De Nederlandse dichter Louis de Bourbon werd geboren in Renkum op 27 december 1908. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 december 2010.
Laus Brabantiae
Ik houd van het Brabantse land
door de eeuwen geteisterd, gehard,
als een phoenix verrijst uit den brand
rees zijn schoonheid uit rampspoed en smart.
Door geen legers van geuzen geknecht
maar versomberd van eeuwen in rouw,
gebeten op vrijheid en recht
maar zijn God en zijn Heren getrouw.
Land van vennen en wouden en wei,
rivieren, moerassen en zand,
Peel, land van Maas, Meierij
en het eenzame Kempenland.
Land van Altena, Biesbos, Breda,
oude zetels van adellijken roem,
schoon is elk oord waar ik ga,
gewijd elke naam die ik noem.
Heeft de dood weer uw akkers gekleurd?
Zijn uw steden en dorpen gewond?
Wie geknield en in deemoed treurt,
diens traan vindt een vruchtbaren grond.
Wie weet, dat geen lot wordt volbracht
in dit donkere dal van den tijd,
wie gelooft en wie hoopt, die wacht
op het licht van de eeuwigheid.
Ik houd van dit Brabantse volk,
van dit land tussen Schelde en Maas.
Zij de dienstmaagd des Heren zijn tolk
en het Goddelijk Kind zijn solaes.
Louis de Bourbon (27 december 1908 – 8 januari 1975)
De Zwitserse dichteres en schrijfster Mariella Mehr werd geboren op 27 december 1947 in Zürich. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 december 2010.
Schlafen, sagst du
Schlafen, sagst du,
eine gute Zeit
wenn die Flut den
Moder wegschwemmt
und so meinem Leben
zur Welt verhilft.
Schlafen, sage ich,
Jahre und jahrelang
schlief ich nicht mehr,
träumte wach,
dass jeder Weg
in den Sog des Wassers
zurückführt.
Und wirklich, die Wasserlast
zwang meine Augen zu tragen,
was ihnen zusteht:
das Nichts.
Rot wie die Nacht um uns,
an der selbst der Mond zerschellt.
Keine Heiterkeit in diesem Rot,
kein Hohn.
Du weisst, in jeder Heiterkeit
wäre nur Lüge zu entdecken,
die schütteren Tentakel der Illusion.
Weshalb kehrt keiner
mit mir ins Meer zurück,
um die Dinge zu richten,
die nicht in der Macht
der Engel stehen?
Mariella Mehr (Zürich, 27 december 1947)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Louis Bromfield werd geboren op 27. Dezember 1896 in Mansfield, Ohio. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 december 2010.
Uit: The Green Bay Tree
“ONE late afternoon in April, nineteen thirteen, when the trees in the garden were all feathery and soft with the first green of the Gallic springtime, Madame Gigon sat in her chair by the door of the long drawing-room bidding her guests good-by, one by one, as they left her usual Thursday salon. The drawing-room, owing to the sharp slope of the ground upon which the house was built, lay below the surface of the Rue Raynouard on the garden side of the house so that the guests leaving were forced to climb a long flight of stairs that led up to the street door. The stairway, opening directly into the drawing-room, provided a long, high vista leading up to a door, itself noticeable by its very insignificance. It was one of the charming features of the house that on the street side it was but one story high with a single door and a row of high windows which betrayed no hint of the beauty and space within its walls. On the garden side, however, the house presented a beautiful façade some three stories high, constructed of Caen stone and designed in the best manner of the eighteenth century. Lenôtre himself was said to have had a hand in the planning of the terraces and the pavilion that stood at a little distance completely embowered by shrubs and covered by a canopy made of the broad green leaves of plane trees. The house, after a fashion, turned its back upon the world, concealing its beauties from the eye of the random passerby, preserving them for the few who were admitted by the humble and unpretentious door that swung open upon the cobble stones of the Rue Raynouard. To the world it showed the face of a petite bourgeoise. To its friends it revealed the countenance of an eighteenth century marquise. And this fact had influenced for more than a century and a half the character of its tenants. The prosperous chocolate manufacturer abandoned it for the German palace in the Avenue de Jena for the very reason that Lily Shane seized it the moment it fell vacant. It was no sort of a house for on one who desired the world to recognize his success and the character of his life, but it was an excellent house in which to live quietly, even secretly. It stood isolated in the very midst of Paris.”
Louis Bromfield (27 december 1896 – 18 maart 1956)
De Amerikaanse schrijver en essayist Wilfrid Sheed werd geboren op 27 december 1930 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 27 december 2010. Wilfied Sheed overleed op 19 januari van dit jaar op 80-jarige leeftijd.
Uit: The House That George Built
“So the parents went into hock and found room for the damn thing someplace, and artistic Darwinism did the rest. You buy a piano for Ira Gershwin, and George is the one who plays it, although sometimes you had to live through a week of hell to learn this. As anyone knows who has ever housed a child and a piano, every tot who walks through the door will bang the bejesus out of the new toy for a few minutes, get bored, and come back, and back again, and bang some more, but then successively less and less until the dust starts to move in and claim it. . . . Unless the child finds something interesting in the magic box, a familiar tune that stammers to life under his fingers, or a promising and unfamiliar one; a chord that sounds good, and rolls out into a respectable arpeggio as well, with, saints be praised, a bass line that actually works for a bar or two—after which a gifted kid with an instrument is like a teenager with his first car and a tank full of gas. Where to, James: Charleston, Chattanooga, or Kalamazoo? Two-steps, or concertos, or parts unknown?
“Well, he’ll probably settle down eventually,” hoped the parents who had only bought the thing for the sake of respectability and maybe for some civilized graces around here. It speaks wonders for those parents in that era that they knew that being a famous lawyer or doctor wasn’t enough in life. If you weren’t a person of cultivation, you were still a bum.
But some of the kids insisted on being bums anyway, and sometimes the piano only made them worse. There were low-life uses for the instrument as well as high, and all the classical music lessons the parents could shout for weren’t always enough to keep Junior out of the gutter, especially once ragtime had come along, in Frank Loesser’s phrase, “to fill the gutters in gold.” Talk about subversive —not even Elvis Presley rolling his hips had as many parents and preachers up and howling and sending for the exorcism unit as ragtime did.”
Wilfrid Sheed (27 december 1930 – 19 januari 2011)