De Amerikaanse schrijver Bill Bryson werd geboren in Des Moines (Iowa) op 8 december 1951. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 december 2007.

Uit: A Walk In The Woods

 “We hiked till five and camped beside a tranquil spring in a small, grassy clearing in the trees just off the trail. Because it was our first day back on the trail, we were flush for food, including perishables like cheese and bread that had to be eaten before they went off or were shaken to bits in our packs, so we rather gorged ourselves, then sat around smoking and chatting idly until persistent and numerous midgelike creatures (no-see-ums, as they are universally known along the trail) drove us into our tents. It was perfect sleeping weather, cool enough to need a bag but warm enough that you could sleep in your underwear, and I was looking forward to a long night’s snooze–indeed was enjoying a long night’s snooze–when, at some indeterminate dark hour, there was a sound nearby that made my eyes fly open. Normally, I slept through everything–through thunderstorms, through Katz’s snoring and noisy midnight pees–so something big enough or distinctive enough to wake me was unusual. There was a sound of undergrowth being disturbed–a click of breaking branches, a weighty pushing through low foliage–and then a kind of large, vaguely irritable snuffling noise.
Bear!

I sat bolt upright. Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest. I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent. Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose. There was another noise, quite near“.

 

Bill Bryson (Des Moines, 8 december 1951)

 

De Britse schrijver Louis de Bernières werd geboren in Londen op 8 december 1954. De Bernières ging op 18-jarige leeftijd in het leger, maar vertrok daar al na vier maanden. Een grote verscheidenheid aan baantjes volgde daarop. Hij vertrok naar Zuid-Amerika, waar hij onder andere werkte als monteur en als cowboy in Colombia en Argentinië. Zijn eerste drie romans The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) en The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992) werden naar eigen zeggen geïnspireerd door zijn ervaringen in Colombia en door de schrijver Gabriel García Márquez. In 1993 werd De Bernières gerekend tot de 20 beste jonge Britse romanschrijvers. Het jaar daarop verscheen Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, waarmee hij de Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book won. Het boek werd een groot succes, werd in vele talen vertaald en in 2001 ook verfilmd. Het succes van het boek leidde tot een grote toename van het toerisme naar het Griekse eiland Kefalonia (Cephalonia), waar het verhaal zich afspeelt. Zijn roman, Birds Without Wings (2004), speelt zich af in Turkije en verhaalt over de lotgevallen van een kleine gemeenschap tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog.

 

Uit: Birds Without Wings

 

Yusuf the Tall loved all his children equally
, with a passionate adoration that, when he thought about it, sometimes made him lachrymose. If his life were like a garden, then his daughters would be like the roses growing alongside its walls, and his sons would be like young trees that formed a palisade against the world. When they were small he devoted happy hours to their entertainment, and when they grew older he hugged them until their eyes bulged and they thought that their ribs would crack. He had grown to love his wife too, partly because this is what happens when a wife is well chosen, and partly because from her loins had sprung these brooks and becks of happiness.

But now Yusuf the Tall did not know what to do with his hands. It seemed as though they were behaving on their own. The thumb and middle finger of his left hand stroked across his eyeballs, meeting at the bridge of his nose. It was comforting, perhaps, for a scintilla of time. There was no comfort longer than that in this terrible situation. Sometimes his hands lay side by side on his face, the tips of his thumbs touching the lobes of his ears. He had thrown off his fez so that they could stroke his hair backwards, coming to rest on the back of his neck. The maroon fez lay in a corner on its side, so that his wife Kaya kept glancing at it. Despite this awful emergency, and the drama in which she was caught up, her instinct was to tidy it away, even if it were only to set it upright. She sat on the low divan, kneading her fingers, biting her lip and looking up at her husband. She was as helpless as one who stands before the throne of God.”

Louis de Bernières (Londen, 8 december 1954)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Mary Catherine Gordon werd geboren op 8 december 1949 in Far Rockaway, New York. Zij is de dochter van een Italiaans-Ierse moeder en een joodse vader die overgegaan is naar het katholicisme. Gordon kreeg een opleiding aan de The Mary Louis Academy, het Barnard College en aan de Syracuse University. Aan het Barnard College is zij tegenwoordig docente Engels. In 2007 verschenen haar memoires Circling My Mother. Ander werk o.a: The Company of Women (1981), Men and Angels (1985), Spending (1998).

