De Britse schrijfster Santa Montefiore (eig. Santa Palmer-Tomkinson) werd geboren op 2 februari 1970 in Hampshire. Zie ook alle tags voor Santa Montefiore op dit blog.
Uit: The French Gardener
“Gus felt a jolt of excitement. He forgot about biting Adam Hudson in the playground, about running out of the school gates and up the High Street, about his mother’s angry voice and his own clawing sense of isolation. He forgot about everything except the sudden rush of blood as he set off in pursuit of the donkey.
“You a scaredy cat?” he hissed as he approached the terrified animal. “Whoooa!” He lunged at him, delighting in the clumsy way the donkey stumbled back before cantering stiffly off towards the woods at the top of the field, braying in panic.What a shame he hadn’t brought the stick. It was more fun when he hit him.
Bored of that game, Gus continued into the woods, leaving Charlie trembling in the corner of the field, surrounded by sheep. The ground was soggy, strewn with twigs and brown leaves amongst which a shiny pheasant scraped the earth for food. The sun shone weakly through the leaves, illuminating the spiders’ webs that adorned the surrounding shrubbery with lace. Gus picked up a twig and began to swipe the webs, squashing the fleeing spiders under foot. The pleasure was fleeting, and he was left with the emptiness of believing, albeit subconsciously, that he was of no value to anyone.
Miranda Claybourne put down the telephone and remained at the window, staring out over the orchard. The ground was littered with apples and the last of the plums. She had sensed her son’s presence at the door, but now he had gone. Of all the days Gus had to choose to play truant, he had chosen Deadline Day. She stubbed out her cigarette, reassuring herself that a lapse in her struggle to quit was absolutely okay; three puffs hardly counted. She didn’t have time to go looking for him, and anyway, she wouldn’t know where to start, the grounds were so large and, she observed with a sinking feeling, desperately overgrown and wet.”
Santa Montefiore (Hampshire, 2 februari 1970)
De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver James Dickey werd geboren op 2 februari 1923 in Atlanta, Georgia. Zie ook alle tags voor James Dickey op dit blog.
Creation Made Like Hope
Ethereal and supreme
Of tersest heaven it
has pronounced a daily storm
While hours have been supreme, it has
had hours in its
glee
A purple name
has covered the fans of sovereign
things about its
existence
Has raised and has rased, but
there has been no death
in these mornings
Has experienced and has perched
Has put up with it and has disinvested
Has raised and has razed
Has pondered and has asked
Has said and has raised
James Dickey (2 februari 1923 – 19 januari 1997)
Atlanta, Peachtree Street, jaren 1920
De Viëtnamese dichter Xuân Diệu werd geboren op 2 februari 1916 in Gò Bồi, gemeente Tùng Giản. Zie ookook alle tags voor Xuân Diệu op dit blog.
Lovesick Even
This cold day the sun goes to bed early.
I miss you, dear, I miss you so.
Nothing sadder than a still eve
When gloam mixes with the last rays.
The dragging wind glides o’er the tangled grass
Amid snippets of night darkly hiding among the limbs.
The clouds follow their birds to green mountains
In flocks and rows silent in unison
While gray skies nigh dissolve into moist tears.
It’s over now! What’s left, my dear?
It’s over now! no wind through loft nor moon on porch
With dewy leaves falling on our heads bound.
No more jealousy or anger or spite
(What a bliss to be mad at each other!)
Now ‘lone, I hear the whole even
Seeping slowly into my lonely soul.
I miss your voice, your figure, your image.
I miss you, dear, oh how I miss you, dear!
And I recall those days so far away.
I miss your lips that smiled in country far
And eyes on me that filled with passion deep.
My dear, come close! Give me your hand!
O wind, thy gusts that brought me memories!
O memories, what good thou call’st me for?
Vertaald door Thomas D. Le
Xuân Diệu (2 februari 1916 – 18 december 1985)
De Amerikaanse schrijfster van Russische komaf Ayn Rand (eig. Alissa “Alice” Zinovievna Rosenbaum) werd geboren in Sint-Petersburg op 2 februari 1905. Zie ook alle tags voor Ayn Rand op dit blog.
Uit: Atlas Shrugged
“You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins; it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection.
You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has granted you your wish.
Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man’s mind.
Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn’t. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.
While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem — I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality-mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.”
Ayn Rand (2 februari 1905 – 6 maart 1982)