De Franse schrijver Jean-Edern Hallier werd geboren op 1 maart 1936 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Zie ook alle tags voor Jean-Edern Hallier op dit blog.
Uit: Bréviaire pour une jeunesse déracinée
« Aujourd’hui, en mon train endiablé, quand je me retourne, je vois d’autres enfants qui me poursuivent, et se rapprochent. L’un me ressemble singulièrement, avec ses yeux verts, sa mèche noire. Il me fait plus peur que les autres, avec son air de farouche détermination. Lui, est sans pitié. A sa moue dédaigneuse, à son regard perdu et fixe de voyant, je reconnais qui je fus – et qui je redeviens, quand je m’évade de la société des hommes pour travailler à l’un de mes livres. O solitudes enchantées ! Ma force d’oubli se déverse souvent en un havre de grâce, un vert paradis où le temps se gonfle, reprenant sa capillarité perdue, sa subjectivité, et ce rêve habité de réel. Elle est partie. Quoi ? L’Eternité. La voici retrouvée. »
Jean-Edern Hallier (1 maart 1936 – 12 januari 1997)
De Mauritiaanse dichter, schrijver en journalist Marcel Cabon werd geboren op 29 februari 1912 in Curepipe. Zie ook alle tags voor Marcel Cabon op dit blog.
Uit: Namasté
« Toujours il avait aimé à apprendre.Ce qu’il y a sous le ciel et ce qu’il y a dans les livres.Ce que les gens ont à dire.
A Bras d’Eau, l’huile était aux trois quarts consumée dans la lampe qu’il lisait encore.
-Viens dormir,lui disait sa mère.
Mais Ram n’entendait pas ou faisait la sourde oreille.Dormir quand il était en plein ciel,avec les dieux et les déesses?Dormir quand sur le champ de Dharma, le saint champ de Kuru, les hommes de Dhristarâshtra et les fils de Pându s’assemblaient, brûlants de combattre?
La crainte venait à la pauvrette qu’il ne tombât malade, que son sang ne tarît, comme l’huile dans la lampe.
A la classe du maraz, il était le premier arrivé.Et cette classe-lâ se faisait après le repas du soir, alors que les étoiles cheminaient déjà.
Homme, Ram se souvenait encore, – et ses yeux riaient à ce souvenir – de ce livre que vantait le maître (on y parlait des frasques d’Hanoumane), et qui se vendait à Flacq, chez le bijoutier.
Il avait douze ans,alors.Pas plus haut que ça.Pourtant, sou après sou, il avait acquis un petit pécule.Et un matin, il s’était mis en route, au chant du coq.
-Où vas-tu, Ram?
-Je reviens tout de suite.
Il s’en allait pour la moitié de la journée.
Qu’il était heureux! Et que la lune descendante était belle! Que l’odeur de la terre était pénétrante!Jamais encore la nuit qui s’achève ne lui semblerait aussi belle. »
Marcel Cabon (29 februari 1912 – 31 januari 1972)
De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en criticus William Dean Howells werd geboren op 1 maart 1837 in Martinsville, Ohio. Zie ook alle tags voor William Dean Howells op dit blog.
Vision
Within a poor man’s squalid home I stood:
The one bare chamber, where his work-worn wife
Above the stove and wash-tub passed her life,
Next the sty where they slept with all their brood.
But I saw not that sunless, breathless lair,
The chamber’s sagging roof and reeking floor;
The smeared walls, broken sash, and battered door;
The foulness and forlornness everywhere.
I saw a great house with the portals wide
Upon a banquet room, and, from without,
The guests descending in a brilliant line
By the stair’s statued niches, and beside
The loveliest of the gemmed and silken rout
The poor man’s landlord leading down to dine.
Tomorrow
Old fraud, I know you in that gay disguise,
That air of hope, that promise of surprise:
Beneath your bravery, as you come this way,
I see the sordid presence of Today;
And I shall see there, before you are gone,
All the dull Yesterdays that I have known.
William Dean Howells (1 maart 1837 – 11 mei 1920)
Op 18-jarige leeftijd
De Amerikaanse schrijver Steven Barnes werd geboren op 1 maart 1952 in Los Angeles. Zie ook alle tags voor Steven Barnes op dit blog.
Uit: Shadow Valley
“Whatever the truth might be, a second disaster soon struck. From the south came the Mk*tk, brutal men who killed many and even stole three of the sacred dream dancers. The bloody war had almost undone the Ibandi.If Hot Tree’s daughter had not brought her here to Water boma, Tree did not know what might have become of her.
Much had changed since then. Sky Woman, the girl who had earned her name by climbing Great Sky, had fled north with half the tribe, accompanied by her lover, Frog Hopping, who had climbed Great Sky with her in search of wisdom. Some said he was a mighty hunter, but Tree had never been impressed by Frog. Both his elder brothers, greater providers by far, had died on the great mountain, but their widows, Ember and Flamingo, had traveled north with Frog.
Hot Tree inhaled deeply. The afternoon air reeked of burnt grass. She stood just outside the boma’s bamboo gate at the edge of the wide blackened zone singed every moon to deny hiding space to leopards. Beyond that dark space, grass grew knee- high, and beyond that the plain was broken by round and flat- topped trees and dusky scrub ranging out to a thinly ridged northern horizon. The air smelled of dust and burnt thornbush.
Her old eyes could just barely distinguish a hyena’s brownish- gray pelt, lurking a spear’s throw from the edge of the blackened zone.
Another four or five spear casts distant loped three giraffes, two adults and one calf half the height of its parents. Even as she watched, they dissolved into the shimmering air, much like the cloud creatures the strange boy Frog had so often babbled of.”
Steven Barnes (Los Angeles, 1 maart 1952)
De Spaans-Amerikaanse schrijfster en dichteres Mercedes de Acosta werd geboren op 1 maart 1893 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Mercedes de Acosta op dit blog.
Uit: Here Lies the Heart
“Imoved near Bhagavan, sitting at his feet and facing him. Guy was right. Not long after this Bhagavan opened his eyes. He moved his head and looked directly down at me, his eyes looking into mine. It would be impossible to describe this moment and I am not going to attempt it. I can only say that at this second I felt my inner being raised to a new level-as if, suddenly, my state of consciousness was lifted to a much higher degree. Perhaps in this split second I was no longer my human self but the Self. Then Bhagavan smiled at me. It seemed to me that I had never before known what a smile was. I said, “I have come a long way to see you.”
There was silence. I had stupidly brought a piece of paper on which I had written a number of questions I wanted to ask him. I fumbled for it in my pocket, but the questions were already answered by merely being in his presence. There was no need for questions or answers. Nevertheless, my dull intellect expressed one.
“Tell me, whom shall I follow-what shall I follow? I have been trying to find this out for years by seeking in religions, in philosophies, in teachings.” Again there was silence. After a few minutes, which seemed to me a long time, he spoke.”
Mercedes de Acosta (1 maart 1893 – 9 mei 1968)