De Amerikaanse schrijver Philip Roth werd geboren op 19 maart 1933 in Newark. Zie ook alle tags voor Philip Roth op dit blog.
Uit: Everyman
“Nancy told everyone, “I can begin by saying something to you about this cemetery, because I’ve discovered that my father’s grandfather, my great-grandfather, is not only buried in the original few acres alongside my great-grandmother but was one of its founders in 1888. The association that first financed and erected the cemetery was composed of the burial societies of Jewish benevolent organizations and congregations scattered across Union and Essex counties. My great-grandfather owned and ran a boarding house in Elizabeth that catered especially to newly arrived immigrants, and he was concerned with their well-being as more than a mere landlord. That’s why he was among the original members who purchased the open field that was here and who themselves graded and landscaped it, and why he served as the first cemetery chairman. He was relatively young then but in his full vigor, and it’s his name alone that is signed to the document specifying that the cemetery was for `burying deceased members in accordance with Jewish law and ritual.’ As is all too obvious, the maintenance of individual plots and of the fencing and the gates is no longer what it should be. Things have rotted and toppled over, the gates are rusted, the locks are gone, there’s been vandalism. By now the place has become the butt end of the airport and what you’re hearing from a few miles away is the steady din of the New Jersey Turnpike. Of course I thought first of the truly beautiful places where my father might be buried, the places where he and my mother used to swim together when they were young, and the places where he loved to swim at the shore.”
Philip Roth (Newark, 19 maart 1933)
De Amerikaanse schrijfster Lynne Sharon Schwartz werd geboren op 19 maart 1939 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Lynne Sharon Schwartz op dit blog.
Uit: Leaving Brooklyn
„Only much later did I find that those words referred to quite a different sort of fidelity, to not bending your identity out of shape to fit the fashion. But by that time I was light years out of Brooklyn. I was becoming an actress. I was playing Polonius’s daughter.
I never broached the subject with my father, such matters not being, as he might put it, in his “department.” Also, he needed to be right in everything he undertook, and bristled at any hint of error or bungling. His department covered money and cars and going to work. I knew about the money part, for as far back as I could remember he would sit down after dinner at his small desk in the dining room, a desk that looked almost too small for him to fit his knees under, and I would stand beside him, jiggling the metal handles on the drawers, wordless but beseeching, till he pulled me up onto his lap. With arms reaching around me, he would go through mail, tear open envelopes, leaf through papers, and write. What was he doing?
He explained what bills were. “You should pay a bill the same day you receive it. Why wait?”
He would write out a check in his gallant, illegible writing – so that forever after I considered illegible writing a sign of masculinity and sophistication – put it in a small white envelope, dart his tongue across the wide V of the flap, pound it shut on the desk with his fist – the vibrations thumped excitedly through my body – and affix a stamp. Then he would tear up the remaining bits of paper littering the desk. Once in a while he even tore up an envelope unopened. He tore it across, then tore two or three more times with fierce gusts of energy, and threw the scraps in the wastebasket under the desk.
“Why do you have to tear it up?”
“It’s garbage.”
“I know, but why do you have to tear it up? Why can’t you just throw it away?”
Lynne Sharon Schwartz (New York, 19 maart 1939)
De Oekraïense schrijfster en dichteres Lina Kostenko werd op 19 maart 1930 geboren in Rzhyshchiv. Zie ook alle tags voor Lina Kostenko op dit blog.
Steppes
Steppe verte, ni arbre, ni champ.
Steppe azur, ni nuages, ni pigeons.
Un soleil rouge,
lingot encore brûlant,
vogue avec lenteur entre elles.
Et toi, derrière lui
jusqu’au soir vagabondes
Es-tu las ? plonge, renversé dans l’herbe,
puis écoute, écoute,
jusqu’à n’en plus pouvoir
les fleurs de steppe qui, si doucement, respirent.
Le rire
Le rire Dans la rue — je l’entends par la fenêtre —
Une femme éclate d’un rire forcé.
Peut-être est-elle triste, cette femme, mais elle
voudrait Avoir envie de rire.
