De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.
Uit: A Streetcar Named Desire
« STELLA: Now please tell me quietly what you think you’ve found out about my sister.
STANLEY: Lie Number One: All this squeamishness she puts on! You should just know the line she’s been feeding to Mitch — He thought she had never been more than kissed by a fellow! But Sister Blanche is no lily! Ha-ha! Some lily she is!
STELLA: What have you heard and who from?
STANLEY: Our supply-man down at the plant has been going through Laurel for years and he knows all about her and everybody else in the town of Laurel knows all about her. She is as famous in Laurel as if she was the President of the United States, only she is not respected by any party! This supply-man stops at a hotel called the Flamingo.
BLANCHE [singing blithely]: “Say, it’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea — But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!”
STELLA: What about the — Flamingo?
STANLEY: She stayed there, too.
STELLA: My sister lived at Belle Reve.
STANLEY: This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily white fingers! She moved to the Flamingo! A second class hotel which has the advantage of not interfering in the private social life of the personalities there! The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche! In fact they were so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to turn in her roomkey — for permanently! This happened a couple of weeks before she showed here.
BLANCHE [singing]: “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world. Just as phony as it can be — But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me!”
STELLA: What – contemptible – lies.“
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Cover dvd
De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.
Writ On The Steps Of Puerto Rican Harlem
There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth
Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death
I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard
I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant
Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)
De Zuid-Koreaanse dichter en schrijver Hwang Sun-won werd geboren op 26 maart 1915 in Taedong, Zuid-Pyongan, in het hedendaagse Noord-Korea. Zie ook alle tags voor Hwang Sun-won op dit blog.
Uit: The Mule (Vertaald door Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton)
“Now why are you always…,” said the old gentleman.
How could he tell this man, who always welcomed him so heartily, to stop tying up his mule in the accustomed place?
Feigning reluctance, he went inside.
“That’s it, come on in,” chimed in the man’s wife with obvious pleasure. Knowing they had put the old gentleman and his family in a fix by tying up their animal next to his house, the husband had told her they should treat him to a drink whenever visited. And so out she went, to return with a bottle in her arms.
” Afraid there’s not much for you to munch on, though…”
With only kimchi and some scraps of dried pollack for snacks, the liquor soon took effect.
The old gentleman began to feel flushed. “You know, we have a problem,” he ventured.
As if expecting this, the mule owner broke in: “I know I’ve gone and put you on the spot, but if you could give us a break and bear with us a little longer… That mule is our livelihood. What else can we do? As you know, uncle, that little mule is all we have in the world. I’ve said this before, but without that little mule we’d of starved a long time ago.”
No matter how drunk he felt, the old gentleman didn’t have the heart to tell the mule owner not to tie up the animal in its usual place because of the mess it made. The man had said he couldn’t survive without it. And besides, wasn’t himself always accepting warm hospitality from him?
“Well, sir, there’s been all sorts of talk from the neighbors,” he ended up saying.
“I figured as much. But uncle, sir, I wish you wouldn’t talk so polite, me being just a young guy and all.”
“Well, for the time being…”
Hwang Sun-won (26 maart 1915-14 september 2000)
De Engels-Ierse schrijver en regisseur Martin McDonagh werd geboren op 26 maart 1970 in Camberwell, Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin McDonagh op dit blog.
Uit: The Lieutenant of Inishmore
«Davey: If you’re insulting me hair again, Donny Osbourne, I’ll be off right this minute. After going out of me way to bring your cat in to you . . .
Donny After squashing the life out of me cat, and he isn’t my cat at all . . .
Davey So as not to let the oul flies be picking the meat off him. A favour I was doing you.
Donny It’s a favour now! With half of that cat’s head poking out of the spokes of your wheels, I’ll bet, and it’s a favour you’re doing me!
Davey stares at Donny a moment, then darts out through the front door. Donnygoes over to the cat and strokes it sadly, then sits in the armchair stage left, looking at the cat’s blood on his hands. Davey returns a few moments later, dragging his mum’s bicycle in through the door. It is pink, with small wheels and a basket. He brings it right over for Donny to see, raises its front wheel so that it’s almost in Donny’s face, and starts slowly spinning it.