 

Uit: Pearl (2005)

 

We may as well begin with the ride home.

It is Christmas night, 1998. The ending of a day that was not unseasonable, except in its failure to fulfill the sentimental wish for spur-of-the moment snow. The sky: gray; the air: cold, with a high of 33 degrees Fahrenheit. Palpable winter but not winter at its worst. Fewer of the poor than usual died on that day of causes traceable to the weather. Perhaps the relatively unimpressive showing of weather-related deaths was due to the relative clemency of the air, the relative windlessness, the relative benevolence that could be counted on by the poor to last, perhaps, eight days, December twenty-fourth through the first of January.

Ten o’clock Christmas night. Four friends drive south on the way home after a day of celebration. They have had Christmas dinner at the house of other friends, a weekend and vacation house in the mountains north of New York. One couple sits in the front of a brown Honda Accord, the other in the back. They are all in their fifties. All of their children are on other continents: one in Brazil, working on an irrigation project; one in Japan, teaching English; one in Ireland studying the Irish language at Trinity College. They were determined not to have a melancholy Christmas, and for the most part they have not.

They leave Maria Meyers off first since she lives in the most northerly part of the city or, as they would say, the farthest uptown.

She opens the door of her apartment on the sixth or top floor of a building on the corner of La Salle Street and Claremont Avenue, a block west of Broadway, a block south of 125th Street, on the margins of Harlem, at the tip end of the force field of Columbia University. Before she takes off her brown boots lined with tan fur, her green down coat, her rose-colored scarf, her wool beret, also rose, she sees the red light of her answering machine.”

 

Mary Gordon (Far Rockaway, 8 december 1949)

 

De Spaanse schrijfster, vertaalster en journaliste  Carmen Martín Gaite werd geboren op 8 december 1925 in Salamanca. Zij studeerde filologie in Salamanca, waar zij ook de schrijver Ignacio Aldecoa leerde kennen. Later besloot zij naar Madrid te verhuizen om daar haar proefschrift over Galicisch-Portugese dichtkunst van de 13e eeuw te schrijven. Daar kwam zij in contact met een hele groep van schrijvers, zoals  Medardo Fraile, Alfonso Sastre, Jesús Fernández Santos, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio en Josefina Aldecoa. Zij stopte met het schrijven van haar dissertatie en schreef in plaats daarvan verhalen en artikelen. In 1978 ontving zij de Premio Nacional de Literatura voor haar roman El cuarto de atrás. Zij vertaalde werk van Gustave Flaubert, Charles Perrault, Virginia Woolf, Emily Brontë en Natalia Ginzburg in het Spaans en schreef draaiboeken voor de Spaanse televisie. Een van haar meest gelezen boeken is Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España uit 1972.

 

Uit: The Back Room (Vertaald door Helen Lane)

 

… AND YET I’D swear that the position was the same-I think I’ve always slept this way, with my right arm underneath the pillow and my body turned slightly over onto that side, my feet searching for the place where the sheet is tucked in. What’s more, if I close my eyes – and I end up closing them as a last, routine resort – I am visited by a long-familiar apparition, always the same: a parade of stars, each with a clown’s face, that go soaring up like a balloon that’s escaped and laugh with a frozen grin, following one after the other in a zigzag pattern, like spirals of smoke gradually becoming thicker and thicker. There are so many of them that in a little while there won’t be any room left for them and they’ll have to descend to seek more space in the riverbed of my blood, and then they’ll be petals that the river carries away. At the moment they’re rising in bunches. I see the minuscule face drawn in the center of each one of them, like a cherry pit surrounded by spangles. But what never changes is the tune that accompanies the ascent, a melody that can’t be heard yet marks the beat, a special silence whose very denseness makes it count more than it would if it could be heard. This was the most typical thing back then too. I recognized that strange silence as being the prelude to something that was about to happen. I breathed slowly, I felt my insides pulsing, my ears buzzing, and my blood locked in. At any moment – where exactly? – that ascending multitude would fall and swell the invisible inner flow like an intravenous drug, capable of altering all my visions. And I was wide awake, awaiting the prodigious change, so lightning-quick that there was never a night when I managed to trap the very instant of its sudden stealthy appearance as I lay in wait there, watching for it eagerly and fearfully, just as I’m doing now.