Et je regarde les rivières des rues obscures
Les têtes des joyeuses lanternes,
Coiffées de petites casquettes de fer blanc,
Et sur le haut appui de ma fenêtre,
Des marronniers offrent des fleurs blanches…
Et je regarde et pense à mes poèmes.
S’ils ont du chagrin — qu’ils soient tristes.
Du moins, qu’ils ne rien pas d’un rire forcé,
Car les gens sincères ferment les fenêtres.
Vertaald door Stefano Guglielmin
Lina Kostenko (Rzhyshchiv, 19 maart 1930)
De Kroatische dichter en schrijver Petar Preradović werd geboren op 19 maart 1818 in het dorp Grabrovnica bij Virovitica. Zie ook alle tags voor Petar Preradović op dit blog.
Traveller (Putnik, fragment)
Good Gracious God what have I done!
Trapped by night in a foreign land,
I don’t know what track to follow,
on bare rocks my feet do wallow,
Weary legs in a wilderness!
no shelter here have I yet found,
The north wind blows on snowy peaks,
While this poor wayfaring stranger
finds in darkness darkest danger,
As this rough earth with hardness speaks
All around the fog has fallen
And covered up now is the moon,
star tracks have disappeared and yes
Mayko mila (mother dearest),
If you could only see your son!
If only you could see this soul
surrounded just by poverty.
you sure would shed a bitter tear,
Indeed your hand would tremble here
To see him in such misery.
Vertaald door Barry Hajdinjak en Gordon Biok
Petar Preradović (19 maart 1818 – 18 augustus 1872)
Borstbeeld in Zagreb
De Duitse literatuurwetenschapper, schrijver, criticus, jurist en socioloog Hans Mayer werd geboren op 19 maart 1907 in Keulen. Zie ook alle tags voor Hans Mayer op dit blog.
Uit: Du störst mich nicht (Über Thomas und Heinrich Mann: Briefwechsel 1900-1949)
„Das Gegenmotto, auch ihm darf man es glauben, hätte dann Heinrich Mann in einem Brief vom 30. Dezember 1917 formuliert: “In meinen öffentlichen Kundgebungen kommt kein “Ich” vor, und daher auch kein Bruder. Sie sind in das Weite gerichtet, sehen ab — wenigstens will ich es so — von mir, meinem Bürgerlichen, meinem Vorteil oder Nachteil und gelten allein einer Idee. Liebe zur Menschheit (politisch gesprochen: europäische Demokratie) ist allerdings die Liebe einer Idee; wer aber sein Herz so sehr in die Weite hat erheben können, wird es des öftern auch im Engen erwiesen haben.”
Darum ist der Hauptvorwurf des älteren Bruders, den er in diesen Briefen gegen den Bruder und Schriftsteller Thomas Mann zu formulieren nicht müde wird, anfangs höflich, dann schroff, schließlich fast liebevoll-ironisch, gegen das — vermeintlich — Unseriöse der Existenz Thomas Manns gerichtet. Ein Roman Heinrichs trägt den programmatischen Titel “Ein ernstes Leben”. Eben dieser Lebensernst aber wird dem Verfasser des märchenhaften Lustspiel-Romans von der “Königlichen Hoheit” ausdrücklich abgesprochen.
Heinrich geht in jenem Abrechnungsbrief von 1918 so weit, dies menschlich Unseriöse als eigentliche Grundlage der gesamten Schriftstellerei Thomas Manns zu interpretieren: “Dieser Leidenschaft verdankst Du einige enge, aber geschlossene Hervorbringungen. Du verdankst ihr zudem die völlige Respektlosigkeit vor allem Dir nicht Angemessenen, eine “Verachtung”, die locker sitzt wie bei keinem, kurz, die Unfähigkeit, den wirklichen Ernst eines fremden Lebens je zu erfassen.”
Hans Mayer (19 maart 1907 – 19 mei 2001)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 19e maart ook mijn blog van 19 maart 2012 deel 1 en ook mijn blog van 19 maart 2011 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.