Gouden raampjes beven, en in de dageraad deinen kruisen boven elkaar.
Kaars, olielamp, glimwormlicht en lantaarn.
Ontwaak
De kam van de dag komt tevoorschijn.
De witte kam van een gouden haan.
De kam van mijn lach komt tevoorschijn.
De gouden kam van een dolende haan.
Korte ballade voor de dode Eloïse
(woorden van een student)
‘Je was dood’ als aan het eind van alle romans. Ik had je niet lief, Eloïse, en je was zo zacht! Met muziek van groene lente droomde je me mooi en met halflang haar. Ik gaf je kussen en sloeg er geen acht op dat ik je niet zei: O Kersenrode lippen! Wat was je een groot romantica! Je dronk azijn achter de rug van je grootmoeder. Je werd als wilde lentejasmijn. En ik was verliefd op een ander. Zie je niet wat een kwelling? Op een ander die een naam schreef in het zand.
Toen ik in je huis aankwam lag je dood te midden van waskaarsen en basilicum, net als in romans. De meisjes van school liepen rondom je scheepje. Je had de azijn gedronken van de fles der eeuwigheid. Ding ding, dong dong de goede klokken huilden om je.
Dong dong, ding ding in de namiddag met pijn in het hoofd. Misschien sliep je dromend, dat je Ophelia was op een blauw meer met koortsig water. Ding ding, dong dong Laten de zachte klokken om je huilen! Dong dong, ding ding in de namiddag met pijn in het hoofd.
Vertaald door Marije Dekkers
Lied van de kleine dood
Dodelijke weide van manen en bloed onder de aarde. Weideland van oud bloed.
Schijnsel uit gister en morgen. Dodelijke hemel van gras. Schijnsel en nacht uit zand.
Ik kwam de dood er tegen. Dodelijke weide uit aarde. Het was een kleine dood.
De hond op het terras. Enkel mijn linkerhand doorkruiste eindeloze bergen van dorre bloei.
Sintelen kathedraal. Schijnsel en nacht uit zand. Een kleine kleine dood.
Een dood en ik een mens. Een mens alleen en daar een kleine kleine dood.
Vertaald door Dolf Verspoor
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936
„Natürlich will niemand sechzig werden, jedenfalls nicht als Jubilar, und natürlich will niemand, der bei Sinnen ist, ein Fest, um das auch noch zu feiern, aber obwohl ich alles darangesetzt hatte, es zu verhindern, war ich in die erwartbaren Abläufe geschlittert und musste mich am Ende vielleicht wirklich als bedeutender Künstler, verdienter Bürger, und was dergleichen sonst für Würdigungen kurz vor dem Grabstein und kurz vor dem Vergessen stehen, ganz nach dem Geschmack des Publikums wie ein Pfau ausstopfen und vorführen lassen. Gewöhnlich begann der Unsinn erst zehn oder fünfzehn Jahre später, doch weil sie in der Provinz sonst kaum jemanden fanden, kam ich ihnen zupass. Ich hatte bereits lange davor mit Luzie verabredet, dass wir in der kritischen Zeit gemeinsam durch Amerika fahren und am 21. Dezember irgendwo an der Westküste ankommen würden, nur sie und ich, Vater und Tochter, vielleicht in San Francisco, genau an dem Tag, an dem das große Ereignis eintreten sollte, aber dann zerschlug sich alles schon Monate davor. Mein ganzes Leben war ich nicht ein Christkind, sondern nur annähernd eines gewesen, mit erwartetem Geburtstermin am Heiligen Abend, sofern man das noch sagen kann, doch dann hatte es Komplikationen gegeben, hatten die Wehen eingesetzt, und ich hatte drei Tage Leben gewonnen, Jahr für Jahr drei Tage zu verschenken, an denen ich mit Fug und Recht so tun konnte, als gäbe es mich nicht. Seit ich das begriffen hatte, waren es diese drei Tage im Jahr, die ich am meisten liebte, weil ich mir zugestand, in diesen drei oder sogar vier Tagen aus der Welt herauszufallen. Es hatte 21., 22., 23. Und 24. Dezember in meinem Leben gegeben, von denen ich behaupten würde, dass ich glücklich war wie sonst nie, die kürzesten Tage des Jahres, die längsten Nächte, Nächte voller Lichter. Die Geburtstage im Flugzeug, auf dem Weg irgendwohin, mit weihnachtlich gestimmten Sitznachbarn auf ihrer Reise nach Hause, der Geburtstag in Brighton, meine plötzliche Gewissheit ganz draußen auf dem Pier, dass das Leben etwas Gutes sei, der Geburtstag in Tanger, der Schwindel des Glücks beim Blick hinüber nach Gibraltar, der Geburtstag in Nazaré, nördlich von Lissabon, wo sich die Wellenreiter auf die Saison der Riesenwellen vorbereiteten und ich ihnen bei ihren wilden Ritten zuschaute, ihren Kunststücken, wieder und wieder obenauf zu bleiben und nicht unter dem niederstürzenden Wasser begraben zu werden und sich das Rückgrat zu brechen.“
Korte ballade voor de dode Eloïse (woorden van een student)
‘Je was dood’ als aan het eind van alle romans. Ik had je niet lief, Eloïse, en je was zo zacht! Met muziek van groene lente droomde je me mooi en met halflang haar. Ik gaf je kussen en sloeg er geen acht op dat ik je niet zei: O Kersenrode lippen! Wat was je een groot romantica! Je dronk azijn achter de rug van je grootmoeder. Je werd als wilde lentejasmijn. En ik was verliefd op een ander. Zie je niet wat een kwelling? Op een ander die een naam schreef in het zand.