 

 Carmen Martín Gaite (8 december 1925 – 22 juli 2000)  

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Delmore Schwartz werd geboren op 8 december 1913 in New York. Zijn eerste gepubliceerde werk was het korte verhaal uit 1937, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, dat later samen met andere verhalen in een bundel werd opgenomen. In de daarop volgende dertig jaar verschenen talrijke gedichten, verhalen en stukken. In 1959 kreeg hij voor Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems de Bollingen Prize. Het eind van zijn leven werd gekenmerkt door alcoholisme en waanzin. De geschiedenis van deze neerwaartse spiraal ligt ten grondslag aan Saul Bellow’s Roman Humboldt’s Gift uit 1975.

 

 

At This Moment Of Time

  

 Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear

The Ace of Spades. They fear

Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,

Sweet with decision. And they distrust

The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,

Then the colored lights, rising.

Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume

Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,

Locked in the stone of his act and office.

While the brass band brightly bursts over the water

They stand in the crowd lining the shore

Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it. Their eyes

Are haunted by water

 

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true

That “no man is happy,” but that is not

The sense which guides you. If we are

Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),

You are exact. You tug my sleeve

Before I speak, with a shadow’s friendship,

And I remember that we who move

Are moved by clouds that darken midnight.

 

 

 

Late Autumn In Venice

  

(After Rilke)

 

The city floats no longer like a bait

To hook the nimble darting summer days.

The glazed and brittle palaces pulsate and radiate

And glitter. Summer’s garden sways,

A heap of marionettes hanging down and dangled,

Leaves tired, torn, turned upside down and strangled:

Until from forest depths, from bony leafless trees

A will wakens: the admiral, lolling long at ease,

Has been commanded, overnight — suddenly –:

In the first dawn, all galleys put to sea!

Waking then in autumn chill, amid the harbor medley,

The fragrance of pitch, pennants aloft, the butt

Of oars, all sails unfurled, the fleet

Awaits the great wind, radiant and deadly.

 

Delmore Schwartz (8 december 1913 – 11 juli 1966)

 

De Griekse dichter en schrijver Nikos Gatsos werd geboren op 8 december 1911 in Kato Asea in Arcadië. Hij bezocht het gymnasium in Tripoli.Later verhuisde hij naar Athene, waar hij filosofie studeerde. Daar kwam hij in conact met literaire kringen en raakte hij bevriend met de dichter Odysseus Elytis. In 1943 publiceerde hij zijn verzamelde gedichten Amorgos, een belangrijke representatie van het Griekse surrealisme.

 

 

Rosewater

  

When you reach that other world, don’t become a cloud,

don’t become a cloud, and the bitter star of dawn,

so that your mother knows you, waiting at her door.

Take a wand of willow, a root of rosemary,

a root of rosemary, and be a moonlit coolness

falling in the midnight in your thirsting courtyard.

I gave you rosewater to drink, you gave me poison,

eaglet of the frost, hawk of the desert.

 

 

Vertaald door Jon Corelis

 

Nikos Gatsos (8 december 1911 – 12 mei 1992)

 

De Oostenrijkse schrijver Jura Soyfer werd op 8 december 1912 in Charkov, Oekraïne, geboren. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 december 2006.

 

Uit: So starb eine Partei

 

“Am nächsten Tag… wurde offensichtlich, dass Dollfuß nicht umfiel. Der Zwerg erklärte in seiner Radiorede, seine Ziele wären: Erweiterung der Rechte des Bundespräsidenten, Einführung eines Ständerates, Geschäftsordnungsreform im Parlament und Schutz der Ruhe und Ordnung. Er hatte in einer endlich gewährten Unterredung den Unterhändlern ungefähr dasselbe mitgeteilt. Diese hatten erwidert, man könne darüber mit sich wohl reden lassen. Daraufhin hatte Dollfuß für Ende des Monats eingehende Verhandlungen in Aussicht gestellt. Aber das Parlament könne er am 15. keinesfalls zusammentreten lassen; er sei nach wie vor entschlossen, diese Sitzung zu verhindern. Gewaltsam? Unter Aufrechterhaltung der Ruhe und Ordnung.

