Tag: Arthur Laurents

Gavrila Derzjavin, Béatrix Beck, Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Willard Motley

De Russische dichter Gavrila Romanovitsj Derzjavin werd geboren in Kazan op 14 juli 1743. Zie ook alle tags voor Gavrila Derzjavin op dit blog.

On The Death Of Prince Meshchersky (Fragment)

O, Voice of time! O, metal’s clang!
Your dreadful call distresses me,
Your groan doth beckon, beckon me
It beckons, brings me closer to my grave.
This world I’d just begun to see
When death began to gnash her teeth,
Like lightening her scythe aglint,
She cuts my days like summer hay.

No creature thinks to run away,
From under her rapacious claws:
Prisoners, kings alike are worm meat,
Cruel elements the tomb devour,
Time gapes to swallow glory whole.
As rushing waters pour into the sea,
So days and ages pour into eternity
And death carnivorous all eats.

We slide along the edge of an abyss
And we will someday topple in.
With life, we take at one time death,
To die’s the purpose of our birth.
Death strikes all down without a thought.
It shatters e’en the stars,
Extinguishes the suns,
It threatens every world.

Gavrila Derzjavin (14 juli 1743 – 20 juli 1816)
Op een postzegel uit 1972


De Franse schrijfster van Belgische origine Béatrix Beck werd geboren in Villars-sur-Ollon op 14 juli 1914. Zie ook alle tags voor Béatrix Beck op dit blog.

Uit: La Petite Italie

“Au dernier étage, dans un placard à balais coquettement aménagé, tapissé d’échantillons de papier mural, vivotait la très vieille signora Cumini, trois fois veuve et plus de dents. Elle dormait recroquevillée pour pouvoir fermer sa porte. On la nourrissait gratis, les uns par solidarité sociale, les autres pour l’amour de la bienheureuse Maria Goretti, la grande Teresa ou, carrément, Dieu.
— Du pareil au même, chuintait Lucrezia Cumini.
Lait de poule, purées de toutes choses, même gâtées, elle n’y voit que du feu. Consommé où le chat mijote trois heures et demie, c’est pas la mort d’un pape. Avec les herbes, un vrai lapin. La nonagénaire Lulu larmoyait d’attendrissement en déglutissant.
Alida étreignit sa fille comme si elle venait d’échapper à un carnage, coiffa de sa belle grande main abîmée la tête ronde de son fils, rasée à cause des poux des riches :
— Mon cœur, qu’est ce que t’as fait à l’école aujourd’hui ?
— Rien.
— Oh, protesta Alia. Ils ont appris une chanson. Chante à maman.
— La pou-oule noire pond dans l’a-armoire.
— Et puis ?
— La poule blanche je sais pas.
La toute petite Sandra donna de la voix. Mère et fille se jetèrent sur elle, l’arrachèrent à son moïse, se l’arrachèrent. Alida dut lâcher prise pour touiller la sublime soupe des premiers jours du mois, une totalité, un absolu. Dans chaque assiette un filet d’or liquide. Mon huile c’est mon sang, disait Alida en rebouchant serré le bidon. Fête intérieure, recueillement. Seigneur, priait in petto Alida, mange avec nous cette bonté.
Quand le travail venait à manquer, on allait jusqu’à bouffer de l’herbe bien bouillie, bien tordue, bien hachée. Les macaronis vivent de l’air du temps, disaient les Français, les gaspilleurs, avec envie et mépris.
Après le repas, succulent ou misérable, les trois enfants baisaient la main de leur mère qui l’avait préparé, l’hommage de Nicola tenant plutôt du suçon. Alida accueillait le cérémonial avec naturel et dignité. Essayait de raconter à son mari : — La voisine… le boulanger… la pluie… — Les ragots j’en ai rien à foutre. Parle-moi de la dictature du prolétariat.”

Béatrix Beck (14 juli 1914 – 30 november 2008)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918.Zie ook alle tags voor Arthur Laurents op dit blog.

Uit: West Side Story

“By the time the mambo music starts the Jets and Sharks are each on their own side of the hall. At the climax of the dance, Tony and Bernardo’s sister, Maria, see one another :as a delicate cha-cha-cha, they slowly walk forward to meet each other.
MEETING SCENE
TONY
You’re not thinking I’m someone else?
MARIA
I know you are not.
TONY
Or that we have met before?
MARIA
I know we have not.
TONY
I felt I knew something-never-before was going to happen, had to happen. But this is …
MARIA
interrupting
My hands are so cold.
He takes them in his.
Yours too.
He moves her hands to his face.
So warm.
She moves his hands to herface.
TONY
Yours, too…
MARIA
But of course. They are the same.
TONY
It’s so much to believe. You’re not joking me?
MARIA
I have not yet learned how to joke that way.
I think how I never will.

[JUMP]
Bernardo is upon them in an icy rage. Chino, whom Bernardo has brought Maria from Puerto Rico to marry, takes her home. Riff wants Bernardo for”War Council”; they agree to meet in half an hour at Doc’s drugstore.”

Arthur Laurents (14 juli 1918 – 5 mei 2011)
Scene uit de film uit 1961 met Natalie Wood (Maria) and Richard Beymer (Tony)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Owen Wister werd geboren op 14 juli 1860 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Owen Wister op dit blog.

Uit: The Jimmyjohn Boss

“One day at Nampa, which is in Idaho, a ruddy old massive jovial man stood by the Silver City stage, patting his beard with his left hand, and with his right the shoulder of a boy who stood beside him. He had come with the boy on the branch train from Boise, because he was a careful German and liked to say everything twice–twice at least when it was a matter of business. This was a matter of very particular business, and the German had repeated himself for nineteen miles. Presently the east-bound on the main line would arrive from Portland; then the Silver City stage would take the boy south on his new mission, and the man would journey by the branch train back to Boise. From Boise no one could say where he might not go, west or east. He was a great and pervasive cattle man in Oregon, California, and other places. Vogel and Lex–even to-day you may hear the two ranch partners spoken of. So the veteran Vogel was now once more going over his notions and commands to his youthful deputy during the last precious minutes until the east-bound should arrive.
“Und if only you haf someding like dis,” said the old man, as he tapped his beard and patted the boy, “it would be five hoondert more dollars salary in your liddle pants.”
The boy winked up at his employer. He had a gray, humorous eye; he was slim and alert, like a sparrow-hawk–the sort of boy his father openly rejoices in and his mother is secretly in prayer over. Only, this boy had neither father nor mother. Since the age of twelve he had looked out for himself, never quite without bread, sometimes attaining champagne, getting along in his American way variously, on horse or afoot, across regions of wide plains and mountains, through towns where not a soul knew his name. He closed one of his gray eyes at his employer, and beyond this made no remark.
“Vat you mean by dat vink, anyhow?” demanded the elder.
“Say,” said the boy, confidentially–“honest now. How about you and me? Five hundred dollars if I had your beard. You’ve got a record and I’ve got a future. And my bloom’s on me rich, without a scratch. How many dollars you gif me for dat bloom?” The sparrow-hawk sailed into a freakish imitation of his master.
“You are a liddle rascal!” cried the master, shaking with entertainment. “Und if der peoples vas to hear you sass old Max Vogel in dis style they would say, ‘Poor old Max, he lose his gr-rip.’ But I don’t lose it.” His great hand closed suddenly on the boy’s shoulder, his voice cut clean and heavy as an axe, and then no more joking about him. “Haf you understand that?” he said.”

Owen Wister (14 juli 1860 – 21 juli 1938)
Cover


De Amerikaanse schrijver Willard Frances Motley werd geboren op 14 juli 1909 in Chicago. Zie ook alle tags voor Willard Motley op dit blog.

Uit: Alan M. Wald.American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War (Hoofdstuk over Willard Motley)

“Like Oscar Wilde, Motley yearned for an escape from moralistic prohibi-tionism, but unlike Wilde he would not turn victimization into martyrdom. In personal notes he kept for a planned book-length novel about homosexual culture in the postwar era, he explained that he did not want to write the kind of book later known as the “Homosexual Problem Novel”; he hated the ones he read such as Gore Vidal’s The Pillar and the City (1946).107 He also refused to depict a homosexual as a redemptive figure, as in James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962). While Motley’s rejection of the available racial and gender definitions makes sense in a pre-Stonewall age, the absence of an alternative turned into a no-win predicament. Rather than producing fiction that replaced settled forms of identity with processes embedded in class, national, ethnic, and personal contexts, Motley could generate only a disconcerting sequence of enigmas and stereotypes. Hoist with his own petard of nondisclosure, Motley nonetheless partook, instinctively, of an “Adornian” dialectic through which his novels register a cognition of tension between concepts of race and gender and the non-conceptuality of the same. He merged with Petry and others in eroding prior categories, which in Petry’s case created a narrative that promoted a dissolu-tion of the 193os idea of the novel as reflective of the material configuration of experience. But anyone seeking in Motley a nimble and buoyant presenta-tion of such art will be disappointed. He aspired to panoramic volumes on a grand scale, and these are weighted with the deadly undertow of exhaustively researched sociological settings. Only a vigilant reader can discern how Mot-ley’s literary trajectory exhibits a process of paradoxical self-negation. Unlike Petry, there is no rematerializing logic to his texts through a vivid seizure of the imagination. In the eyes of his FBI watchers, Willard Motley was simply a “Negro writer with Leftist and homosexual tendencies who has lived in Mexico for a num-ber of years..”00 To understand more intricately what this redaction denoted, one needs to recover motives and meanings from Motley’s intimate life.”

Willard Motley (14 juli 1909 – 15 maart 1965)


Irving Stone, Volker Kaminski, Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Béatrix Beck, Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Willard Motley

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Irving Stone op dit blog.

Uit:Lust for Life

“He did not know how much time passed. He got up, ripped the canvas off the frame, threw it into a corner, and put on a new one. He mixed some paints, sat down, and began work. One starts with a hopeless struggle to follow nature, and everything goes wrong; one ends by calmly creating from one’s palette, and nature agrees with it and follows. On croit que j’imagine—ce n’est pas vrai—je me souviens. It was just as Pietersen had told him in Brussels; he had been too close to his models. He had not been able to get a perspective. He had been pouring himself into the mould of nature; now he poured nature into the mould of himself. He painted the whole thing in the colour of a good, dusty, unpeeled potato. There was the dirty, linen table cloth, the smoky wall, the lamp hanging down from the rough rafters, Stien serving her father with steamed potatoes, the mother pouring the black coffee, the brother lifting a cup to his lips, and on all their faces the calm, patient acceptance of the eternal order of things. The sun rose and a bit of light peered into the storeroom window. Vincent got up from his stool. He felt perfectly calm and peaceful. The twelve days’ excitement was gone. He looked at his work. It reeked of bacon, smoke, and potato steam. He smiled. He had painted his Angelus. He had captured that which does not pass in that which passes. The Brabant peasant would never die.”
(…)

“The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and the grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, the corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life….”

 

 
Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)
Cover

Lees verder “Irving Stone, Volker Kaminski, Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Béatrix Beck, Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Willard Motley” →

Irving Stone, Volker Kaminski, Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Béatrix Beck, Arthur Laurents

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Irving Stone op dit blog.

Uit: Uit: Lust for Life

“The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and the grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, the corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life….”
(…)

“I don’t know myself,” he said. “I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me, and I say, ‘That white board must become something!’ I work for a long time, I come back home dissatisfied, I put it away in the closet. When I have rested a little I go to look at it with a kind of fear. I am still dissatisfied because I have too clearly in my mind the splendid original to be content with what I have made of it. But after all, I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered, there may be mistakes or gaps, but there is something in it of what the woods or beach or figure has told me. Do you understand?” “No.”

 

 
Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)
Kirk Douglas als Vincent van Gogh in de film “Lust for Life” uit 1956

Lees verder “Irving Stone, Volker Kaminski, Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Béatrix Beck, Arthur Laurents” →

Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Béatrix Beck, Willard Motley

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918.Zie ook alle tags voor Arthur Laurents op dit blog.

Uit: West Side Story

“A-RAB: Great Daddy-O!
RIFF: so everybody dress up sweet and sharp and meet Tony and me at ten.
ALL:
Oh, when the Jets fall in at the cornball dance
We’ll be the sweetest dressin’ gang in pants!
And when the chicks dig us in our Jet black ties,
They’re gonna flip, gonna flop, gonna drop like flies!
(They dance together a little wild )
RIFF: Hey, Cool! Easy. Sweet. See ya. And walk tall!
(He runs off)
A-RAB: We always walk tall!
BABY JOHN: We’re Jets!
ACTION: The greatest!
ACTION and BABY JOHN:
When you’re a Jet
You’re the top cat in town
You’re the gold-medal kid
With the heavyweight crown!
A-RAB, ACTION and BIG DEAL:
When you’re a Jet
You’re the swingingest thing
Little boy, you’re a man
Little man, you’re a king

 

Arthur Laurents (14 juli 1918 – 5 mei 2011)
Scene uit de film “West Side Story” uit 1961
Lees verder “Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Béatrix Beck, Willard Motley” →

Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Béatrix Beck, Willard Motley, Joshua Ferris, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918.Zie ook alle tags voor Arthur Laurents op dit blog.

Uit: West Side Story

“SNOWBOY: What about the day we clobbered the Emeralds?
A-RAB: Which we couldn’t have done without Tony.
BABY JOHN: He saved my ever-lovin’ neck!
RIFF: Right! He’s always come through for us and he will now.

(sings)
When you’re a Jet,
You’re a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last dyin’ day.

When you’re a Jet,
If the spit hits the fan,
You got brothers around,
You’re a family man!

You’re never alone,
You’re never disconnected!
You’re home with your own:
When company’s expected,
You’re well protected!

Then you are set
With a capital J,
Which you’ll never forget
Till they cart you away.
When you’re a Jet,
You stay a Jet!

(spoken) I know Tony like I know me. I guarantee you can count him in.

ACTION: In, out, let’s get crackin’.
A-RAB: Where you gonna find Bernardo?
RIFF: At the dance tonight at the gym.
BIG DEAL: But the gym’s neutral territory.
RIFF: (innocently) I’m gonna make nice there! I’m only gonna challenge him.”

 

Arthur Laurents (14 juli 1918 – 5 mei 2011)

Lees verder “Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Béatrix Beck, Willard Motley, Joshua Ferris, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” →

Irving Stone, Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Béatrix Beck, Willard Motley, Kerstin Preiwuß, Rainer Stolz

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: Der Schöpfung wunderbare Wege (Vertaald door Willy Thaler)

„Er stand vor seinem Rasiertisch aus Mahagoni und rührte mit dem Rasierpinsel in der weißen Rasierschale mit den blauen Blumen, goss heißes Wasser aus einem Kupferkrug hinzu, seifte sein hellhäutiges Gesicht ein und klappte sein scharf geschliffenes Rasiermesser mit dem Ebenholzgriff auf.

Für den zweiundzwanzigjährigen Charles Darwin war das Rasieren eine angenehme, wenig schwierige Aufgabe, denn er trug seinen rötlich braunen Backenbart bis zum Kinn. Er brauchte also nur seine rosa Wangen und das runde Kinn zu rasieren. Seine roten Lippen waren recht kurz geraten im Vergleich zu der Größe seiner braunen, purpurgesprenkelten Augen, die alles beobachteten und registrierten.

Er säuberte sein Gesicht vom Seifenschaum, nahm zwei Bürsten mit silbernem Rücken und scheitelte sein langes karottenrotes Haar sorgfältig, sodass es fast sein ganzes rechtes Ohr bedeckte, dann bürstete er den übrigen dichten Schopf quer über seinen großen Kopf, bis er in einem eleganten Schwung über sein linkes Ohr fi el. Er nahm ein frisches weißes Hemd aus der Kommode aus Nussholz, knöpfte den gestärkten weißen Kragen zu, dessen Spitzen seinen Bart umrahmten, legte

eine dunkelbraune Krawatte um den hohen Kragen und band eine große Schleife. Gewöhnlich rasierte er sich, wenn er am Morgen aufstand, aber er hatte den Tag auf dem Severn im Familienruderboot mit Fischen und Sammeln verbracht und das Ankleiden bis zu dem Zeitpunkt hinausgeschoben, an dem er Professor Adam Sedgwick empfangen sollte.“

stone

Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)

 

De Italiaanse schrijfster Natalia Ginzburg werd geboren op 14 juli 1916 in Palermo. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2006 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2008 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: De menselijke verhoudingen (Vertaald door etta Maris)

“En we verlaten ons huis en gaan voor altijd met deze persoon samenleven; niet omdat we ervan overtuigd zijn dat hij de juiste persoon is, integendeel, we zijn daar helemaal niet van overtuigd en we hebben steeds het vermoeden dat de ware juiste persoon zich wie weet waar in de stad verborgen houdt. Maar we hebben geen zin om te weten waar hij zich verbergt. We voelen dat we hem nu nog maar heel weinig te zeggen hebben, omdat we alles aan deze persoon zeggen waar we nu mee samenleven en die misschien niet de juiste is; en het goede en het kwade van ons leven willen we ontvangen van deze persoon en met hem.”

ginzburg 

Natalia Ginzburg (14 juli 1916 – 7 oktober 1991)

 

De Franse schrijver en letterkundige Jacques de Lacretelle werd geboren in Cormatin (Saône-et-Loire) op 14 juli 1888. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2008 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: Silbermann

„En troisième on passait au grand lycée. Il occupait la moitié de l’établissement et était identique à la partie où j’avais fait mes études pendant quatre années. Même cour carrée, plantée de quelques arbres, dont faisait le tour une haute galerie couverte, élargie à un endroit pour former préau : même disposition des classes tout du long de cette galerie ; et sur les murs, entre les fenêtres, semblables moulages de bas-reliefs antiques.

Néanmoins, comme c’était la première fois, le matin de cette rentrée d’octobre, que je pénétrais dans cette cour, les choses me présentaient un aspect neuf et je portais de tous côtés des regards curieux. La pensée chagrine d’une indépendance qui expire me vint à l’esprit comme je remarquais les portes et les croisées nouvellement repeintes. Leur couleur marron rouge était pareille à celle des jujubes que l’avant-veille encore je ramassais à Aiguesbelles, près de Nîmes, dans le jardin du mas. C’était là, chez mes grands parents, que nous avions passé les vacances comme chaque année. Nous y restions jusqu’au soir du dernier dimanche, car ma mère se plaisait beaucoup à ces jours de cérémonie et de loisir qui lui rappelaient les réjouissances virginales de sa jeunesse. L’absence de mon père, qui rentrait à Paris au commencement de septembre, la rendait libre de les vivre de même façon qu’autrefois. Le matin, nous allions avec mes grands parents au temple. Au retour, ma mère ne manquait jamais de cueillir au vieux figuier dont les racines noueuses étaient captives dans le dallage de la terrasse, la figue la plus belle et la plus chaude. Elle me la tendait, ayant fendu en quatre la pulpe rose et granuleuse, et me regardait manger, cherchant dans mes yeux si j’aimais les fruits de cet arbre autant qu’elle les avait aimés à mon âge…“

lacretelle

Jacques de Lacretelle (14 juli 1888 – 2 januari 1985)

 

De Russische dichter Gavrila Romanovitsj Derzjavin werd geboren in Kazan op 14 juli 1743. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2008 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Ter gelegenheid van de dood van
Katerina Jakovlevna op 15 juli 1794

Niet langer zingt mijn zoetgevooisde
Huiszwaluw op het dakgebint,
Gevlogen is mijn liefste, mooiste…
En of ik ooit nog vreugde vind?

Door het verschrikkelijke duister
Valt zelfs het licht niet van de maan;
Haar reine lichaam ligt en rust er
Morsdood, de ogen toegedaan.

De honden wroeten in de aarde,
En janken, net als wind en huis;
Niet wakker wordt de opgebaarde.
De donder slaat mijn hart tot gruis!

Jij, zwaluw, zanger zonder weerga,
Keert weder in april of mei.
Maar jij, mijn teerbeminde eega,
Jij bent voor eeuwig weg bij mij.

Een jarenlange disgenote,
Een metgezel die om mij gaf,
Een onvolprezen echtgenote –
Zij allen delen nu één graf.

’t Is leeg rondom. Waartoe nog leven?
Voel mij verslagen, uitgeblust.
Hart, zielehelft, wil mij vergeven,
Ik sluit de kist waarin jij rust.

derzjavin

Gavrila Derzjavin (14 juli 1743 – 20 juli 1816)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals

„With Tyne Daly in the 1989 revival of Gypsy, the defining moment between star and director happened, not in her dressing room, but in the rehearsal room. From the first day of rehearsal, it was apparent she and I were headed for that Showdown at the OK Corral.
I liked her from our first meeting, which was at her audition on the stage of the Imperial Theatre. She had an irresistible smile, a lust for life in the theatre-and great legs. I was surprised how well she sang; the timbre of her voice was oddly similar to Ethel’s. This Rose could be sexual, a motor I could use to drive the whole production. From what I had seen of her work, I assumed she was a good actress-perhaps a questionable assumption, since I’d only seen her on TV. She’d begun in the theatre, though, and came from a theatrical family. As it turned out, my assumption was justified: she was a very good actress-a stubborn one, but a damn good one.
She arrived for rehearsal with her beamish smile and armed: she called me “Mr. Laurents.” While she didn’t overtly question any direction I gave her, there was always the slightly raised eyebrow, the polite question, the little grin that came and went like a sudden threatening cloud on the beach. Unexpressed challenge was always polluting the air, filling the rehearsal hall; the whole company was waiting for the gas to catch fire and explode. Which it did, when we came to the last scene of the first act, where Rose reads June’s letter of defection.“

laurentz

Arthur Laurents (New York, 14 juli 1918)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Owen Wister werd geboren op 14 juli 1860 in  Germantown, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: The Virginian

„Sometimes the pony took a turn alone; next he had slid in a flash among his brothers, and the whole of them like a school of playful fish whipped round the corral, kicking up the fine dust, and (I take it) roaring with laughter. Through the window-glass of our Pullman2 the thud of their mischievous hoofsreached us, and the strong, humorous curses of the cow-boys. Then for the first time I noticed a man who sat on the high gate of the corral, looking on. For he now climbed down with the undulations of a tiger, smooth and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin. The others had all visibly whirled the rope, some of them even shoulder high. I did not see his arm lift or move. He appeared to hold the rope down low, by his leg. But like a sudden snake I saw the noose go out its length and fall true; and the thing was done. As the captured pony walked in with a sweet, church-door expression, our train moved slowly on to the station, and a passenger remarked, “That man knows his business.”

But the passenger’s dissertation upon roping I was obliged to lose, for Medicine Bow was my station. I bade my fellow-travellers good-by, and descended, a stranger, into the great cattle land. And here in less than ten minutes I learned news which made me feel a stranger indeed.

My baggage was lost; it had not come on my train; it was adrift somewhere back in the two thousand miles that lay behind me. And by way of comfort, the baggage-man remarked that passengers often got astray from their trunks, but the trunks mostly found them after a while. Having offered me this encouragement, he turned whistling to his affairs and left me planted in the baggage-room at Medicine Bow. I stood deserted among crates and boxes, blankly holding my check, furious and forlorn. I stared out through the door at the sky and the plains; but I did not see the antelope shining among the sage-brush, nor the great sunset light of Wyoming.“

wister

Owen Wister (14 juli 1860 – 21 juli 1938)

 

De Franse schrijfster van Belgische origine Béatrix Beck werd geboren in Villars-sur-Ollon op 14 juli 1914. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: Léon Morin, prêtre.

„Monsieur l’abbé, je voudrais vous dire quelque chose, articulai-je avec difficulté. Il leva vers moi des yeux attentifs. – Voilà. Je suis flambée. – Vous êtes flambée ? – Oui. Je me convertis. Je suis à vos ordres. Morin parut consterné… – Vous êtes peut-être un peu trop fatiguée, ou sous-alimentée, ces temps-ci. – Non, je ne suis pas fatiguée, et on vient de toucher des pommes de terre… – Elle est complètement braque, cette fille, murmura Morin.“

beck

Béatrix Beck (14 juli 1914 – 30 november 2008)

 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

De Amerikaanse schrijver Willard Frances Motley werd geboren op 14 juli 1909 in Chicago.

 

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata:

De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Kerstin Preiwuß werd geboren in 1980 in Lübz en groeide op in Plau am See en Rostock. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2009.

Uit: Wohin ich in Wahrheit hingehöre

„Während eines einjährigen Studienaufenthaltes in Aix-en-Provence, Südfrankreich, trat mir ein Reiseziel vor Augen, das legte mir ein der aufgehenden Sonne näheres Land als Naturgesetz dar:

 west-östlich

 um mich herum die luft ist ein fanal:

du lebst im gesegneten land, sagt sie

wie sie mich anbläst in ihrer größe,

ich finde kein leben darin,

ich atmete gerne woanders auf

Was auch bedeuten mag, jene Zeit im gelobten Sonnenland war derart sättigend, dass ich mich auf die Suche begab nach dem, was wieder hungrig macht. Die Provence trägt ein schönes Licht von Januar bis März, im übrigen ist sie eine alte Frau, grell geschminkt läuft diese über ihren Steg und weiß nicht mehr, welcher Touristenführer sie am schönsten macht. Bei einem derartigen Sonnenschein bohrte so allerlei Nagegetier seinen Hunger in mich hinein. Warum ich so selbstverständlich beobachtete, was sich dort Leben nennt, wollte ich wissen, das führte unweigerlich zu jener Frage, woher einer kommt, der (noch) so sieht. Ich bin geboren in einem Land DDR, das ist nicht mehr, obwohl mir doch alles erhalten blieb an ihm.“

 preiwuss 

Kerstin Preiwuß (Lübz, 1980)

 

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Rainer Stolz werd geboren in hamburg in 1966. Hij woont nu in Berlijn. Hij publiceerde in diverse tijdschriften en bloemlezingen. Ook werden aan hem verschillende werkbeurzen toegekend. In 2007 verscheen zijn dichtbundel Während mich die Stadt erfindet.

Strandstück

Hinter uns singt das Geländer.
Es sucht den Ton des Windes
zu halten – gibt es also
noch Wetterharfen. Du
raffst dein Kleid und watest
lachend durch den Priel – es gibt
sogar noch Nixen. Ich
vertiefe mich in die Schönheit
von Totholz, besetzt
mit Flechten. Der Flugsand
umspielt mir die Knöchel,
die Fesseln.

 stolz

Rainer Stolz (Hamburg, 1966)

Irving Stone, Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister, Béatrix Beck, Willard Motley, Steffen Popp, Kerstin Preiwuß

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007.

Uit: The Agony and the Ecstasy

„He began with the Deluge, a large panel toward the entrance of the chapel. By March he had the cartoon blown up and ready to be transferred to the ceiling. Winter had not released its grip on Rome. The Sistine was bitterly cold. A hundred braziers could not heat its lowest areas. He wore his warm wool stockings, brache and shirt.

Rosselli, who had left for Orvieto for a profitable commission, had trained Michi in the mixing of the plaster and the method of applying it. Michelangelo helped him carry the sacks of lime, sand and pozzolana, volcanic tufa dust, up the steep wall ladders to the top of the scaffolding. Here Michi made his mix. Michelangelo was dissatisfied with the tawny color caused by the pozzolana, adding more lime and ground marble. He and Michi then climbed the series of three receding platforms that Rosselli had built so that they could plaster and paint the top of the rolling vault. Michi laid an area of intonaco, then held the cartoon.

Michelangelo used the stick, charcoal bag, red ochre for connecting lines. Michi descended, set to work grinding colors below. Michelangelo was now on his top platform, sixty feet above the floor. He had been thirteen when he stood for the first time on the scaffolding in Santa Maria Novella, alone on a peak above the chapel and the world. Now he was thirty-four, and now, as then, he suffered vertigo. The Sistine seemed so hollow from up here, with his head just one foot below the ceiling. He smelled the wet plaster, the pungence of his freshly ground paints.

He turned from his view of the marble floor, picked up a brush, squeezed it between the fingers and

thumb of his left hand, remembering that he would have to keep his colors liquid this early in the morning…”

Stone

Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)

 

De Italiaanse schrijfster Natalia Ginzburg werd geboren op 14 juli 1916 in Palermo. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2006 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2008.

Uit: Human Relationships (Vertaald door Dick Davis)

“In that brief moment we found a point of equilibrium for our wavering life: and it seemed to us that we could always rediscover that secret moment and find there the words for our vocation, the words for our neighbour; that we could look at our neighbour with a gaze that would always be just and free, not the timid or contemptuous gaze of someone who whenever he is with his neighbour always asks himself if he is his master or his servant. All our life we have only known how to be masters and servants: but in that secret moment of ours, in our moment of perfect equilibrium, we have realized that there is no real authority or servitude on the earth. And so it is that now as we turn to that secret moment we look at others to see whether they have lived through an identical moment, or whether they are still far away from it; it is this that we have to know. It is the highest moment in the life of a human being, and it is necessary that we stand with others whose eyes are fixed on the highest moment of their destiny “

ginsburg

Natalia Ginzburg (14 juli 1916 – 7 oktober 1991)

 

De Franse schrijver en letterkundige Jacques de Lacretelle werd geboren in Cormatin (Saône-et-Loire) op  14 juli 1888. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2008.

Uit: Le Retour de Silbermann

« Tout ce qu’on m’apprendra, disait-il, je le sais déjà. Ce que je ne sais pas, c’est comment on gagne de l’argent. »
C’est ainsi qu’il se mit tout de suite aux affaires avec un zèle un peu inexpérimenté que l’oncle Joshua avait dû ralentir à plus d’une reprise. Il avait voulu être initié en même temps à toutes les branches de sa profession. Dès qu’il entendait parler, dans le bureau, d’une vente ou d’un achat possible, il se proposait pour conclure le marché. « Laissez-moi aller voir, oncle Joshua, laissez-moi traiter. »
– Naturellement, me dit son cousin, mon père, qui avait mis trente ans à faire sa fortune, ne lui confiait rien d’important, et il se moquait parfois de l’impétuosité de David.“

lacretelle2

Jacques de Lacretelle (14 juli 1888 – 2 januari 1985)

 

De Russische dichter Gavrila Romanovitsj Derzjavin werd geboren in Kazan op 14 juli 1743. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2008.

The Storm

As my bark in restless ocean
Mounts its rough and foaming hills,
Whilst its waves in dark commotion
Pass me, hope my bosom fills.

Who, when warring clouds are gleaming,
Quenches the destructive spark?
Say what hand, where safety’s beaming,
Guides through rocks my little bark?

Thou Creator! all o’erseeing,
In this scene preserv’st me dread,
Thou, without whose word decreeing
Not a hair falls from my head.

Thou in life hast doubly blest me,
All my soul to thee’s revealed,
Thou amongst the great hast placed me,
Be midst them my guide and shield!

 

Vertaald door William D. Lewis

Derzjavin

Gavrila Derzjavin (14 juli 1743 – 20 juli 1816)
Monument voor Derzjavin in Kazan

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918.Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007.

Uit: My Good Name

„HARRY: Not in their class. Either class. You think they went down because they’re outsiders. I think because they were greedy. I wasn’t greedy, Rachel. I simply wanted to live well. I wanted to be sure that you and I and your child and my childr – child lived well. We do. We have everything we need and a bit more. But we don’t live in the land of Ferraris. I was neither gaudy nor greedy. When they caught up with me, what did they catch? Good name, good clubs, a personable, affable asset to be counted on and no threat to anyone. A gentleman. That’s an old fashioned concept, so they don’t say it. But they think it, and what they think is: you can believe him. In the case of the Feds: you can believe his testimony. That’s why they gave me the choice. I could help them and get immunity or I could be sent to jail. Why should I go to jail? What good would it do anyone if I went to jail? You and Becca would have to give up this room. Why should you? Why should I?

RACHEL: (After a moment.) This is ridiculous. I feel like I’m hyperventilating.

