De Engelse schrijver Patrick Hamilton werd geboren op 17 maart 1904 in Hassocks, Sussex. Zie ook alle tags voor Patrick Hamilton op dit blog.
Uit: Hangover Square
“For two or three minutes he walked along in a dream, barely conscious of anything. The motion of his body caused his raincoat to make a small thundering noise: his big sports shoes creaked and rustled on the grass of the cliff-top. On his left, down below, lay the vast grey sweep of the Wash under the sombre sky of Christmas afternoon; on his right the scrappy villas in the unfinished muddy roads. A few couples were about, cold, despairing, bowed down by the hopeless emptiness and misery of the season and time of day. He passed a shelter, around which some children were running, firing toy pistols at each other. Then he remembered, without any difficulty, what it was he had to do: he had to kill Netta Longdon.
He was going to kill her, and then he was going to Maidenhead, where he would be happy.
It was a relief to him to have remembered, for now he could think it all out. He liked thinking it out: the opportunity to do so was like lighting up a pipe, something to get at, to get his teeth into.
Scene uit het gelijknamige toneelstuk, Finborough Theatre, Londen, 2008
Why must he kill Netta? Because things had been going on too long, and he must get to Maidenhead and be peaceful and contented again. And why Maidenhead? Because he had been happy there with his sister, Ellen. They had had a splendid fortnight, and she had died a year or so later. He would go on the river again, and be at peace. He liked the High Street, too. He would not drink any more-or only an occasional beer. But first of all he had to kill Netta.
This Netta business had been going on too long. When was he going to kill her? Soon-this year certainly. At once would be best-as soon as he got back to London-he was going back tomorrow, Boxing Day. But these things had to be planned: he had so many plans: too many. The thing was so incredibly, absurdly easy. That was why it was so difficult to choose the right plan. You had only to hit her over the head when she was not looking. You had only to ask her to turn her back to you because you had a surprise for her, and then strike her down. You had only to invite her to a window, to ask her to look down at something, and then throw her out. You had only to put a scarf playfully round her neck, and fondle it admiringly, and then strangle her. You had only to surprise her in her bath, lift up her legs and hold her head down.”
De Duitse schrijver, essayist, vertaler, uitgever, historicus, organist en muziekwetenschapper Hans Wollschläger werd geboren op 17 maart 1935 in Minden. Zie ook alle tags voor Hans Wolfschläger op dit blog.
Uit: Leitfaden a priori. Karlheinz Deschners Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums
„Es scheint zweierlei zu sein, was erlebt – und was dem Erlebten dann nachgesagt wird, posthum, wenn es bücherreif geworden ist –: sind unsere Informationen über den vitiosen Semper-idem-Kreis vielleicht generell schlecht assortiert? Wir haben eine reiche Geschichtsschreibung – für die älteren wie für die neueren Zeiten; sie hat selber ihre Geschichte, und ihre Tradition hat sogar eine ganze Philosophie ausgebildet –: läge die Crux der vergeblichen Lehre bei ihr?
Zumindest auf sie trifft zu, was sich aus dem endlosen politischen Fortsetzungsroman als allgemeiner Verdacht aufdrängt: daß die Lebenslehrerin Geschichte immer auffallend ungelehrige Schüler hatte. Die Zeiten ändern sich, doch sie mit ihnen nicht; sie sind sitzen geblieben, wo sie immer saßen. Das Phänomen ist um so erstaunlicher, als es am Fleiß nicht liegt; es hat mit dem »Betragen« zu tun, mit dem Charakter, und tatsächlich bezeichnet »der Historiker« eine Gemein-Konstitution, die nicht nur die verschiedensten Persönlichkeiten einbindet, sondern auch die verschiedensten Erlebnisepochen unerschütterlich übergreift, und das mit einer derart zwanghaften Verbindlichkeit, daß niemand, der sich ihr nicht assimiliert, auf zünftigen Applaus rechnen kann. Ihr Zentrum ist der herrenmoralische Blick auf dieTaten – in einem Maß, das die Grenze zur Komplizenschaft mit den Tätern, zur »Beihilfe nach der Tat« nur allzu oft überwallt.”
Minden, markt met raadhuis
De Engelse dichteres en schrijfster Jean Ingelow werd geboren op 17 maart 1820 in Boston, Lincolnshire. Zie ook alle tags voor Jean Ingelow op dit blog.
Sweet are His ways who rules above
‘Though I take the wings of the morning.’
Sweet are His ways who rules above,
He gives from wrath a sheltering place;
But covert none is found from grace,
Man shall not hide himself from love.
What though I take to me the wide
Wings of the morning and forth fly,
Faster He goes, whoso care on high
Shepherds the stars and doth them guide.
What though the tents foregone, I roam
Till day wax dim lamenting me;
He wills that I shall sleep to see
The great gold stairs to His sweet home.
