De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Sylvia Plath op dit blog.
Child’s Park Stones
In sunless air, under pines
Green to the point of blackness, some
Founding father set these lobed, warped stones
To loom in the leaf-filtered gloom
Black as the charred knuckle-bones
Of a giant or extinct
Animal, come from another
Age, another planet surely. Flanked
By the orange and fuchsia bonfire
Of azaleas, sacrosanct
These stones guard a dark repose
And keep their shapes intact while sun
Alters shadows of rose and iris —
Long, short, long — in the lit garden
And kindles a day’s-end blaze
Colored to dull the pigment
Of azaleas, yet burnt out
Quick as they. To follow the light’s tint
And intensity by midnight
By noon and throughout the brunt
Of various weathers is
To know the still heart of the stones:
Stones that take the whole summer to lose
Their dream of the winter’s cold; stones
Warming at core only as
Frost forms. No man’s crowbar could
Uproot them: their beards are ever-
Green. Nor do they, once in a hundred
Years, go down to drink the river:
No thirst disturbs a stone’s bed.
Doom of Exiles
Now we, returning from the vaulted domes
Of our colossal sleep, come home to find
A tall metropolis of catacombs
Erected down the gangways of our mind.
Green alleys where we reveled have become
The infernal haunt of demon dangers;
Both seraph song and violins are dumb;
Each clock tick consecrates the death of strangers
Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun.
Still, stubbornly we try to crack the nut
In which the riddle of our race is shut.
Family Reunion
Outside in the street I hear
A car door slam; voices coming near;
Incoherent scraps of talk
And high heels clicking up the walk;
The doorbell rends the noonday heat
With copper claws;
A second’s pause.
The dull drums of my pulses beat
Against a silence wearing thin.
The door now opens from within.
Oh, hear the clash of people meeting —
The laughter and the screams of greeting :
Fat always, and out of breath,
A greasy smack on every cheek
From Aunt Elizabeth;
There, that’s the pink, pleased squeak
Of Cousin Jane, out spinster with
The faded eyes
And hands like nervous butterflies;
While rough as splintered wood
Across them all
Rasps the jarring baritone of Uncle Paul;
The youngest nephew gives a fretful whine
And drools at the reception line.
Like a diver on a lofty spar of land
Atop the flight of stairs I stand.
A whirlpool leers at me,
I cast off my identity
And make the fatal plunge.
Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)
Hier met dichter en echtgenoot Ted Hughes
De Engelse dichter Dylan Thomas werd geboren op 27 oktober 1914 in Swansea in Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Dylan Thomas op dit blog.
This Bread I Break
This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape’s joy.
Once in this time wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.
This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.
To Others Than You
Friend by enemy I call you out.
You with a bad coin in your socket,
You my friend there with a winning air
Who palmed the lie on me when you looked
Brassily at my shyest secret,
Enticed with twinkling bits of the eye
Till the sweet tooth of my love bit dry,
Rasped at last, and I stumbled and sucked,
Whom now I conjure to stand as thief
In the memory worked by mirrors,
With unforgettably smiling act,
Quickness of hand in the velvet glove
And my whole heart under your hammer,
Were once such a creature, so gay and frank
A desireless familiar
I never thought to utter or think
While you displaced a truth in the air,
That though I loved them for their faults
As much as for their good,
My friends were enemies on stilts
With their heads in a cunning cloud.
Limerick
There was an old bugger called God,
who got a young virgin in pod.
This disgraceful behaviour
begot Christ our Saviour,
who was nailed to a cross, poor old sod.
Dylan Thomas (27 oktober 1914 – 9 november 1953)
Portret door Augustus John, 1937-38
De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Zadie Smith op dit blog en eveneens mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010
Uit: White Teeth
“Overhead, a gang of the local flying vermin took off from some unseen perch, swooped, and seemed to be zeroing in on Archie’s car roof – only to perform, at the last moment, an impressive U-turn, moving as one with the elegance of a curve ball and landing on the Hussein-Ishmael, a celebrated halal butchers. Archie was too far gone to make a big noise about it, but he watched them with a warm internal smile as they deposited their load, streaking white walls purple. He watched them stretch their peering bird heads over the Hussein-Ishmael gutter; he watched them watch the slow and steady draining of blood from the dead things – chickens, cows, sheep – hanging on their hooks like coats around the shop. The Unlucky. These pigeons had an instinct for the Unlucky, and so they passed Archie by. For, though he did not know it, and despite the Hoover tube that lay on the passenger seat pumping from the exhaust pipe into his lungs, luck was with him that morning. The thinnest covering of luck was on him like fresh dew. Whilst he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger-moth’s diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie. Somewhere, somehow, by somebody, it had been decided that he would live.