HARRY: Take some slow deep breaths.

RACHEL: I’m not hyperventilating. This is ridiculous! You know what it is? I know what it is. Everything in my head is jammed. all circuits closed down. I had it once before. Years ago, before you. Even before Becca. I was trying to get away from Mickey and wound up back-packing through Europe with him. In Paris, I spoke French – from college. In Madrid, Spanish – from high school. By the time we got to Italy, I had stopped thinking in English and was translating from either Spanish or French into Italian in the present tense. Until one night, in a bar in Positano. Out of season, just before Easter – the Buca di Bacco! I can see the carving over the door. all the languages seemed jammed in my head and I couldn’t speak anything for ten minutes. Nothing, not one word, not even English for ten minutes. The next day, I flew home alone. But Becca was already underway.”

ArthurLaurents

Arthur Laurents (New York, 14 Juli 1918)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Owen Wister werd geboren op 14 juli 1860 in  Germantown, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007.

Uit: Red men and white (Little Big Horn Medicine)

“Something new was happening among the Crow Indians. A young pretender had appeared in the tribe. What this might lead to was unknown alike to white man and to red; but the old Crow chiefs discussed it in their councils, and the soldiers at Fort Custer, and the civilians at the agency twelve miles up the river, and all the white settlers in the valley discussed it also. Lieutenants Stirling and Haines, of the First Cavalry, were speculating upon it as they rode one afternoon.

“Can’t tell about Indians,” said Stirling. “But I think the Crows are too reasonable to go on the war-path.”

“Reasonable!” said Haines. He was young, and new to Indians.

“Just so. Until you come to his superstitions, the Indian can reason as straight as you or I. He’s perfectly logical.”

“Logical!” echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.

“You’d know better,” remarked Stirling, “if you’d been fighting ’em for fifteen years. They’re as shrewd as Æsop’s fables.”

Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff—one [Pg 4]old and shabby, the other young and very gaudy—riding side by side.

“That’s Cheschapah,” said Stirling. “That’s the agitator in all his feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively.”

The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.

“Nice manners,” commented Haines. “Seems to have a chip on his shoulder.”

But Stirling looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he muttered, “he has a chip.”

wister

Owen Wister (14 juli 1860 – 21 juli 1938)

 

De Franse schrijfster van Belgische origine Béatrix Beck werd geboren in Villars-sur-Ollon op 14 juli 1914. Zij was de dochter van de Belgische dichter Christian Beck uit Verviers, die van Lets-Italiaanse afkomst was. Haar moeder was Ierse. Na haar rechtenstudie werd zij communiste en trouwde met de statenloze Jood, Naun Szapiro, die in de tweede wereldoorlog overleed. Na verschillende andere jobs werd zij secretaresse van André Gide, die haar aanmoedigde om over haar ervaringen te schrijven, zoals de zelfmoord van haar moeder, de oorlog, de armoede, enz. In 1955 werd zij Franse. De schrijfster kreeg in 1952 de Goncourtprijs voor Léon Morin, prêtre. Het boek omvat de dialoog tussen een oorlogsweduwe van een communistische Jood en een priester tijdens de bezetting. De roman werd nog beroemder door de verfilming in 1961 door Jean-Pierre Melville, met Jean-Paul Belmondo en Emmanuelle Riva.

Uit: Une

“- Pourquoi son geste vous a-t-il fait souffrir moralement ?

– C’était insolite, anormal, inavouable, pas du tout comme les exaltantes bagarres avec les garçons. Avant, à peine, savais-je que j’avais des seins (le mot m’est pénible à prononcer). J’ai d’abord cru avoir deux grains de beauté, curieusement symétriques, mais ils se sont développés et j’ai à peu près compris qu’il s’agissait d’un phénomène naturel.

– Et plus tard ?

– Suis tombée des nues en apprenant qu’ils pouvaient jouer un rôle dans les rapports sexuels. J’ai lu autrefois un récit où l’héroïne, atteinte d’un cancer, avait subi l’ablation des deux seins. Je l’enviais presque. Les Amazones, au moins, n’en avaient qu’un.

– Cette asymétrie ne vous gênait pas ?

– Le bouclier rétablissait l’équilibre. Adolescente, j’ai écrit : “L’embryon rêve au creux de l’amazone. Le nouveau-né s’abreuve à l’unique sein de l’amazone.”

Beatrix_Beck

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Willard Frances Motley werd geboren op 14 juli 1909 in Chicago. Hij thematiseerde in zijn sociaalkritische romans de slums van zijn geboortestad. Zijn eerste roman Knock on Any Door verscheen in 1947. Het boek werd goed ontvangen door de kritiek en er werden binnen drie weken 47.000 exemplaren van verkocht. Hoofdpersoon in het boek is Nick Romano, een jongen die opgroeit in de sloppen van de wereldstad Chicago. Ondanks zijn in wezen goed hart komt hij als slachtoffer van zijn milieu op pad der misdaad. Een weg die hij gedoemd is om te volgen

Uit: Knock On Any Door

“Tony pulled the rubberband from his fingers and threw it on the floor. It landed in the aisle, halfway between Tony and Nick. Nick reached out with his foot, remembering that Tony would be expelled. His toe barely reached it, the rubberband was stubborn and jelly-like beneath his toe as he tried to pull it under his desk. He stepped over and picked it up, palming it quickly. As he straightened Father Scott’s bony fingers closed on his collar.

‘Did you do that?’ It was an accusation.  Y-y-yes Father.’

Willard Motley (14 juli 1909 – 15 maart 1965)

 

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata:

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Steffen Popp werd geboren in 1978 in Greifswald. Hij groeide op in Dresden en volgde daar bijzonder natuurwetenschappelijk onderwijs. Hij studeerde aan het Literaturinstitut Leipzig en daarna kiteratuur en filosofie in Berlijn. In 2004 verscheen zijn bundel Wie Alpen en in 2008 volgde de bundel Kolonie Zur Sonne. Zijn roman Ohrenberg oder der Weg dorthin werd in 2006 genomineerd voor de Deutsche Buchpreis. Samen met Uljana Wolf vertaalde hij gedichten van de Amerikaan Christian Hawkey, die 2008 verschenen onder de titel “Reisen in Ziegengeschwindigkeit”.

Uit: Ohrenberg oder der Weg dorthin

“Ein schwaches Licht, das ihn hier noch erreicht, auf seinem Turm, im Eis: ein abgebrochener Jesuit, glatzköpfig, mit Bart, der, wenn er Holz einschlägt, mit Gott redet – einfach nur in diesen Schlägen, begreift er in diesem Moment, gegen das wimmernde Holz, rede ich wahrhaft mit Gott. Einmal dabei, will Ohrenberg weitere Gedanken zur Situation anfügen, Wahrheiten aussprechen, die seine Existenzleistung in dem Gebirge hier direkt betreffen – die Heizung seines Turms im Angesicht einer Welt, die mit der Sonne warm wird, die Bewältigung des lebendigen Augenblicks zwischen den Gegenständen – aber dann treibt ihn ein Anfall von Hunger von seinem Sitz: erst sucht er Schokolade auf dem Tisch, durchwühlt verschiedene Ablagen, dann gibt er auf, steigt aus dem astronomischen Kabinett in die Küche ab. Schwache Re¿exe in der Kühlschranktür, Ohrenberg klappt seinen Kiefer auf: keine Bewegung ist zu erkennen, Ohrenberg klappt seinen Kiefer wieder zu, betastet seinen Schädel – der Leninkomplex ist abgeheilt, lediglich Kopfschmerzen sind ihm geblieben. Graf Ohrenbergs physiognomische Bestandsaufnahme, vor der Tür seines Kühlschranks, Bilanz, nun ja, des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, das alles – ist zu vernachlässigen, im Hinblick auf den vereisten Innenraum, der leer ihn anstarrt. Ein aussichtsloses Unterfangen, hier irgendwelche Lebensmittel aufspüren zu wollen – auch unten im Dorf, Ohrenberg schaut auf seine Uhr: alle Verkaufsstellen haben geschlossen. Alle Verkaufsstellen, seit über zwanzig Jahren, geschlossen:”

