De Cubaanse dichter en schrijver Reinaldo Arenas werd geboren op 16 juli 1943 in Holguin. Zie ook alle tags voor Reinaldo Arenas op dit blog.
Uit: The Color of Summer (Vertaald door Andrew Hurley)
“Fifo: (enraged)
What’s that old faggot that I’m going to screw tonight muttering?
Virgilio Piñera: (desperately raising his voice to a shout, and changing his tune)
Don’t go, Avellaneda—take my advice.
You’re better off here by far.
If you go North you’ll pay the price:
here, at least you’re a star.
I beg you—reconsider, dear;
the Island’s awfully nice.
Turn back now—there’ll be no harm to you;
These dwarves will open their arms to you.
(To himself)
God, how could I write such awful lines!
I can’t believe they’re really mine!
But if I don’t try as hard as I can
to lure Avellaneda back again
I’ll never see tomorrow.
But hold on!
—Didn’t Fifo put out a contract on yours truly?
That’s what I was told, so surely
I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t!
And then when I’m dead and they’ve buried me,
that horrid Olga Andreu will pray for me
and Arrufat will grab my dictionary
and who knows what they’ll say about me—
but screw ‘em all—
I’ll be vindicated by History, they’ll see!
Virgilio halfheartedly throws a little-betty kestrel egg, but as luck would have it, it hits Avellaneda right in the eye. Avellaneda, enraged, turns like the basilisk whose glance is fatal and picks up the anchor out of the bottom of her boat and throws it at the crowd on the Malecón, killing a midget—some say a hundred-headed one.
Fifo: (more enraged yet)“
Reinaldo Arenas (16 juli 1943 – 7 december 1990)
De Belgische dichter en schrijver Georges Rodenbach werd geboren in Doornik op 16 juli 1855. Zie ook alle tags voor Georges Rodenbach op dit blog.
La maladie est si doucement isolante…
La maladie est si doucement isolante :
Lent repos d’un bateau qui songe au fil d’une eau,
Sans nulle brise, et nul courant qui violente,
Attaché sur le bord par la chaîne et l’anneau.
Avant ce calme octobre, il s’appartenait guère :
Toujours du bruit, des violons, des passagers,
Et ses rames brouillant les canaux imagés.
Maintenant il est seul; et doucement s’éclaire
D’un mirage de ciel qui n’est plus partiel;
Il se ceint de reflets puisqu’il est inutile;
Et, délivré du monde, il s’encadre de ciel.
Car cet isolement anoblit, lénifie;
On se semble de l’autre côté de la vie;
Les amis sont au loin, vont se raréfier;
A quoi dont s’attacher; à qui se confier ?
On ne va plus aimer les autres, mais on s’aime;
On n’est plus possédé par de vains étrangers,
On se possède, on se réalise soi-même;
Les noeuds sont déliés ! Les rapports sont changés !
Toute la vie et son mensonge et son ivraie
Se sont fanés dans le miroir intérieur
Où l’on retrouve enfin son visage meilleur,
Celui de pure essence et d’identité vraie.
Georges Rodenbach (16 juli 1855 – 25 december 1898)
Portret door Nicolas van den Eeden, rond 1885
De Amerikaanse schrijver Tony Kushner werd geboren op 16 juli 1956 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Tony Kushner op dit blog.
Uit: Angels in America
“ROY COHN: Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels: “gay”, “homosexual”, “lesbian.” You think they tell you who a person sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that. Like all labels, they refer to one thing and one thing only: Where does a person so identified fit in the food chain? In the pecking order. Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Who owes me favors. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call. To someone who doesn’t understand this, homosexual is what I am because I sleep with men, but this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who, in 15 years of trying, can’t get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through City Council. They are men who know nobody, and who nobody knows. Now, Henry, does that sound like me?
HENRY: No.
ROY COHN: No. I have clout — lots! I pick up that phone, dial 15 numbers, and guess who’s on the other end of the line? In under five minutes, Henry.
HENRY: The President.
ROY COHN: Better — his wife.
HENRY: I’m impressed.
ROY COHN: I don’t want you to be impressed, Henry — I want you to understand. This is not sophistry, and this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men, but unlike nearly every other man of which this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to Washington, and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand, because what I am is defined entirely by who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man who fucks around with guys.”
Tony Kushner (New York, 16 juli 1956)
Affiche voor een opvoering in Amsterdam, 2012
De Engelse schrijfster en historica Anita Brookner werd geboren op 16 juli 1928 in Herne Hill, een voorstad van Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Anita Brookner op dit blog.
Uit: Hotel Du Lac
“Turning her back on the toneless expanse beyond the window, she contemplated the room, which was the colour of over-cooked veal: veal-coloured carpet and curtains, high, narrow bed with veal-coloured counterpane, small austere table with a correct chair placed tightly underneath it, a narrow, costive wardrobe, and, at a very great height above her head, a tiny brass chandelier, which, she knew, would eventually twinkle drearily with eight weak bulbs. Stiff white lace curtains, providing even more protection against the sparse daylight, could be parted to allow access, through long windows, to a narrow strip of balcony on which were placed a green metal table and chair. I shall be able to write there when the weather is fine, she thought, and moved to her bag to extract two long folders, one of which contained the first chapter of Beneath the Visiting Moon, on which she planned to work calmly throughout this curious hiatus in her life. But it was to the other folder that her hands went and, on opening it, she moved instinctively to the table and was soon seated on the unyielding chair, her pen uncapped, her surroundings ignored.
‘My dearest David (she wrote),
‘A cold coming I had of it. Penelope drove fast and kept her eyes grimly ahead, as if escorting a prisoner from the dock to a maximum security wing. I was disposed to talk-it is not every day that I get on an aeroplane and the pills I had got from the doctor had the effect of making me rather loquacious-but my intervention did not seem to be too welcome. Anyway, she relented once we were at Heathrow and found me a trolley for my bag and told me where I could get a cup of coffee, and suddenly she was gone and I felt terrible, not sad but light-headed and rather entertaining and with no one to talk to. I drank my coffee and paced around and tried to absorb all the details, as people think writers do (except you, my darling, who never think about it at all) and suddenly I caught sight of myself in the glass in the Ladies and saw my extremely correct appearance and thought, I should not be here! I am out of place! Milling crowds, children crying, everyone intent on being somewhere else, and here was this mild-looking, slightly bony woman in a long cardigan, distant, inoffensive, quite nice eyes, rather large hands and feet, meek neck, not wanting to go anywhere, but having given my word that I would stay away for a month until everyone decides that I am myself again. For a moment I panicked, for I am myself now, and was then, although this fact was not recognized. Not drowning, but waving.”
Anita Brookner (16 juli 1928 – 10 maart 2016)
De Duitse schrijver en journalist Jörg Fauser werd geboren op 16 juli 1944 in Bad Schwalbach. Zie ook alle tags voor Jörg Fauser op dit blog.
CHARLIE UND HARRY
Trüber Sommernachmittag in Fat City,
sie hockten auf Harrys Bude und kippten Bier,
irgendwo im Hinterhof stieg eine Teenager-Party
und die Beatles leierten einen ihrer total
schwachsinnigen Songs runter,
»Lucy in the sky with diamonds«
oder sonst einen abgedroschenen Heuler.
Son abgedroschener Heuler, sagte Charlie,
aber die Miniröcke sind wohl immer noch scharf darauf.
Stimmt, sagte Harry, macht einen ganz fickrig.
Sex Sex Sex, sagte Charlie und warf die leere Dose
in den Abfalleimer,
bei dir was los?
Sex, sagte Harry, was ist das?
Shit, sagte Charlie, ich fang wohl an kirre zu werden,
ich bin so heiß daß ich Löcher in die Matratze brenne,
lauf drei Wochen mit ’nem Steifen von hier bis Timbuktu
rum,
aber wenn ich endlich was zwischen den Fingern hab
wird mir einfach alles fad, fad –
irgendwie rentiert sich der Aufwand nicht,
man könnte genauso ’nen Emmentaler pimpern
wenn du weißt was ich meine –
klar, sagte Harry, Emmentaler
mit rotem Pfeffer oder Nudelwalker von hinten
und ’ne Stefan-George-Erstausgabe ums ritzy zu machen,
oder einfach fürn Heiermann ’ne Gastarbeiterin
in der Anlage hinterm Interconti, und Samstag abends
all die kleinen brühwarmen Homos die im ZDF
über die Mattscheibe spritzen, ist schließlich
alles ’n Loch, und alles leer, immer gewesen –
Shit, sagt Charlie, von hier aus kann man direkt rübersehn,
und sie standen am Fenster und glotzten rüber,
die Beatles heulten auf höchster Lautstärke,
die Teenager kreischten und ließen ihre Beinchen sehn,
die Schmeißfliegen legten Eier,
sie tranken ihr Bier,
dann ging Charlie zur Spätschicht
und Harry versprühte eine Ladung Flit.
Jörg Fauser (16 juli 1944 – 17 juli 1987)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 16e juli ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.