feel a sense of, if not comfort, then relief, and my breathing will be very difficult and this will cause panic but that will slowly harden to resolve. And when the dogs are on the lake and racing toward me, jaws foaming and teeth bared, I will know that even this won’t hurt anymore, my eyes frozen shut as I slip into a sleep that no one can awaken from. As the dogs circle me I will try to smile at them, baring my own teeth, too, and when they begin to eat me I won’t feel myself being consumed but will, like You, Christ, give my body so that others might live.
This thought of giving, I now see, lifts me just enough to pick up the girl and begin walking away from the lake’s edge. After all, if she’s alive, won’t her people—my pursuers—consider sparing me? I will
keep her alive, not only because this is what You demand but also to save myself. The thought of betraying Your wishes feels more an intellectual quandary than what I imagine should physically cause my heart to ache, but I’ll worry about that later. For now I follow the others’ footsteps as best I can, my thick black robe catching on the branches and nettles, the bush so thick I wonder how it is that the men I follow, and those who follow me, are not part animal, contain some black magic that gives them abilities beyond what is natural. You seem very far away here in this cold hell, and the Superior’s attempts to prepare me before I left France, before my journey to this new world, seem ridiculous in their naïveté. You will face great danger. You will most certainly face death. You will question Jesus’ mercy, even His existence. This is Lucifer whispering in your ear. Lucifer’s fires are ice.
There is no warming your body and your soul by them. But Superior doesn’t have any idea what true cold is, I realize, as I allow myself and the girl to be swallowed by the darkness of trees that the bitter sun fails to penetrate.”
Joseph Boyden (Willowdale, 31 oktober 1966)
Cover
De Engelse dichter John Keats werd geboren op 31 oktober 1795 in Finsbury Pavement in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor John Keats op dit blog.
Ode on Melancholy
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Ode aan de neerslachtigheid
Ontwring de wrangwortel geen giftige wijn,
ontwijk de Lethe, laat geen scarabee
of doodshoofdvlinder je eigen Psyche zijn,
laat je niet kussen door Persefone,
nachtschades rode druif, op ’t bleke hoofd,
rijg niet je rozenkrans uit taxuszaad
en maak de donzige uil geen deelgenoot
van jouw geheim verdriet: je ziel verdooft
als elke schaduw in de schaduw staat –
daartussen vindt de waakzame angst de dood.
Maar komt zij plotseling uit de hemel vallen,
Neerslachtigheid, als huilbui die de bloemen
knikt maar ook voedt, en legt ze een wade op alle
hellingen met hun prille lentegroenen –
voed je verdriet dan met een morgenroos,
met welige pioenen, met de wieren
die aanspoelen omringd door regenbogen –
of, is je meesteres fantastisch boos,
vang dan haar zachte handen, laat haar tieren
en zwelg diep, diep in haar weergaloze ogen.
Ze woont bij Schoonheid, die ooit dood zal zijn,
en Blijheid, met haar hand steeds aan de lippen
ten afscheid, naast Plezier, ofwel Venijn
zo gauw de bijenmond ervan gaat nippen –
ja, de gesluierde Neerslachtigheid
heeft in het vreugdevolle heiligdom
haar soevereine schrijn, alleen betreden
door wie de druif van Blijheid met zijn tong
te barsten drukt – zijn ziel hangt na die tijd
tussen haar droeve, duistere trofeeën.
Vertaald door Jan Kuijper
John Keats (31 oktober 1795 – 23 februari 1821)
John Keats listening to the Nightingale on Hampstead Heath door Joseph Severn, ca. 1845
De Amerikaanse schrijver Don Winslow werd geboren in New York op 31 oktober 1953. Zie ook alle tags voor Don Winslow op dit blog.
Uit: The Force
“The last guy on earth anyone ever expected to end up in the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Park Row was Denny Malone.
You said the mayor, the president of the United States, the pope—people in New York would have laid odds they’d see them behind bars before they saw Detective First Grade Dennis John Malone.
A hero cop.
The son of a hero cop.
A veteran sergeant in the NYPD’s most elite unit.
The Manhattan North Special Task Force.
And, most of all, a guy who knows where all the skeletons are hidden, because he put half of them there himself.
Malone and Russo and Billy O and Big Monty and the rest made these streets their own, and they ruled them like kings. They made them safe and kept them safe for the decent people trying to make lives there, and that was their job and their passion and their love, and if that meant they worked the corners of the plate and put a little something extra on the ball now and then, that’s what they did.
The people, they don’t know what it takes sometimes to keep them safe and it’s better that they don’t.
They may think they want to know, they may say they want to know, but they don’t.
Malone and the Task Force, they weren’t just any cops on the Job. You got thirty-eight thousand wearing blue, Denny Malone and his guys were the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the 1 percent the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, the best, the baddest.
The Manhattan North Special Task Force.
“Da Force” blew through the city like a cold, harsh, fast and violent wind, scouring the streets and alleys, the playgrounds, parks and projects, scraping away the trash and the filth, a predatory storm blowing away the predators.
A strong wind finds its way through every crack, into the project stairwells, the tenement heroin mills, the social club back rooms, the new-money condos, the old-money penthouses. From Columbus Circle to the Henry Hudson Bridge, Riverside Park to the Harlem River, up Broadway and Amsterdam, down Lenox and St. Nicholas, on the numbered streets that spanned the Upper West Side, Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, if there was a secret Da Force didn’t know about, it was because it hadn’t been whispered about or even thought of yet.”
Don Winslow (New York, 31 oktober 1953)
Cover
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 31e oktober ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.