Popp

Steffen Popp  (Greifswald, 1978 )

 

De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Kerstin Preiwuß werd geboren in 1980 in Lübz en groeide op in Plau am See en Rostock. Zij studeerde filosofie en psychologie in Leipzig en Aix-en-Provence. Zij publiceerde o.a. in DIE ZEIT“, „F.A.Z.“, „Neue Rundschau“ , „plumbum. In 2006 verscheen haar eerste dichtbundel „nachricht von neuen sternen“. Sinds 2007 schrijft zij kitieken voor het tijdschrift EDIT.

später sommer

der see ist heute ganz verwaist
und wie benommen
legt die schwalbe ihre federn an,
das geht so herztonnah
wie es begann

mag sein
heut steht der hecht in seinem grund
und nach dem regen läuft der aal,
es kann die rohrdommel am ufer sein

frau spinne
leih sie mir ihr netz,
hab mich verloren im mückentanz,
die schwalben beschließen den sommer

kerstin-preiwuss

Kerstin Preiwuß (Lübz, 1980)

Natalia Ginzburg, Jacques de Lacretelle, Gavrila Derzjavin, Irving Stone, Arthur Laurents, Owen Wister

De Italiaanse schrijfster Natalia Ginzburg werd geboren op 14 juli 1916 in Palermo. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2006 en ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007.

 

Uit: So ist es gewesen (Vertaald door Maja Pflug)

 

Ich habe zu ihm gesagt: »Sag mir die Wahrheit«, und er hat gesagt: »Welche Wahrheit? « und zeichnete rasch etwas in seinen Notizblock. Er hat es mir hinterher gezeigt, es war ein langer, langer Zug mit einer großen schwarzen Rauchwolke, und er beugte sich aus dem Zugfenster und winkte mit dem Taschentuch.
Ich habe ihm in die Augen geschossen.
Er hatte mich gebeten, ihm eine Thermosflasche für die Reise fertig zu machen. Ich bin in die Küche gegangen und habe Tee gekocht, Milch und Zucker dazugetan und ihn in die Thermosflasche gefüllt, dann habe ich den Becher fest zugeschraubt und bin ins Arbeitszimmer zurückgegangen. Da hat er mir die Zeichnung gezeigt, und ich habe den Revolver aus seiner Schreibtischschublade genommen und auf ihn geschossen. Ich habe ihm in die Augen geschossen.
Aber ich dachte schon sehr lange, daß ich ihm früher oder später etwas antun würde.
Dann habe ich mir Regenmantel und Handschuhe angezogen und bin gegangen. Ich habe in der Bar einen Kaffee getrunken und bin aufs Geratewohl durch die Stadt gelaufen. Der Tag war recht kühl, und es wehte ein leichter Wind, der nach Regen schmeckte. In den Anlagen habe ich mich auf eine Bank gesetzt, die Handschuhe abgestreift und meine Hände betrachtet. Ich habe den Ehering abgenommen und eingesteckt.
Vier Jahre lang waren wir Mann und Frau. Er sagte mir, daß er mich verlassen wollte, doch dann starb unsere Tochter, und deshalb blieben wir zusammen. Er wollte, daß wir noch ein Kind bekommen, das würde mir guttun, meinte er, so schliefen wir oft zusammen in der letzten Zeit. Aber es gelang uns nicht, noch ein Kind zu bekommen.
Ich kam dazu, wie er Koffer packte, und fragte ihn, wo er hinführe. Er sagte, er führe nach Rom, um mit einem Rechtsanwalt über einen bestimmten Fall zu entscheiden. Ich könnte zu meinen Eltern gehen, dann wäre ich nicht allein zu Haus, solange er fort sei. Er wisse nicht genau, wann er aus Rom zurückkäme, in vierzehn Tagen, in einer Woche, er wisse es nicht. Ich dachte, er käme vielleicht überhaupt nicht wieder. Also habe ich auch Koffer gepackt. Er sagte, ich solle ein paar Romane zum Lesen mitnehmen, damit ich mich nicht langweile. Ich habe den »Jahrmarkt der Eitelkeiten« und zwei Bücher von Galsworthy aus dem Regal genommen und in meinen Koffer gelegt.
Ich habe gesagt: »Alberto, sag mir die Wahrheit«, und er hat erwidert: »Welche Wahrheit«, und ich habe gesagt: »Ihr fahrt zusammen weg«, und er hat gesagt: »Wer, zusammen? « Und hinzugefugt: »Du phantasierst immer herum und verzehrst dich innerlich, indem du dir dauernd schreckliche Sachen vorstellst, und so hast du keine Ruhe und läßt auch den anderen keine Ruhe. «
Er hat zu mir gesagt: »Nimm den Bus, der um zwei in Maona ankommt«, und ich habe geantwortet: »Ja. «
Er hat zum Himmel geschaut und zu mir gesagt: »Am besten ziehst du den Regenmantel und die Gummistiefel an. «
Ich habe gesagt: »Es ist mir lieber, ich weiß die Wahrheit, wie auch immer«, und er hat zu lachen angefangen und gesagt:

 

Verità va cercando, ch’è si cara,
Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.
(Die Wahrheit sucht er, die so teuer, wie der weiß, der für sie sein Leben opfert.)“

 

ginzburg-1

Natalia Ginzburg (14 juli 1916 – 7 oktober 1991)

 

 

De Franse schrijver en letterkundige Jacques de Lacretelle werd geboren in Cormatin (Saône-et-Loire) op  14 juli 1888. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007.

Uit: La Bonifas

 

« Assurément, cette vieille fille, qui n’avait éprouvé aucun bouleversement sensuel et qui traînait après soi des désirs et des dégoûts de vierge, jugeait, en raisonnant de la sorte, d’après son cas. Toutefois, bien des romanciers ont tendance à faire passer leurs personnages d’une case dans une autre, comme si les époques successives de la vie humaine, enfance, adolescence, âge mûr, étaient analogues aux états tout différents par lesquels passe un insecte. En fait, ces solutions de continuité sont fausses ; il n’est rien qui ne soit inclus en nous dès l’origine ; les transformations de notre nature sont plus spécieuses que réelles ; et, lorsque dans une œuvre de fiction on étudie tout au long un caractère, ce n’est point une habileté d’artiste mais bien une vérité psychologique que de montrer la trame permanente de ce caractère et d’exploiter dans une large mesure le pressentiment. »

 

 

Lacratelle

Jacques de Lacretelle (14 juli 1888 – 2 januari 1985)

 

De Russische dichter Gavrila Romanovitsj Derzjavin werd geboren in Kazan op 14 juli 1743. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007. 

 Time’s river

Time’s river in its rushing current
Sweeps all the human deeds away,
And fills an abyss of oblivion
With nations, kingdoms and their kings,
But if there is something remaining
In sounds of lyre or trumpet’s air,
Will enter the Eternal gullet –
And will not flee the common Fate.

 

God 

O Thou, who’s infinite in space,
Alive in ever-moving matter,
Eternal in the flow of time,
God faceless, with a trinity of faces!
Soul unified and omnipresent,
Who needs no place or reason,
Whom none can ever comprehend,
Whose being permeates all things,
Encompassing, creating, guarding,
Thou, called by us God.

Although a great mind might contrive
To fix the ocean’s depths,
To count the sands, the rays of stars,
Thou can’t be summed or fixed!
Enlightened souls who have emerged
From your creative light
Cannot begin to grasp your ways:
Our thought alone aspires to thee,
But in your magnitude is lost,
A moment in eternity.

From depths eternal thou invoked
Primordial substances of chaos
Within thine very self thou birthed
Eternity before all time.
And before time from thine self alone
Thou shinest forth within thyself.
All light originates in thee.
Creating all with but a single word
And reaching forth in new creation,
Thou wast, thou art, and thou will ever be!

Thou incarnate the chain of life,
Thou nourish and sustain it.
Thou joinest starts with ends.
Thou bringest life to all through death.
New suns are born from thee
In flowing streams of sparks.
As on a clear and freezing day,
A hoarfrost dusting shines,
And floats, and churns and sparkles,
As do the stars beneath thy vault.