Toen ik in je huis aankwam lag je dood te midden van waskaarsen en basilicum, net als in romans. De meisjes van school liepen rondom je scheepje. Je had de azijn gedronken van de fles der eeuwigheid. Ding ding, dong dong de goede klokken huilden om je.
Dong dong, ding ding in de namiddag met pijn in het hoofd. Misschien sliep je dromend, dat je Ophelia was op een blauw meer met koortsig water. Ding ding, dong dong Laten de zachte klokken om je huilen! Dong dong, ding ding in de namiddag met pijn in het hoofd.
Vertaald door Marije Dekkers
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936)
Then I led her to the river certain she was still a virgin though she had a husband. The fourth Friday in July, as good as on a promise. The street lights were vanishing and the crickets flaring up. Last bend out of town I brushed her sleepy breasts. They blossomed of a sudden like the tips of hyacinths and the starch of her petticoat bustled in my ear like silk slit by a dozen blades. The pines, minus their halo of silver, grew huger and the horizon of dogs howled a long way from the river.
Past the blackberry bushes, the rushes and whitethorn, beneath her thatch of hair, I made a dip in the sand. I took off my neckerchief. She unstrapped her dress. Me my gun and holster, she her layers of slips… Not tuberose, not shell, has skin as half as smooth nor does mirror glass have half the shimmer. Her hips flitted from me like a pair of startled tench: the one full of fire, the other full of cold. That night I might as well have ridden the pick of the roads on a mother-of-pearl mare without bridle or stirrups. Gentleman that I am, I won’t say back the scraps she whispered to me. It dawned out there to leave my lip bitten. Filthy with soil and kisses, I led her from the river and the spears of lilies battled in the air.
I behaved only the way a blackguard like me behaves. I offered her a big creel of hay-colored satins. I had no wish to fall for her. She has a husband after all, though she was still a virgin when I led her to the river.
Vertaald door Conor O’Callaghan
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) Portret door Mick Rooney, 1990-95
In witte geplooide broek, turend door groene zonneschermen, op zoek naar de wijze waarop de zon rood geluid is , hoe sprinkhanen sissen om de zon na te bootsen. Wat is het visuele equivalent van syncopering? Rijen aangebraden palmen rimpelen in de hittegolven door groen glas. Sproeiers tik, tik, tik. De Watts Towers beogen de lucht in chroma te splitsen, torenspitsen betegeld met natuursteen niets minder dan ambitie. ik verliet minaretten voor zon en syncopering,
zevenenzestig tinten groen die ik heb geteld, om te beginnen: palmbladeren, voor- en achterkant, augurk bij de lunch, flessenglas, et cetera. Op een dag zal ik de verschillende gradaties van rood begrijpen. Op die dag zal ik deze mensen begrijpen, ritmes, jazz, Simon Rodia, Watts, Los Angeles, ambitie.
Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve without curving waters and frozen cypresses. Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.
I have seen grey showers move towards the waves raising their tender riddle arms, to avoid being caught by lying stone which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.
For stone gathers seed and clouds, skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra: but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire, only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.
Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone. All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face: death has covered him with pale sulphur and has place on him the head of dark minotaur.
All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth. The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest, and Love, soaked through with tears of snow, warms itself on the peak of the herd.
What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down. We are here with a body laid out which fades away, with a pure shape which had nightingales and we see it being filled with depthless holes.
Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true! Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner, nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent. Here I want nothing else but the round eyes to see his body without a chance of rest.
Here I want to see those men of hard voice. Those that break horses and dominate rivers; those men of sonorous skeleton who sing with a mouth full of sun and flint.
Here I want to see them. Before the stone. Before this body with broken reins. I want to know from them the way out for this captain stripped down by death.
I want them to show me a lament like a river wich will have sweet mists and deep shores, to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself without hearing the double planting of the bulls.
Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull, loses itself in the night without song of fishes and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.
I don’t want to cover his face with handkerchiefs that he may get used to the death he carries. Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!
4. Absent Soul
The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree, nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house. The child and the afternoon do not know you because you have dead forever.
The shoulder of the stone does not know you nor the black silk, where you are shuttered. Your silent memory does not know you because you have died forever
The autumn will come with small white snails, misty grapes and clustered hills, but no one will look into your eyes because you have died forever.
Because you have died for ever, like all the dead of the earth, like all the dead who are forgotten in a heap of lifeless dogs.
Nobady knows you. No. But I sing of you. For posterity I sing of your profile and grace. Of the signal maturity of your understanding. Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth. Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. I sing of his elegance with words that groan, and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.
Vertaald door Pablo Medina
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) Portret door Gregorio Prieto, ca. 1937
At five in the afternoon. It was five sharp in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A basket of lime already set at five in the afternoon. The rest was death and only death at five in the afternoon.
The wind swept away the cotton at five in the afternoon. And rust planted crystal and nickel at five in the afternoon. Now the struggle of leopard and dove at five in the afternoon. And a thigh with a desolate horn at five in the afternoon. And so began the bass notes at five in the afternoon. The arsenic bells and the smoke at five in the afternoon.
On the corners groups of silence at five in the afternoon. And the bull alone with heart on high at five in the afternoon. When the sweat of snow arrived at five in the afternoon, when the bullring filled with iodine at five in the afternoon, death laid eggs in the wound at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon. At five sharp in the afternoon.