(…)

Wir haben noch am 7. der Regierung unsere ehrliche Mitarbeit angeboten! Wir haben anerkannt, dass außergewöhnliche Zeiten außergewöhnliche Maßnahmen erfordern, und waren bereit, der Regierung die Möglichkeit zu solchen Maßnahmen zu geben! Was war der Dank? Was war die Antwort? Ein Verfassungsbruch! Genossen!

 

JuraSoyfer (8 december 1912 – 16 februari 1939)

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Thurber werd geboren op 8 december 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 december 2006.

Uit: The Dog Department

„I am not a dog lover. A dog lover to me means a dog that is in love with another dog. I am a great admirer of certain dogs, just as I am an admirer of certain men, and I dislike certain dogs as much as I dislike certain men. Mr. Stanley Walker” in his attack on dogs brought out the very sound contention that too much sentimental gush has been said and written about man’s love for the dog and the dog’s love for man. (This gush, I should say, amounts to about one ten-thousandth of the gush that has been printed and recited about man’s love for woman, and vice versa, since Shelley wrote “0′ lift me from the grass! I die, I faint, I fall! Let thy love in kisses rain on my lips and eyelids pale.”) It is significant that none of the gush about dogs has been said or written by dogs. I once showed a copy of Senator Vest’s oration to one of my dogs and he sniffed at it and walked away. No dog has ever gone around quoting any part of it. We see, then, that this first indictment of dogs ‘ that they have called forth so much sentimental woofumpoofum ‘ is purely and simply an indictment of men. I think we will find this to be true of most of Mr. Walker’s indictments against the canine world: he takes a swing at dogs and socks men and women in the eye.

Mr. Walker began his onslaught with a one-sided and prejudiced account of how a little red chow on a leash (the italics are mine) pulled a knife on Mr. Gene Fowler, a large red man who has never been on a leash in his life. Neither the dog nor the woman who was leading the dog are quoted; we dont get their side of the brawl at all. The knife was not evenexamined for paw prints. Nobody proved anything. There isnt a judge in the world who wouldn’t have thrown the case out of court, probably with a sharp reprimand for Mr. Fowler. So far, then, Mr. Walker hasn’t got a leg to stand on.“

 

James Thurber (8 december 1894 – 2 november 1961)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver William Hervey Allen werd geboren op 8 december 1889 in Pittsburgh. Bekend werd hij door zijn fictioele oorlogsdagboek Toward the Flame uit 1926 en door Israfel, een biografie over Edgar Allan Poe. Zijn ontwikkelingsroman Antonio Adverso uit 1933 maakte hem echter wereldberoemd. Het werk bestrijkt in negen delen het tijdvak 1780 tot 1840 en beschrijft het leven van de held vanaf zijn jeugd in een weeshuis in Livorno, via het keizerlijke Frankrijk naar Zuid-Amerika, zijn reis naar Afrika als slavenhandelaar, tot uiteindelijk zijn vestiging in El Paso.

 

 

VOICE OF LIFE

 

Dear bird, you are the voice of life itself,
A living melody that calls to us
With untaught ecstasy; that sings a joy
Inherited with being, glorious.
Like girls at play, like laughter of a boy,
Your song derides the tired and baffled brain
That thinks itself to death; you sing again
With the immortal freshness of a breath
From morning stars above the mist of pain
That clings to song about the fields of earth.

 

What dusty thresholds to what vacant ears
Your ecstasy might sweep with song; what dearth
Of music starves them through long, silent years,
Who are eclipsed from you by birth!
Now from this lonely moor you have sprung up
Beyond our need, to pour; pour higher yet
Your melody into that tilted cup
Which all about with clustered gems is set.
Now I can hear it spilling back again,
Melodious excess through my casement bars,
Oh, what delirious madrigals are these
To wither out to nothing twixt the stars!
Such perfect music, and no ideal ear?
Listen! It is the earth that needs to hear.