~
The Hussein-Ishmael was owned by Mo Hussein-Ishmael, a great bull of a man with hair that rose and fell in a quaff, then a ducktail. Mo believed that with pigeons you have to get to the root of the problem: not the excretions but the pigeon itself. The shit is not the shit (this was Mo’s mantra); the pigeon is the shit. So the morning of Archie’s almost-death began as every morning in the Hussein-Ishmael, with Mo resting his huge belly on the windowsill, leaning out and swinging a meat cleaver in an attempt to halt the flow of dribbling purple.”
Zadie Smith (Londen, 27 oktober 1975)
De Egyptische schrijfster, gynaecologe, moslimfeministe en politiek activiste Nawal el Saadawi werd geboren in Kafr Tahla op 27 oktober 1931. Zie ook alle tags voor Nawal el Saadawi op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010
Uit:Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (Vertaald door Fedwa Malti-Douglas)
“And there was only one meaning for the word “girl” in my mind…that I was not a boy…I was not like my brother…
My brother cuts his hair and leaves it free, he does not comb it, but as for me, my hair grows longer and longer. My mother combs it twice a day, chains it in braids, and imprisons its ends in ribbons…
My brother wakes up and leaves his bed as it is, but I, I have to make my bed and his as well.
My brother goes out in the street to play, without permission from my mother or my father, and returns at any time…but I, I do not go out without permission.
My brother takes a bigger piece of meat than mine, eats quickly, and drinks the soup with an audible sound, yet my mother does not say anything to him…
As for me…! I am a girl! I must watch my every movement…I must hide my desire for food and so I eat slowly and drink soup without a sound…
My brother plays…jumps…turns somersaults…but I, whenever I sit and the dress rides up a centimeter on my thighs, my mother throws a sharp, wounding glance at me. »
(…)
The Faculty of Medicine?! Yes medicine…
The word has a fearful impression on me…it reminds me of white shining glasses under which are two penetrating eyes moving with amazing speed…and strong tapered fingers holding a sharp frightening long needle…
The first physician I saw in my life…
My mother was trembling in fear and looking at him with supplication and humility…And my brother was shaking from fear…And my father was lying in bed looking at him with imploration and a plea for mercy…“
Nawal el Saadawi (Kafr Tahla, 27 oktober 1931)
De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Albrecht Rodenbach op dit blog.
Trouwlied
op muziek van Peter Benoît
Door woelig jonglingsleven,
door bonte jonglingsdromen,
gelijk ene Elve aan ’t zweven
in lichte morgendomen
ontwaart de Man de Liefde – een toverachtig beeld
dat, troostend en belovend, gedurig rond hem speelt.
Pas eerst in hare bloesem,
het blozen op de wangen,
de Vrouw voelt in de boezem
een vreemd gedurig langen
naar een aanbeden wezen dat, rustig in zijn macht,
haar tederheden lonend, haar steunt en op haar lacht.
Eens daagt voor ’s jonglings ogen
zijn droom – een levend wezen.
Hij spreekt – Zij spreekt bewogen,
en laat hem in haar lezen –
En Hij die schikt en zegent vereent een zalig Paar.
Zij blijve met Hem zalig en zalig Hij met Haar!
Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 – 23 juni 1880)
Portret door J.-L. Huens in De Geïllustreerde Geschiedenis van België
De Engelse dichter en vertaler Jamie McKendrick werd op 27 oktober 1955 in Liverpool geboren. Zie ook alle tags voor Jamie McKendrick op dit blog.
Six Characters in Search of Something
A friend of mine met the son of a man
who it seems was eaten by a polar bear
in Iceland where the bear had stepped ashore
rafted from Greenland on an ice-floe.
The father of the man who met my friend
saw the bear who’d eat him loitering near
the shore and hurried on and met another man
who was walking the other way towards the bear.
He gave that other man his walking stick
but the bear meanwhile had doubled back
and reappeared on the path ahead
of the man who now was unprotected-
There may be a moral in this story,
for the man, his son, the man he met,
for my friend, for me, or even for the bear,
but if there is it’s better left unsaid.
Sky Nails
That first day, to break me in,
my hardened comrades
sent me scampering like a marmoset
from the topmost parapet
to the foreman’s hut
for a bag of sky nails.
The foreman wondered which precise
shade of blue I had in mind.
It’s still sky nails I need today
with their faint threads
and unbreakable heads
that will nail anything
to nothing
and make it stay.
Jamie McKendrick (Liverpool, 27 oktober 1955)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27 oktober ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2013 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.
Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.
De Iraanse schrijver en filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh werd geboren op 27 oktober 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran.