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 : I don’t want to hear any more!
STANLEY: She’s not going back to teach school! In fact I am willing to bet you that she never had no idea of returning to Laurel! She didn’t resign temporarily from the high school because of her nerves! No, siree, Bob! She didn’t. They kicked her out of that high school before the spring term ended—and I hate to tell you the reason that step was taken! A seventeen-year-old boy—she’d gotten mixed up with!
BLANCHE: “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, Just as phony as it can be—”
[In the bathroom the water goes on loud; little breath-less cries and peals of laughter are heard as if a child were frolicking in the tub.]
STELLA : This is making me—sick!
STANLEY: The boy’s dad learned about it and got in touch with the high school superintendent. Boy, oh, boy, I’d like to have been in that office when Dame Blanche was called on the carpet! I’d like to have seen her trying to squirm out of that one! But they had her on the hook good and proper that time and she knew that the jig was all up! They told her she better move on to some fresh territory. Yep, it was practickly a town ordinance passed against her! [The bathroom door is opened and Blanche thrusts her head out, holding a towel about her hair.]
BLANCHE: Stella!
STELLA [faintly]: Yes, Blanche?
BLANCHE: Give me another bath-towel to dry my hair with. I’ve just washed it.”
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Scene uit de gelijknamige tv-film uit 1984 met o.a.Treat Williams als Stanley Kowalski
De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.
America Politica Historia, In Spontaneity (Fragment)
O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets!
The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways,
and it rains, it will not let up,
and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s
prophecy, will the world be over before the races blend color?
All color must be one or let the world be done—
There’ll be a chance, we’ll all be orange!
I don’t want to be orange!
Nothing about God’s color to complain;
and there is a beauty in yellow, the old Lama
in his robe the color of Cathay;
in black a strong & vital beauty,
Thelonious Monk in his robe of Norman charcoal—
And if Western Civilization comes to an end
(though I doubt it, for the prophet has not
executed his prophecy) surely the Eastern child
will sit by a window, and wonder
the old statues, the ornamented doors;
the decorated banquet of the West—
Inflamed by futurists I too weep in rain at night
at the midnight of Western Civilization;
Dante’s step into Hell will never be forgotten by Hell;
the Gods’ adoption of Homer will never be forgotten by the Gods;
the books of France are on God’s bookshelf;
no civil war will take place on the fields of God;
and I don’t doubt the egg of the East its glory—
Yet it rains and the motors go
and continued when I slept by that wall in Washington
which separated the motors in the death-parlor
where Joe McCarthy lay, lean and stilled,
ten blocks from the Capitol—
Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)
In 1994
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:A Shower (Vertaald door broeder Anthony van Taizé)
“They reached the point where the path divided. From here the girl has to go a mile or so downhill, the boy two or three miles uphill.
The girl stopped and said, ‘Have you ever been beyond that hill?’
She pointed beyond the end of the fields.
‘Never.’
‘Why don’t we go? Down here in the country, it’s so boring I can’t stand it.’ ‘It’s a long way, anyway.’
‘How far do you mean by far? Up in Seoul we used walk a long way on picnics.’ The girl’s eyes seemed to be saying, ‘Silly boy! Silly boy!’
They took a path between two paddy fields. They passed close to where the autumn harvest was under way.
A scarecrow was standing there. The boy shook its straw rope. A few sparrows go flying off. The thought comes to him that he was supposed to go home early today to scare the sparrows from their main paddy field.
‘This is fun!’
The girl is holding the scarecrow’s rope and is tugging at it. The scarecrow sways, seems to be dancing. A light dimple appeared on the girl’s left cheek.A bit further away there is another scarecrow. The girl goes running toward it. The boy is running behind her. It’s as if he’s trying to forget that today he was supposed to go home early and help with the work.
He just runs on close beside the girl. Grasshoppers strike their faces and leave them stinging. The perfectly clear azure sky of autumn starts to turn before the boy’s eyes. He is dizzy. It’s because that eagle up there, that eagle up there, that eagle up there is turning.
Looking behind, the girl is shaking the scarecrow he has just run past. It sways better than the other one. At the place where the rice fields ended was a ditch. The girl jumped across it first.
From there as far as the foot of the hills was all fields.
They passed the top of a field where millet stalks were stacked together.”