The bed is a coffin on wheels at five in the afternoon. Bones and flutes blow in his ear at five in the afternoon. The bull bellowed on his brow at five in the afternoon. The room iridescent with agony at five in the afternoon. Gangrene comes in the distance at five in the afternoon. Trumpet of lilies on green groins at five in the afternoon. The wounds burned like suns at five in the afternoon, and the rabble broke the windows at five in the afternoon. Oh, what a terrible five in the afternoon! It was five on all the clocks. It was five in shadow of the afternoon.
2. Spilled Blood
I don’t want to see it! Tell the moon to come. I don’t want to see Ignacio’s blood on the sand.
I don’t want to see it!
The moon fully open, a horse of quiet clouds and the gray bullring of sleep with willows over the barricades.
I don’t want to see it! My memory burns. Warn the jasmine to cover its whiteness!
I don’t want to see it!
The cow of the old world stroked a snout of blood with its sorrowful tongue and the bulls of Guisando almost death and almost stone bellowed like two centuries tired of walking the land. No.
I don’t want to see it.
Up the bleachers goes Ignacio with death on his shoulders. He looks for dawn and it isn’t dawn. He looks for his sensible profile and sleep confuses him. He looks for his beautiful body and finds his open blood. Don’t ask me to see it! I don’t want to feel the spurt growing weaker by the moment, the spurt that illumines the seats and spills on the hide of the thirsty crowd. Who orders me to look! Don’t make me see it!
His eyes didn’t close when he saw the horns approach, but the terrible mothers raised their heads and all through the cattle ranches there was an air of secret orders thrown to celestial bulls by the foremen of pale mists. There wasn’t a prince in Seville who could compare, no sword like his sword nor a heart so real. His strength was a river of lions, his prudence a torso of marble. An air of Andalusian Rome gilded his head where his smile was a rose of salt and intelligence. The great fighter of bulls! The good mountaineer of the mountain! How soft with the wheat stalk! How hard with his spurs! How tender with the dew! How dazzling in the fair! How grand with the last banderillas of dusk!
But now he sleeps forever. Now the grass and the moss open with sure fingers the flower of his skull. And his blood comes singing: singing through marshes and prairies, sliding down shivering horns, wandering soulless in fog, stumbling on thousands of hoofs like a long, dark, sorrowful tongue to form a puddle of agony by the Guadalquivir of the stars. Oh white wall of Spain! Oh black bull of sorrow! Oh hard blood of Ignacio! Oh nightingale of his veins! No. I don’t want to see it! There is no chalice to hold it. There are no swallows that drink it, no frost of light to cool it, no song or deluge of lilies, no crystal to bathe it in silver. No. I don’t want to see it!
Vertaald door Pablo Medina
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) Muurschildering in New York
Ik kan niet genoeg krijgen van je huid. Als een blinde lees ik met mijn vingers het stille verhaal van je oppervlak. In je ogen dreig ik te verzinken. Op je huid bewandel ik alle wegen zonder mij van jou te verwijderen.
Soms keer je je behulpzaam op je buik. Je rug is een lang hoofdstuk uit een boek. Ik spel je tepels, herlees je oren. Ik laat je tenen op elkander rijmen. Ik lees tussen de regels van je benen en blader in de atlas van je hals.
Het is mij of mijn eigen vingers je lichaam hebben uitgeschreven. Eerst viel het mij als klank te binnen, toen lag het als een beeldspraak op mijn tong en nu herhaal ik wat ik heb gestameld in vloeiende bewoordingen.
Schilderij
Twee doode kreeften met gebroken scharen Rood op de witheid van het tafellaken; Een gele wijn, die fonkelt in het glas, Maar niet gedronken wordt; gemorste asch, En tusschen appelen en eierschalen Een houten kruisbeeld met de pijn en zegen Van zijn doorboorde handen. In den regen, Achter het raam, dat uitziet in de straat, Het grijs gelaat van een bedroefde vrouw, Die in den rouw van hare kleeren staat, Verwonderd en afwijzend en naijvrig En ongetemd: haar wilde armen slaan, Als in een dwaas verweer langs ’t vensterraam. En verder in een kleinen, kalen tuin Van een der huizen aan den overkant, Zacht neergevlijd als een vermoeide hand, Een laatst verzet in ’t wijkend perspectief, De weemoed van een omgewaaiden boom.
Uit:Het eeuwige vuur(Vertaald door Joost van der Meer en William Oostendorp)
“Te midden van een sneeuwstorm kwam Ned Willard thuis in Kingsbridge. In
de hut van een trage schuit, geladen met stoffen uit Antwerpen en wijn
uit Bordeaux, voer hij stroomopwaarts vanuit Combe Harbour. Toen
hij vermoedde dat de boot eindelijk Kingsbridge naderde sloeg hij zijn
Franse mantel strakker om zijn schouders; hij trok de capuchon over zijn
oren, stapte het open dek op en tuurde in de verte. Aanvankelijk
werd hij teleurgesteld: vallende sneeuw was het enige wat hij zag. Maar
zijn verlangen om een glimp van de stad op te vangen was als een pijn,
en vol hoop staarde hij in de sneeuwvlagen. Na een poosje werd zijn wens
vervuld, de storm begon zich terug te trekken. Er verscheen een
verrassend stukje blauw aan de hemel. Starend over de toppen van de
omringende bomen zag hij de toren van de kathedraal,
honderddrieentwintigenhalve meter hoog, zoals iedere leerling in
Kingsbridge wist.
