De Nederlandse schrijver, dichter en vertaler Louis Th. Lehmannwerd geboren op 19 augustus 1920 in Rotterdam. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Louis Th. Lehmann op dit blog.
Bij het bericht dat er weer een uit is
In een onderaards gewelf
in de tuin van Vestdijk zelf,
waar geen Doornaar hen kan zoeken,
zitten, schrijvend Vestdijks boeken,
negenhonderd negerslaven
(allen met bijzondere gaven).
En als Vestdijk soms eens niet
(wat sporadisch slechts geschiedt)
zelf ook nijver zit te schrijven,
loopt hij langs de noeste lijven,
in zijn listge ijzren greep
kwispelt stil de denkerszweep.
Ode aan de Middellandse Zee
Varend op de zee der zeeën
met dolfijnen om de boeg,
Aan mijn linkerhand Saguntum
en Carthago ergens rechts,
zie’k Majorca, paars en roze.
Hier alleen zijn wel de golven
glazen huizen voor de vissen,
en de mensen staan in boten,
boten klein als vruchtenschillen,
treffen vissen thuis en zaaien
’s nachts de vonken op de zee.
Louis Th. Lehmann (Rotterdam, 19 augustus 1920)
De Engelse schrijver Jonathan Coe werd geboren op 19 augustus 1961 in Birmingham. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2007 en ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2008 en eveneens mijn blog van 19 augustus 2009 en ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2010
Uit: The House of Sleep
“The group of four strangers sitting at her table may or may not have asked permission to join her. Sarah couldn’t remember. Now, an argument seemed to be developing, but she did not hear what was being said, although she was conscious of their voices, rising and falling in angry counterpoint. What she heard and saw inside her head was, at that moment, more real. A single, venomous word. Eyes blazing with casual hatred. A sense that she had not so much been spoken to, as spat upon. An encounter which had lasted–two seconds?–less?–but which she had now been replaying, involuntarily, in her memory for more than half an hour. Those eyes; that word; there would be no getting rid of them, not for a while. Even now, as the voices around her grew louder and more animated, she could feel another wave of panic swell inside her. She closed her eyes, suddenly weak with nausea.
Would he have attacked her, she wondered, if the High Street had not been so busy? Dragged her into a doorway? Torn at her clothes?
She raised her mug of coffee, held it a few inches from her mouth, looked down at it. She stared at its oily surface, which was shimmering perceptibly. She clasped the mug tighter. The liquid steadied. Her hands were no longer shaking. The moment passed.
Another possibility: had it all been a dream?
‘Pinter!’ was the first word of the argument to catch her attention. She willed herself to look across at the speaker and concentrate”
.
Jonathan Coe (Birmingham, 19 augustus 1961)
De Amerikaanse dichter Li-Young Lee werd geboren op 19 augustus 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesië. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2007 en ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2008 en ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2009 en ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2010
Early In The Morning
While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher’s ink.
She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.
My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.
But I know
it is because of the way
my mother’s hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.
Pillow
There’s nothing I can’t find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.
Everything but sleep.
And night is a river bridging
the speaking and listening banks,
a fortress, undefended and inviolate.
There’s nothing that won’t fit under it:
fountains clogged with mud and leaves,
the houses of my childhood.
And night begins when my mother’s fingers
let go of the thread
they’ve been tying and untying
to touch toward our fraying story’s hem.
Night is the shadow of my father’s hands
setting the clock for resurrection.
Or is it the clock unraveled, the numbers flown?
Ther’s nothing that hasn’t found home there:
discarded wings, lost shoes, a broken alphabet.
Everything but sleep. And night begins
with the first beheading
of the jasmine, its captive fragrance
rid at last of burial clothes.
Li-Young Lee (Jakarta, 19 augustus 1957)
De Amerikaanse dichter Frederic Ogden Nash werd geboren in Rye, New York, op 19 augustus 1902. Zie ook mijn blog van 19 augustus 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Ogden Nash op dit blog.
So Does Everybody Else, Only Not So Much
O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh and clerge, For I wish to be purged of an urge. It is an irksome urge, compounded of nettles and glue, And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view. It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental larder lardless, And it consists not of “Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” but of “I know you’ve heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I’m going to tell it to you again regardless,” Yes I fear I am living beyond my mental means. When I realize that it is not only anecdotes that I reiterate but what is far worse, summaries of radio programs and descriptions of caroons in newspapers and magazines. I want to resist but I cannot resist recounting the bright sayins of celebrities that everybody already is familiar with every word of; I want to refrain but cannot refrain from telling the same audience on two successive evenings the same little snatches of domestic gossip about people I used to know that they have never heard of. When I remember some titlating episode of my childhood I figure that if it’s worth narrating once it’s worth narrating twice, in spite of lackluster eyes and dropping jaws, And indeed I have now worked my way backward from titllating episodes in my own childhood to titillating episodes in the childhood of my parents or even my parents-in-laws, And what really turns my corpuscles to ice, I carry around clippings and read them to people twice. And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don’t want to do it but I can’t help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner, And the prospects for my future social life couldn’t possibly be barrener. Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn’t be barrener?
Ogden Nash (19 augustus 1902 – 19 mei 1971)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e augustus ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.