 

William Hervey Allen (8 december 1889 – 28 december 1949)

 

De Noorse dichter, schrijver, journalist en politicus Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson werd geboren op 8 december 1832 in Kvikne bij Tynset.  Zie ook mijn blog van 8 december 2006.

 

 

Ballad Of Tailor Nils

  

If you were born before yesterday,

Surely you’ve heard about Tailor Nils, who flaunts him so gay.

 

If it’s more than a week that you’ve been here,

Surely you’ve heard how Knut Storedragen got a lesson severe.

 

Up on the barn of Ola-Per Kviste after a punchin’:

“When Nils heaves you again, take with you some luncheon.”

 

Hans Bugge, he was a man so renowned,

Haunting ghosts of his name spread alarm all around.

 

“Tailor Nils, where you wish to lie, now declare!

On that spot will I spit and lay your head right there.”–

 

“Oh, just come up so near, that I know you by the scent!

Think not that by your jaw to earth I shall be bent!”

 

When first they met, ’t was scarce a bout at all,

Neither man was ready yet to try to get a fall.

 

The second time Hans Bugge slipped his hold.

“Are you tired now, Hans Bugge? The dance will soon be bold.”

 

The third time Hans fell headlong, and forth the blood did spurt.

“Why spit you now so much, man?” — “Oh my, that fall did hurt!”–

 

Saw you a tree casting shadows on new-fallen snow?

Saw you Nils on a maiden smiling glances bestow?

 

Have you seen Tailor Nils when the dance he commences?

Are you a maiden, then go!–It’s too late, when you’ve lost your senses.

 

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (8 december 1832 – 26 april 1910)

 

De Franse theaterauteur Georges Feydeau werd geboren op 8 december 1862 in Parijs. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 december 2006.

Uit : Le dindon

Acte I

À Paris, chez Vatelin. Un salon élégant. Porte au fond. Deux portes à droite, deux à gauche. Mobilier ad libitum. Au lever du rideau, la scène reste vide un instant. On ne tarde pas à entendre des rumeurs au fond, et Lucienne, en tenue de sortie, son chapeau un peu de travers sur la tête, fait irruption comme une femme affolée.

Scène I

Lucienne, Pontagnac. LUCIENNE, entrant comme une bombe et refermant la porte sur elle, mais pas assez vite pour empêcher une canne, passée par un individu qu’on ne voit pas, de se glisser entre le battant et le chambranle de la porte. – Ah ! mon Dieu ! Allez-vous en, monsieur !… Allezvous en !…

 

PONTAGNAC, essayant de pousser la porte que chaque fois Lucienne repousse sur lui. – Madame !… Madame !… je vous en prie !…

LUCIENNE. – Mais jamais de la vie, monsieur !… Qu’est-ce que c’est que ces manières ! (Appelant tout en luttant contre la porte.) Jean, Jean ! Augustine !… Ah ! mon Dieu, et personne !… PONTAGNAC. – Madame ! Madame !

LUCIENNE. – Non ! Non !

PONTAGNAC, qui a fini par entrer. – Je vous en supplie, madame, écoutez-moi !

LUCIENNE. – C’est une infamie !… Je vous défends, monsieur !… Sortez !…

PONTAGNAC. – Ne craignez rien, madame, je ne vous veux aucun mal ! Si mes intentions ne sont pas pures, je vous jure qu’elles ne sont pas hostiles… bien au contraire. Il va à elle.

LUCIENNE, reculant. – Ah çà ! monsieur, vous êtes fou !

PONTAGNAC, la poursuivant. – Oui, madame, vous l’avez dit, fou de vous ! Je sais que ma conduite est audacieuse, contraire aux usages, mais je m’en moque !… Je ne sais qu’une chose, c’est que je vous aime et que tous les moyens me sont bons pour arriver jusqu’à vous.

LUCIENNE, s’arrêtant. – Monsieur, je ne puis en écouter davantage !… Sortez !…

PONTAGNAC. – Ah ! Tout, madame, tout plutôt que cela ! Je vous aime, je vous dis ! (Nouvelle poursuite.) Il m’a suffi de vous voir et ç’a été le coup de foudre ! Depuis huit jours je m’attache à vos pas ! Vous l’avez remarqué.