De stenen engel die vanaf de torenspits over de stad waakte had vandaag
sneeuw op haar vleugels liggen, waardoor haar duifgrijze vleugeltoppen
nu helderwit waren. Even viel er een zonnestraal op het beeld, die als
een zegen van de sneeuw af fonkelde; daarna sloot de storm haar weer in
en werd ze aan het zicht onttrokken. Een
poosje zag hij niets anders dan bomen, maar zijn verbeelding liep over.
Hij stond op het punt om na een afwezigheid van een jaar met zijn
moeder te worden herenigd. Hij zou haar niet vertellen hoezeer hij haar
had gemist, want een man diende op zijn achttiende onafhankelijk te
zijn. Maar
bovenal had hij Margery gemist. Hij was op een rampzalig moment voor
haar gevallen: een paar weken voor zijn vertrek uit Kingsbridge om een
jaar door te brengen in Calais, de door Engelsen bestuurde havenstad aan
de Franse noordkust. Hij kende en mocht de ondeugende, intelligente
dochter van sir Reginald Fitzgerald al sinds zijn kindertijd. Toen
ze opgroeide had haar schalksheid een nieuwe verleidelijkheid gekregen,
waardoor hij merkte dat hij in de kerk met een droge mond en
oppervlakkige ademhaling naar haar staarde. Hij had geaarzeld om meer te
doen dan alleen staren, want ze was drie jaar jonger dan hij, maar zij
kende zulke remmingen niet. Op het kerkhof van Kingsbridge, achter de
grote graftombe van prior Philip, de monnik die vier eeuwen eerder de
opdracht voor de bouw van de kathedraal had gegeven, hadden ze elkaar
gekust. Er was niets kinderachtigs geweest aan hun lange, gepassioneerde
zoen; daarna had ze gelachen en was ze weggerend.”
I want you to imagine, in your late capitalist’s mind’s eye, a stagnant fly-blown lake under an African sun, the smell of the sea just beyond (this at least should come easy being the universal saltwater of all your childhoods). Armies of ants on parade in the poor weeds and grey sludge of the ages, dismantling the scene in their own time-lapse movie, skeletal cats picking over spoil, boneyard mongrels marking their range by the water’s edge before moving on. I want you to imagine all this, because once I was Carthage and still am in name, though like some poisoned inland sea my horizons have shrunk to a port that handles zero tonnage, an import and export that evens the scales up at nil, not counting the old rope and plastic bottles that come knocking with the tides, not counting the rusted tins that drift in, not counting the ants shifting clay forms and Carrera marble from my ruins, or the guide who conducts his own private dig for unscrupulous tourists who think nothing of removing a coin from its context (if money ever has such set contexts), of taking a Roman penny with an obverse of Augustus out of the country, to reach the cold northern latitudes in the holds of Lufthansa or Aeroflot, in a fraction of the time it once took under oar and Ursa Major. I was Carthage, but nothing much comes or goes in this afterwards; all that’s left of a thousand years of dockyards and shipsheds are a few shapes the soft earth has found indigestible, for the tourist to squint at, consider, weigh up, reconstruct imaginatively, as I am asking you, listener. From this silted salt lake I once pulled the strings of the known world. Lovers looked out from my sea walls into powerful distance that bound them knowing that I was a true centre. They pulled tight their merchant purses. They drank from clay pitchers – under glass now in nearby museums. A museum will go some way to help in your excavations, but what stories lead on from the razors and combs and amphora and ostrich egg masks are the details of millions who passed through, then into the ground. Standing over a scale model in its sea of flat glass acts out a dominion of your time over mine, looking down on my circular dockyard apotheosis; looking down as from a great height, in a way I can never have known. A map might be easier in helping you build on my wasteland: my trade routes once lit up the coastlines in thousands of oil lamps, a Phoenician outline of Africa in the antique night, spreading westward and hugging the shore, a luminous tracing that brought in and foundered sea creatures, signalling for their mates. I can still taste the distant metals like blood in my harbour mouth, the tin and the iron and the copper which don’t come here now but leech down the well-furrowed sea lanes, my phantom nerve endings. Carthaginian and Roman and Vandal are blinks in my brine eye, In each of their eternities: to me they rise and fall as sea swell. Credit me, listener, with such a long memory, as more than the sum of my parts, more than archaeology and soft sump, more than ground fought over. Aeneas stood here once with a mind to call it quits and cut loose, so the story goes, my port in his storm to his girl in every port. The jets tilt and bank heading north for their carrier hubs in Frankfurt and Moscow, without so much as a second thought for me in my modern darkness, their starboard wing lights blinking in an element I knew nothing about. Some things have endured: the peaks of Cap Bon across the bay form a backdrop to nothing much doing these days; the stars rise to guide nobody from my mouth and on course for the Pillars of Hercules – but these things give me a sense of myself, as the winds do, strong at the turns in the year, which remind me of cargoes and freights in their seasons, gross tonnes that passed through as sand through an hour glass, until history, like the idea of magnetic north so long in the discovering, moved slowly away from here, like a great ship embarking out onto the future’s broad main, and this is the fate of all ports, even yours, listener. Listen to me. I was Carthage.