Davey Now where’s your cat’s head? Eh? Now where’s your cat’s head?
Donny (depressed) Scraping it off on the way wouldn’t have been a hard job.
Davey There’s no cat’s head on that bicycle wheel. Not even a stain, nor the comrade of a stain, and the state of Wee Tommy you’d have had lumps of brain pure dribbling.
Donny Put your bicycle out of me face, now, Davey.
Davey Poor Wee Thomas’s head, a bicycle wouldn’t do damage that decent. Damage that decent you’d have to go out of your way to do.
Donny Your bicycle out of me face, I’m saying, or it’ll be to your head there’ll be decent damage done.
Davey leaves the bike at the front door.
Davey Either a car or a big stone or a dog you’d need to do that decent damage. And you’d hear a dog.
Donny And you’d hear a car.”
Martin McDonagh (Camberwell, 26 maart 1970)
Scene uit een opvoering in het Plays and Players Theatre in Philadelphia, 2011
De Amerikaanse dichter Robert Lee Frost werd geboren op 26 maart 1874 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Frost op dit blog.
A Time to Talk
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
A Boundless Moment
He halted in the wind, and – what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.
‘Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,’ I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.
We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on) .
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.
Into My Own
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew–
Only more sure of all I though was true.
Robert Frost (26 maart 1874 – 29 januari 1963)
Rond 1895
De Duitse schrijver Patrick Süskind werd geboren in Ambach op 26 maart 1949. Zie ook alle tags voor Patrick Süskind op dit blog.
Uit: Das Parfum
„Und erst später, am Vorabend der Französischen Revolution, nachdem einige der Leichengräben gefährlich eingestürzt waren und der Gestank des überquellenden Friedhofs die Anwohner nicht mehr zu bloßen Protesten, sondern zu wahren Aufständen trieb, wurde er endlich geschlossen und aufgelassen, wurden die Millionen Knochen und Schädel in die Katakomben von Montmartre geschaufelt, und man errichtete an seiner Stelle einen Marktplatz für Viktualien.
Hier nun, am allerstinkendsten Ort des gesamten Königreichs, wurde am 17. Juli 1738 Jean-Baptiste Grenouille geboren. Es war einer der heißesten Tage des Jahres. Die Hitze lag wie Blei über dem Friedhof und quetschte den nach einer Mischung aus fauligen Melonen und verbranntem Horn riechenden Verwesungsbrodem in die benachbarten Gassen. Grenouilles Mutter stand, als die Wehen einsetzten, an einer Fischbude in der Rue aux Fers und schuppte Weißlinge, die sie zuvor ausgenommen hatte. Die Fische, angeblich erst am Morgen aus der Seine gezogen, stanken bereits so sehr, daß ihr Geruch den Leichengeruch überdeckte. Grenouilles Mutter aber nahm weder den Fisch- noch den Leichengeruch wahr, denn ihre Nase war gegen Gerüche im höchsten Maße abgestumpft, und außerdem schmerzte ihr Leib, und der Schmerz tötete alle Empfänglichkeit für äußere Sinneseindrücke. Sie wollte nur noch, daß der Schmerz aufhöre, sie wollte die eklige Geburt so rasch als möglich hinter sich bringen. Es war ihre fünfte. Alle vorhergehenden hatte sie hier an der Fischbude absolviert, und alle waren Totgeburten oder Halbtotgeburten gewesen, denn das blutige Fleisch, das da herauskam, unterschied sich nicht viel von dem Fischgekröse, das da schon lag, und lebte auch nicht viel mehr, und abends wurde alles mitsammen weggeschaufelt und hinübergekarrt zum Friedhof oder hinunter zum Fluß.“
Patrick Süskind (Ambach, 26 maart 1949)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e maart ook mijn twee blogs van 26 maart 2012.