A multitude of shining spheres
Floats off into infinity.
They all fulfill thy laws,
And cast their vivifying rays.
But all these brilliant lanterns-
This mass of glowing crystal-
This roiling crowd of golden waves-
These burning elements-
Or all these gleaming worlds as one-
Compare to thee like night to day.

Compared to thee the earthly realm
Is like a droplet in the sea.
What is this universe I see?
And what am I, compared to thee?
If, in this airy sea, I wish
To multiply a million worlds
By other worlds a hundred times-
Then venture to compare the sum to thee,
All this would be a tiny speck;
So I, compared to thee, am naught.

I’m Naught! But thou shinest through me
With all the splendor of your virtue;
Thou showest yourself through me
Like sun inside a tiny water drop.
I’m Naught! But still I can feel life,
Like something hungering I fly,
I’m always soaring high above.
To be with you is my soul’s wish,
It contemplates, reflects and thinks:
If I exist-thou art as well.

Thou art! As nature’s order shows,
My heart affirms the same to me,
My reason’s sure of it:
Tho art-And I’m no longer naught!
A fraction of the universe’s whole,
It seems that I repose in nature’s
Critical center where you started
With the creation of corporeal beasts,
And ended with the heav’nly spirits:
Through me, you fused the chain of life.

I am the link of all existing worlds,
I am the outer brink of matter,
I am the focal point of living things,
I am the starting place of the divine;
Although my flesh rots into ash,
My mind commands the thunderbolts,
I’m king-I’m slave – I’m worm-I’m God!
But though I am miraculous,
Whence did I come?-that no one knows.
I could not by myself have risen.

Creator, I am your invention!
I am a creature of your wisdom.
O, source of life, bestower of blessings,
My soul and king!
According to your iron laws
My self eternal must needs pass
Across the borne of death;
My spirit’s clothed in mortal garb
And I return through death alone,-
To your eternity – O, father!-

Thou art inscrutable, transcendent!
I understand that all my soul’s
Imaginings are powerless
Your shadow to describe;
But when thou must be glorified
To pay such tribute we frail men
One course alone can follow.
We venture upwards to thy realm,
To lose ourselves in thy vast otherness
And shed our tears of gratitude.

 

D

Gavrila Derzjavin (14 juli 1743 – 20 juli 1816)

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007.

Uit: Der Schöpfung wunderbare Wege (Vertaald door Willy Thaler)

 

“Er stand vor seinem Rasiertisch aus Mahagoni und rührte mit dem Rasierpinsel in der weißen Rasierschale mit den blauen

Blumen, goss heißes Wasser aus einem Kupferkrug hinzu, seifte sein hellhäutiges Gesicht ein und klappte sein scharf

geschliffenes Rasiermesser mit dem Ebenholzgriff auf.

Für den zweiundzwanzigjährigen Charles Darwin war das Rasieren eine angenehme, wenig schwierige Aufgabe, denn

er trug seinen rötlich braunen Backenbart bis zum Kinn. Er brauchte also nur seine rosa Wangen und das runde Kinn zu

rasieren. Seine roten Lippen waren recht kurz geraten im Vergleich zu der Größe seiner braunen, purpurgesprenkelten

Augen, die alles beobachteten und registrierten.

Er säuberte sein Gesicht vom Seifenschaum, nahm zwei Bürsten mit silbernem Rücken und scheitelte sein langes karottenrotes Haar sorgfältig, sodass es fast sein ganzes rechtes Ohr bedeckte, dann bürstete er den übrigen dichten Schopf quer über seinen großen Kopf, bis er in einem eleganten Schwung über sein linkes Ohr fi el. Er nahm ein frisches weißes Hemd aus der Kommode aus Nussholz, knöpfte den gestärkten weißen Kragen zu, dessen Spitzen seinen Bart umrahmten, legte eine dunkelbraune Krawatte um den hohen Kragen und band eine große Schleife. Gewöhnlich rasierte er sich, wenn er am Morgen aufstand, aber er hatte den Tag auf dem Severn im Familienruderboot mit Fischen und Sammeln verbracht und das Ankleiden bis zu dem Zeitpunkt hinausgeschoben, an dem er Professor Adam Sedgwick empfangen sollte.

 

 

StoneIrving

Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)

 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2007. 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918.

De Amerikaanse schrijver Owen Wister werd geboren op 14 juli 1860 in  Germantown, Pennsylvania.

 

 

 

Jacques de Lacretelle, Natalia Ginzburg, Gavrila Derzjavin, Arthur Laurents, Irving Stone, Owen Wister

De Franse schrijver en letterkundige Jacques de Lacretelle werd geboren in Cormatin (Saône-et-Loire) op  14 juli 1888. Lacretelles vader was consul en de jonge Lacretelle reisde daardoor meer door de wereld dan zijn leeftijdgenoten: op zijn achtste bijvoorbeeld verhuisde het gezin naar Alexandrië. Vader overleed in 1898. Jacques de Lacretelle was een ziekelijk kind en groeide op tot een a-typische Fransman; hij had een meer dan gemiddelde lengte en een afkeer van het christendom. Van zijn moeder erfde hij zijn belangstelling voor de natuur. Het gezin verkeerde in literaire kringen (nazaten van Victor Hugo). Hij werd opgeleid voor een financiële carrière, maar reisde liever wat door Europa. Na een ontmoeting met Marcel Proust begon hij te werken aan zijn eerste roman.
De Lacretelle debuteerde in 1920 met La vie inquiète de Jean Hermelin en in 1922 won hij de Prix Femina met de roman over een joodse intellectueel: Silbermann. In 1936 werd hij lid van de Académie française.
Zijn succes als schrijver tussen de twee wereldoorlogen was te danken aan zijn psychologische romans, waarvan door Albert Thibaudet is gezegd dat ze lijken op het werk van Proust en Gide, maar dan door Flaubert herschreven. Een voorbeeld is de cyclus Les hauts ponts (1932-1935) over een vrouw die het voorvaderlijk huis probeert terug te krijgen, wat haar uiteindelijk lukt, zij het voor zeer korte tijd, aangezien het verkocht moet worden om de schulden van haar zoon te kunnen afbetalen.

Uit: Silbermann (1922)

 

“A Houlgate, pendant le mois d’août, poursuivit-il à voix moins haute, j’ai fait beaucoup de tennis. Mais, là-bas, c’était moins agréable parce que – il fit une moue – il y avait trop de Juifs… Sur la plage, au casino, partout, on ne rencontrait que ça. Mon oncle Marc n’a pas voulu y rester trois jours. Tiens, celui-là y était. Il s’appele Silbermann.
En disant ces mots, il m’avait désigné un garçon qui se tenait à la porte de la classe, en tête des rangs, et que je ne me rappelais pas avoir aperçu division de quatrième. Il était petit et d’extérieur chétif.
Sa figure, que je vis bien car il se retournait et parlait à ses voisins, était très formée, mais assez laide, avec des pommettes saillantes et un menton aigu. Le teint était pâle, tirant sur
le jaune; les yeux et les sourcils étaient noirs, les lèvres charnues et d’une couleur fraîche.
Ses gestes étaient très vifs et captivaient l’attention. Lorsque, avec une mimique que l’on ne pouvait s’empêcher de suivre, il s’adressait à ses voisins, ses pupilles semblaient sauter sur l’un et puis sur l’autre. L’ensemble éveillait l’idée d’une précocité étrange; il me fit songer aux petis prodiges qui exécutent des tours dans les cirques. J’eus peine à détacher de lui
mon regard ».

 

 

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Jacques de Lacretelle (14 juli 1888 – 2 januari 1985)

 

De Italiaanse schrijfster Natalia Ginzburg werd geboren op 14 juli 1916 in Palermo. Zie ook mijn blog van 14 juli 2006

Uit:  A Place to Live and Other Selected Essays

‘In October of 1944 I came to Rome to find work. My husband had died the previous winter. In Rome there was a publishing house where he had worked for years. The publisher was away in Switzerland at the time, but the firm had resumed business right after the liberation of Rome, and I thought that if I asked, they would give me a job. The prospect of asking was burdensome, however, because I thought they would be hiring me out of pity, as I was a wid
ow with children to support. I would have liked someone to give me a job without knowing me, on the basis of my skills. The trouble was that I had no skills.

