De Amerikaanse schrijver, journalist, musicus en acteur Roy Alton Blount Jr. werd geboren op 4 oktober 1941 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Zie ook alle tags voor Roy Alton Blount Jr. op dit blogen ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010
Uit: Alphabet Juice
“Maybe many of them were trying to break away from the alphabet, but I wasn’t. To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don’t remember what I was like before I learned my ABC’s, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones. Where are we, at the moment? We’re in the midst of a bunch of letters, and if you’re like me, you feel like a pig in mud.
What a great word mud is. And muddle, and muffle, and mumble . . .
You know the expression “Mum’s the word.” The word mum is a representation of lips pressed together. Since it’s not merely a sound, mmmm, but a word, to say it we have to move our lips. For the separator we choose that utterly unintellectual (though it’s what we say when trying to think) vowel sound uh, which thrusts at the heart of push and shove and grunt and love.
The great majority of languages start the word for “mother” with an m sound. The word mammal comes from the mammary gland. Which comes from baby talk: mama. To sound like a grownup, we refine mama into mother; the Romans made it mater, from which: matter. And matrix. Our word for the kind of animal we are, and our word for the stuff that everything is made of, and our word for a big cult movie all derive from baby talk.
What are we saying when we say mmmm? We are saying yummy. In the pronunciation of which we move our lips the way nursing babies move theirs. The fact that we can spell something that fundamental, and connect it however tenuously to mellifluous and manna and milk and me (see M), strikes me as marvelous. You know the expression “a magic spell”—
Here the scholar cries, Aha! (See H.)”
Roy Alton Blount Jr. (Indianapolis, 4 oktober 1941)
De Duitse schrijver Herbert Kranz werd geboren op 4 oktober 1891 in Nordhausen. Zie ook alle tags voor Herbert Kranz op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010.
Uit: Besenbinders Gretel und der Königssohn
„1. Szene
Auf dem Klavier hinter der Szene leichte Marschmusik. In deren Rhythmus schreitet von links die Oberhofmeisterin herein, in der Hand ein aufgewickeltes Zentimetermaß. Hinter ihr im Gänsemarsch die fünf Pagen. Die ersten zwei tragen je einen Stuhl mit Lehne, die nächsten zwei je einen Hocker, dazu je ein Kissen unter den Arm geklemmt. Der Fünfte trägt einen Hocker, kein Kissen. Die Musik verstummt, die Pagen bleiben stehen, machen dabei eine Wendung zu den Zuschauern.
Oberhofmeisterin: (weist an)
Hierher den Stuhl für Ihre Majestät die allerhöchste Frau Königinmutter!
(Der erste Page setzt einen Lehnstuhl an die bezeichnete Stelle.)
Oberhofmeisterin:
Und hierher den Stuhl für Seine Königliche Hoheit den Herrn Königssohn!
(Zweiter Page setzt seinen Stuhl neben den andern)
Oberhofmeisterin:
Hierher den Hocker für Ihre Hoheit die Erste Königliche Tante, genau 40 Zentimeter vom Stuhl Ihrer Majestät der allerhöchsten Frau Königinmutter! (sie gibt das Maßband hin) Miss genau nach! Meine Augen können die kleinen Zahlen nicht mehr lesen.
Dritter Page: (setzt den Hocker hin, legt das Kissen darauf, misst mit dem ersten und zweiten Pagen zusammen nach) Genau 40 Zentimeter, Frau Oberhofmeisterin!
Zweiter Page:
Wie gewünscht, Frau Oberhofmeisterin!”
Herbert Kranz (4 oktober 1991 – 30 augustus 1973)
De Australische dichter en schrijver Hugh Raymond McCrae werd geboren op 4 oktober 1876 in Melbourne. Zie ook alle tags voor Hugh McCrae op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010
Mortgaged
These spotted trousers, now too short,
Were once some verses smoothly wrought,
The worn-out bluchers on my feet
Twin sonnets to My Lady Sweet,
This ‘decker’ hanging round my nose
The product of an ODE TO ROSE;
The collar, tie and underpants
Are still an editor’s advance
For some wild Bacchanalian song
The gods, I hope, will send along…
To work a dead horse off one’s hand
(More so, of Pegasus’s brand)
Is what a poet hates to do,
Yet still is what Fate drives us to.
Ah me, I feel my soul is ripe
For forty couplets’ worth of tripe,
Three lines of beer, a verse of bread,
But O … I’ll have to pay instead
That d___d old Editor!!
Hugh McCrae (4 oktober – 1876 – 17 februari 1958)
Zelfportret 1896
De Britse schrijfster Jackie Collins werd geboren in Londen op 4 oktober 1937. Zie ook alle tags voor Jackie Collins op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010
Uit: Hollywood Wives
“Elaine Conti awoke in her luxurious bed in her luxurious Beverly Hills mansion, pressed a button to open the electrically controlled drapes, and was confronted by the sight of a young man clad in a white T-shirt and dirty jeans pissing a perfect arc into her mosaic-tiled swimming pool. She struggled to situp, buzzing for Lina, her Mexican maid, and at the same time flinging on a marahou-trimmed silk robe and pressing her feet into dusty pink mules. The young man completed his task, zipped up his jeans, and strolled casually out of view. “Lina!” Elaine screamed. “Where are you?” The maid appeared, inscrutable, calm, oblivious to her mistress’s screams. “There’s an intruder out by the pool,” Elaine snapped excitedly. “Get Miguel. Call the police. And make sure all the doors are locked.” Unperturbed, Lina began to collect the debris of clutter frorn Elaine’s bedside table. Dirty Kleenex, a half-finished glass of wine, a rifled box of chocolates. “Lina!” Elaine yelled. “No get excited, senora,” the maid said stoically. “No intruder. Just boy Miguel sent to do pool. Miguel sick. No come this week.” Elaine flushed angrily. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?”