LUCIENNE, s’arrêtant devant la table. – Mais non, monsieur.

PONTAGNAC. – Si, madame, vous l’avez remarqué ! Une femme remarque toujours quand on la suit.

 

Georges Feydeau (8 december 1862 – 5 juni 1921)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Joel Chandler Harris werd geboren op 8 december 1848 in Eatonton, Georgia. Bekend werd hij vooral door zijn Uncle Remus vervolgverhalen, zoals Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1905) die eerst in de krant verschenen en na de opheffing van de rassenscheiding snel populair werden. Door het gebruik van dialect waren ze ook vernieuwend. Harris schreef ook novelle-achtige verhalen over het landleven in Georgia.

 

Uit: Stories of Georgia

 

„So far as written records tell us, Hernando de Soto and his companions in arms were the first white men to enter and explore the territory now known on the map as the State of Georgia. Tradition has small voice in the matter, but such as it has tells another story. There are hints that other white men ventured into this territory before De Soto and his men beheld it. General Oglethorpe, when he came to Georgia with his gentle colony, which had been tamed and sobered by misfortune and ill luck, was firmly of the opinion that Sir Walter Raleigh, the famous soldier, sailor, and scholar, had been there before him. So believing, the founder of the Georgian Colony carried with him Sir Walter’s diary. He

was confirmed in his opinion by a tradition, among the Indians of the Yamacraw tribe, that Raleigh had landed where Savannah now stands.

There are also traditions in regard to the visits of other white men to Georgia. These traditions may be true, or they may be the results of dreams, but it is certain that De Soto and his picked company of Spaniards were the first to march through the territory that is now Georgia. The De Soto expedition was made up of the flower of Spanish chivalry,–men Used to war, and fond of adventure. Some of them were soldiers, anxious to win fame by feats of arms in a new land; some were missionaries, professing an anxiety for the souls of such heathen as they might encounter, but even these men were not unfamiliar with the use of the sword; some were physicians, as ready to kill as to heal; some were botanists, who knew as much about the rapier and the poniard as they did about the stamens, pistils, and petals of the flowers; and some were reporters, men selected to write the history of the expedition.“

 

Joel Chandler Harris (8 december 1848 – 3 juli 1908)

 

De Romeinse dichter en schrijverQuintus Horatius Flaccus werd geboren op 8 december 65 v. Chr. Zie ook mijn blog van 8 december 2006.

 

Oden I.7

 

Laat andren ’t roemrijk Rhodos, Mytilene
of Ephesus bezingen of Corinthe,
waar zee van Oost en West den mu
ur bespoelt,
of ’t Bacchisch Thebe, ’t Apollinisch Delphi,
het lieflijk dal, waar de Peneios vloeit.
De stad der Jonkvrouw zij het levenswerk
van menig dichter, die van heind’ en veer
olijvetakken tot een krans vergaart.
In veler mond leve tot Hera’s eer
Mycene rijk aan goud, Argos aan paarden.
Mij heeft noch Sparta met zijn zwarte soep,
noch ook Larissa met zijn vette klei
zoo ’t hart geroerd als ’t ruischend Tivoli
met steilen waterval en duister woud,
met weelgen boomgaard langs de slingerbeek.
Zooals ’t Zuidwesten soms geen regenvlagen,
maar blauwe lucht brengt, die het zwerk verscheurt,
laat zoo uw droefheid, Plancus, en uw zorg
verlichten door de wijsheid van den wijn,
te velde nu, straks thuis in Tivoli!
Teukros, die door zijn vader was verstooten,
heeft bij een laatst festijn op Salamis
geklonken met zijn treurende trawanten:
“Waar beter lot, dan hier in ’t vaderhuis,
ons wenkt, daar gaan wij heen, mijn kameraden!
Vertwijfelt niet! Ik zal uw leider zijn.
Apollo waarborgt ons Nieuw-Salamis.
Helden, die met mij stondt voor heeter vuur,
drinkt thans den beker der vergetelheid!
Morgen begint opnieuw de groote reis.”

 

 

Vertaald door Dr. A. Rutgers van der Loeff.

Horatius (8 december 65 v. Chr. – 27 november 8 v. Chr.)