De Vlaamse dichter en beeldhouwer Marcel van Maele werd geboren in Brugge op 10 april 1931. Zie ook alle tags voor Marcel van Maele op dit blog.
Met mijn dood sterft alles mee
Met mijn dood sterft alles mee
ook wat overblijft:
een vruchteloos debat,
een boek – vol woorden ter verduidelijking-,
een grijns.
Ik ken verduiveld goed de grens tussen drift en durf,
daarom ligt mijn hand op de wekker,
-nee, ik speel niet mee-
ook niet met een nouveau nouveau roman.
Ik,
het resultaat van wat is en wat was,
blijf nooit mezelf
dat is in beweging zijn
terwijl pijn aan de stilte knaagt.
En verder drijven met kristal verbazing,
de rinkeling, de wekker,
de vragen weken of ontwijken, en aanvaarden
hartstochtelijk de klappen van de zweep.
Klappertandend geduld,
ik sla de fles aan scherven.
Marcel van Maele (10 april 1931 – 24 juli 2009)
De Engelse schrijver en essayist William Hazlitt werd geboren op 10 april 1778 in Maidstone. Zie ook alle tags voor William Hazlitt op dit blog.
Uit:From The Round Table
“THE STUDY of the Classics … teaches us to believe that there is something really great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile fear, which bows only to present power and upstart authority … We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed, either a real love of excellence, or a belief that any excellence exists superior to their own. Everything is brought down to the vulgar level of their own ideas and pursuits. Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men, and which degenerates into obstinate prejudice or petulant fickleness of opinion, according to the natural sluggishness or activity of their minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the first opinions they have struck out for themselves, and inaccessible to conviction; or else (the dupes of their own vanity and shrewdness) are everlasting converts to every crude suggestion that presents itself, and the last opinion is always the true one. Each successive discovery flashes upon them with equal light and evidence, and every new fact overturns their whole system. It is among this class of persons, whose ideas never extend beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find partizans, who are very honest men, with a total want of principle, and who unite the most hardened effrontery and intolerance of opinion, to endless inconsistency and self-contradiction.”
William Hazlitt (10 april 1778 – 18 september 1830)
Portret door John Hazlitt, 1830
De Amerikaanse schrijver Lew Wallace werd geboren in Brookville, Indiana, op 10 april 1827. Zie ook alle tags voor Lew Wallace op dit blog.
Uit: Ben-Hur
“For two hours the dromedary swung forward, keeping the trot steadily and the line due east. In that time the traveller never changed his position, nor looked to the right or left. On the desert, distance is not measured by miles or leagues, but by the saat, or hour, and the manzil, or halt: three and a half leagues fill the former, fifteen or twenty-five the latter; but they are the rates for the common camel. A carrier of the genuine Syrian stock can make three leagues easily. At full speed he overtakes the ordinary winds. As one of the results of the rapid advance, the face of the landscape underwent a change. The Jebel stretched along the western horizon, like a pale-blue ribbon. A tell, or hummock of clay and cemented sand, arose here and there. Now and then basaltic stones lifted their round crowns, outposts of the mountain against the forces of the plain; all else, however, was sand, sometimes smooth as the beaten beach, then heaped in rolling ridges; here chopped waves, there long swells. So, too, the condition of the atmosphere changed. The sun, high risen, had drunk his fill of dew and mist, and warmed the breeze that kissed the wanderer under the awning; far and near he was tinting the earth with faint milk-whiteness, and shimmering all the sky.
Two hours more passed without rest or deviation from the course. Vegetation entirely ceased. The sand, so crusted on the surface that it broke into rattling flakes at every step, held undisputed sway. The Jebel was out of view, and there was no landmark visible. The shadow that before followed had now shifted to the north, and was keeping even race with the objects which cast it; and as there was no sign of halting, the conduct of the traveller became each moment more strange.
No one, be it remembered, seeks the desert for a pleasure-ground. Life and business traverse it by paths along which the bones of things dead are strewn as so many blazons. Such are the roads from well to well, from pasture to pasture. The heart of the most veteran sheik beats quicker when he finds himself alone in the pathless tracts. So the man with whom we are dealing could not have been in search of pleasure; neither was his manner that of a fugitive; not once did he look behind him. In such situations fear and curiosity are the most common sensations; he was not moved by them. When men are lonely, they stoop to any companionship; the dog becomes a comrade, the horse a friend, and it is no shame to shower them with caresses and speeches of love. The camel received no such token, not a touch, not a word.”
Lew Wallace (10 april 1827 – 15 februari 1905)
Scene uit de mini-serie uit 2010 met Joseph Morgan als Ben Hur en Jack Hawkins als admiraal Arrius
De Amerikaanse schrijver Eric Knight werd geboren op 10 april 1897 in Menston in Yorkshire, Engeland. Zie ook alle tags voor Eric Knight op dit blog.
Uit: Lassie Come-Home
“For the first four days Lassie traveled without pause, resting only briefly during the nights. The urge to travel south burned in her like a fever, and nothing could replace it.
On the fifth day a new demand began to gnaw at her senses. It was the call of hunger. The command to travel had blotted it out at first, but now it was insistent.
She had had no trouble in finding streams to quench her thirst, but the problem of getting food was one far removed from her protected life. From her first memory, food had never been her responsibility. At stated times it was provided for her. Man put it down before her in a platter. She had been taught carefully that that was her portion, and she must never eat any food that lay elsewhere. Year after year, that lesson had been driven into her.
Food was not her responsibility. Man provided it.
But now, suddenly, the training and conditioning of a lifetime were useless. There was no man to put down a pan of food each afternoon. And yet this aristocratic animal must learn to exist.
Lassie found the way. She did not reason it out as a human being would. Human beings have imagination-they can pictureevents and circumstances before they meet them. Dogs cannot do this, they must wait blindly until the circumstance faces them and then do their best to meet it.
Yet how could Lassie meet this new problem? She had not the brain of a man to reason about it. She could not base her conduct on the past experience of others of her kind, which is another human method. A young child does not have to undergo many dangerous experiences in life to find out the result, for his parents and other older persons can tell him from their acquired knowledge what will result in such a case.”
Eric Knight (10 april 1897 – 14 januari 1943)
Lassie en Timmy (John Provost) uit de televisieserie (1957 – 1964)
De Amerikaanse dichter Byron Forceythe Willson werd geboren op 10 april 1837 in Little Genesee, New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Forceythe Wilson op dit blog.
In State (Fragment)
II.
‘Three cold, bright moons have marched and wheeled;
And the white cerement that revealed
A Figure stretched upon a Shield,
Is turned to verdure; and the Land is now one mighty Battlefield.
‘And lo, the children which she bred,
And more than all else cherished,
To make them true in heart and head,
Stand face to face, as mortal foes with their swords crossed above the dead.
‘Each hath a mighty stroke and stride:
One true, – the more that he is tried;
The other dark and evil-eyed; –
And by the hand of one of them, his own dear mother surely died!
‘As stealthy step, a gleam of hell, –
It is the simple truth to tell, –
The Son stabbed and the Mother fell:
And so she lies, and mute and pale, and pure and irreproachable!
‘And then the battle-trumpet blew;
And the true brother sprang and drew
His blade to smite the traitor through;
And so they clashed above the bier, and the Night sweated bloody dew.
Forceythe Willson (10 april 1837 – 2 februari 1867)