I had brooded over all this during the months of the German occupation, which I spent in the country, in Tuscany, with my children. The war had passed through there, followed by the usual silent aftermath, until finally, in the quiet countryside and the villages thrown into turmoil, the Americans arrived. We moved to Florence, where I left the children with my parents and went on to Rome.

I wanted to work because I had no money. True, if I had remained with my parents I could have managed. But the idea of being supported by my parents was also very burdensome, and besides, I wanted to make a home for myself and my children again. We hadn’t had a place of our own for a long time.

During those last months of the war, we lived with relatives and friends, or in convents and hotels.

Driving to Rome in a car that stalled every halfhour, I dallied with fantasies of adventurous jobs, such as being a governess or covering crime for a newspaper. The major obstacle to my career plans was the fact that I didn’t know how to do anything.”

 

 

natalia_ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg  (14 juli 1916 – 7 oktober 1991)

 

De Russische dichter Gavrila Romanovitsj Derzjavin werd geboren in Kazan op 14 juli 1743. Hij wordt algemeen beschouwd als de grootste Russische dichter uit de periode voor Aleksandr Poesjkin. Derzjavin was van eenvoudige komaf, maar wist met zijn gedichten de gunst te winnen van Catharina de Grote. In 1784 werd hij benoemd tot gouverneur van Olonets en in 1785 werd hij gouverneur van Tambov. Hij werd persoonlijk secretaris van Catharina in 1791, president van de Handelskamer in 1794 en minister van Justitie in 1802. In 1803 ging hij met pensioen en bracht hij de rest van zijn leven door op zijn landgoed in Tsvanka bij Novgorod, waar hij zich volledig aan het schrijven van verzen wijdde.

 

 

To my heart

 

Why, poor heart, so ceaseless languish?

  Why with such distresses smart?

Nought alleviates thy anguish,

  What afflicts thee so, poor heart?

 

Heart, I comprehend not wrongly,

  Thou a captive art confest,

Near Eliza thou beat’st strongly

  As thou’dst leap into her breast.

 

Since ’tis so then, little throbber,

  You and I, alas! must part,

I’d not be thy comfort’s robber;

  To her I’ll resign thee, heart.

 

Yet the maid in compensation

  Must her own bestow on me,

And with such remuneration

  Never shall I grieve for thee.

 

But should she, thy sorrows spu
rning,

  This exchange, poor heart, deny,

Then I’ll bear thee, heart, though mourning,

  From her far and hasty fly.

 

But, alas! no pain assuaging,

  That would but increase thy grief;

If kind Death still not its raging,

  Granting thee a kind relief.

 

Vertaald door William D. Lewi

Deze afbeelding heeft een leeg alt-attribuut; de bestandsnaam is derzjavin.jpg
Gavrila Derzjavin (14 juli 1743 – 20 juli 1816)

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, scenarioschrijver en regisseur Arthur Laurents is geboren in New York op 14 Juli 1918. Zijn eerste internationale succes was Home of the Brave (1945), dat bijna in ieder land opgevoerd werd en waarvan ook een film gemaakt is. West Side Story (1957) was zijn eerste musical, maar er zouden er nog verschillende volgen waarvoor hij het scenario schreef en/of de regie voerde: Gypsy (1959) Invitation to a March (1960), I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) In 2000 verschenen zijn memoires Original Story By.

 

Uit: Original Story By

 

“It’s the stuff of dreams. The audience is on its feet calling “Author! Author!” my

mother is calling “Arthur! Arthur!” my father’s eyes are wet and a handsome young

actor has flown in from the Coast to share the night with me. My father wouldn’t want

me to see the tears any more than I’d want him to see the actor.

The producer, all smiles, is Humpty-Dumpty in a brown suit. By now, I know it’s

his good suit. He motions me forward to the stage. My feet tell me I am walking

down the aisle; I feel a fireman boost me up on the stage. I can see the actors

behind me applauding but can’t hear them. I’m unsure whether the moon is out or

not but I know it has to be. I turn from the actors and look out front. I don’t see

anyone. Not my father, not my mother, not my actor. I hear no cheering, I see no

audience, just a big black hole of silence. I turn to the wings and say to the stage

manager, “Bring in the curtain, Jimmy.”

It was Jimmy Gelb who told me about the moon the day of our first preview and

he was a Marxist like the producer, the director and half the cast. Stop worrying

whether my play was good enough to be a hit, he commanded. Success in the

theatre had little to do with merit; what it really depended on was the moon. If the

moon was out, we were in; if it wasn’t, we weren’t.”

 

 

Laurents
Arthur Laurents (New York, 14 Juli 1918)

 

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irving Stone werd geboren op 14 juli 1903 in San Francisco. Hij is vooral bekend geworden door zijn biografische romans over beroemde personen. Zijn bekendste werk is wellicht Lust for Life over Vincent van Gogh uit 1934, in 1956 verfilmd met Kirk Douglas.. Adversary in the House gaat over de vakbondsman en politicus Eugene V. Debs.

 

Uit: Adversary in the House

 

“That night when he left the tent he saw a man trail him back to town.  When he

went into the restaurant for supper, the man waited outside.  When he went up to

his hotel the man kept a few steps behind him, his hand in his coat pocket.  Gene

closed the door of his room and locked it behind him, but he could feel the

presence immediately outside.  He flung the door open and cried:
“Why do you follow me?  Surely I have never done you any harm.”
The gunman released his hold of the revolver and stood staring at Gene with

his mouth open.
“Oh, Mr. Debs, I am no thug.  I heard the company’s private police say they

were going to shoot you, so I appointed myself your bodyguard.  No one is going

to shoot you while I’m around.”
The climax to the years of civil war cam when former Governor Steunenberg

of Idaho, who had been charged with anti-labor violence during his

administration, was murdered by the explosion of a bomb attached to the gate

of his house.  The man who had set the bomb, Harry Orchard, was a lifelong

criminal; he was arrested, held incommunicado in jail, and then placed in the

hands of the Pinkerton Agency, which provided strikebreakers and mine police. 

As a result of Orchard’s deal with the Pinkertons, Charles Moyer, William Haywood

and George Pettibone, officers of the Western Federation of Miners, were arrested

in Denver, kidnapped by the police of Idaho without extradition papers, locked in

murderers’ row in the state penitentiary in Boise, and charged with conspiracy to

murder ex-Governor Steunenberg.

The news reached Gene while he was in his office in Terre Haute.  He had long

been specially attached to the Western Federation of Miners because it had bolted

from the conservative American Federation of Labor and formed the first industrial

union since his own American Railway Union had been destoyed.”

 

 

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Irving Stone (14 juli 1903 – 26 augustus 1989)

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Owen Wister werd geboren op 14 juli 1860 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Zijn beroemdste roman is The Virginian, die beschouwd word als de eerste Amerikaanse western.

 

Uit: The Virginian

 

“Some notable sight was drawing the passengers, both men and women, to the

window; and therefore I rose and crossed the car to see what it was. I saw near the

track an enclosure, and round it some laughing men, and inside it some whirling

dust, and amid the dust some horses, plunging, huddling, and dodging. They were

cow ponies in a corral, and one of them would not be caught, no matter who threw

the rope. We had plenty of time to watch this sport, for our train had stopped that

the engine might take water at the tank before it pulled us up beside the station

platform of Medicine Bow. We were also six hours late, and starving for

entertainment. The pony in the corral was wise, and rapid of limb. Have you seen

a skilful boxer watch his antagonist with a quiet, incessant eye? Such an eye as

this did the pony keep upon whatever man took the rope. The man might pretend

to look at the weather, which was fine; or he might affect earnest conversation with

a bystander: it was bootless. The pony saw through it. No feint hoodwinked him.

This animal was thoroughly a man of the world.  His undistracted eye stayed fixed

upon the dissembling foe, and the gravity of his horse-expression made the matter

one of high comedy. Then the rope would sail out at him, but he was already

elsewhere; and if horses laugh, gayety must have abounded in that corral.”

 

owen-wister-1

Owen Wister (14 juli 1860 – 21 juli 1938