“Meanwhile,
at dusk—even allowing for the fact that it’s winter, the day has been
stunningly short—the Eagles sneak across the snowy railroad tracks, in
the wake of a freight train whose role will not extend beyond this cameo
appearance (a sad decline from the recent glory years of Von Ryan’s
Express [1965], starring Frank Sinatra, and The Train [1964], with Burt
Lancaster). They let themselves into a storage unit where Eastwood and
Burton strip off their parkas and pull out greatcoats and caps from
their small but apparently bottomless rucksacks. They have not packed
lightly, these two; they have enough clothes and equipment to keep the
Sherpas on an inter-war Everest expedition employed for much of the
climbing season. Working within the confines of a smaller costume
budget, the others do what they can, reversing their parkas from
snowy-white to wintery camouflage. Thus arrayed, like any bunch of lads
on a stag weekend, they head into the village of Werfen for a bit of the
old après-ski (minus the skiing), a little apprehensive, naturally,
this being their first night out on the streets of the resort. The
pitched roofs are laden with snow, the streets are bustling with troops
and vehicles, and there’s so much parping of horns it sounds like an
Alpine equivalent of Cairo. They choose a tavern at random—we’ll try
this one behind us, says Burton, though as with most things he says
he’s not saying but ordering. He tells them to keep their ears open for
anything about General Carnaby, but it seems a lame excuse for that
which needs no excuse, namely getting into the bar and getting a few
down them. It’s a cosy place with foaming steins, a really festive
Bavarian atmosphere and no obviously anti-Semitic conversation. You
can’t help thinking what fun it would be to attend a fancy-dress party
like this in real life, even though you’d catch hell from the tabloids,
especially since the guests include none other than the blond beast Von
Hapen, in his medal-bedecked Gestapo costume. For once Burton is not the
one doing the ordering; it’s Eastwood who orders drinks at the bar,
thereby raising the possibility that, for all his swagger, command and
much-publicized love of drink and his willingness to splash out vast
sums of money on diamonds, Burton might be that lowest, most treacherous
form of British life: a round-dodger, a
conscientious-drink-buying-objector and all-round round-shirker. Even
this suspicion only slightly clouds the rest of the group’s belief that
this is surely the best of all Second World War mission-capers, way
better than scaling the cliffs of Navarone, sweating your malarial
bollocks off on that ghastly bridge over the River Kwai or waiting for
Telly Savalas to flip his sicko lid in The Dirty Dozen. A top night
seems guaranteed as long as they can keep up their German and not be
tricked into letting their conversational guard down, as fatally
happened, six years earlier, to Gordon Jackson as he boarded a bus in
The Great Escape (before enjoying extended small-screen resurrections in
Upstairs Downstairs and The Professionals).”
“Has the chimney fallen in? Or what is it?” She wanted to step farther out and look. But he sprang over the logs and ran at her. She was too surprised to fight him, and her insides were too delicate. The icicled edge of the thatch swept down across the heavy sky, and she was on the floor, the door slammed closed above her. It was dark after the snow-glare, the air thick with the billowing smoke. Outside, he shouted—she could not hear the words—and hurled his logs one by one at the door. She pressed her nose and mouth into the crook of her elbow, but she had already gulped smoke. It sank through to her deepest insides, and there it clasped its thin black hands, all knuckles and nerves, and wrung them, and wrung them. Time stretched and shrank. She seemed to stretch and shrink. The pain pressed her flat, the crashing of the wood. Da muttered out there, muttered forever; his muttering had begun before her thirteen years had, and she would never hear the end of it; she must simply be here while it rose from blackness and sank again like a great fish into a lake, like a great water snake. Then Liga’s belly tightened again, and all was gone except the red fireworks inside her. The smoke boiled against her eyes and fought in her throat. The pains resolved themselves into a movement, of innards wanting to force out. When she next could, she crawled to the door and threw her fists, her shoulder, against it. Was he out there anymore? Had he run off and left her imprisoned? “Let me out or I will shit on the floor of your house!” There was some activity out there, scraping of logs, thuds of them farther from the door. White light sliced into the smoke. Out Liga blazed, in a dirty smoke-cloud, clambering over the tumbled wood, pushing past him, pushing past his eager face.”
“Of
het nu om mensen of dieren ging, Peter Vos was in zijn tekeningen
voortdurend aan het vermommen, om-draaien, transformeren en verkleden:
dieren die menselijke din-gen doen, mensen die dierendingen doen, mensen
die in vogels veranderen, wezens die half dier, half mens zijn, mensen
die in een satirisch beestenkarakter veranderen (klavierleeuw,
kloothom-mel). Hij was een Pulcinel, de komische bediende uit de
commedia dell’arte die aan alles een fantasierijke wending moest geven.
Met een handtekening in de vorm van een Pulcinel ondertekende hij vaak
zijn brieven. Eind jaren vijftig sorteerde de toenmalige uitgever van De
Arbei-derspers Theo Sontrop nog brieven op het postkantoor van
Amster-dam. Op een dag herkende hij een met vogels versierde envelop als
afkomstig van Peter Vos, net als hij oud-leerling van het St.
Boni-fatiuslyceum in Utrecht Peter Vos was inmiddels student aan de
Rijksakademie, Sontrop zat in de redactie van het studentenweek-blad
Propria Cures. Hij vond dat Propria Cures wel een vaardig en geestig
tekenaar als Peter Vos kon gebruiken. Dat dacht Rinus Ferdinandusse ook
toen hij als redacteur van Propria Cures was over-gestapt naar Vrij
Nederland (VN) en Vos vroeg mee te gaan. In het begin maakte Vos
getekende grappen voor de rubriek ‘Vrij Blijvend’, die later ‘Terzijde’
zou gaan heten. De rubriek bestond nog uit pasti-ches en parodieën
geschreven door Ferdinandusse en Hugo Brandt Corstius, en niet uit de
volle kolom oneliners van Toon Verhoeven waarmee de rubriek later
vermaard zou worden. vn-lezers lazen hem altijd als eerste (‘Als je van
lezen houdt is de Tros een goede omroep’). In die verzuilde tijd kon een
tekening van Peter Vos nog voor de nodige commotie en ingezonden
brieven zorgen. Zoals de tekening in het kerstnummer van het jaar 1960.
