De Franse dichter en schrijver Jean Genet werd geboren op 19 december 1910 in Parijs. Zie ook alle tags voor Jean Genet op mijn blog.
Uit: Querelle de Brest
“Pour la première fois Querelle embrassait un homme sur la bouche. Il lui semblait se cogner le visage contre un miroir réfléchissant sa propre image, fouiller de la langue l’intérieur figé d’une tête de granit. Cependant, cela étant un acte d’amour, et d’amour coupable, il sur qu’il commettait le mal. […] Les deux bouches restèrent soudées, les langues en contact aigu ou écrasé, ni l’une ni l’autre n’osant se poser sur les joues rugueuses où le baiser eût été signe de tendresse.
(…)
“L’idée de meurtre évoque souvent l’idée de mer, de marins. Mer et marins ne se présentent pas alors avec la précision d’une image, le meurtre plutôt fait en nous l’émotion déferler par vagues. Si les ports sont le théâtre répété de crimes l’explication en est facile que nous n’entreprendrons pas, mais nombreuses sont les chroniques où l’on apprend que l’assassin était un navigateur, faux ou vrai et s’il est faux le crime en a de plus étroits rapports avec la mer. L’homme qui revêt l’uniforme de matelot n’obéit pas à la seule prudence. Son déguisement relève du cérémonial présidant toujours à l’exécution des crimes concertés. Nous pouvons d’abord dire ceci : qu’il enveloppe de nuées le criminel ; il le fait se détacher d’une ligne d’horizon où la mer touchait au ciel ; à longues foulées onduleuses et musclées il le fait s’avancer sur les eaux, personnifier la Grande-Ourse, l’Etoile Polaire ou la Croix du Sud ; il (nous parlons toujours de ce déguisement et du criminel) il le fait remonter de continents ténébreux où le soleil se lève et se couche, où la lune permet le meurtre sous des cases de bambous, près des fleuves immobiles chargés d’alligators ; il lui accorde d’agir sous l’effet d’un mirage, de lancer son arme alors qu’un de ses pieds repose encore sur une plage océanienne si l’autre déroule son mouvement au-dessus des eaux vers l’Europe ; il lui donne d’avance l’oubli puisque le marin “revient de loin” ; il le laisse considérer les terriens comme des plantes. Il berce le criminel. Il l’enveloppe dans le plis, étroits du maillot, amples du pantalon. Il l’endort. Il endort la victime déjà fascinée.”
Jean Genet in 1939
De Amerikaanse schrijver en radiopresentator Michelangelo Signorile werd geboren op 19 december 1960 in Jersey Brooklyn, New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Michelangelo Signorile op dit blog.
Uit: Hitting Hard (Rome’s Sex Summit)
“Who’d have thought that the Pope would ever call an emergency meeting in Rome of the American cardinals to discuss the topic of sex? Sure, the issues that have forced the Vatican to make this extraordinary move, we’ve been told through much of the media, are pedophilia and sexual abuse. But under the surface it’s also–if not more so–about consensual sex: sex by supposedly celibate priests, and yes, often of the homosexual variety. By now everyone’s heard about the swinging Father Shanley, a priest with a sexually abusive past who was shuffled around from archdiocese to= archdiocese with Boston’s Cardinal Law’s blessings, left the Boston archdiocese with Cardinal Law’s blessings, only to head out to Palm Springs, where he opened up a clothing-optional gay resort spa, all while he got a check from the church. (Church officials thought he was out there in the desert tending to his allergies.) Turns out he’s been living for some time now with what appears to be a much younger boyfriend.
The Shanley case shines a bright light on an uncomfortable aspect of the crisis. The vast majority of the cases of abuse we’ve seen in the media over the past several months have been male-on-male, and not between priests and little boys but between priests and teenagers; often the abuser has been gay-identified. Some conservatives–yes, admittedly, even including some among that loathsome bunch at the National Review–have been right when they have pointed out that many of these men thus are not pedophiles as much as they are simply gay men in the priesthood (which some observers have speculated could be up to 50 percent gay) who struggle like their straight counterparts to keep the celibacy vow, and who wind up looking for the easiest venue for sex. And defensive liberal and openly gay pundits have been too quick to dismiss that observation, fearful of where it might lead.”
De Amerikaanse schrijver en musicus Tristan Egolf werd geboren op 19 december 1971 in San Lorenzo del Escorial in Spanje. Zie ook alle tags voor Tristan Egolf op dit blog.
Uit: Skirt and the Fiddle
“A beat-up Timberland stomped into view. I jolted.
My rivulet died underfoot.
The Timberland shifted, edged into profile. Stricken, I locked to its gravel-torn shank and panned up from there, imploring Jesus-over an ankle chain, stonewashed pant cuffs, a windburned kneecap, a nickel-plated Harley buckle, ring around the armpit, an undersize wife-beater, airbrushed, reading: speak english or die-to a Bryl-maned, acne-pitted, craven-pallored bristle-snout with Ecto-mullet, dagger ring and service-station cap included. From there, back, for the overall picture: Postcard from Honky Town, 1984.
