De Noorse schrijver Johan Harstad werd geboren op 10 februari 1979 in Stavanger. Zie ook alle tags voor Johan Harstad op dit blog.
Uit: 172 Hours on the Moon (Vertaald door Tara F. Chace)
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Mia Nomeland said, giving her parents an unenthusiastic look. “No way.”
“But Mia, honey. It’s an amazing opportunity, don’t you think?”
Her parents were sitting side by side on the sofa, as if glued together, with the ad they had clipped out of the newspaper lying on the coffee table in front of them. Every last corner of the world had already had a chance to see some version of it. The campaign had been running for weeks on TV, the radio, the Internet, and in the papers, and the name NASA was on its way to becoming as well known around the globe as Coca-Cola or McDonald’s.
“An opportunity for what? To make a fool of myself?”
“Won’t you even consider it?” her mother tried. “The deadline isn’t for a month, you know.”
“No! I don’t want to consider it. There’s nothing for me to do up there. There’s something for me to do absolutely everywhere except on the moon.”
“If it were me, I would have applied on the spot,” her mother said.
“Well, I’m sure my friends and I are all very glad that you’re not me.”
“Mia!”
“Fine, sorry. It’s just that I . . . I don’t care. Is that so hard for you to understand? You guys are always telling me that the world is full of opportunities and that you have to choose some and let others pass you by. And that there are enough opportunities to last a lifetime and then some. Right, Dad?”
Johan Harstad (Stavanger, 10 februari 1979)
De Noorse schrijfster en journaliste Åsne Seierstad werd geboren in Oslo op 10 februari 1970. Zie ook alle tags voor Åsne Seierstad op dit blog.
Uit: The Bookseller of Kabul (Vertaald door Ingrid Christophersen)
“She kissed his hand, in the custom of showing respect for an elder relative, and he blessed the top of her head with a kiss. Sonya was aware of the charged atmosphere and flinched under Uncle Sultan’s searching look.
“I have found you a rich man, what do you think of that?” he asked. Sonya looked down at the floor. A young girl has no right to have an opinion about a suitor.
Sultan returned the third day, and this time he made known the suitor’s proposition: a ring, a necklace, earrings, and bracelet, all in red gold; as many clothes as she wanted; 600 pounds of rice, 300 pounds of cooking oil, a cow, a few sheep, and 15 million afghani, approximately $500.
Sonya’s father was more than satisfied with the price and asked to meet this mysterious man who was prepared to pay so much for his daughter. According to Sultan, he even belonged to their tribe, in spite of their not being able to place him or remember that they had ever met him.
“Tomorrow,” said Sultan, “I will show you a picture of him.”
The next day, fortified by a sweetener, Sultan’s aunt agreed to reveal to Sonya’s parents the identity of the suitor. She took a photograph with her—a picture of Sultan Khan himself—and with it the uncompromising message that they had no more than an hour to make up their minds. If the answer was yes, he would be very grateful, and if it was no, there would be no bad blood between them. What he wanted to avoid at all costs was everlasting bargaining about maybe, maybe not.
The parents agreed within the hour. They were keen on Sultan Khan, his money, and his position. Sonya sat in the attic and waited. When the mystery surrounding the suitor had been solved and the parents had decided to accept, her father’s brother came up to the attic. “Uncle Sultan is your wooer,” he said. “Do you consent?”
Åsne Seierstad (Oslo, 10 februari 1970)
De Duitse schrijfster Simone Trieder werd geboren op 10 februari 1959 in Quedlinburg. Zie ook alle tags voor Simone Trieder op dit blog.
Uit: BarCodes
Elisabeth Werkner
Nivea
Jeden Tag lege ich meine
Haut ab wie die
ausgelesene Zeitung
Nicht ohne vorher meine
besten Artikel auszuschneiden
Die Artikel meiner Haut
sind Hinterlassenschaften anderer
Ich sammle nur die guten
Diese Fingerspitze berührte
einen Unterarm
Das Stück Hals
roch wem gut
Diese Haarsträhne lag
auf einem Kaffeelöffel
Die Haut wird hart faltig wund
Immer schwerer findet sich
ein gutes Teil
für meine Hautchronik
Immer öfter verletze ich mich
kaum hebe ich die Hand
Simone Trieder (Quedlinburg, 10 februari 1959)
De Duitse dichter en schrijver Bertolt Brecht werd op 10 februari 1898 in de Zuid-Duitse stad Augsburg geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Bertolt Brecht op dit blog.
Uit: Dreigroschenroman
“Ein Soldat namens George Fewkoombey wurde im Burenkrieg ins Bein geschossen, so daß ihm in einem Hospital in Kaptown der Unterschenkel amputiert werden mußte. Er kehrte nach London zurück und bekam 75 Pfund ausbezahlt, dafür unterzeichnete er ein Papier, worauf stand, daß er keinerlei Ansprüche mehr an den Staat habe. Die 75 Pfund steckte er in eine kleine Kneipe in Newgate, die in letzter Zeit, wie er sich aus den Büchern, kleinen, mit Bleistift geführten, bierf leckigen Kladden, überzeugen konnte, ihre reichlich 40 Schilling abwarf.