She flung herself into her bathroom, slamming the door so hard that a framed print sprang off the wall and crashed to the floor, the glass shattering. Stupid maid. Dumb-ass woman. It was impossible to get good help anymore. They came. They went. They did not give a damn if you were raped and ravaged in your own home. And this would have to happen while Ross was away on location.”
Jackie Collins (Londen, 4 oktober 1937)
De Franse dichter en criticus André Salmon werd geboren op 4 oktober 1881 in Parijs. Zie ook alle tags voor André Salmon op dit blogen ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010
Un poète se promène
Lamentable et correct il va, c’est un poète.
Oh ! mon Dieu, c’est un homme comme les autres,
Quelque chose de très semblable aux choses les plus honnêtes,
Un chapeau d’employé qui couvre un cœur d’apôtre
Il passe dans la foule sans qu’un passant remarque
Qu’il ne s’y mêle pas.
Le pauvre ! Il voudrait bien quelquefois, mais ses pas
Ne sont guère à lui, il va, les autres marchent.
Il fume, portant sa pipe comme un temple
À l’heure de la grand’messe.
Des femmes lui font, par devoir, de l’œil, il les contemple.
Or, en accomplissant ces diverses promesses,
Il en arrive à se cogner le flanc sur le portail
De Notre-Dame dont la porte au nez lui bâille.
Et c’est alors qu’il veut s’expliquer le pourquoi
De sa balade matinale :
Il regrette le lit où fait bon rester coi,
Les draps jusqu’au menton,
Tandis que la pendule, ainsi qu’une cigale,
Cisèle avec méthode des roses de métal
Qui s’envolent légères, jusqu’au plafond.
Il ne s’étonne pas des vitraux merveilleux,
Sachant qu’il est de tels flamboiements en ses yeux.
L’amour des cieux !
C’est comme un très grand bol d’éther,
Qu’il faudrait avaler d’un seul coup pour guérir.
Allons, vous voyez bien, on ne peut en finir.
Suicide ? — Abandonnons ce remède aux esthètes.
Ô qu’une cathédrale afflige un pur poète
Qui n’aime pas la Terre et se sait terre à terre
Et ne se plaît qu’aux heures qu’on passe à ne rien faire !
André Salmon (4 oktober 1881 – 12 maart 1969)
Portret door Moise Kisling, 1912
De Franse schrijfster, polemiste en feministe Juliette Adam werd als Juliette Lamber geboren op 4 oktober 1836 in Verberie. Zie ook alle tags voor Juliette Adam op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010
Uit: The Schemes Of The Kaiser (Vertaald door J.O.P. Bland)
“William II appeals to the higher ranks of officers, who are tradition personified, to put an end to tradition. It is really wonderful what a genius he has for exciting cupidity in one class and resistance in the other. And he has done the same thing with the working class as with the army.
What a strange riddle his character presents–this quietist, this worshipper of an angry and a jealous God, with a mania for achieving the happiness of his people in the twinkling of an eye! A strange figure, this Emperor of country squires, who despises the bourgeois and who threatens to despoil the aristocracy of the very privileges which have been the safeguard of the Hohenzollerns’ throne for centuries.
These peculiarities are due to an occult influence which weighs on the mind of William II, an influence which, while it points the way to action, blinds him to its consequences. The dead hand is upon him!
Frederick III, that liberal, bourgeois monarch, compels his reactionary, Old-Prussian-school son, to do those things which he would have done himself, had he not been victimised by Bismarck and his pupil.
I wonder whether the ever-mystical William II sometimes reflects on the ways by which God leads men into His appointed ways? Such thoughts might do more to enlighten him than his way of gazing at the heavens in the belief that all the stars are his.”
Juliette Adam (4 oktober 1836 – 23 augustus 1936)
Friedrich III als kroonprins door Heinrich von Angeli, 1874
De Franse dichter Eugène Edine Pottier werd geboren op 4 oktober 1816 in Parijs. Zie ook alle tags voor Eugène Pottier op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 4 oktober 2010
Tuer l’ennui!
A Émile ZOLA.
La fabrique est sale et morose,
L’air infect et la vitre en deuil;
J’y fais toujours la même chose,
J’y tourne comme l’écureuil.
Aussi j’ai du plomb dans la veine,
Je me rouille dans mon étui.
La ribotte a bu ma quinzaine.
Que voulez-vous? Il faut tuer l’ennui!
Oh! vivre sous le ciel d’Afrique,
Arabe ou lion, librement!…
Je ne sais rien en politique,
Mais j’ai besoin de mouvement!
La rue éclate en fusillades,
Le peuple va droit devant lui;
Allons faire des barricades!…
Que voulez-vous? il faut tuer l’ennui!
Feu! toujours feu! je suis la foudre,
Mon âme bout dans mon fusil;
On met la gloire dans la poudre,
On ne la met pas dans l’outil.
Mais je tombe comme un homme ivre,
Une balle au flanc – bonne nuit! –
Mourir ainsi, du moins c’est vivre.
Que voulez-vous? il faut tuer l’ennui!
Eugène Pottier (4 oktober 1816 – 6 november 1887)
Portret door Boris Taslitzky, 1962