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
“DONNY And was his since he was five years old. His only friend for fifteen year. Brought him out to me when he started moving about the country bombing places and couldn’t look after him as decent as he thought needed. His only friend in the world, now.
DAVEY Was he fond of him?
DONNY Of course he was fond of him.
DAVEY Oh he’ll be mad.
DONNY He will be mad.
DAVEY As if he wasn’t mad enough already. Padraic’s mad enough for seven people. Don’t they call him ‘Mad Padraic’?
DONNY They do.
DAVEY Isn’t it him the IRA wouldn’t let in because he was too mad?
DONNY It was. And he never forgave them for it.
DAVEY Maybe he’s calmed down since he’s been travelling.
DONNY They tell me he’s gotten worse. I can just see his face after he hears. And I can just see your face too, after he hears your fault it was. I can see him plugging holes in it with a stick.
DAVEY (dropping to his knees) Oh please, Donny, I swear to God it wasn’t me. Don’t be saying my name to him, now. Sure, Padraic would kill you for sweating near him, let alone this. Didn’t he outright cripple the poor fella laughed at that girly scarf he used to wear, and that was when he was twelve?!
DONNY His first cousin too, that fella was, never minding twelve! And then pinched his wheelchair!
DAVEY Please now, Donny, you won’t be mentioning my name to him?
Donny gets up and ambles around. Davey stands also.”
Martin McDonagh (Camberwell, 26 maart 1970)
Scene uit een opvoering in Berkeley, Californië, 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 Late Walk
When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words
A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
The Birthplace
Here further up the mountain slope
Than there was every any hope,
My father built, enclosed a spring,
Strung chains of wall round everything,
Subdued the growth of earth to grass,
And brought our various lives to pass.
A dozen girls and boys we were.
The mountain seemed to like the stir,
And made of us a little while-
With always something in her smile.
Today she wouldn’t know our name.
(No girl’s, of course, has stayed the same.)
The mountain pushed us off her knees.
And now her lap is full of trees.
A Question
A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
Robert Frost (26 maart 1874 – 29 januari 1963)
Hier op zijn 85e verjaardag in 1959
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
„Man schaut nach, entdeckt unter einem Schwarm von Fliegen und zwischen Gekröse und abgeschlagenen Fischköpfen das Neugeborene, zerrt es heraus. Von Amts wegen wird es einer Amme gegeben, die Mutter festgenommen. Und weil sie geständig ist und ohne weiteres zugibt, dass sie das Ding bestimmt würde haben verrecken lassen, wie sie es im übrigen schon mit vier anderen getan habe, macht man ihr den Prozess, verurteilt sie wegen mehrfachen Kindermords und schlägt ihr ein paar Wochen später auf der Place de Grève den Kopf ab.
Das Kind hatte zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits das dritte Mal die Amme gewechselt. Keine wollte es länger als ein paar Tage behalten. Es sei zu gierig, hieß es, sauge für zwei, entziehe den anderen Stillkindern die Milch und damit ihnen, den Ammen, den Lebensunterhalt, da rentables Stillen bei einem einzigen Säugling unmöglich sei. Der zuständige Polizeioffizier, ein gewisser La Fosse, war die Sache alsbald leid und wollte das Kind schon zur Sammelstelle für Findlinge und Waisen in der äußeren Rue Saint-Antoine bringen lassen, von wo aus täglich Kindertransporte ins staatliche Großfindelheim von Rouen abgingen. Da nun aber diese Transporte von Lastträgern vermittels Bastkiepen durchgeführt wurden, in welche man aus Rationalitätsgründen bis zu vier Säuglinge gleichzeitig steckte; da deshalb die Sterberate unterwegs außerordentlich hoch war; da aus diesem Grund die Kiepenträger angehalten waren, nur getaufte Säuglinge zu befördern und nur solche, die mit einem ordnungsgemäßen Transportschein versehen waren, welcher in Rouen abgestempelt werden musste; da das Kind Grenouille aber weder getauft war noch überhaupt einen Namen besaß, den man ordnungsgemäß in den Transportschein hätte eintragen können; da es ferner seitens der Polizei nicht gut angängig gewesen wäre, ein Kind anonymvor den Pforten der Sammelstelle auszusetzen, was allein die Erfüllung der übrigen Formalitäten erübrigt haben würde…“
Patrick Süskind (Ambach, 26 maart 1949)
Ben Whishaw als Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in de film uit 2006
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e maart ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.