Het is kerstavond en we zien Jozef op het moment dat een engel hem laat
weten dat er een kindje is geboren. ”t Is een jongen!’ juicht de engel.
En toen in 1964 de aflevering ‘Beeldreligie’ van het satirische
televisieprogramma Zo is het toevallig ook nog eens een keer zo veel
verontwaardiging had ge-wekt, maakte Peter Vos de tekening van de man
die voor de televisie zit en zijn vrouw roept ‘Mien, kom. Het is weer
kwetsen.’ Zijn bijdrage aan ‘Terzijde’ bestond uit het tekenen van de
weke-lijkse leeuw. Die werd zo’n vaste verschijning dat je hem bijna
over het hoofd zag. Maar wie dat niet liet gebeuren, zag de mens
ver-momd als leeuw elke week vechten tegen de aanvallen van het leven.
Hij nam in de loop der tijd elke denkbare manhaftige pose aan. De leeuw
werd met alles geconfronteerd, elke ochtend al meteen met zichzelf in de
spiegel, en verder in de loop van de dag met allerhande tegenstanders
die hij niet zelden met een zwaard te lijf ging, tot hij zich bedacht. “
Ik weet het wee van zoveel scherpe klippen. Ik weet het lied dat druipt van wrange wijn. Ik weet veraders aan uw fijngekorven lippen die mij een smart van lang-verduren zijn; want wist gij hoe ik heb gebeden om niet meer droef uw roekloosheid te denken, hoe ‘k u wou bedden, heel schuldeloos en rein en hoe ‘k het snijdend woord voor u steeds heb vermeden om zacht en heelend en ook goed te zijn.
Hoe ik de eenzaamheden geregen heb tot kostbre snoeren rond uw lijf, hoe ik het licht bevangen heb vermeden en hoe ik stil bij ’t graf van een herinnering blijf. En hoe de stilte werd tot een ondraaglijk tarten te weten dat er is een véélvergulden schijn! Die kerft zijn wond in al te wilde harten die niet bevrijd, te snel verbeten zijn…
Weet gij dat wij toch grenzeloos herleven van dit vergift, nog zoeter dan jasmijn? dat alles nieuw, het hunkren en het streven en ’t worstelen, ongekend, rebels en wreed zal zijn.
“While I was watching the advertisements on television last night, I saw Sophy Brent. I have not set eyes on her for some months, and the sight of her filled me with a curious warm mixture of nostalgia and amusement. She was, typically enough, eating: she was advertising a new kind of chocolate cake, and the picture showed her in a shining kitchen gazing in rapture at this cake, then cutting a slice and raising it to her moist, curved, delightful lips. There the picture ended. It would not have done to show the public the crumbs and the chewing. I was very excited by this fleeting glimpse, as I always am by the news of old friends, and it aroused in me a whole flood of recollections, recollections of Sophy herself, and of all that strange season, that Garrick year, as I shall always think of it, which proved to me to be such a turning point, though from what to what I would hardly like to say. Poor old Sophy, I allowed myself to say, thinking that she would not much like being on a cake advertisement; and then I remembered the last time I had said Poor old Sophy, and that in any case, she would have earned a lot of money from that tantalizing moment. There is perhaps something finally unpitiable in Sophy, just as there is in me. We are both in our ways excellent examples of resilience, though I seem obliged to pass through many degrees of meanness on my way, whereas she just smiles and wriggles and exclaims and with a little charming confusion gets by. I like Sophy. I cannot help liking Sophy. And if there is a defensive note to be detected in that assertion, I am not in the least surprised. That chocolate cake vision made me think back, as I said, over the whole lot, right back to the very beginning, to the occasion when I first realized that David was really intending to go to Hereford. I had just finished putting Flora to bed, and I came downstairs, splashed and bedraggled from her bath, to find David nursing the new baby and drinking a glass of beer. He had poured some stout for me, which was the only thing he would let me drink. When I appeared he handed the baby over quickly, and as I sat down and prepared to feed him, wondering if I would ever get him to wake at a less exhausting time, Dave spoke.”
The moon came into the forge in her bustle of flowering nard. The little boy stares at her, stares. The boy is staring hard. In the shaken air the moon moves her amrs, and shows lubricious and pure, her breasts of hard tin. “Moon, moon, moon, run! If the gypsies come, they will use your heart to make white necklaces and rings.” “Let me dance, my little one. When the gypsies come, they’ll find you on the anvil with your lively eyes closed tight. “Moon, moon, moon, run! I can feelheir horses come.” “Let me be, my little one, don’t step on me, all starched and white!”
Closer comes the the horseman, drumming on the plain. The boy is in the forge; his eyes are closed. Through the olive grove come the gypsies, dream and bronze, their heads held high, their hooded eyes.
Oh, how the night owl calls, calling, calling from its tree! The moon is climbing through the sky with the child by the hand.
They are crying in the forge, all the gypsies, shouting, crying. The air is veiwing all, views all. The air is at the viewing.
