De Georgische schrijver en dichter Nikoloz Baratashvili werd geboren op 4 december 1817 in Tbilisi. Zie ook alle tags voor Nikoloz Baratashvili op dit blog.

 

Merani

It runs; it flies; it bears me on; it heeds no trail nor spoor;
A raven black behind me croaks with ominous eyes of doom;
Speed thee on and onward fly with a gallop that knoweth no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts in raging darkness found.

Go onward! onward! cleaving through roaring wind and rain
Over many a mount and many a plain, short’ning my days of pain;
Seek not shelter, my flying steed, from scorching skies or storm;
Pity not thy rider sad, by self-immolation worn.

I bid farewell to parents, kin, to friends and sweetheart dear
Whose gentle voice did soothe my hopes to a hot and bitter tear.
Where the night falls, there let it dawn, there let my country be;
Only the heavenly stars above my open heart will see.

The sighs that burn, that rend the heart to stormy waves I hurl;
To thy inspired, wild maddened flight, love’s waning passions whirl.
Speed thee on, and onward fly, with a gallop that knoweth no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts, in raging darkness found.

In foreign lands thou lay me low, not where my fathers sleep;
Nor shed thou tears nor grieve, my love, nor over my body weep;
Ravens grim will dig my grave and whirlwinds wind a shroud
There, on desert plains where winds will howl in wailings loud.

No lover’s tears but dew divine will moist my bed of gloom;
No dirge but vultures’ shrieks will sound above my lowly tomb;
Bear me far beyond the bounds of fate, my Merani,
Fate whose slave I never was, and henceforth – never shall be!

By fate repulsed, oh bury me in a dark and lonely grave:
My bloody foe, I fear thee not – thy flashing sword I brave.
Speed thee on and onward fly with a gallop that knoweth no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts in raging darkness found.

The yearnings of my restless soul will no in vain have glowed,
For, dashing on, my steel has paved a new untrodden road.
He who follows in our wake, a smoother path will find;
Daring all, his fateful steed shall leave dark fate behind

It runs; it flies; it bears me on; it heeds no trail nor spoor;
A raven black behind me croaks with ominous eyes of doom;
Speed thee on, and onward fly, with a gallop that knoweth no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts, in raging darkness found.

 

Vertaald door Venera Urushadze

Nikoloz Baratashvili (4 december 1817 – 21 oktober 1844)

Portret door Lado Gudiashvili

 

De Deense dichter Emil Aarestrup werd geboren op 4 december 1800 in Kopenhagen. Zie ook alle tags voor Emil Aarestrup op dit blog.

 

Admonition

This blue that is called azure-blue,
This scoop of water, clump of earth,
This foolish nonsense of no worth,
Called good and evil by some pedants too –
Oh, this diversion full of vain pretence!
This you can gape at? By and by
Will you take in a dream so wry
To call it life must mean you lack all sense?
Oh, surely there is more to life than this!
By human thought I could not make a hole
In this great veil, or fire in this black coal –
For thought itself is play that goes amiss –
Oh, if that Alexander were here now,
He’d proffer me his sword – and I – But see:
There with his scythe strides death ahead of me
To slice the knot he only needs one blow! –

 

Emil Aarestrup (4 december 1800 – 21 juli 1856)
Het “Aarestruphus“ in Nysted

 

De Russische dichter Nikolay Nekrasov werd geboren op 4 december 1821 in Nemirovo. Zie ook alle tags voor Nikolay Nekrasov op dit blog.

 

In War

Hearing the terrors of the war, sore troubled,
By each new victim of the combat torn–
Nor friend, nor wife I give my utmost pity,
Nor do I for the fallen hero mourn.
Alas! the wife will find a consolation.
The friend by friend is soon forgot in turn.
But somewhere is the one soul that remembers–
That will remember unto death’s dark shore,
Nor can the tears of a heart-stricken mother
Forget the sons gone down on fields of gore.
One soul there is that like the weeping willow
Can never raise its drooping branches more.

 

Nikolay Nekrasov (4 december 1821 – 8 januari 1878)

Portret door Konstantin Makovsky, 1856

 

De Surinaamse dichteres en cultureel antropologe Gertrude (Trudi) Marie Guda werd geboren in Paramaribo op 4 december 1940. Zie ook alle tags voor Trudi Guda op dit blog.

Vandaag

is poëzie geen vlucht
de harde tekens –
taal
houd ik gericht
naar buiten, deze kleine opening
waarin bijna onmerkbaar
liefde binnendringt.

 

Strand bij Coronie

Dragen vogels de wind
koelt de zee het strand
Vrijen vogels de wind
zoent de zee het zand, het zand, het zand

 

Trudi Guda (Paramaribo, 4 december 1940)

 

De Engelse schrijver, componist, filoloog en schilder Samuel Butler werd geboren op 4 december 1835 in Langar, Nottinghamshire. Zie ook mijn blog van 4 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 4 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 4 december 2010.

 

Uit: Erewhon

„Hence their professorships of Inconsistency and Evasion, in both of which studies the youths are examined before being allowed to proceed to their degree in hypothetics. The more earnest and conscientious students attain to a proficiency in these subjects which is quite surprising; there is hardly any inconsistency so glaring but they soon learn to defend it, or injunction so clear that they cannot find some pretext for disregarding it.
Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason only. Reason betrays men into the drawing of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language — language being like the sun, which rears and then scorches. Extremes are alone logical, but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme. There are no follies and no unreasonablenesses so great as those which can apparently be irrefragably defended by reason itself, and there is hardly an error into which men may not easily be led if they base their conduct upon reason only.
Reason might very possibly abolish the double currency; it might even attack the personality of Hope and Justice. Besides, people have such a strong natural bias towards it that they will seek it for themselves and act upon it quite as much as or more than is good for them: there is no need of encouraging reason. With unreason the case is different. She is the natural complement of reason, without whose existence reason itself were non- existent.“

 

Samuel Butler (4 december 1835 – 18 juni 1902)

 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 4 december 2010.

 

De Franse schrijver René Fallet werd geboren op 4 december 1927 in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Zie ook alle tags voor René Fallet op dit blog.

De Schotse dichter en schrijver Thomas Carlyle werd geboren in Ecclefechan, gelegen in de regio Dumfries and Galloway in Schotland op 4 december 1795. Zie ook alle tags voor Thomas Carlyle op dit blog.