What though the press I pass before,
And climb the branch, He lifts his face;
I am not secret from His grace
Lost in the leafy sycamore.
What though denied with murmuring deep
I shame my Lord,—it shall not be;
For He will turn and look on me,
Then must I think thereon and weep.
The nether depth, the heights above,
Nor alleys pleach’d of Paradise,
Nor Herod’s judgment-halls suffice:
Man shall not hide himself from love.
De Duitse dichter, schrijver en journalist Karl Gutzkow werd geboren op 17 maart 1811 in Berlijn. Zie ook alle tags voor Karl Gutzkow op dit blog.
Uit: Der Sadducäer von Amsterdam
“Glückliche Juden, die ihr zwischen Hollands Poldern und Deichen euer Asyl suchtet! Habt ihr je in der Fremde euer Passahlamm in solcher Ruhe genossen und zu den Laubhütten so viel Zweige von den Bäumen brechen dürfen, als an dem Meerbusen IJ? So lustig rauchten nirgends eure Schornsteine bei der Paraskeue am Vorabende des Sabbaths; so reich verbrämte Talare durften die Männer, so schwere goldene Ketten und Ohrgehänge eure Weiber nur in Amsterdam tragen. Die Holländer fürchteten sich weder vor eurem Gelde, noch vor euren Bärten, noch vor euren schönen Töchtern, noch vor Jehova, der sich prächtige Tempel in ihrem Lande baute und mit Wachskerzen, unartikulirten Tönen, ja selbst mit recht unduldsamen, ketzersüchtigen und orthodoxen Priestern und Leviten verehrt wurde.
Es war in der ersten Hälfte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, in einer der Straßen, die von dem großen Kai zu Amsterdam auslaufen, in einem stattlichen Hause, das sich vor Niemanden versteckte, aber schon spät, bei eingebrochener Nacht, daß vielleicht die sorgsamste und ehrwürdigste der jüdischen Mütter mit dreien von ihren Söhnen zusammensaß. Welch prachtvolle Umgebung! Welche sonderbare Verbindung des orientalischen und holländischen Geschmacks: in Vorhängen, Sophas, Rauchpfannen, der weitfaltige, elastische, sinnliche Orientalismus, in allem übrigen Zubehör eines großartigen Gesellschaftszimmers die nette, barocke, chinesische Eleganz des Holländers. Esther aber wechselte mit ihren Söhnen jene zärtlichen, sorglichen Reden und Blicke, welche nirgends so treu gemeint sind und wie vom beklommenen Herzen kommen, als im Schooß einer Judenfamilie. Sie ist egoistisch, grausam gegen andere, gewissenlos, die Familienzärtlichkeit der Juden, aber sie ist voller Hingebung und Aufopferung für die Ihrigen.”
Rond 1860
De Engelse dichter Ebenezer Elliott werd geboren op 17 maart 1781 in Masborough, Yorkshire. Zie ook alle tags voor Ebenezer Elliott op dit blog.
A POET’S PRAYER
ALMIGHTY Father! let thy lowly child,
Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold—
A patriot bard, by sycophants revil’d,
Let him live usefully, and not die old!
Let poor men’s children, pleas’d to read his lays,
Love, for his sake, the scenes where he hath been;
And, when he ends his pilgrimage of days,
Let him be buried where the grass is green;
Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late
To hear the bee his busy note prolong:—
There let him slumber, and in peace await
The dawning morn, far from the sensual throng,
Who scorn the windflower’s blush, the redbreast’s
lonely song.
Ebenezer Elliott (17 maart 1781 – 1 december 1849)
Anoniem portret, rond 1800
De Amerikaanse toneelschrijver Paul Green werd geboren op 17 maart 1894 in Lillington, North Carolina. Zie ook alle tags voor Paul Green op dit blog.
Uit:A Daughter’s Biography (Door Janet Green)
„Perhaps you never heard of my father. I can understand that. One of the things that made him less famous nationally than he should have been was his great age when he died. People stereotyped him with his earlier achievements, but he was a practicing writer until the day he died. In fact, he used to complain that recent interviewers acted as if he were already dead; that their tasks were to gather information from a defunct creature about dinosaur matters. Also, Paul Green, for much of his career, was not in the mainstream of the American theatre. That is, he avoided gratuitous violence, loveless sex, miserable introspection, ironic ambiguity, sophisticated banter, and fearful despair, as subjects for the stage. Still another reason you may never have heard of him is because he was in his beginning a regionalist. As the first white playwright to write about blacks, he created plays dripping in dialect, which are heavy going to urban northern people. I am thinking of some production very early in my father’s career of his Negro plays, done by northern white actors in blackface, attempting to mimic the deep North Carolina rural dialect. They did this because the theatre was not then open to black actors. But, as you can imagine, their efforts were not usually what the playwright had in mind.”