Vertaald door Will Kirkland
Arbolé, Arbolé
Tree, tree dry and green.
The girl with the pretty face is out picking olives. The wind, playboy of towers, grabs her around the waist. Four riders passed by on Andalusian ponies, with blue and green jackets and big, dark capes. ‘Come to Cordoba, muchacha.’ The girl won’t listen to them. Three young bullfighters passed, slender in the waist, with jackets the color of oranges and swords of ancient silver. ‘Come to Sevilla, muchacha.’ The girl won’t listen to them. When the afternoon had turned dark brown, with scattered light, a young man passed by, wearing roses and myrtle of the moon. ‘Come to Granada, inuchacha.’ And the girl won’t listen to him. The girl with the pretty face keeps on picking olives with the grey arm of the wind wrapped around her waist. Tree, tree dry and green.
Vertaald door William Logan
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) Portret door Alejandro Cabeze, 2015
Nog voor zonsondergang valt reeds de wind, het land wordt diep waarin de boomen zwijgen en de gedachten ruimte en toekomst krijgen, voor ’t open raam denkt menig moeder aan haar kind.
En in den nacht wordt ’t gouden haar ontbonden en streelen vingers een bemind gelaat; het spel is oud waarvoor wij namen vonden zoo zoet dat geen herinnering geheel vergaat.
In vele kamers schijnt de glans der maan over de lichamen die zich verstrenglen; de liefde raakt ons in ’t voorbijgaan aan, maakt ons één nacht haar uitverkoren englen.
Wie nu nog rond ziet in de leege straat hoort hoe het loover nauwlijks leeft en fluistert, de vogel onder maan en sterren klaagt, de klimroos maakt het venster zoet en duister.
Straks gloort de morgen boven bosch en weiden, het landschap waar het vee slaapt in het gras wordt vochtig van den dauw, de vijver blinkt als glas waarover schaduwen van wolken glijden.
Als de rivier zich rekt in ’t heldre licht en langs de wegen menschen naar de dagtaak loopen, begint de wind opnieuw en waait den hemel open, de boomen ruischen in het vergezicht.
„22 June 1911 On the day King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the pit in Aberowen, South Wales. The twenty-second of June, 1911, was Billy’s thirteenth birthday. He was woken by his father. Da’s technique for waking people was more effective than it was kind. He patted Billy’s cheek, in a regular rhythm, firmly and insistently. Billy was in a deep sleep, and for a second he tried to ignore it, but the patting went on relentlessly. Momentarily he felt angry; but then he remembered that he had to get up, he even wanted to get up, and he opened his eyes and sat upright with a jerk. “Four o’clock,” Da said, then he left the room, his boots banging on the wooden staircase as he went down. Today Billy would begin his working life by becoming an apprentice collier, as most of the men in town had done at his age. He wished he felt more like a miner. But he was determined not to make a fool of himself. David Crampton had cried on his first day down the pit, and they still called him Dai Crybaby, even though he was twenty-five and the star of the town’s rugby team. It was the day after midsummer, and a bright early light came through the small window. Billy looked at his grandfather, lying beside him. Gramper’s eyes were open. He was always awake, whenever Billy got up; he said old people did not sleep much. Billy got out of bed. He was wearing only his underdrawers. In cold weather he wore his shirt to bed, but Britain was enjoying a hot summer, and the nights were mild. He pulled the pot from under the bed and took off the lid. There was no change in the size of his penis, which he called his peter. It was still the childish stub it had always been. He had hoped it might have started to grow on the night before his birthday, or perhaps that he might see just one black hair sprouting somewhere near it, but he was disappointed. His best friend, Tommy Griffiths, who had been born on the same day, was different: he had a cracked voice and a dark fuzz on his upper lip, and his peter was like a man’s. It was humiliating. As Billy was using the pot, he looked out of the window. All he could see was the slag heap, a slate-grey mountain of tailings, waste from the coal mine, mostly shale and sandstone. This was how the world appeared on the second day of Creation, Billy thought, before God said: “Let the earth bring forth grass.” A gentle breeze wafted fine black dust off the slag on to the rows of houses.”
Guardian of the date-stamp and card catalogue, keeper of knowledge, and a staff notice-board pinned with drunks and men who lick the atlases, go with me while I Tipp-Ex-out the bogies and spray Glade in the newspaper section. Curmudgeon, teach me how to smile while fining the sinners who have lately been in hospital, who were struck dumb by lightning, or forgot. Teach me to bear their crumbs and bookmarks with the fortitude for which you are not famous: the bus tickets, postcards, rashers of bacon and once – give me strength – a knotted condom. Gatekeeper, watch over books on loan; their months of purgatory spent in bath steam or under beds. Watch over those abandoned on bus seats or park benches. Heal the torn. Take them back from houses with the measles. Inform Environmental Health at once. And teach me to work with an abrupt demeanour, And the martyrdom of the index, which was yours; to speak out in the silence of your feast day whose widespread celebration is long overdue.
