De Roemeense dichter en schrijver Mircea Dinescu werd geboren op 11 november 1950 in Slobozia. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Mircea Dinescu op dit blog.
A Letter to Mother
You’re telling me the rats have nibbled the church down to its roots,
oh my sad mother,
but even so our faith is more a matter
of bread and wine.
If only the oat plants wouldn’t get
into the bed of my sister who’s run to the fields,
if only the singer banished among bulrushes wouldn’t run wild . . .
over the death combing your hair,
over the entrails of fire
storks are passing like a leukaemia of stars.
Fishes
The visages of gods have long since withdrawn
to the labels on tins.
Only the hosts of elders still abide
to watch a made-up church through pouring rain
alongside the delicate sunflower machinery
left to whir on the mound for ever and ever.
We huddle next to cattle in the pastures
and elegant steamers
the nerves of the sea can no longer put up with
seem to be floating through green fields leaving
nothing but oil slicks and the flotsam of parties.
And thus like frightened fishes
beneath the gently rolling paradise
we keep watch for the rope
going to hoist us on deck by and by.
But never mind:
another world sails by
past yet another world
and they don’t touch each other.
Vertaald door Florin Bican
Mircea Dinescu (Slobozia, 11 november 1950)
De Mexicaanse dichter en schrijver Carlos Fuentes Macías werd geboren op 11 november 1928 in Panama-Stad. Carlos Fuentes overleed op de 15e mei van dit jaar. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Carlos Fuentes op dit blog.
Uit:Destiny and Desire (Vertaald door Edith Grossman)
„Castor and Pollux
Permit me to introduce myself. Or rather: introduce my body, violently separated (you know this already) from my head. I speak of my body because I’ve lost it and will not have another opportunity to introduce it to all of you, gentle readers, or to myself. In this way I can indicate, once and for all, that the following narration has been dictated by my head and only my head, since my detached body is nothing more than a memory: one that can be transmitted and left in the hands of the forewarned reader.
Forewarned indeed: The body is at least half of what we are. Still, we keep it hidden in a verbal closet. For the sake of modesty, we do not refer to its invaluable and indispensable functions. Forgive me: I will speak in detail about my body. Because if I don’t, very soon my body will be nothing but an unburied corpse, a slaughtered fowl, an anonymous loin. And if you, being very well bred, don’t want to know about my bodily intimacies, skip this chapter and begin your reading with the next one.
I am a twenty-seven-year-old man, one meter seventy-eight centimeters tall. Every morning I look at myself naked in my bathroom mirror and caress my cheeks in anticipation of the daily ceremony: Shave my beard and upper lip, provoke a strong response with Jean-Marie Farina cologne on my face, resign myself to combing black, thick, untamable hair. Close my eyes. Deny to my face and head the central role my death will be certain to give them. Concentrate instead on my body. The trunk that is going to be separated from my head. The body that occupies me from my neck to my extremities, covered in skin the color of pale cinnamon and tipped with nails that will continue to grow for hours and days after death, as if they wanted to scratch at the lid of the coffin and shout I’m here, I’m still alive, you made a mistake when you buried me.
This is a purely metaphysical consideration, as is terror in its passing and permanent forms. I ought to concentrate here and now on my skin: I ought to rescue my physical being in all its completeness before it’s too late.”
Carlos Fuentes (11 november 1928 – 15 mei 2012)
De Amerikaanse schrijver en schilder Kurt Vonnegut werd op 11 november 1922 geboren in Indianapolis. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 november 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Kurt Vonnegut op dit blog.
Uit: Slaughterhouse-Five
““The letter said that they were two feet high, and green., and shaped like plumber’s friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those wonderful things were in his next letter.
Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second letter started out like this:
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is “so it goes.”
Kurt Vonnegut (11 november 1922 – 11 april 2007)
Een zeer jonge Vonnegut
De Turks-Nederlandse schrijfster Nilgün Yerli werd op 11 november 1969 geboren in Kirsehir,Turkije. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 november 2008 en eveneens allle tags voor Nilgün Yerli op dit blog.
Uit: Kerk preek
“Er was een man met 3 zoons
Harot, Lebib en Narok
Harot was de oudste en was de rustigste van de drie
Hij hield niet van conflicten
Sociale waarden waren erg belangrijk voor hem
Lebib was de middelste, hij was eigenwijs, overtuigd van zijn eigen waarheid
Hij hield ervan om te discussiëren en stond open voor andere meningen
Maar kon moeilijk compromis sluiten
Narok, de jongste was wild en gepassioneerd
Hij had een enorme doorzettingsvermogen en hield van goed eten en van grote lappen stof en hield niet zo van veranderingen.
De drie jongens wilden niets liever dan geliefd worden door hun vader
En hun vader had ze lief
Maar voor de jongens was de gelijke liefde niet genoeg
Ieder wilde de beste zijn om zo het meeste liefde en aandacht van hun vader te ontvangen
Elk van hen besloten een boek te schrijven over hun vader
Een boek over zijn wijsheid
Over zijn waarden en normen
Over zijn gelijke liefde voor alles dat leeft”
Nilgün Yerli (Kirsehir, 11 november 1969)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 11 november ook mijn blog van 11 november 2011 deel 2.