Als er in das winzige Hinterzimmer eingezogen war und den Schankbe- trieb zusammen mit einem alten Weib ein paar Wochen geführt hatte, wußte er, daß sein Bein sich nicht besonders rentiert hatte: die Einnahmen blieben erheblich unter 40 Schillingen, obgleich es der Soldat an Höf lichkeit seinen Gästen gegenüber nicht fehlen ließ. Er erfuhr, daß die letzte Zeit durch im Viertel gebaut worden war, so daß die Maurer für Betrieb in der Kneipe gesorgt hatten. Der Bau war aber jetzt fertig und damit war es mit der vielen Kundschaft aus. Der neue Käufer hätte das, wie man ihm sagte, aus den Büchern leicht erkennen können, da die Einnahmen an den Wochentagen entgegen allen Erfahrungen des Gastwirtsgewerbes höher gewesen waren als an den Feiertagen; jedoch war der Mann bisher nur Gast solcher Lokale gewesen und nicht Wirt. Er konnte das Lokal knapp vier Monate halten, umsomehr, als er zuviel Zeit damit verschwendete, den Wohnort des früheren Besitzers ausfindig zu machen, und lag dann mittellos auf der Straße.
Eine Zeitlang fand er Unterkunft bei einer jungen Kriegerfrau, deren Kindern er, während sie ihren kleinen Laden versorgte, vom Kriege er-zählte.“
Bertolt Brecht (10 februari 1898 – 14 augustus 1956)
In 1931
De Russische dichter en schrijver Boris Leonidovich Pasternak werd geboren in Moskou op 10 februari 1890. Zie ook alle tags voor Boris Pasternak op dit blog.
Uit: Doctor Zhivago (Vertaald door Max Hayward and Manya Harari)
“While his mother was alive, Yura did not know that his father had abandoned them long ago, had gone around various towns in Siberia and abroad, carousing and debauching, and that he had long ago squandered and thrown to the winds the millions of their fortune. Yura was always told that he was in Petersburg or at some fair, most often the one in Irbit.
But then his mother, who had always been sickly, turned out to have consumption. She began going for treatment to the south of France or to northern Italy, where Yura twice accompanied her. Thus, in disorder and amidst perpetual riddles, Yura spent his childhood, often in the hands of strangers, who changed all the time. He became used to these changes, and in such eternally incoherent circumstances his father’s absence did not surprise him.
As a little boy, he had still caught that time when the name he bore was applied to a host of different things. There was the Zhivago factory, the Zhivago bank, the Zhivago buildings, a way of tying and pinning a necktie with a Zhivago tie-pin, and even some sweet, round-shaped cake, a sort of baba au rhum, called a Zhivago, and at one time in Moscow you could shout to a cabby: “To Zhivago!” just like “To the devil’s backyard!” and he would carry you off in his sleigh to a fairy-tale kingdom. A quiet park surrounded you. Crows landed on the hanging fir branches, shaking down hoarfrost. Their cawing carried, loud as the crack of a tree limb. From the new buildings beyond the clearing, pure-bred dogs came running across the road. Lights were lit there. Evening was falling.”
Boris Pasternak (10 februari 1890 – 30 mei 1960)
Portret door zijn vader Leonid Pasterrnak. 191
De Joods-Oostenrijks-Britse schrijver Jakov Lind (pseudoniem van Heinz Landwirth) werd geboren in Wenen op 10 februari 1927. Zie ook alle tags voor Jakov Lind dit blog.
Uit: Counting My Steps
“I was born sometime in June ’44. In Ludwigshafen. We had just tied her down, lying deep in the water with coal. It was lunchtime. The alarm seemed like a whistle for lunch break. You could see them against the light blue sky, against the sun. Tiny silver wings fluttered high up in the heavens … A thousand of them. Maybe more. Who can count them? If you see wings fluttering under God’s throne, there is usually no reason for alarm, let them howl hysterically. This time it was different. Nothing seemed to fall from above. The earth itself exploded … the day of judgment has come.
Language was my real problem … I needed language to lift what had dropped into the Danube and Rhine and a few other mainstreams of confusion and misery. I needed a language and the time to find it before I could carry on. I knew an antiquated Austrian, a fluent bargeman’s Dutch, and a few other sentences in every other European language … in ’45 I had difficulties in expressing even the simplest sentence. I couldn’t make plausible what I had to tell. I could talk about the years in Germany but no one could understand.”
Jakov Lind (10 februari 1927 – 17 februari 2007)
Cover
De Surinaamse dichteres Carry-Ann Tjong-Ayong werd op 10 februari 1941 in Paramaribo, Suriname geboren Zie ook alle tags voor Carry-Ann Tjong-Ayong op dit blog.
De sterren boren gaten in mijn brein
De sterren boren gaten in mijn brein
als laserstralen branden ze een doorgang tot mijn denken
doorboord ben ik doorzeefd als een vergiet
zo een met grijze wolkjes die aan het keukenhaakje
thuis bij oma hing te wachten tot de natte sla
weer koelte brengen kwam
nu stromen door mijn hoofd de malse regenbuien
en hoor ik verre donder door de gaten
een bliksemschicht tracht zich een toegang te verschaffen
maar schampt de kanten scheef gemikt
maar als de avond valt komen
de glimwormpjes in grote zwermen en dansen zich een weg
door mijn geteisterd schedeldak, zie ik het licht, ben ik verlicht en weer
van zorgen vrij
Carry-Ann Tjong-Ayong (Paramaribo, 10 februari 1941)
Hier met André Mosis (links)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 10e februari ook mijn blog van 10 februari 2013 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.