“On top of that he was supposed to make sure – at the very least – that she agreed to grant Kulchur exclusive rights to reproduce a drawing Morison had made of her, a drawing never previously published, and not even seen by anyone at Kulchur, but which, due to the fear that a rival publication might get hold of it, had acquired the status of a rare and valuable artefact. The value of any individual part of this arrangement was irrelevant. What mattered was that in marketing and publicity terms (or, from an editorial point of view, circulation and advertising) the planets were all in alignment. He had to interview her, had to come away with the picture and the right to reproduce it. Christ Almighty … A woman pushing an all-terrain pram glanced quickly at him and looked away even more quickly. He must have been doing that thing, not talking aloud to himself but forming words with his mouth, unconsciously lip-synching the torrent of grievances that tumbled constantly through his head. He held his mouth firmly shut. He had to stop doing that. Of all the things he had to stop doing or start doing, that was right at the top of the list. But how do you stop doing something when you are completely unaware that you’re doing it? Charlotte was the one who pointed it out to him, when they were still together, but he’d probably been doing it for years before that. Towards the end that’s how she would refer to this habit of muted karaoke. ‘That thing,’ she would say. ‘You’re doing that thing again.’ At first it had been a joke between them. Then, like everything else in a marriage, it stopped being a joke and became a bone of contention, an issue, a source of resentment, one of the many things that rendered life on Planet Jeff – as she termed the uninhabitable wasteland of their marriage – intolerable. What she never understood, he claimed, was that life on Planet Jeff was intolerable for him too, more so, in fact, than for anyone else. That, she claimed, was precisely her point.”
In the branches of the laurel tree I saw two dark doves One was the sun and one the moon Little neighbors I said where is my grave — In my tail said the sun On my throat said the moon And I who was walking with the land around my waist saw two snow eagles and a naked girl One was the other and the girl was none Little eagles I said where is my grave — In my tail said the sun On my throat said the moon In the branches of the laurel tree I saw two naked doves One was the other and both were none.
Vertaald door Sarah Arvio
Sonnet of the Wreath of Roses
The wreath, quick, I am dying! Weave it quick now! Sing, and moan, sing! Now the shadow is darkening my throat, and January’s light returns, a thousand and one times.
Between what needs me, and my needing you, starry air, and a trembling tree. A thickness of windflowers lifts a whole year, with hidden groaning.
Take joy from the fresh landscape of my wound, break out the reeds, and the delicate streams, and taste the blood, spilt, on thighs of sweetness.
But quick! So that joined together, and one, time will find us ruined, with bitten souls, and mouths bruised with love.
Paso (The Images of the Passion)
Virgin in a crinoline, Virgin of Solitude, spreading immensely like a tulip-flower. In your boat of light, go – through the high seas of the city. through turbulent singing, through crystalline stars. Virgin in a crinoline through the roadway’s river you go, down to the sea!
Vertaald door A. S. Kline
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) “Federico García Lorca” door Alice Wellinger, 2011
In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins. The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream, and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. In a graveyard far off there is a corpse who has moaned for three years because of a dry countryside on his knee; and that boy they buried this morning cried so much it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful! We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias. But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist; flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths in a thicket of new veins, and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
One day the horses will live in the saloons and the enraged ants will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows.
Another day we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue. Careful! Be careful! Be careful! The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm, and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge, or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe, we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting, where the bear’s teeth are waiting, where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting, and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is sleeping. If someone does close his eyes, a whip, boys, a whip! Let there be a landscape of open eyes and bitter wounds on fire. No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one. I have said it before.
No one is sleeping. But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night, open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.
Vertaald door Robert Bly
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) Portret door Fabrizio Cassetta, 2013
Aanvangt de klaagzang van de gitaar. Breken doen de bekers van de ochtend. Aanvangt de klaagzang van de gitaar. Hem smoren is nutteloos. Hem smoren is onmogelijk. Hij huilt eentonig zoals het water huilt, zoals de wind huilt over de sneeuwvlakte. Hem smoren is nutteloos. Hem smoren is onmogelijk. Hij huilt om dingen ver. Heet zand uit het zuiden snakt naar witte camelia’s. Hij huilt om de pijl zonder doel, om de avond zonder ochtend en om de eerste vogel dood op de tak. O gitaar! Hart door vijf zwaarden zwaargewond.
Processiebeeld
Maad met hoepelrok, Maagd der Verlatenheid, open als een onmetelijke Op je lichtende schip klief je door het hoogwater van de stad, tussen roezige saeta’s en kristalsterren. Maagd met hoepelrok jij klieft door de straatrivier tot in zee!
Vertaald door Bart Vonck
De zigeunernon Voor José Moreno Villa
Stilte van witkalk en mirte. Kaasjeskruid in de kruidentuin. De non borduurt violieren op een strogeel doek. In de grijze luchter vliegen zeven vogels van het prisma. In de verte gromt de kerk als een beer op zijn rug. Wat borduurt zij mooi! Hoe fraai! Op het strogele doek wil zij de bloemen van haar fantasie borduren. Wat een zonnebloem! Wat een magnolia van pailletten en linten. Wat een saffraantjes, wat een maantjes op de altaardwaal! Vijf pompelmoezen versuikeren vlakbij in de keuken. De vijf wonden van Christus in Alméria geoogst. In de ogen van de non galopperen twee ruiters. Een verre gesmoorde zucht maakt haar hemd los, en terwijl ze in verstarde verten naar wolken en bergen staart, breekt haar hart van suiker en citroenverbena. O, wat een steile vlakte met twintig zonnen erboven. Wat een rechtopstaande stromen dagen in haar fantasie! Toch gaat zij verder met haar bloemen, terwijl rechtop, in de bries, het licht schaakspeelt hoog in het zonnescherm.
Vertaald door Lepus
Federico García Lorca (5 juni 1898 – 19 augustus 1936) Portret door Mick Rooney, 1990-95