Sneering, he made his way to a seat and flopped down, akimbo-package on parade … He sucked down four long gulps of Schlitz, pitched the can and swiveled around-belching through foam-lined catfish lip growth, cussing to himself, glaring at the rail map, lighting a smoke with his butane knuckle bar, scowling at the tramp, plugging one nostril, craning his neck, snapping it, groaning, hawking phlegm, then cussing some more …
I gazed in wide wonder the whole way through.
What came next, Krishnas in Kevlar?
Set to write him off as a fluke when the doors slid open and three more appeared. Two males, one otherwise. Slamming a bottle of Old Crow. All a decade out of element-foul, mean, tough and nasty …
I shot to attention, concerned by now.
Okay, go easy-no cause for alarm. Hessians in Philth Town. Not unheard of …
Yet the next station brought four more of them. Soon to be joined by a pair at Elkins. Then a whole crowd farther on. Inexplicable: Keystone Dutch retrogression en masse. The car began to stink like a tractor pull in a heat wave … I kept wondering what kind of hole in time had spat forth on the sly. But more importantly-and this with a growing sense of dread-where these people were going? No one had gotten off the train yet, and there were only five more stops on the line. There was really nothing cooking in this part of town; after a certain point on the southbound, the area was no longer even residential-just storage lots and warehouse facilities. The only public venue was the Civic Center, and that’s where I was going. So where did that leave these freaks? My agent wouldn’t have let this happen. He wouldn’t have dared, not with my record. Surely it had to be something else-some aberrant, regional faction in transit ..”
De Deense schrijver, dichter, fotograaf en componist Jens Fink-Jensen werd geboren op 19 december 1956 in Kopenhagen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jens Fink-Jensen op dit blog.
The Sea of Dreams
1
The sea has caught fire
Floating gold washing up on the beach
The sunshades stretching to cover this miracle
As best they can
Soon the sun will disappear in the waves
The fire will die out
And the gold will be found
In the dreams of thousands
2
The sea gnawing at the coast
Sand tumbling down the cliff
Encapsulated time atomised
Petrifaction broken
A glimpse of eternity
So short
That all I’ve time to say
Is
I’m here
Vertaald door Sheema Kalbasi
De Nederlandse dichteres Hanny Michaelis werd geboren in Amsterdam op 19 december 1922. Zie ook alle tags voor Hanny Michaelis op dit blog.
Ergens in huis
Ergens in huis
slaat hard een deur dicht
en even wankelt
de kleine giraffe
van vrolijk oranje plastic.
Geschenk van een 6-jarig
jongetje dat pendelend
tussen ontredderde ouders
zijn lot onbegrijpelijk
blijmoedig draagt.
Op een weg tussen de weiden
Op een weg tussen de weiden
– geen mens te zien, alleen
wat eenden slapend weggedoken
in het gras, en de lichten
van verspreide boerderijen
wedijverend met de avondster –
raakt vrede mijn ogen aan.
Maar in mijn binnenste
wroet heimwee rusteloos
naar resten van een vroeger
leven toen iemand mij
in zijn armen terugdroeg
naar de stilte van voor
het begin, onvoorzien
overgegaan in de stilte
van na het einde.
De Italiaanse schrijver Italo Svevo (pseudoniem van Aron Hector Schmitz) werd geboren op 19 december 1861 in Triëst. Zie ook alle tags voor Italo Svevo op mijn blog
Uit: Zeno’s Conscience (Vertaald door Berye de Zoete)
“For several weeks I suffered from a violent sore throat accompanied by fever. The doctor ordered me to stay in bed and to give up smoking entirely. I remember being struck by that word entirely, which the fever made more vivid. I saw a great void and no means of resisting the fearful oppression which emptiness always produces.
When the doctor had left, my father, who was smoking a cigar, stayed on a little while to keep me company (my mother had already been dead some years). As he was going away he passed his hand gently over my feverish brow and said:
“No more smoking, mind!”
I was in a state of fearful agitation. I thought: “As it’s so bad for me I won’t smoke any more, but first I must have just one last smoke.” I lit a cigarette and at once all my excitement died down, though the fever seemed to get worse, and with every puff at the cigarette, my tonsils burned as if a firebrand had touched them. I smoked my cigarette solemnly to the end as if I were fulfilling a vow. And though it caused me agony, I smoked many more during that illness. My father would always come and go, always with a cigar in his mouth, and say from time to time: “Bravo! A few days more of no smoking and you will be cured!”
Italo Svevo (19 december 1861 – 13 september 1928)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e december ook mijn blog van 19 december 2011 deel 2.